Sometimes, sex is just sex and is just that violent and starts without a preamble. I mean, I dunno about *anal *sex in that way, but obviously my mind is set differently about anal sex than a gay man’s mind would be. I know many people who have jumped into bed with little conversation; why not gay folks? And sometimes that sex is the hottest of all.
As for the thing with his wife, Cartooniverse, I think it’s more along the lines of fantasy. Like he’s fantasizing about Jack while doing it with his wife. Maybe.
I can personally vouch for that early, first sexual encounter happening very suddenly, and with enough passion it seems rough and violent-ish. One second you’re still “straight” the next second you find yourself overwhelmed with all that sexual frustration you’ve kept pent up all those years.
The one thing that was a bit unrealistic to me was the butt sex. IRL, I think that’s something most guys gradually build up to. You can’t just plow right in. It’s takes a good deal of foreplay & psychological gettin’ ready for it. The author was heterosexualizing it a bit there, IMO. IRL, that sex would mostly have been a lot of passionate bumping & grinding without a good feel for what, exactly, they were supposed to be doing.
Many of the questions being asked in this thread, and much of the confusion, can be answered by reading the original short story - including yours, Cartooniverse. I encourage everyone who doesn’t quite get it to read it. There is very little conversation in the short story - it’s all thoughts - and that lack of expressed thoughts seems to be tripping up a lot of people.
A little bit of Googling and digging and it’ll turn up, or you can hit the library and find the 1997 New Yorkers.
[spoiler]A . I don’t think you can use the word “only” as I’m sure there have been a few times where he was “deeply/aggressively” aroused by his wife, but the point of that scene was to show that he needed to recreate the act, likely closing his eyes and thinking of Jack all the while. And being the dutiful wife she was, she was going to allow it the few times it happened, even though she didn’t enjoy it nor understood why he needed it.
Until she saw him with Jack, that is: I’m sure that answered a lot of questions she didn’t really know to ask - and a few she did![/spoiler]
One thing that is rarely mentioned is Ennis’ rather remarkable (to me) capacity for beer. Was that man ever without one? I’m sure the amount he drank while waiting for Jack on the first visit lead to his lack of… judgement… in the stairwell.
It’s because the wives want to dance, of course, on the dancefloor and in bed, with men who want to dance with them… but they can’t. Not openly at least, not if they want to keep their lifestyles.
BBM also deals with how the wives of homosexuals dealt with situations like this, and I think I would’ve enjoyed the movie just as much had it been from Alma’s and Lureen’s point of view. It’s easy to judge them from our computer chairs, but they did love their men and they had lives (and children) built around them. It’s not easy just throwing that away, especially when you realize that it’s something that you’ll never be able to provide, especially when your first instinct is to fight it, fighting for them.
My favorite scene is where Jack meets Randall. They meet, size each other up, their wives watching all the while, growing ever bitchier as they see their (by now, knowingly-gay) husbands almost openly hook up, hopeless to stop it. In frustration they start baiting their husbands, “Why don’t men don’t dance with their wives?”, insisting they dance, to no avail, the men having no desire to take the bait at the cost of their position in Texas society… or their lives.
The guys then, at the end, are outside while the women are in the bathroom, tension no doubt crackling in that air. Jack and Randy, showing that they don’t even care anymore as to what makes women tick, ask themselves cluelessly, in all seriousness: “Why do women powder their noses when they leave?”
It’s because the wives want to dance, of course, on the dancefloor and in bed, with men who want to dance with them… but they can’t. Not openly at least, not if they want to keep their lifestyles.
Alma actually had the more emotionally mature response - she realized that whatever she wanted from a man, she wouldn’t be able to get it from Ennis and she got out of the marriage as soon as she believed she was capable of taking care of the kids w/o him. Lureen made accomodations (in my world, she likely had a number of lovers on the side) and would’ve stayed with Jack until A. he was outed or B. she was guaranteed a fair chunk of change of his assets and future earnings in a divorce. As long as he was discreet, however, she could have lived with that… being outed would’ve hurt her father’s business interests and she surely would not have wanted that.
It didn’t make a lot of sense to me why Jack felt he had to get married. Ennis I understand; it was established already and he was living up to what he thought he should do. And he was scared by the childhood murder.
But Jack was a rodeo rider, a cowhand. He could have just kept traveling, fooling around, and seeing Ennis when he could. He wouldn’t really be expected to settle down if those were the kinds of jobs he was working.
