My Uncle Clive

We went to see Brokeback Mountain recently. I had seen it once before, but Kent wanted to see it. So, last Sunday, I went for my second viewing of the movie. My reactions to the first viewing and the second viewing were different.

The first viewing of the film left me very sad - sad for the characters really, and their hopeless situation.

The second viewing of the file left my angry. I was angry at Ennis, one of the characters in the movie for not trying to make the love work. But, as he said in the movie, that is how people get killed. He’s right. I was almost one of those people who lived in Idaho. In the Midwest it’s very conservative and almost impossible to be yourself if you are gay, without severe consequences.

So, you learn to lie. You lie to everyone, even your family. Perhaps, especially your family. Brokeback Mountain is the story of two cowboys who met as sheep herders. Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are the two characters who really share a lifetime together never proclaiming their love. As Jack declares to Ennis at one point, after being together for twenty years and only seeing each other four times a year, “I can’t live on four high-altitude fucks a year!” They would meet at their secret location to be together. Afterwards, they would go back to their homes - one in Texas and one in Montana, to live their real lives where they had real marriages and fake relationships, all for the purpose of public display. What a way to live.

Here’s another way to live... my uncle Clive. He was also a sheep herder, just like Jack and Ennis in Brokeback Mountain. He would come home from time to time between work and help out around the house. My father had died and Clive was kind of like my Dad to me. He never married. He never dated. He never once introduced any of us to any women he had met. He never once let us meet any of his “friends” from his real work. He never brought them home. He never talked of them.

But I know there was someone - someone special in his life. There is a scene in the movie where, after Jack was killed, where Ennis goes to Jack’s parents home. The movie leads us to believe that Jack was savagely beaten to death with a crow bar despite the fact that his wife told another, more sanitized story. Ennis offers to take his ashes to Brokeback Mountain, as Jack had wished. It was not to be. Jack’s father insisted that Jack be buried in the family plot. Jack’s mother tells Ennis that he’s welcome to go upstairs to Jack’s room if he wished too. He accepts. While there, Ennis finds a jacket that used to belong to Ennis and inside the jacket is a shirt that belonged to Jack - the sleeves of the shirt extending into the sleeves of the jacket, as though they are joined together forever. You will have to see the movie to know the significance of this. This is the point that Ennis is overcome with regret.

My Uncle Clive died of alcohol poisoning. I believe that he killed himself. Spiritually, he died alone - with family - but his love was not there. After his death, I was there when we went through his place. My aunts wanted to distribute his things to those who might want them. He didn’t have much. He left no will. I came across letters very similar to those that Jack and Ennis would write to each other. They really said very little. They were all from the same person; a man. They were a way of arranging to get together. The letters were taken from me, and were most likely destroyed.

So I’m left wondering if my Uncle Clive was “Jack”, or was he “Ennis”? I guess I’m mad about it because of all the crap we seem to have to go through in the United States; gay bashing, death, and the denial of our relationships in civil law. In this great and free country of ours, there were some of us who felt we had to deny any form of passion, love, or any form of a relationship at all. This still happens today, and that is still just fine with many Americans.

No one should be put through a lifetime of that. That was my Uncle Clive.