So much of being a gay man in this country has entailed resistance to neglect, to exploitation, to death. As gay men we have settled for stories about men wanting men that use tragedy in stories. If we didn’t suffer, we didn’t exist.

But, have we turned a corner?

The show “Heated Rivalry” is a beautiful, life-giving, hot take. Who wouldn’t wont to watch this? It’s a six-episode show that’s great as romance television.

We have suffered during, say, “Cruising,” in 1980, that remains an index of gay sex clubs in the Meatpacking District. The men in that movie like it hot. A homicidal maniac is on the loose, and he’s killing “homosexuals.” He might, alas, be gay himself, and the heterosexual detective trying to catch him worries he might not be as straight as he thought. Pathos again.

Or how about “The Talented Mr. Ripley” which also produces a body count.

There is a lot of gay media of torment and death, but let’s also never fail to remember that for a long time “Brokeback Mountain” was our “gay love story.” But Jack Twist gets beaten to death and, in the final shot, Ennis Del Mar stands in a trailer all by his lonesome.

Maybe we are accustomed to art that would enrage us as we are fed morsels like “Moonlight.”

During the AIDS crisis, a regime of dehumanization spawned a knowing counterculture of subversion. Being allowed to marry some man always seemed beside the point. Are we going to be allowed to live? We watched movies and still wondered if it did a number on the gay psyche.

During all of these years of gay comedies and weepy ghost stories, of high school comings-of-age and great-man biographies, the gay romance shelf has been barren.

One of the marvels of “Heated Rivalry” is its de-emphasis of tragedy. It hails from the world of the romance novel, where gay plots aren’t novel at all. (Rachel Reid, its author, has written a slew of these books.)

“Heated Rivalry” has no subtext in play, the stars meet during their rookie years and spend years trying not to fall in love. The last shot of the final episode puts the camera in the back seat of a car as these two drive out of the closet.

Source: New York Times

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