Ennis was always the male in their sexual relationship, it's clear. He would never bottom for Jack as he would never have sex with another man.
"I hear what they got in Mexico for boys like you."
About FNIT, Jack would be male or female, but he was very satisfied next morning.
I disagree. I don't believe they had set "roles" for their sexual and romantic relationship. I have read too many things about how people thought it was only one way, but I don't see it that way at all. I think they were both versatile, for lack of a better term. I think it was only that way the first time because Ennis didn't know what he was feeling at that moment, and was half drunk. I believed SNIT showed that that Ennis wanted to experience much more with Jack, and it was the first of many times he was "bottom". He so easily lets Jack get on top of him. He wouldn't let a woman do that, but with Jack it felt natural. I hate to use the terms "male" and "female" and "top" and "bottom" to describe the sexual relationship they have. With two men, a homosexual relationship there is no "male" and "female". And in a heterosexual relationship, due to men and women having certain different anatomy, women therefore are always in a certain way, "top" and "bottom" mean something else in a heterosexual relationship, but that does not make women inferior and it doesn't mean that women are passive all the time. Caressing and nurturing your lover doesn't mean it is a "feminine" thing to do. And Jack in SNIT, behaved in a way a lot of men do when they are with a woman.
By "female", I assume you mean who was the one being penetrated? With two men, since they have the same sexual anatomy, there isn't just one way, and I believe that a lot of couples will take turns so to speak. While some couples might have set "roles", I don't believe that the majority of homosexual couples do that, and I don't believe that Ennis and Jack were set in roles. I believe there were many times after that first tent scene where Ennis was penetrated...I think Jack was on "top" in more ways than one in that relationship...I just got that feeling especially by the way Ennis behaved about things sometimes, and how much he fought his feelings. He was so vulnerable in so many ways. This does not mean that one of them was inferior to the other, it only means that Ennis didn't fully accept who he was, while Jack accepted himself and was a much more confident person. When Ennis was around every person he ever met he hid it so well, but with Jack he just couldn't. Jack just had that uncanny ability to sense what Ennis was really like. I do believe that Ennis and Jack switched "roles" quite often, whenever they wanted to. I liked it how they showed Jack on top of him in the second tent scene, leading him gently, it symbolized Ennis finally giving in to his feelings, and Jack showing him how to make love, and showed him that his feelings and desires were okay. Ennis felt very safe with Jack to bring all those repressed feelings and desires to the surface.
That second night, Ennis let Jack seduce him, where the first night, he was battling with himself. The first night the reason he did not want to be in the tent was because he knew how he felt about Jack. He knew in his heart that he was attracted to this man...and he hated himself for it because he was taught that it was so wrong and the worst thing in the world. When Jack made the sexual advance, Ennis was terrified, because he knew what he felt, but he didn't want to be that...he didn't want to be a queer. By doing what he did to Jack in FNIT, it was his way of trying to still believe that he wasn't queer. He knew for the past month, Jack had been pursuing him, Jack was trying to initiate that relationship, chasing him, and trying to get him, to Ennis, with his internalized homophobia and self-loathing, having been conditioned by a society that set certain roles for men and women, Ennis saw it as "unmanly"...that he was being pursued as if were a woman. So in that drunken moment he did what he did in a desperate attempt to switch the roles around. But that second night, it was completely different. He let Jack be the pursuer, he gave into Jack, let himself be "caught" by Jack so to speak. He let Jack take the reins that night, and the rest of that wonderful summer (a symbol of this is the last day when Jack takes the lasso, and ropes it around Ennis), he cast aside all that he'd been taught and lived a private world that he created with Jack. To Ennis that summer, it was like the outside world ceased to exist, it was just him and Jack in their own heaven, and he felt safe letting Jack see his real self and let all the rules of society be damned.
Alone with Jack, when he thought no one was watching, Ennis wasn't that "tough guy" anymore. Jack sensed that about him from the moment he first saw him outside Aguirre's office. So from day one, he started chipping away at that exterior, and he made progress. A month later he felt that he'd made enough progress to make a sexual advance, and that resulted in FNIT, but the next night, when Ennis came into the tent on his own, and wanted Jack to show him what to do, that must have been the happiest moment of Jack's life. Here was the man Jack wanted more than anything else in the world, and he was finally right there in Jack's arms. It was what Jack had wanted to do the night before, and from the moment he met Ennis, and here he was and it was finally happening. To be Jack in that moment must have been pure heaven, you can see it in his eyes how his heart must have been leaping with pure joy.
