Hello everyone, I live in Northern England, an area south of the River Humber, called North Lincolnshire. I've been here all my sixty-seven years, with a handful of new addresses along the way. I'm a gay man, not officially 'out', and certainly not to my family. It does seem very likely from my appearance and single state, that most people will have 'got my number' by now. I live as 'straight' a life as I can, and have not attempted serious action for many years now. I was never comfortable with serious involvement in the gay world, probably because I never learned to be at ease with my nature!
I was probably 27 years old before I consciously spoke to another gay, by which time I was irrevocably set upon the lifelong solitary path that has been my life. I fell in love with a straight guy before I knew it, and lost ten years of my life before I accepted that romantic love was not for me! I have been virtually 'closed down' emotionally for many years, and it's only ole Brokeback which has reawakened me (bit like the sleeping beauty, but substitute a frog!). I count myself solitary but not lonely; if I am lonely it's an old friend that I'm comfortable with, and given my age I've no reason or wish to change. What is different these last months since I first saw the film, is that I really do know now what I've missed, and it’s a turning knife, that will be with me to the end of the road. Love such as that shared by our boys, is so sublime, that it makes it hard to discount divinity, it really does. Not the bible bashing variety, but the all encompassing love that created everything, and which I’ve read somewhere described as ‘God in Nature'.
I could and probably will write much more later, but I've no wish to alienate you good people so soon, and will close with a favourite quote from Annie Proulx' magical short story, it seems to encompass the miracle of Ennis and Jack's love. I'm not sure why, perhaps you can help me to unravel the mystery eventually.
"Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his 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." - Brokeback Mountain - Annie Proulx
