Not really a running or a work post so I didn’t know what to do with it. Just roll with it, I am. I have had a really weird week and a bit. I have been knocked out with flu so maybe my brain has just gone to mush. I have been trying to think about writing. I have been trying to think about work stuff. But I have been distracted by chaos in the world, by the scary geo-political shit we’re in the middle of. I have also been distracted by the state of Higher Education and legal education. I have been wondering about what the point is, or at least what my role in it can and should be. But my flu addled brain didn’t come up with much useful – it just got itself stuck in ‘we’re doomed’ mode.  Anyway, two things happened at the same time – the Montane Winter Spine Race and the release of Heated Rivalry in the UK. I was not expecting to get drawn into either.

The Spine Race is a 268 mile run up the Pennine Way. There are also shorter options but they are all serious endurance races. I was always going to check in with the race because Kath’s coach Allie Bailey was doing the full Spine. And maybe it was just because I was ill and not actually capable of doing anything other than sit on the sofa, but I got seriously hooked on the dot watching and the social media updates of how everyone was doing. I was so anxious for everyone given the conditions. It was brutal, there was so much snow, it was icy, it was cold. I devoured the updates from those along the course and those who had to call it along the way. I was totally invested in the success of strangers. I internally cheered every checkpoint arrival, I refreshed the camera feeds to watch people arrive and leave. I worried about the front runners having gone off too fast – a worry that turned out not to be completely unfounded. I read the messages people where leaving for the athletes, I read anything I could find on social media and I celebrated the love all the runners seemed to have for each other, the mutual admiration, respect and support. 

Each runner will have their why. You don’t attempt a race like that without a why. I didn’t at all care who won, I cared about the runners getting to run their race, to address their why. I felt a little stab of excitement every time a dot on the tracker moved forward. I was so glued to it. I was so gutted for people as they had to stop and retire. I always knew I would be interested in the race. I didn’t anticipate the emotional rollercoaster and obsessively checking dots on a map and Instagram reels for a week. Whenever I fell asleep (which was a lot), I would wake up and immediately refresh the dots. From Monday, Kath, who was working, got way more updates than she wanted. Watching the runners just put one foot in front of the other, just relentlessly moving forward somehow made me believe that anything is possible. That while the world is going to hell, humans continue to be resilient and brilliant and surprising and that maybe there is hope for something better. If people can do these extraordinary things in the face of all adversity then hope remains. 

And then Heated Rivalry dropped. It is one of the most achingly beautiful, heartbreaking and in many ways gentle love stories I have ever seen or read. I am usually so late to popular culture success stories that it feels weird to have seen this as soon as it came out. It also feels weird to be so affected by it. I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting to be excited for a queer love story, for a queer story on mainstream TV, to enjoy the 6 episodes and move on. I did not expect for it to punch me in the gut and pull at my heartstrings hard and for me to spend the next week rewatching the series several times. Each time I noticed something I had missed before, every time it hit harder somehow. I cried more through this series than I have at anything for a long time (and I cry at everything) and the emotional impact is so intense, so visceral. And it annoys the hell out of me that I don’t really fully understand why.

I have read lots of commentary online as to why the show appeals to (straight) women and yes, I think the story speaks to me because of some of that. There is an absence of toxic masculinity in the way the relationships develop even if it all takes place in the aggressively masculine setting of hockey. There’s so much emotional availability, so little power play and at the same time so much anxiety, fear and uncertainty. It’s so unbelievably sweet and at the same time it’s totally heartbreaking. The acting is superb, the story telling perfect, the cinematography and soundtrack brilliant. It has some of the funniest lines in it and it has believable characters that I can’t help root for. From the first scene I wanted their happily ever after. I watched the first time through absolutely terrified that they wouldn’t get there. I was waiting for the nightmare moment, the horror story, the thing that somehow breaks the spell, the hope. I wanted a proper queer romance so much but I didn’t trust it. Not until I had seen it through and the happily ever after came. The second time round, I saw so much more in the way the characters and their relationship develops because my nervous system wasn’t on high alert. I wasn’t waiting for disaster to strike and the beautiful queer love story to be turned into a tragedy.

That made me think about the last (and I think only) time I was even remotely invested in fictional love story to the point that I would re-watch episodes obsessively: Willow and Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was important at the time because there weren’t really any lesbian love stories. It was one of the first times I saw something resembling a part of me in a TV show. That was 1999. I was at university. Everything was pretty relaxed, fun and fluid and it didn’t really matter whether I was referring to Tara and Willow as witches or as lesbians, same, same, but different. I think all of us in my little university bubble were just exploring, pushing boundaries and seeing where we ended up. In that world I was out even though I sort of didn’t need to be. But I also had a (on/off) girlfriend at the time – and she was not out. She was at a different university, she was sporty, she played on all the sports teams and while I think it has probably always been easier for queer women in sport, she struggled for a long time. When she eventually did come out at university, she got all the love. But she never came out to her parents and it was a really long time before we came out to our friends at home and the reception wasn’t awful but it also wasn’t accepting really. And I wanted my sunshine, I didn’t want to be a secret. And I was also absolutely terrified of what that actually meant – a bit like Ilya on the drive to the cottage. Watching Tara and Willow in Buffy, initially a secret, then not and then they killed Tara. It didn’t help. It confirmed something unspoken but something we sort of all knew. Queer love stories don’t have happy endings. There has to be something tragic, or queer characters aren’t allowed to stick around for too long. I cried over and over again because that meant that my own love stories were destined to secrecy or tragedy, one or the other (see also Brokeback Mountain).

