Were they gay? (Jack & Ennis)

[Caroline]

gordonleo.
where are you... which church are you referring to??

[Uclapeterg]

I think perhaps we digressed to a wayout degree, so if you want then yes... can we get back on track, I fear that the women have hijacked this thread...

Yea!  JK!!!!!!!!!! I love you all!!

Actually, I don't mind when it goes off on tangents.

[Caroline]

AND what are those tangents... peter.?? 

[sunspot]

I am not sure why people keep bringing up Cassie - Ennis said he was putting the blocks to Cassie - he didn't persue a relationship with her because he didn't love her.

According to the short story, the tales Jack and Ennis tell each other of straight liaisons are just that - tales.  They're lies.

Jack says he's having an affair with the neighbor's wife.  In truth, we see him initiate an affair with the neighbor's husband.  We also see Jack pay for sex in Mexico.

The movie never shows either Jack or Ennis engaged in sexual relations with any woman besides their wives.  If they were having straight affairs (in contrast to the short story), that's a pretty glaring omission.
 

[sunspot]

Next time you see BBM, watch those early scenes when Ennis allows his eyes to follow Jack: it happens in the very first scene. And later again several times on the mountain. Now, if you're so inclined, you may say, "Well, Ennis is just looking at him," but it's also entirely possible that Ennis is---shyly, certainly--admiring Jack and taking him in as a man, as a male. I think we see something approaching longing in Ennis's face in several of those early scenes.

There's one scene early on where Jack rides off to the sheep after breakfast and Ennis watches him go.  Ennis watches Jack ride off way too long, and with way too guilty a look in his eyes, for that behavior to be anything other than sexually motivated.

Of course, we see Ennis carefully, fitfully cruising Jack outside the trailer in the very first scene.  Jack cruises him more overtly, which Ennis also notices.
 

[helen_uk]

There's one scene early on where Jack rides off to the sheep after breakfast and Ennis watches him go.  Ennis watches Jack ride off way too long, and with way too guilty a look in his eyes, for that behavior to be anything other than sexually motivated.

Of course, we see Ennis carefully, fitfully cruising Jack outside the trailer in the very first scene.  Jack cruises him more overtly, which Ennis also notices.

The scenes up to when they leave the mountain are my favourites, and in nearly every one up to the tent scenes either Ennis is looking at Jack or Jack is looking at Ennis.  And eventually they both look at each other at the same time.  That scene you just mention, Ennis even cocks his head to one side to enable him to keep Jack in view.

And when Ennis says he hasn't had the opportunity to sin he looks Jack straight in the eye, looks quickly away, then brings his gaze back to Jack for a second.  When he does this they both give a little smile.

They are so ready for it! 

[sunspot]

I see nothing in the short story which implies that "tales Jack and Ennis tell each other of straight liasons are just that - tales".

We are simply told what Jack and Ennis say and left to make our own minds up about the truth of those statements.

From the conclusion of their conversation about their "straight" affairs:

Without getting up he threw deadwood on the fire, the sparks flying up with their truths and lies, a few hot points of fire landing on their hands and faces, not for the first time, and they rolled down into the dirt. One thing never changed: the brilliant charge of their infrequent couplings was darkened by the sense of time flying, never enough time, never enough.

Now, either they were lying about the other things in that conversation - Jack's dyslexic boy, Ennis wanting a boy, or Jack not wanting kids much at all - or they were lying about the supposedly straight affairs they'd claimed to have been having.
 

[cyoung]

I think perhaps we digressed to a wayout degree, so if you want then yes... can we get back on track, I fear that the women have hijacked this thread...

Deleted! Sorry for pulling the thread so far off track. Did not mean to hijack, was just having some fun.

Cara

[vertimus]

GordanLeo, I'm with you.

I think, as is, the film can be trumpeted not as a love story but as a cautionary tale about what happens to 'uppity' homosexual men, not only Jack, but Ennis too.

Obviously, if someone chooses to view the film that way, the message would be, "Well, stay in the damned closet and suffer if you must be a fag, because that's far better than being beaten to death, isn't it?"

Sadly enough, hat's the way some will see it and perhaps even champion it.

[Cambridge]

I am not sure why people keep bringing up Cassie - Ennis said he was putting the blocks to Cassie - he didn't persue a relationship with her because he didn't love her.

The movie never shows either Jack or Ennis engaged in sexual relations with any woman besides their wives.  If they were having straight affairs (in contrast to the short story), that's a pretty glaring omission.

It's a pretty glaring addition, I'd say, as Cassie gets one line in the short story. But can you say Ennis isn't "putting the blocks" to her (love that phrase, btw, and must find ways to use it in conversation...perhaps as the secret code to ID BB-aholics to one another?) when - in the film - he makes it a point to introduce Alma Jr to her, who asks if she thinks her Dad's the marrying kind and, when they have their final scene together in the bus station Cassie says "girls don't fall in love for fun" as she sheds a tear? That Ennis chose not to pursue the relationship doesn't say to me there wasn't one, or that it was not sexual, but that he chose not to live that lie.

Those scenes imply - to me at least - that Ennis is doing the nasty with someone besides Jack: Cassie. It'd have to be a woman as Jack is the only man with whom he can conceive of having a sexual relationship whereas Jack, whose essential orientation is - again, IMO - more homosexual, is indeed having it on with Randall the ranch foreman and not Mrs Randall, the ranch foreman's wife...knowing, as he so well does by now and which truth is soon confirmed, that Ennis will be enraged/devastated were he "to come to know" that someone else is grazing on what Ennis thought was his spread (sorry - couldn't resist the pun) and his alone.

