Ok, people, I think we have to remember that these are fictional characters and that for all intents and purposes the two main characters where written as gay in order to support the main theme in the story of the struggle between two men in love in the 1960's American West. Any gay man who lived in or grew up in the 1960's and '70's (as I have) knows full well that any attraction to your own sex had to be denied, suppressed and ignored at all costs because according to the information around you at the time, you were sick, abnormal, strange and "funny", if not menally ill, and in most places at the time you were a "criminal sex offender" and could be sent to prison or locked in an institution. As successful as we were in that denial (people believed we were straight), even when the evidence was pretty obvious (you never dated girls, never talked about girls, etc.) most people would never have considered thinking someone as homosexual (as to consider a person homosexual was and perhaps was/still is in some circles a very serious insult). It was equated with considering someone a thief, a swindler, mentally ill, etc. So this is not exclusive to the Ennis' of the world. It was a fact of life for all of us. My god, I remember having sex with guys, or quick encounters and as soon as you were finished, up went the denial again and as if nothing happened you and the other guy would often get away from each other as quickly as possible and in so doing it wouldn't be at all uncommon to tell the guy "you know I never do this kind of thing really" or someting to that effect. So Ennis' obvious denial should never be read to conclude that he never had an attraction for men before that night in the tent. Remember that the character was only 19 and it would not be unusual for a gay 19 year-old whom had never been with a man before to quickly recoil when he found his arms around the guy you were bunking with, if only for fear of the reaction of the guy whom you had your arms around. I find it portrayed in the film quite realistically, that after the initial recoil, after he realized that Jack wasn't recoiling and was approaching him rather tenderly that Ennis became comfortable with the situation and "let it happen". Remember also (in spite of the Author's assertion in the original story that Ennis knew instinctively how to "progress" with the encouter (the actual coupling), that that is not the case in real life. With out being too graphic, you have to have done it before in order know that spit would be an adequate lubricant in a pinch! People --especially younger people or straight people with no frame of reference to just what these character were going through mustn't fall into the mistake of believing that the things gay people did and said in this period were true representations of what they really were feeling and experiencing. It was always a matter of life and death to us so we had to make you think we were like you in order to live in the societies were found ourselves in.
