Just like Ennis Del Mar in his lonely trailer home later in life, my dad is living alone and kind of feeling alone, too. New Years’ Eve he called to say he was roasting a suckling pig in Hialeah, Florida with his renter because my incognito half-brother hadn’t returned his calls. Ranting against my half-brother and the world at large for having abandoned him, he eventually started to cry. Well. More like he started to hold back tears and his voice shook. This from the man who didn’t say “I love you” until I was 24.

The lights turned on: my dad, emotionally unavailable his whole life is now, at 70, feeling like the world has closed its heart to him. A little Oedipal in the suffering-via-realization-of-being-the-master-of-his-own-downfall kinda way, huh? Except my stoic cowboy/farmboy dad isn’t very good at self-reflection; he doesn’t realize he never bonded with people in a way that would make them emotionally forthcoming down the road. He still doesn’t see the value of opening up, since when I suggested he share his feelings with his other son he replied “you know how I am. I can’t talk.”

So thanks to Heath Ledger’s performance, I now am CERTAIN my dad’s not gay, but just a Marlboro man. His greatest lessons: men don’t cry, walk like a man, don’t laugh like a girl, don’t yell (a raised voice or excessive laughter are faggot things). I wasn’t allowed to wear certain colors or have plush animals or take gymnastics because grace and pink kill testosterone.

And this is another thing: the Marlboro man icon that people have been talking about in relation to this movie is not just American. My parents are both 100% Cuban. Machismo is not is a gender role trait that can and should be fought against. Perpetual queerness (aka perpetual acceptance of your self as a warrior against intolerance) is an emotional journey, not a repressive one, an expressive one. It is a battle against the Marlboro man himself.. I’m not saying being gay is an antidote to emotional repression, nor am I saying that getting in touch with your emotions makes you gay. I’m saying the greatest lesson of Brokeback is: you are not a full human if you squash your humanity. It takes more balls to open your heart than it does to be a man.