Nerve.com - When The Rodeo Starts by Michael Joseph Gross

Nerve.com - When The Rodeo Starts by Michael Joseph Gross: "The popularity of Brokeback Mountain's tragic love story measures America's progress toward becoming a place where gay men can build their lives on love. With terrible clarity, it also describes a tension that still exists in the life of practically every gay man I know.
Like Ennis, most gay men have the fantasy that our great love is, or should be, sui generis. Like him we've told ourselves 'I ain't queer' — until, like Jack, we realize that we are — or decide that we want to become, or have to become — queer, or gay, or whatever we decide to call it, if we are to accept the desires that are built into our bones and find a way to let them help us thrive.
In that way, every man who comes out is playing a role. The role cannot be categorically defined: being gay requires no one to do drag or lift weights or collect antiques. But participation in gay life — moving beyond forbidden feelings and hard-ons, to create relationships and social networks that honor and satisfy our desires — is always a decision, and requires a bit of a performance, and has to be re-made again and again: we have to decide not to be ashamed.
Of Brokeback Mountain's lovers, Jack is the one who understands this. He's the one who can imagine a gay life, and the role-playing it requires, because while Ennis is a farmhand, Jack rides the rodeo. "