There was Queer as Folk around the same time I think – which was fun and then a few years later I watched the L-Word. Maybe that should have been my world, the one I watched on repeat. I did have the DVD set but I was nowhere near as invested in that series as I am in Heated Rivalry and I don’t remember really relating to the stories, they didn’t get at the emotion in the same way. Heated Rivalry gives us the possibility of queer joy without the tragedy. All us queers finally get our happy ending. Or part of the happy ending, because the actual happy ending would be the safety to come out and just live our fucking lives.  And I wonder whether that is why Episode 3 breaks me every time I watch it. Scott and Kip is the more grown up perspectives in some way. It’s the antidote to Shane and Ilya taking an age to admit to themselves that they are so deeply in love with each other. Scott is a little older, him and Kip are clearer about what they want and that they want to be together – and then boom, society, sport, heteronormative bullshit hits. The Art Gallery scene breaks my heart every time, as does Elena’s speech as she dances with Scott. I have sobbed through it several times. Sunshine, we all deserve sunshine and sunshine should not be terrifying, it should not come with risk. Sunshine should be joyous and celebratory and, well safe. 

I saw someone write that Episodes 1 and 2 hook you, episodes 3 and 4 break you and episodes 5 and 6 heal you. Well, I think that’s pretty close. Although I think I was completely invested in the Shane/Ilya love story from the gym scene early on. The looks, the passing of the water bottle with the deliberate hand touch – haven’t we all been there. I mean, I haven’t for over 20 years because I found my person, but before that – the trying to figure out who is safe, who is on the same wavelength. The club scene in series 4 also resonated so much. Things I had just completely forgotten about. The pretence, the other people, the eye contact, the doubling down, fuck. And all because somehow pretending to be ‘normal’ was easier than just saying ‘yeah that’s my girl’. Somehow that seems absurd now. But that’s what happened so many times. And the end of episode 4 and start of 5 captures it so well and punches me right in the gut. We were in such a safe space really and I have never really thought about my coming out (which wasn’t one event) as in any way traumatic or difficult but somehow watching the Club scene in particular was a reminder that perhaps it wasn’t actually as easy as I now remember it. That the fear was real and powerful and that often secrecy felt safer. Pretence and the hurt we caused each other through that pretence still somehow felt better than being honest with our various joint groups of friends. 

I guess you can’t talk about Heated Rivalry without talking about the sex. Although that in itself is bullshit really. The sex is no more explicit than sex scenes in other shows. The difference is that the sex is between men. And honestly, the sex is hot. I assumed it wouldn’t be (for me I mean), because, you know, men. Not really my thing and also, I’m like old enough to be their mother. But it is so much hotter than any hetero sex scene I have seen on TV. I’ve been thinking about that. Obviously, the people in the series that we see having sex are incredibly beautiful people, I can appreciate that whatever. But I think the sex scenes are also shot with such care. They centre desire, sure, but also tenderness and care. Consent is everywhere and then there is so much kissing. I think that stood out for me – so much kissing. Do I just tune out when watching sex in other series or films, or is the focus not on kissing or is it a kind of power thing in straight sex. I don’t know but I wonder whether ‘We didn’t even Kiss’ hits so hard because actually we see a lot of passionate but really tender kisses right from the start. The sex and maybe in particular the kisses show the evolution of the relationship – it’s communication. It’s sex for a reason in the show and I wonder whether so much straight sex on TV is kind of irrelevant to the story, it’s just there but doesn’t add much to the characters. Whereas here it’s key. You cannot tell this story without the sex. 

There is so much more, there’s the women of the show (let’s take a minute for the Rose Landry’s (of any gender) of this world), there’s Scott Hunter’s coming out, the recognition of possibility that brings for Shane and particularly Ilya, there’s Kip’s dad and Shane’s parents. This week, the show has been everything. 

So what am I taking away from watching dots on a map and Instagram updates of one of the most brutal endurance races in the world alongside several ‘reheats’ of Heated Rivalry?

1. Humans are phenomenal and we never know what we can do until we dare try
2. We all have our demons, we all face them in different ways
3. I am an absolute sucker for a proper queer romance
4. “Stupid Canadian Wolf Bird” is absolutely the best way to swear
5. The word “Compatible” can do a lot of heavy lifting!
6. And more seriously, representation, fucking matters. Queer stories matter. Somehow I saw more of me, felt more at home, in a show about queer male hockey players than I have ever seen or felt in a mainstream TV show, even one with the odd queer character. I can’t explain how or why, but that’s how it feels. 
7. We (I) needed this. The world is going to hell, anything not heteronormative feels under attack. It feels like we’re going backwards. Heated Rivalry is hope and I think that’s why I want to just watch it again and again. We need hope.
8. The Spine Race being at the same time as me watching Heated Rivalry meant that there was something else to attach that hope to. It wasn’t just about fictional characters, I watched real humans achieve extraordinary things. That is also hope. Real hope that the world can change, because we can do things that seem impossible, that are terrifying. We can keep going with hope.