You can imagine, I'm sure, the thrill I felt when I met Bud and Manuel. I was 5, maybe 6, holding onto my grandmother's hand when she introduced her cowboy pals to me at the county fair. When Bud leaned down and shook my little hand, I caught the pungent smell of fresh sweat and stale tobacco.

From their scuffed leather boots to their weathered Stetsons, they looked like real men. Lean, muscular, with big, calloused hands and strong faces, tanned by the sun. The kind of cowboys Marlboro later glorified.

Bud owned a cattle ranch. Manuel was his foreman. They built barbed-wire fences and rode the range together on horseback. They also shared a bed.

Bud and Manuel were gay cowboys even though neither man would have known what that term meant 60 years ago. In those days, gay folk were called queers and homos.

Nobody who knew Bud and Manuel would have dared to ask if they were gay, but everyone sensed Bud belonged to Manuel. They formed an inseparable pair, just like my grandmother's married friends. Somehow, the names of the two men fit together as comfortably as Charlie and Mary or Harry and Alice.

I've thought a lot about Bud and Manuel since I saw Brokeback Mountain. They are long gone, but I wish they were here to share their story with me. How did they forge a relationship in rural California when society -- from our families and churches to our government -- shrieked "No!" or shouted "Don't you dare!"

And how were they able to live out the dream denied to Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain? They had the ranch -- and they shared the love -- Jack and Ennis could never find.

I know all about the homophobia that existed in 1963, the year Jack and Ennis met on Brokeback Mountain. I came out that same summer -- not in rural Wyoming but at a liberal California university.

It was rough then. There were no support groups and no resources available to provide a helping hand as we struggled to accept our sexuality and overcome the self-loathing society heaped on us.

Five of my close friends at Stanford, I later discovered, also were gay. But that was a subject we couldn't raise with each other until years later. We were too uptight and, I guess, ashamed. So we led our secret lives.

Three visual metaphors from Brokeback Mountain echo in the memories of every gay man who came out when Ennis and Jack were struggling to accept their love -- the closet, the bloodied shirts and the tire iron.

Most gay men then were wedged in a closet so tight and airless we could barely breathe. We all had our bloodied shirts -- the secrets, the pain and hurt we experienced. And we all feared the tire iron that could strike suddenly and violently.

A less than lethal version of the tire iron that killed Jack Twist hit me on a warm summer evening as I walked down Pine Street in Philadelphia 25 years ago.

Suddenly, in the glow of twilight, a hate-filled face loomed in front of me. A fist smashed into my head. I sank to my knees, blood streaming onto my shirt.

The gay basher slunk away, a dark, mean figure. I was stunned by his blow but also shocked by the sudden silence on a street filled with people. Nobody -- not a passerby or a person in a car -- stopped. Are gay people invisible, I asked myself as I tried to staunch the blood. Staggering, I turned down a side street. Two gay guys sitting on a stoop took me in and cleaned me up.

When I got home, the phone rang. It was my parents. They must have sensed the danger from long distance. But how could I tell them their son had just been attacked by a gay basher? Another secret to lock up with all the others.

David tried to hide who he was in a loveless marriage. It failed. He called his mother and told her he was going to kill himself. "Why not?" she replied before hanging up. David disemboweled himself with a steak knife.

Ron was forced into an unhappy marriage by his father, a prominent evangelist. Unable to meet his father's expectations, he put a gun to his chest and fired a shot through his heart, a final rebuke aimed at his heartless father.

Those deaths devastated me. Why were the bodies of these smart, talented but tormented young men lowered into graves before their time? Little by little, I learned to hide those bloodied shirts in the closet stuffed with other painful memories. As Ennis Del Mar says, "If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it."

Suddenly, all the hurt exploded. I sobbed. Tears flowed, but they couldn't wash away the stains left by the deaths of my young friends and decades of secrets unshared.

The film also brought back another, happier memory. After his mother died, Bud showed up at our door. He said his mother wanted my mother to have her antique gold earrings. She has worn them for more than 50 years.

Last year, my mother lost one of those earrings. She was heartsick. A friend of mine called to console her. In the middle of their conversation, she told my mother what a loving son she has. "And you know all of his secrets, don't you?" my mother replied.

A week later, my mother found her cherished golden earring. And now, thanks to Brokeback Mountain, she no longer has a son with secrets to hide.

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