Watching Brokeback Mountain kept me in the closet

When the author was 14 years old, his mother rented the film Brokeback Mountain for a special movie night. The film tells the story of two sheep herders in Wyoming who fall in love. However, their love is hidden because of society's strict ideas about what it means to be a man and their own feelings of shame. The story ends sadly with one of the men dying, and it suggests he may have been killed because he was gay.

After the film, the author’s mother asked him if he wanted to say anything. He felt ashamed and shook his head, running out of the room. His mother was trying to help him admit he was gay, which he was. The author admits that his interest in less typically masculine things, like crying when a Spice Girl left or having a poster of the elf Legolas, made his sexuality quite obvious to others. However, it still took him six more years to accept and admit he was gay to himself and his family.

Watching Brokeback Mountain had the opposite effect of what his mother intended. The author connected the film’s message, where one character says he wishes he knew how to quit the other, to his own unwanted attraction to men. He hated this part of himself so much that he decided being gay meant a life of unhappiness or death. This made him hide his true feelings even more.

Around that time, Canada had made same-sex marriage legal. However, there was a lot of negative talk about it. At school, many students argued that it was unnatural and wrong for two men to marry. These experiences led the author to feel even more determined to keep his own sexuality a secret.

To understand his identity better, the author started looking for stories about LGBTQ+ people in TV, films, and books. By the 2010s, thanks to the efforts of activists, it became more common to see gay characters and stories in popular culture. Shows like Glee and films like the one about Harvey Milk helped him see that it was possible to be openly gay and to understand the importance of being visible. Reading the memoir of Janet Mock, a transgender woman, helped him feel part of a community and motivated him to support others.

He didn't watch Brokeback Mountain again for many years, pretending he disliked it to avoid painful memories. This changed in 2018 when a friend invited him to a special screening for Pride. This time, the film felt like a release. He could now appreciate the acting, the sadness, and the way the characters dealt with denial to survive in their society. He saw himself in one of the characters who longed for a love that could be more than just secret moments.

Brokeback Mountain is now one of his favorite films, and he watches it every year. He even cried at a stage version of the play in London. He later understood that his mother’s actions, though perhaps misguided, came from a place of love and a desire to help him. Her choice to show him Brokeback Mountain was her way of saying, “I love you for who you are,” something he can now finally understand.