Trying to imagine what it must have been like for Shane to hear Rose say "Are there any, like, gay hockey players? Obviously, there are, but are there any openly gay hockey players?"
Like even for him to hear her say with such confidence "There are gay hockey players" but then to add on the word "Obviously" when this man has undoubtedly never once in his life thought any hockey players were gay, much less that it was "obvious" some of them were. He hasn't even considered that he's gay.
I've seen a couple people tease Shane for not knowing that Miles was gay and chalk it up to his autism but what I don't think a lot of younger fans understand is that once upon a time it would not have been obvious Miles is gay. Like, okay, sure it's obvious he's gay in the year the club scene takes place, and yeah, Miles was dancing on Shane very gayly, and so you can certainly chalk it up to Shane being autistic if you really want.
But genuinely, there was a time when the concept of someone being visibly gay, obviously gay, just by looking at them, to straight people, wasn't really a thing yet. I don't really know how to describe it but like... Gay people were like the fucking boogeyman. Everyone knew they existed, but the concept of them was almost mythical. There was no "gay stereotype" because gayness wasn't something people openly ever were. Gayness was only ever something you suspected on someone, you sniffed out on someone - someone who, in the minds of straight people and in reality, was undoubtedly making every effort under the sun to not be visibly gay, at any cost, not be someone you "could tell" was gay "just by looking at them" - and what made someone susceptible to being viewed as gay was way broader and way more convoluted than it is today, when we have these very like, core traits (stereotypes) that straight people recognize as gay. But it just wasn't a thing once upon a time. There was no recognizably "gay" look because no one was ever openly gay.
That was why in the 2000s men were calling everything gay. Wearing properly fitting clothes was gay. Washing your hands was gay. Living with a male roommate was gay. The only way to not be gay was to be simultaneously aggressively heterosexual and homophobic because fucking anything could make people suspicious you were gay.
And though I don't know this from my own familiarity with Hockey culture, I have seen people consistently and adamantly explaining that this is what the NHL is like, that this is still what it's like.
And so even though the club scene takes place in 2016 or whatever...It's actually not that hard for me to buy that Shane didn't realize Miles was gay. That Shane probably never considers that literally anybody is gay.
And then...to hear Rose say, "Obviously, there are, but are there any openly gay hockey players?"
To hear her create this distinction between gay and openly gay, to hear her say that there obviously are gay hockey players -
I'm not kidding I think it really would invert Shane's entire fucking worldview.
I think for a moment he had to just be thinking, "Wait - you can do that?"
And for him this had to be like finding out unicorns were real or like walking on water. Something more than unbelievable. Something thought impossible being real.
It actually doesn't surprise me at all that Shane does a 180 after this. How he goes from forcing himself to being with a woman, to pretty much immediately seeking Ilya out and trying to be with him. The man has just learned the impossible is possible, and, if you'll forgive me, now he'll believe in anything.
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