But he wasn’t a very good rodeo rider, he was just barely scraping by and he wasn’t getting any younger. I think the implication was that he married Lureen because her family offered him some economic stability. Not the same kind of pressure and denial that led Ennis to get married, that’s true, but Jack’s marriage always seemed more pragmatic for both sides than Ennis’ did. It wasn’t explicit, but I think there were some hints that Lureen sort of knew or suspected why Jack was always going off to see Ennis and that she accepted (or at least tolerated) it as a trade off for other reasons. she never seemed as intensely invested emotionally in her marriage as Alma did.
Lureen was kind of ambiguous and hard to read in her phone conversation with Ennis at the end but it seemed like there was an unspoken understanding in her words about who Ennis really was to Jack. The fact that she suggested to Ennis that he attempt to carry out Jack’s wishes with regard to his ashes would seem to imply a knowledge that Ennis was more than just a casual fishing buddy.
Likewise, I saw nothing in what Lureen says or does before Jack’s death indicated she was aware of her husband’s double life. In fact, one of the points of her character was how shallow she was. She barely looks up from zipping away at her calculator as Jack goes off on another fishing trip. The family business was more important to her than her husband, who was something of an accessory in her life. She serves as a contrast to Ennis’s wife, whose painful inner emotions are heartbrakingly evident as she silently watches Ennis become a stranger to her.
I think that Lureen only got married so that she could provide an heir for her domineering father. Once Jack had succeeded in siring a son, his father-in-law was ready to pay him off and send him on his way (according to a conversation Jack has with Ennis). I think Lureen stayed with him partly as a passive-aggressive act of defiance against her father, partly because Jack was an involved and conscientious parent (it’s implied that Jack is more actively involved with taking care of their son than Lureen is) and partly because they did have a sort of bond with each other that might not have been romantic love, exactly, more like a pragmatic, working relationship. I don’t think Lureen needed the same things emotionally from her husband that Alma needed from hers.
To those who think that the adultery somehow disqualifies the movie as being good art, I wonder how many of you have the same feelings about the Sopranos, one of the most acclaimed dramatic series in television history, which features a lead character who is not only a serial adulterer but is also a mafia crime boss and a murderer.
The scene where Jack picks up Randall in front of their wives is plenty of evidence that Lureen knew, that Jack knew that she knew, and that he didn’t really care anymore.
The question, “Why do you think that is, Jack?” to me reads and sounded like an open challenge, one that he refuses to meet.
I think it can be seen both ways (she knew and didn’t care/adjusted, or didn’t know), however, I think the evidence for her knowing (or suspecting) is stronger than the evidence for her being utterly clueless.
I guess I’ll give it one more try, but I’m getting tired of posting the same thing over and over: The point of the movie was Ennis’s and Jack’s love story, the obstacles they faced, and so forth. If I think they’re assholes, why would I care about their love troubles?
Let me preface by saying that I didn’t think the movie was particularly great, or particularly horrible. It was an OK movie. I’m not sorry I saw it, but I can think of better ways to spend a few hours.
I didn’t look at the morality of what they were doing the same way, though. Sure, I thought it was shitty that they cheated and lied. Sometimes people are shitty to one another in their own interest… if that makes people who cheat and lie assholes and/or not worth caring about, there are a lot more assholes in the world than you know. I’ve come to realize, though, that discovering you have homosexual feelings for someone(s) and dealing with those feelings in the context of an indisposed society doesn’t always bring out the rational person in you. Sometimes you try to deny it and move on with your life as a “normal” person. More often than not that doesn’t work, you keep having those feelings, and by the time you realize it’s not going away, you’re stuck in a situation that’s no good for anybody and it’s not as easy as just saying “well! looks like I’m gay, sorry honey!” when you genuinely care about the life you’ve built even if it’s making you miserable. Sometimes you continue indefinitely in trying to be normal or do what you feel is right, either because you don’t admit your feelings, or you don’t think definitively acting on those feelings would make for a happy life. Homosexuality is oftentimes a lot more complicated than just feeling the feelings and going with them.
I’m not saying this excuses the cheating and the lies. I can understand what they did without giving the thumbs-up. I’ve done similar things in the past, and I’m not proud of them, but I know where they were coming from and no, I don’t think that making some bad choices under some very difficult circumstances makes me or them dismissible as assholes.