Ennis fought against his feelings for twenty years, but he was definitely not the macho guy he pretended to be around everyone else when he was with Jack. He knew Jack could see right through that facade. There is also that part in the short story at the motel where Jack makes a remark about how it's got to be all the time Ennis spent riding horses that made the sex feel so good, heavily implying that what he was talking about was certain muscles of Ennis's anatomy that were firm and tight due to exercise he got from riding horses. That's the way I understand that line, that Jack was talking about Ennis's butt muscles, and there's only one way that Jack would know how tight those were. That's just one example that Jack and Ennis didn't have set roles, they both gave and received, so to speak. But the fact that Ennis never had sex with any other man, it doesn't really mean much at all. Ennis never met anyone, male or female, like Jack. For Ennis was a very introverted person, who did not really have any friends, and did not make connections with people easily. He was a complete loner really. It had to be the right person, and the only right man he met with Jack.
He just didn't have the opportunities to ever meet anyone else like that. Jack came into his life at just the right time, and brought the real Ennis out from hiding. It could have very well have been a similar man, but it happened to be Jack, and after that Ennis's heart was taken. He wasn't going to even think about being with anyone else. He was just a very faithful person, and like Jack said he could survive on a "couple of high altitude f's a year"...meaning that Ennis was okay with having sex just several times a year, while Jack was a person who needed it more...hence he went looking for it with other people. Jack would even enjoy sex with a woman like how he said "I like the direction this is going" when Lureen came on to him. Jack had a higher libido I guess. Also the relationship with Cassie was a sham from the start. Ennis didn't want her, but she came on to strong, and he passively gave in to it because it served as a good cover. I believe the only reason he had the relationship with Cassie was because he was so paranoid about people in Riverton figuring out that he's gay.
This was after that Thanksgiving fight with Alma, where she told him that she knew the truth about him, and for certain after that day, the rumors about Ennis would be going around in a small town where everyone knows everyone else's business. Alma obviously told Monroe, and so you can imagine what people around Riverton were saying about Ennis behind his back...he knew people suspected because they would look at him weird whenever they saw him. So Cassie, who had no idea about the rumors about Ennis, made a good cover, it was a good way to show the townspeople that the rumors weren't true...even then Ennis was always uncomfortable around Cassie and would rather not even be with her, she just wouldn't leave him alone, and Ennis was not the type of person to really be assertive (another truth that Jack knew about him all too well). Ennis could only play tough guy with Alma, because she was a very passive, docile woman (and even she, after she saw him and Jack kissing, she was just rolling her eyes at his macho guy act, like when she walks away and doesn't listen to him when he tells her to serve dinner), or with some random moron bikers saying vulgar things because they didn't know who he was, he was anonymous to them. With everyone else, Ennis was quiet as a rabbit, and with Jack, he was a person who was entirely different, whom only Jack knew and got to see, the lovely person that Ennis hid from the world, the gift that only Jack got to have.
Also that last meeting when Ennis threatens Jack...it's a multitude of things..."boys like you"...it meant that Ennis still was in denial about who he was, even after twenty years, this happens to a lot of gay men who grow up in such homophobic societies, especially ones whose fathers show them and teach them what Ennis's father taught him. He also was upset that Jack was being unfaithful to him, because he loved Jack deeply though after all those years still had self-doubt and doubt about what he really meant to Jack. He was still afraid that he was nothing more than just a sex buddy to Jack. He couldn't keep up the angry facade for long, as we saw how he collapsed and cried in Jack's arms...Jack knew this. This is why he was so patient with Ennis all those years. He knew how fragile and vulnerable and sensitive Ennis was inside underneath that hard shell exterior that he showed the world to protect himself. I do agree with what what someone else said that the short story and the film do an excellent job of showing and reinforcing the fact that neither one was exclusively "top" or "bottom". I think it's a safe bet to say that Jack was the "top" one more often, given what we see in other scenes, and given that Ennis is a more passive person. The way Ennis was with Alma is because he wanted to assert himself to her as "the man"...with Jack he obviously, as we saw in SNIT, that was far from the real Ennis. Ennis around other people was always overcompensating because he knew the truth about himself and he was so afraid other people would realize he wasn't the macho guy society wanted him to be.
