Watching Brokeback Mountain kept me in the closet Culture

Me I was 14 years old the first time I saw two men kissing through the window. It was 2006, and my mother rented it Brokeback Mountain from our local Blockbuster. He said it was a “special” movie night for “just the two of them”.

For the next 134 minutes, I watched two shepherds, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), fall in love in the beautiful countryside of Wyoming, only because that love was thwarted by rigid expectations of masculinity and self-loathing. The film culminates in Jack’s sudden death, suggesting that he may have been the victim of a homophobic crime.

When the sad movie ended, my mother turned to me and asked: “Is there anything you want to say?” My whole body burned with shame as I shook my head and left the room.

This was a good but misguided attempt by my mother to persuade me to leave the room. He was right: I am gay. When I came out to my family, it wasn’t a surprise. I’m the guy who cried for three days when Geri left the Spice Girls and had a Legolas poster in my bedroom. What I tried to prevent was obvious. But it would be another six years before I would say it out loud to myself and others.

In fact, watching Brokeback Mountain had the opposite effect my mother intended. In the book, Jack tells Ennis: “I wish I knew how to leave you.” The word “you” to me at that time meant my attraction to men. I hated who I was so much that all I took from the film was that being gay meant one of two things: a miserable life or death. I went back to the room.

Also, one year earlier, Canada had legalized same-sex marriage, and the word about the decision was dire. At school, many of my friends had the courage to say that it was “unusual” and “wrong” for two men to get married. After this, I put a dead bolt and extra lock on my bedroom door. It took me a long time to shake my belief that I could not live and be loved as a heterosexual man.

After that I sought out LGBTQ+ stories on TV, movies and books to increase my understanding of what life can be like. By the 2010s, the efforts of human rights activists meant that it was more common to see issues of poverty with mainstream characters. The TV series Glee showed me that it is possible to love out loud. The Harvey Milk biopic taught me the importance of political transparency. Janet Mock’s memoir Redefining Realness, which tells the story of growing up as a transgender woman in Hawaii, helped me understand what it means to be in a community and fight for others.

It took me years to get back to Brokeback Mountain. I wrote this film as a film I didn’t like, a rebellion to not remember the pain of the person I used to be. That was until a friend brought me to a special Pride screening in 2018.

My second visit to Brokeback felt like a long overdue release. Gustavo Santaolalla’s opening words filled my eyes with tears that did not stop flowing throughout the film. I was no longer a scared, shy boy, I just felt like I was seeing for the first time. I appreciated the painful restraint of the movie, and the depth of resistance that Ennis goes through to survive in small town USA. I saw myself in Jack, a romantic dreamer, who wanted a love that was more often than not stolen.

Brokeback Mountain is now one of my favorite movies. I watch it once a year. I cried on stage in London three years ago.

My mother explained to me many years later that she was ready to do anything to save her child who was suffering. Not all mothers can do this to their former child. So in a way, I’m grateful that he wore it on Brokeback Mountain all those years because it was his way of saying: “I love you for who you are.” I couldn’t feel it then – but I do now.