I was watching season two of the Sopranos recently, which features one of my favorite storylines, that of Richie Aprile. In case you don’t remember, he was released from prison after something like ten or fifteen years.
I noticed that, soon after his release, there are a few clues that, I think, suggest that while in prison his sexuality underwent some sort of change, or maybe he was a homosexual all along, and I was wondering if any of you Sopranos fans agree or could provide your own interpretation.
First, Richie is sitting around with the guys outside Satriale’s. I think it is the first time he sees Tony. Tony asks him, “have you been laid yet?” and Richie says “I’m working on it” with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. Tony says he’ll arrange something. These guys, every Sopranos fan knows, have easy access to sex through their goomahs and the girls at Bada-bing. I think its strange that, after being in prison for so long, Richie doesn’t seem very interested in having sex with a woman.
But the scene that raised the most suspicions for me is when Richie receives a blowjob from a stripper at the Bing, arranged by Tony. He turns the lights off the whole time. Afterwards, the stripper says something like “i guess is turns you on when the lights are off” and he says “something like that.” I took this to mean that he wanted to imagine he was with someone else. I thought maybe while he was in prison he had a homosexual love affair.
Of course, there’s also the fact that he’s overly offended at the possibility of his son being a homosexual, but I don’t think that’s really a clue because I’m sure most of his mob friends would have been equally offended.
Any thoughts or interpretations about this? The Sopranos writers are clever and I know the lights being off when he’s with the stripper must mean something.