2006-01-15 04:00:00 PDT West Hollywood -- I am a gift. A prize. After years of difficult repression, men with a secret seek me out as a reward for their good behavior. I make a living having sex with these closeted married men.

I'm an "escort," to use the euphemism, which gives me a unique perspective on a potential, and particular, cultural fallout as "Brokeback Mountain" widens out not just to Britain but to every remaining crumb in America's breadbasket.

Much has been made about the "turning point" effect Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee's Oscar-jockeying film could force upon Hollywood.

The movie is based on the 1997 New Yorker short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx about a ferociously masculine love affair between two Wyoming ranch hands, Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger).

Never before in a major-release film have two male actors stepped so assuredly off the Hollywood fast track to kiss and love this deeply. The dam has been breached, blown apart actually, and we can expect a flood. Yes, it's about time.

As a pre-gay, I dropped a calculus midterm to be among the first to find out what Tom's visit to Brad's bedroom in the "Interview With a Vampire" trailer was really about.

Like scores of other moviegoers, I lamented that the only fluid the nocturnal fops swapped was blood. But I was sufficiently spooked. The film's implicit homoeroticism burrowed beneath my skin.

The nature of the love between Jack and Ennis cannot be misread. The clearer the message, "This could be you," the more likely viewers may hear it. And then act. Which is where I come in.

I work out of Hollywood and, not surprisingly, much of the pillow-talk with my clients focuses on movies and their effect on us as men attracted to other men. Nearly all the men I bed can, when pressed, divine a singular movie that, as a child or adult, tripped their internal gay trigger.

Some genetic filter allowed them to hear the words Elizabeth Taylor didn't say in "Suddenly Last Summer" or to read Sal Mineo's furtive eyeballing of James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause."

Sometimes they acted on their new lusts, and the better-than-porn stories they tell of the cramped dorm rooms or basic-training shenanigans that torqued an especially close friendship into something more can get me up for another gymnastic round.

Students graduate, soldiers return to citizenry and so the one-shot lovers must say goodbye. And like Jack and Ennis, many of my clients went on to pass year after wistful year in a life nature never truly intended. Until something happened.

"See, now I am feeling terribly guilty. I have a beautiful wife with a brain, three incredible kids, a house the size of Rhode Island, and I risk everything to try to recapture what never even happened after the kiss I shared over 30 years ago. Are any of your clients conflicted like this, or do I just have rural attitudes toward sex that L.A. hasn't yet killed?"

The man who e-mailed me this shortly after the third time we got together probably knew the answer to his question as certainly as you do now: No.

No, he's not my first client blindsided by the drive to get beyond the perceived impossibilities of the past and the choking commitments of the present.

The turning point can be dramatic, say a near-fatal car crash that "really put things into perspective," or something as simple as catching sight of a young man crossing Vine whose gait is startlingly reminiscent of someone never really forgotten. Or even a potent movie or image. I've heard them all.

And this from "Mike, AZ," posted on the "testimonials" page of "Brokeback's" Web site. Haunted by either a screening or maybe simply the online photos and promotional trailer, he writes, "I just want him back; more than anything, just come back to me and tell me you love me."

Based on my own set of testimonials, I think a lot of the closeted men who'll dare see the movie in a theater, who in the office of their Topeka law firm can already mouth along to the trailer as it streams over their computer screens, will be unable to suppress what "Brokeback" shakes loose.

Ostensible business trips to the coast will be scheduled, where men like me lie in wait.

After the second or third time a man trucks back home to International Falls from the multiplex, and then maybe the gay bar, in Duluth, the family computer's potential to track down his bible camp paramour may prove too tempting. Men will take risks after seeing this film.

Sex is a salve, not a cure, and it can't replace lost love, missed opportunities. But as salves go, well, so go I.