One of the promos, either a preview or the trailer, says: "There are lies we have to tell." This strikes me as one of 'em, at least on Jack's part.

[Cambridge]

Cara, I meant that 'rimming,' so-called, is not considered 'proper' sex in many high WASP circles and homes. I doubt Ward and June Cleaver practiced it.

Neither is fellatio or cunnilingus, for that matter, at least traditionally speaking.

Many of the WASPs I know here in NYC from 'high WASP' backgrounds find such behavior fairly disgusting. They're strictly into the missionary position. They may desire such acts, but are or would be too afraid to ask their spouses to participate in them.

Vertimus:

A link that seems to contradict that: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/02.05.98/sex-oral-9805.html

At least in Sonoma County, it is written that: ...In their survey of almost 3,500 men and women ages 18 to 59 of varying racial, economic, and educational backgrounds, Gagnon and his fellow researchers discovered that far more people have experienced oral sex than have not. But, who you are may well influence the, uh, outcome. Whites are about 30 percent more likely to engage in oral sex than blacks, while higher education also correlates with greater likelihood of indulging. Religion appears to have little influence on whether people give or receive oral sex except, not surprisingly, for those who consider themselves Religiously Conservative Protestants.

One presumes they're on their knees enough as it is.

Here Johnny Carson swings the imaginary golf club while Doc and the band break into the "Tonight Show" theme: da nah dah nuh, da nun dah nun...

[vertimus]

Cambridge, I'm not attacking WASPs. I'm 50% 'pure-WASP' myself on my father's side.

I'm speaking out my own observations over the years, largley with my peers, who, like me, lived through, enjoyed, and survived the sexual revolution.

I remained sexually liberal, but many of them, if they were ever anything less than sexually uptight, have remained so.

The men, as might be expected, are far more liberal (in my experience), but, once again, I find that they want things from other women that they would either A) not accept from their wives, or B) not want their wives to participate in.

I live in NYC, and we still have an old-school High WASP contingent here. Those are the people I'm referring to. I know many of them well. And many of them, as it happens, are from New England backgrounds, if that matters.

I'm not claiming any access to verity here. I'm simply sharing what I've witnessed.

[Cambridge]

Cambridge, I'm not attacking WASPs. I'm 50% 'pure-WASP' myself on my father's side.

Vertimus - I've no reason to doubt that nor to say that your experience is invalid. But the study referenced would seem to contradict it. WASP's are by definition white, usually well-educated (and those who aren't are often well-medicated...) and Protestants of the Episcopalian persuasion.

And I found the last line I quoted (presumably referencing the followers of Reverends Falwell and Robinson et al, not the communicants at St John the Divine) hilarious.

I am from a 100% Irish-American ethnic background, so thus at least once a Roman Catholic, and while indeed I can promise you that Mom and Dad and their friends in the Knights of Columbus and the Sodality and the Holy Name Society (and the yacht club, and the country club) probably weren't engaging in oral sex (I've no way of knowing because, like WASPs, it's not something one talked about. Ever.) that's certainly not the case today. Or so I'm told. And so I'm led to wonder if what we "say" about many things sexual is a far cry from what we "do."

Here in New England a well known prep school expelled seven or eight hockey players last year for having received oral favors from a 15 year old (female) schoolmate and the resulting brouhaha led to a wider discussion of this phenomenon. Among my friends who have school age children - many of whom fit the WASP stereotype, I might add - it seems pretty clear that their children don't consider oral sex to be sex. "Friends with benefits," perhaps, but absent penetration (presumably vaginal, in these instances) it's a different situation.

As to WASP reticence about all matters sexual, I can only mention that the last WASP mayor of Boston - all since 1930 have been Irish until the election of our present Mayor, Tom Mennino - one Andrew J. Peters of Beacon Hill and the Social Register was hounded out of office on rumors (apparantly true) that he was having an affair with his niece, a woman 34 years younger than was he. James Michael Curley, four times Mayor of Boston and the model for Frank Skeffington in Edwin O'Connor's "The Last Hurrah", once blackmailed Geoffrey Cabot (of "the Cabots who speak only to the Lowells" and thence to God; those Cabots, and president at the time, I believe, of the State Street Bank and Trust Company) with letters Cabot had written in German to his wife reminiscing fondly about her performing what we now call "watersports" on him. These were not, ahem, matters that involved a jet ski, sailboard or kayak at the Wianno Club either...

Please don't think that I'm singling out white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants as the only folks on the down low low down. And to bring us back to somewhere near the topic, I can only quote from the story that "There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe..."

Cheers

[vertimus]

Sunspot, full agree with all your points, every one. And you too, helen_UK, who I see has just chimed in.

It's a little mutual dance of love they're doing there, Jack and Ennis.

Beautifully acted, directed, and ffilmed, and in it, I find all the nuance and subtly I didn't find in the story.

[sunspot]

he makes it a point to introduce Alma Jr to her, who asks if she thinks her Dad's the marrying kind and, when they have their final scene together in the bus station Cassie says "girls don't fall in love for fun" as she sheds a tear? That Ennis chose not to pursue the relationship doesn't say to me there wasn't one, or that it was not sexual, but that he chose not to live that lie.

It's possible Ennis had some sort of relationship with Cassie, but we never see it.  In the short story, it's clear those heterosexual relationships are lies Jack and Ennis tell one another.  Ennis does introduce Alma, Jr. to Cassie, but that may just be to get Jr.'s approval before possibly entering into some sort of relationship with Cassie.  Anyhow, it's clear from his behavior that Ennis isn't over the moon in love with the idea of getting into a relationship with Cassie.  I can't imagine any straight man would be quite so glum over having a girl as pretty as Cassie fawning over him.