Christopher Kelly delved into Cruise's sexual ambiguity in certain roles, and his vulnerability, as being particularly appealing to gays. I submit, however, that those qualities are universally appealing. Tom Cruise is Everyman, as every man would like to think he is -- intelligent, handsome, caring, brilliantly successful and married to Nicole Kidman.

Cruise often illuminates a universal insecurity in men -- an insecurity they prefer to deny. It is the rare male who has not known panic when confronted with his first sexual experience as an adult, confronted with a partner capable of judging, capable of finding you wanting. The fear of failure is deeply ingrained in men, who are raised to win at football, baseball -- virtually everything they do from a small age. It's the American way.

Cruise has a way of cutting through the bullshit of manhood to find the lonely and frightened little boy inside so many jocks -- to find, in fact, the complexity of the characters he plays. We are complex beings, after all; Cruise has the inner peace to play the kinds of roles very few actors can play without tripping over their own psychological land mines.

And while Kelly places these conflicts in a homoerotic context, they are just as easily explained in religious and cultural terms. A young man having sex for the first time is often swimming against a tide of dos and don'ts and potential consequences, in addition to the problem of wondering if he's up to it.

-- J.J. Maloney

This piece by Kelly, depicting Cruise as the underappreciated stand-in for sexually frustrated gay men, only proves that Cruise is a physically attractive man who had the good fortune to be cast in several films that feature him in various states of undress. The same essay could probably be written about Brad Pitt or any of several Hollywood actors that have had rumors printed about their personal sexuality.

Kelly generalizes that Cruise resonates with gay men because he plays "the man paralyzed by sex ... unable to control his impulses, and yet completely terrified to act upon them, he's acting out emotions that just about every gay person has experienced firsthand." Maybe for gay men in the '50s. Or those who cower in the closet and read trite essays like this. Get real.

I'll let you in on a little secret. Cruise holds no more fascination with gay men than any other actor in Hollywood; he just has a good publicity machine to make you believe he does. The piece left me feeling a bit like I had seen a recent Hollywood film -- cheated after having someone else's one-handed fantasy thrust in my face.

-- Randy A. Riddle
Winston-Salem, N.C.

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