Topic of the Week 2/07: Did Ennis and Jack kiss at all up on Brokeback?

[Penthesilea]

Howdy folks,

a big thank you to everybody who participated in the last TOTW  ! It was great to get so much input and to read a wide range of opinions. I'll add my two cents in the next days (never enough time...).

The different Topics of the Week will be consecutively numbered for every year. I modified last weeks title to "Topic of the Week 1/07: ...", meaning it is the first TOTW in the year 2007. Accordingly this week's is TOTW 2/07 and the first TOTW next January will be 01/08, and so on.


You wanna know more about the concept of the TOTW? Go here and read an introduction:
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,12186.0.html


Enough of the organizational stuff - now to the current TOTW:

It is story only, since the answer for the movie is definitely given by Ang Lee in TS2.

Some people think the famous reunion kiss as described by Annie Proulx was their first kiss ever, that they never kissed during their first and only summer on Brokeback. Others are sure they did of course kiss each other. What do you think?


Story only: Did Ennis and Jack kiss at all up on Brokeback?

[Scott6373]

I would doubt it.  Based on AP's description of their sexual activities, kissing would have been too intimate an acitivity.  To Ennis, it would have been a physical expression of something he didn't understand, and also an admission, albeit a silent one, that he was indeed queer.

[opinionista]

I disagree with Scott though he has a point. When they reunited they kissed each other without thinking about it. I think it means, they might have kissed up in Brokeback, since the reunion kiss came very natural to them.

[Toast]

[Proulx]

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his[Jack's] memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held.

And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that.

Let be, let be.

[moremojo]

Toast just made the point that immediately came to my mind. Judging from this detail, it seems unlikely that story Ennis and Jack ever kissed on Brokeback...though I sure wish they had (and it's not impossible that they did).

[Toast]

Like moremojo I desperately wish that Jack and Ennis did kiss up on Brokeback.

Somebody said that the reunion kiss seemed well practised - however the story reunion kiss was far from smooth and soft:

 They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, then, and easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard, Jack's big teeth bringing blood, his hat falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door opening and Alma looking out for a few seconds at Ennis's straining shoulders and shutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other's toes until they pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses and daughters, little darlin.

[Penthesilea]

When I heard this theory, that they never kissed up on Brokbecak, for the first time. I was like:  - no effin way!
That thought had never occurred to me (and by then, I had been a Brokie for a long while) and I realised that my personal view of Brokeback Mountain is much more influenced by the movie than by the story.
But after re-reading the significant parts of the story and thinking about it for a while I admit that it is possible.

Yet my personal take on it is still that they indeed did kiss up there.

This part is for me kind of key to the question:

"...then, and easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, ..."

Easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers sounds to me like it is something they did hundred times before; like it's something well-known, familiar and natural - they fit like a a glove. Even after four years of seperation there wasn't any awkwardness in them, they just continued where they had stopped (before Jake broke the news of bringing them down).
I think it wouldn't be that way (easily as...) if it were the first time.

Additionally I have a hard time picturing two people having sex for months and falling in love (whether they knew it by then or not), but never sharing a kiss. Scott's argument that it would have been a silent admission for Ennis that he was queer sounds to me more like movie-Ennis and not like story-Ennis.

And after four years of seperation and not knowing if they'd ever see each other again, after four years of built-up passion it's no wonder the kiss wasn't soft and smooth.

[Scott6373]

You guys have to realize what kissing means to closeted (actually closeted and in self-denial) gay men.  It's a very sensitive and touchy issue for them.  Besides the Topic was aimed at the book version, and we have authoritative proof that they never did.

[Proulx]

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his[Jack's] memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held.

And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that.

Let be, let be.

[Toast]

Ennis would not then embrace him face to face

This is what I love about Annie Proulx's prose - there is so much ambiguity there that she cannot be pinned down.

Her use of the word then gives you the possible idea that Ennis did indeed become willing to embrace Jack face to face later;  but was that during the time that they felt invisible on the mountain?

Their departure in 1963 (NO kissing behaviour there either) :
"Right," said Jack, and they shook hands, hit each other on the shoulder, then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothing to do but drive away in opposite directions.

[Brown Eyes]

I agree that the sentence "Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held" leaves room for ambiguity.  As Toast suggests, the word "then" could refer to an ambiguous point and amout of time.  "Then" could refer to that one particular embrace.  Or, "then" could refer to the whole '63 summer.  Or, "then" could refer to an early point in the '63 summer that was different from later encounters that same summer.  Etc.

Proulx sentence seems to suggest that kissing was at least a very special thing that they needed to grow into or grow comfortable with (or at least Ennis did).