My wife Mary’s book club always has a party to watch the Oscars together. Everyone brings drinks or hors d’oeuvres and they have a pool to see who can pick the most Oscar winners. Some of the women try to see all of the Best Picture nominees each year. It probably says something about Hollywood that we usually haven’t gone to see any of those movies on our own during the year. It takes an Oscar nomination to make us go see them. I thought this year’s Best Picture Nominations were weaker than usual.

Last weekend, Mary’s friend Michelle asked her to go see Brokeback Mountain, or as she called it, the “Gay Cowboy Movie.” They invited me to go but I told Mary that if I had to watch two cowboys touching each other, I preferred they be doing something proper, like hitting each other in a barroom brawl. Michelle’s husband Greg was also leaning toward staying home. But during the week I began feeling guilty about not going and Mary pointed out I could just close my eyes during the yucky parts. So both Greg and I ended up going too.

Last summer my daughter talked me into buying a pink shirt. She said it takes a man who is confident of his masculinity to wear a pink shirt. So what kind of man does it take to wear a pink shirt to Brokeback Mountain? A man like me, that’s what kind! I decided this movie would be a perfect occasion to wear pink. Mary also wore pink, but I think it was a little darker shade. I’m not sure because I kept my jacket buttoned up so no one could see my shirt. We waltzed into the theater (or maybe a better word is sashayed) and looked for four seats together. Has anyone else thought about the seating pattern when two couples go to a show together? Mary prefers having the two women together in the middle so they can talk. The men just have to sit quietly on the outside because we can’t hear too much. But that is usually fine because the men aren’t there to talk. We are there to see a movie and eat popcorn. For women, activities are an excuse to get together and talk. For men, talking is an unfortunate requirement for doing stuff. I tried a few times having the men sit together so we could hear the conversation better. But it is not as easy for the women to talk across two men who are focused on the popcorn. The boy-girl-boy-girl pattern is a compromise, and seemed more appropriate with one couple dressed all in pink, so that is what we did.

So how was the movie? It was probably well-made, and I liked it better than I expected. I only had to close my eyes twice. But I still would have preferred watching reruns of Starsky and Hutch. In the movie, the two cowboys would tell their wives they were going away together to go fishing when they wanted to have a rendezvous. It will be interesting to see if this helps or hurts the fishing industry.

As I said, women get together to talk, men get together to do things. The weekend after the Oscars, women will be finding excuses to talk by having lunch together, working out, and going on walks. Men will talk only long enough to plan tennis matches, bike rides or ski trips. A few may even go fishing. . . not that there is anything wrong with that.