Jack loved Ennis till he died. The shirts prove that, IMO.
I think Jack mentioned the ranch neighbour to his parents because he wanted to convince himself he really was quitting Ennis, that he'd manage to do it. "Say it loud, make it real". I wouldn't be surprised if Randall would have been as surprised as Ennis to hear about it.
But then I've never really been able to buy that Randall would have been willing - or would have lasted *if* he was willing - to move up to LF. I base the impression of Randall on very little, true - but I base it on about the same that Jack knew by the time Randall came on to him outside the Benefit Dance place:
He's got a good education, an OK job, has got some money (and a wife who knows how to spend them.) He is intellectual rather than "mechanical". He's very straight-forward in coming on to Jack - first at the table and then afterwards, - directly in front of both their wives, too, which IMO is telling us something. My impression is that the reason he's circumspect at all in what he's saying while theyr're sitting on the bench is that he's not entirely certain that Jack is interested - Jack is sending out pretty conflicted signals after all.
He's got a good-looking wife who's so ditzy, dumb and self-absorbed she'd probably not notice what Randall gets up to on the side if it hit her in the face. I can't help wondering if he didn't very deliberately marry her only for that reason. We don't know how long they've been married, but I get the impression from what Lashawn is saying it's not *that* long ago. Yet Randall very disinterestedly calls his wife "the woman". I don't think he's got any affection for her - he seem to think she's a boring necessity.
Incidentally, is the Aggie game where Randall and Lashawn met a football game? One more sign, if so, that Randall is making sure to be seen doing what "real men" do according to the teachings of fine upstanding citizens like L.D. Or maybe he just likes football.
Anyway, all of the above is my way of saying that Randall has managed to blend in. He seems to me to be a person who's found a way to live as comfortably as possible in the dark confines of the closet. I'm not saying he's not feeling horrible about that, not saying he doesn't lie awake at night hating it all, not saying he'd not much rather have lived openly, - but he *has* taken the cards his world has dealt him and is making the most of it. He seems to be handling his life in a less emotional, more deliberately calculated manner than Jack and certainly Ennis. Ennis doesn't want to be with a man except out in the middle of nowhere. Jack wants to live with a man. Both are struggling very much with the discrepancy between what they do and what they want. Randall has taken the middle road between the two of them and plays adroitly by society's rule in public, clearly playing by his own rules in private.
He's making the most of what society will let him do, and be. At first glance at least, Randall seems much less tortured and conflicted about it than Ennis - seems to have found a way to manage being covertly gay in a straight world without being torn to pieces by the pressure. That *is* a first glance impression, sure enough - but I wonder whether that wasn't also the first impression that Jack got. If so, I think that may have been what attracted Jack to Randall more than anything else. Jack loved Ennis, always, but with all his emotional baggage Ennis was no easy man to love.