He was terrified of people even suspecting about him being queer...to the point where in the scene after his divorce, when Jack wants to caress his neck and face, he quickly removes Jack's hand, because he's afraid of his daughters or other people driving along on the road seeing that...only when he was completely alone with Jack would he allow Jack to do everything he wanted with him. Everything was done in private, either behind closed doors in a hotel or cabin or up there on a mountain with the two of them camping. That is why the reunion kissing scene is so poignant. It's the only time we see Ennis behave the way he did in public with Jack, for that moment, Ennis's feelings and emotions were so overwhelming that he forgot to be afraid of society and other people. He forgot to think about that someone might see. I too, was surprised by the first tent scene, as Jack throughout the entire story is clearly always the pursuer, but then I realized it was just Ennis being in denial of his feelings, and his desperate attempt to convince himself that he isn't gay. Hence he rides off the next morning without even saying anything to Jack, he was so afraid of what he felt for Jack.
After having the whole day to think about it, that night he finally gives in to his feelings for the first time and goes in to the tent. He figured that no one would ever know about what he was about to do with another man, and he could just finally give in to Jack. I think Jack knew that Ennis would come into the tent that night, because he understood Ennis like no one else could. Hence, Jack was waiting for him shirtless, and doesn't look surprised when Ennis comes in all shy and blushing. The way he takes his hat out of his hand and tells him it's alright shows how patient and gentle he was with him, and made him feel safer. I don't believe that either one gave being "top" or "bottom" much thought after that first night, they just did whatever they felt like doing, sometimes it was Jack, other times it was Ennis. I to also believe that was one of the main reasons Ennis was so afraid, afraid of those feelings he had for Jack, feelings he couldn't help but have. When he was around Jack, he wanted to yield to him, Jack saw that his big, macho tough guy act was nothing but a sham, he saw right through it from the first moment, and it crumbled quick. With Jack Ennis wanted to behave in a certain way and do things he would never do with anyone else...that's why he was so afraid of "this thing"...and partly why he tells Jack at the end "it's because of you I'm like this"...blaming Jack for making him this way...this person who is nothing like that macho man that he pretended to be in public, this person who was so far from what society told him a man should be. He couldn't be that "manly, masculine" role with Jack, and whenever he was with Jack, he didn't want to. He would just go with what his heart wanted, and where things led them.
That frightened the homophobic part of Ennis that this man could make him feel that way. He couldn't understand that Jack didn't make him that way. He was that way innately, and Jack only forced that hidden person to come out. It was much easier for the self-loathing Ennis to just pin the blame on Jack. Another reason why I believe Jack was on top in more ways than one. Definitely a lot of Ennis's fears came from the way he was around Jack, and what he allowed Jack to do...he couldn't come to terms with why he felt the way he did and why he had the desires for Jack to do certain things to him. While he was with Jack, he would enjoy every moment of lovemaking, and it felt natural to him, he wanted to do everything with Jack, there were no rules in their own private world.
But as soon as he parted from Jack, as soon as he had to get back to living in the midst of society and pretending to be what they wanted him to be, the old thoughts would plague him again that there was something wrong with him, hence his internal conflict that he was not the "real man", and hence the overcompensation of playing the Marlboro man image in front of Riverton society. Bottom line is that Ennis was very complex, the person he was with Jack was very different from the person he pretended to be in front of everyone else. His macho facade could never hold for long when he was in Jack's loving presence. Therefore, I feel that SNIT was just the first of many times Ennis was "receiving" and experienced Jack being "top", but sometimes Jack would want to be "bottom", and vice versa. Neither one was more "dominant" than the other, and I don't believe either one of them was submissive. It's impossible to count how many times they had sex and know exactly how many times who did what during all the years of their relationship, but I would say that it was about half-and-half. I think the film did a good job of showing that, by showing what was necessary to show and letting the viewer figure out the rest. Neither one "conquered" the other, and there were no "traditional" roles. They were two men who made love whichever way they felt like at the moment. I don't believe either one did one "role" more often or less often than the other.
