There is a story behind the story we see in Brokeback Mountain

Rating: 8/10 (20 January 2006)

I was touched by the film. I am a homosexual, but I reject the label "gay" because I don't identify with the gay culture or gay political agenda. Watching the film, I felt I saw both the "gay love story" we're expected to see, but also the story the film tells unintentionally. I see two men who struggle with the demands of manhood and cling to each other for comfort. In Ennis Del Mar I see a man who has isolated himself from other men, and who struggles with aggression toward them. In Jack Twist I see a man longing for masculine affirmation, affection, and approval.
The film fills in points that Annie Proulx's short story leaves out, but the short story also hints at childhood experiences for both Ennis and Jack that may have formed them into the young men who ultimately find an intense connection on Brokeback. For Ennis there's the loss of his parents and a history of violence and rejection with his brother. For Jack there's a violently intimate episode with a cruel father where he learns he is hopelessly different from his dad. It's no wonder to me that Jack instantly assumes the submissive posture toward Ennis when it comes time to sexualize their feelings for each other.
So these two men who don't feel wholly male, with the help of alcohol and privacy, have no way to process their newfound closeness other than through sex. Sexualizing their intimacy traps their otherwise brotherly feelings for each other in a romantic cul-de-sac. It also teaches each of them to see themselves as secretly gay.
In the short story, Ennis admits to masturbating to the fantasy of Jack the four years between working together and their next meeting. With the reward of orgasm, he confirms to his psyche over and over again that making love to Jack is his true condition. The identity he's forced on himself stays with him to the point that he feels strangers in town can see right through him.
Perhaps used to the submissive posture sexually, Jack can't find sexual satisfaction with women the way Ennis can. For whatever reason  I think it has a lot to do with the traumatic event with his father  he feels the need for a sexual connection with men more intensely then Ennis. He patronizes male prostitutes in Mexico and sets his sights on liaisons with other guys. It's sad to me that when he has an opportunity to make a friend out of the ranch foreman while their wives "powder their noses," it immediately turns into a secret romantic proposition. All these experiences confirm even more to Jack that he's a gay man living a life he doesn't want.
But it could have been different right? They could have left their wives and children and moved in together and live always the fantasy they stoke a few times a year. But for that, Jack wouldn't have died either changing a tire, or in maybe from gay-bashing.
Maybe, but I suspect the secret idyllic fantasy-world they create is in fact what keeps their romance going 20 years. The intense periodic connections they experience turn the rest of their lives into barren deserts interrupted occasionally by the oasis of their romance. I suspect that making their romance "regular" is precisely what would have made it boring for one or both of them  just as boring as the regular lives they've had with their wives. Like a lot of gay "couples" who move in together and remain companions into old age, I can see them abandoning sex with each other because it would lose its mystery. With their sexual interest in each other spent, I see them ending up best friends at most, with the sort of brotherhood that they could have had without the sex.
So I ultimately, I set aside the story of a perfectly quaint romance ruined by the demands of a cruel, intolerant society. I see the two heterosexual marriages that could have stood a chance if they hadn't been ruined by homosexual experimentation. I see the missed opportunity of healthy masculine connectedness that Ennis and Jack both abjured for the sake of gay sex and romance. I see the missed opportunities for each of them to become completely male in their self-understandings.
Yes, it could have been different for Ennis and Jack. Instead of sexualizing and romanticizing their friendship, they could have connected as brother-men to each other and to other guys. Instead of disdaining their respective marriages for getting in the way of their romance, they could have supported each other as brother husbands and fathers. Ennis didn't need a Jack to sexually dominate to feel confirmed in his manhood. Jack didn't need Ennis to literally penetrate him in order to feel like he was getting the manhood that was missing in his psyche. These are hells they chose instead of accepting manhood.
The tragedy is that these guys screwed when they really could have been fishing together. The tragedy is that they limited their male connections mostly to each other. Ennis refuses his wife's entreaty to connect with other families at their church. Jack refuses to make another male friend in a non-sexual context. Instead of Ennis and Jack turning to alcohol to cover up his wounded masculinity, he could have sought counseling from a caring male figure, either psychological or spiritual.
There won't be a sequel to "Brokeback Mountain." But I hope for a happy ending for Ennis. I hope for a happy ending where he takes down his shrine to idealized Jack and finds a Godly way to feel complete in himself as a man while learning to cherish what was healthy in his friendship with a fallen brother.