One of the most interesting things about great art is that the greatest of it acts like a mirror to whoever perceives it. Everybody sees themself in the greatest art, or can realistically relate it to their lives. This is what elevates Brokeback among the greats - short story or film (some even believe the minor discrepancies between the script and the film make the script eligible for this category.... 
).
Jack knows he wants Ennis, but even after the fall from the mountain he thinks for pretty much four years that it's over. But even at that, unlike Ennis, he does go out to hookup with the occasional hustler or lonesome cowboy. (One internet correspondent I met pre-Brokeback was a gay cowboy from eastern Washington state who asked me if I knew the difference between a straight cowboy and a gay one. I said,
"no;" he said, "a six pack." 
) Anyway, I think that Jack really likes the sex with Ennis, but knows that his heart is with him, too. He's never had the "benefit" of an Earl-like experience in his life, and so does not behave in anywhere hear as self-restricted manner as Ennis. Jack's been out drinkin' and foolin' around with other rodeo cowboys, so he knows a world of homosex much different than the world Ennis knows: Jack knows from experience that other guys like to do it with other guys; Ennis knows that two guys ranchin' up together = death. OTOH, Ennis knows his life is all about the sex and the happiness of Jack and him together. He doesn't know that the whole package is called love; Jack knows a lot more about sex than Ennis, but wants the daily partnership he's seen his parents have - he tries to be "loved." The only other people in the film or story that Ennis "loves," and he says he loves them, are his little girls, and he knows that his "thing" with Jack is not the same thing. IMO, Ennis can't believe it's love because he doesn't know what love between two adults is; Jack knows he's got plenty of what he needs coming from Ennis, but he desperately needs it to be identified as "love", to reassure himself of the worth his father stole from him as a child. The real tragedy here is that both our boys have the love they need and want, but neither gets it that that's what they've got: and so it is, their own insecurities, beaten and shocked into them in childhood, which rule and destroy their lives. :\'(
Uh huh
The whole process is kind of black and white. Fear or love. Past or future.
The past had them by the balls, but I still tend to believe their hearts, of which they weren't normally aware, had adjusted their manuals.
I think it's damn clear that Ennis had his childhood's fear branded onto his hyde, and I feel Jack had a very similar mark. But Jack had an eye for some gray areas, knew they
could've existed. He may also have yearned a little more for 'love' than perhaps the neighbor Joe, sure. Jack hadn't been brainwashed with the image of death like Ennis had, so he had more leeway in the way of finding love on his own. And moreso than wanting to name what he had with Ennis 'love', he simply had the innocence to keep the dagger from his heart as well as Ennis's. And then, given his own troubled past, he became helplessly attached.
I am a sucker for the depths of faith and the attire of optimism. I certainly don't want to pose the lack of their childhood's significance. I just find it difficult to think of their time on Brokeback Mountain as something other than the top of their food chain; they had accessories such as
, bait, rifles, horses, sheep. And they had the backdrop of childhood, fear, and homophobic society, but the Mountain always had the powerful last word.
In final confrontation, Ennis' reverie of his Father presenting dead Earl seems to make another appearance with:
"All those
things that I don't know will get you killed if I come to know them."
But alas, Ennis' true colors, his love for Jack tumbled down upon the mountain, and everything is torqued to that stark naked testament of love they'd come to subconciously embrace during that time back on Brokeback where nothing was wrong.
Because their childhood's had gotten them, but Brokeback got them
good :\'(
