So I finally saw “Brokeback Mountain”, but I am not going to gush about it. Mostly because so much gushiness has already occurred, that my amateur gushiness would be lost in the general hubbub – but also because it’s too complex of a film to gush about.

It’s not exactly about unrequited love – there’s too much sex and too many varieties of sex in this film to qualify as anything being unrequited – but it is about regretful love: Something I know something about, from my long and rich history of that sort of thing.

Back in my younger years (which started roughly with the second Reagan inauguration, and continued through the end of the second Clinton term) I was the poster boy for loving “not wisely, but too well”. (Actually, that’s too pretty of a description: It was more like “not wisely, but a hell of a lot.” OK, I was a tramp.)

My problem was linking sex with love, which is embarrassingly girlish, and having unrealistic expectations resulting from that. It was something I picked up during the 80’s, and just carried through as a bad habit. When everyone else was getting hooked on cocaine, I was pining away for someone or the other.

Because of this, I had my share of regretful incidents involving emotions of the most shocking kind. But so did most of my friends, so it just didn’t seem that unusual. I am just eternally grateful to whomever decides these things that I am not of a vindictive or particularly addictive manner, or things might have gone really south.

After too many unfortunate episodes(usually culminated by sobbing on a kitchen floor, strangely enough) I learned how to acknowledge and move on. It might be a bit cold, but it really does save on the liquor bills, even if I do have to mop the kitchen floor more regularly.

So what does this lesson (acknowledge, move on) have to do with “Brokeback Mountain”? Well, you’ll just have to go see, won’t you?