On my first trip to the park this year, I thought about the state of the world and specifically how straight men, despite living with this reality for thousands of years, by and large still ‘can’t deal’ with the idea of gay men having sex with each other, and how this inability to acknowledge or cope with this reality of human existence has led to a lot of needless pain and agony.
The latest example for me that has brought this phenomenon into relief is ‘Heated Rivalry,’ the hit show on HBO about a gay relationship between two professional hockey players. (Which alone is kind of hilarious and radical, simply for setting a gay romance in one of the most homophobic settings possible outside of — to pick one of many examples — the Vatican, but we’ve already seen that show on HBO.) Based on a series of romance novels, ‘Heated Rivalry’ is by design not particularly ‘deep’ or ‘intellectually challenging’ in the manner of say, ‘The Bureau’ (the French spy series Stephen and I have also been watching). It is not what I would describe as ‘riveting’ on almost any level, particularly for a ‘literary snob’ like me. But even though it’s squarely in the ‘romance’ genre, I found it refreshing and fun to watch. It’s not corny or cringey in the manner of say, ‘Single All the Way,’ another recent ‘gay romance’ in which two annoying gays fall in love and pine for a mainstream, suburban existence. The hockey stars in ‘Heated Rivalry’ are attracted to each other, they have lots of sex, and they slowly fall in love. That’s pretty much the plot. But the sex is graphic in a way that feels tasteful and novel. It’s entirely in keeping with other shows on HBO, which is to say it’s not exactly realistic, but it’s also not campy in the manner of a lot of gay (or straight) porn and ‘soft porn,’ either. It’s the kind of sex that we’ve all seen depicted ten trillion times between straight couples, but maybe like three times (if you’re really looking for it) between gay men, at least outside of arthouse cinema (and even there it is relatively rare).
My informal research on the show has led me to conclude that, with a few exceptions, straight men cannot handle it (meaning the show itself and specifically the depiction of gay sex). Here, for example, is an article by a straight man who prides himself on being ‘secure enough in his masculinity to admit he is a cat-enthusiast with three cats’ but who opens by making the claim that ‘[a] show about closeted gay hockey players … is obviously not for hockey fans’ before he goes on to basically accuse HBO and the media of a conspiracy to elevate the popularity of a show that has no apparent fan base outside of gay hockey fans. My fellow Cat Lady, I will pose the question that you need to answer, which is: what is your problem? Do I need to take drugs and live in Baltimore to enjoy ‘The Wire’? Do I need to be involved in the mafia to like ‘The Sopranos’? I will always hate football but I loved ‘Friday Night Lights.’ And so on. One of the magical qualities of fiction is that it allows stories to unfold in worlds that may or may not be familiar to us. What’s clear is that the writer is uncomfortable with gay sex and assumes that everyone else feels the same way; hence, he cannot fathom how the show could be a ‘hit.’ This article in the NYT does a better job of explaining how a show with limited viewership can, in fact, be considered a hit (as with many things in the business world, growth is more important than revenue).
As someone who grew up playing hockey and is now gay, I was interested in the show and its reception. When I went back to Pittsburgh between Christmas and New Year’s, I was curious to see if any of my hockey-obsessed relatives would mention it. (I made a point not to.) As it turned out, only my sister had heard about it — it came up in a conversation about something else — but my brothers had not.
On New Year’s Eve, we happened to flip over to Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen just as they were doing an ‘Ask a Lesbian’ segment with Brandi Carlile in which they asked if she cared about ‘Heated Rivalry.’ In response, she joked that it was ‘all I think about.’ I asked my brothers if they had heard of the show, and they said they hadn’t. I explained that it was a ‘new show on HBO’ inspired by a romance novel with a counterfactual scenario loosely inspired by Sydney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, i.e., a romance novel that asks what if the two best players in the NHL were secret lovers? To me, this introduction could have opened the door to a much wider and freewheeling conversation about any number of topics, including the following: Would they be interested in watching an HBO show about a gay romance between two hockey stars? Why or why not? Why do they think that there are no ‘out’ gay players in the NHL and do they see this situation as problematic? Do they ever think about what it was like for me to grow up playing hockey? Do they ever think about about how playing hockey informed their own views about gays (and women)? Do they have any concerns about exposing my brother’s ten-year-old grandson to the same environment? (My brother has relentlessly pushed his grandson to play the sport.) Does my brother ever consider the fact that his grandson might be gay? Do my brothers have any gay friends? Have my brothers considered the idea that my oldest brother’s decision to disown me is rooted in the same homophobic erasure of gay people we constantly see in society at large? Have my brothers ever read a ‘gay book’ or watched a ‘gay movie’? What is their understanding of ‘gay culture’ or even ‘gay sex’?
But this conversation didn’t happen in any form. One of my brothers said nothing, and one grunted and said [dumb straight guy voice], ‘I wonder how Alexander Ovechkin feels about that hehehe.’ Although I ‘let go’ of this oblivious, homophobic statement and said nothing as he changed the channel, I found it problematic on many levels. For one thing, no matter how low I set my expectations, it always stings a little bit to be confronted by such ignorance from someone who has known me for my entire life. (How is it possible that we share the exact same genes!?) For another, it’s the kind of statement that implicitly negates the possibility (or desirability) of a more diverse existence than what he has ever known. I have often half-joked that my brothers are ‘some of the straightest people’ I have ever met on account of their seeming unfamiliarity with any aspect of gay culture, but I know that the problem is not limited to my family. We live in a culture in which it’s possible — and even commendable (see literally any show written or produced by Taylor Sheridan) — to live without acknowledging (much less embracing) the existence of gays. At best, we are an embarrassing inconvenience, a group to be ‘tolerated’ so long as we ‘keep what we do to ourselves.’ We like to have sex that is considered abhorrent, and straight men in particular cannot seem get over it, even though nobody is asking them to participate.
I would like more straight men to watch ‘Heated Rivalry’ and if it makes them squirm a little, all the better. I have spent fifty years being inundated with straight sex; surely they can figure out a way to carve out a few minutes to ‘expand their horizons.’ The problem with the symbolic non-existence in which most gay life exists for straight men is that, when we (meaning ‘we gays’) start to be literally erased, it won’t seem like too much of a loss, and these men will agree to this elimination in a state of political acquiescence with which we (as a society) are all guilty in 2026.
