This came across my screen some time ago while browsing The Stranger blog, and I’ve been meaning to write about it…

The thing I was most excited about in the writing of this article is the discovery (thanks to the good folks at Horizon Books) of a poem from 1892 titled “Jeff and Joe. A True Incident of Creede Camp, Colorado” that was published in an 1897 collection of cowboy poems titled Jim Marshall’s New Pianner and Other Western Stories by William Devere, the self-described “Tramp Poet of the West.” The poem is an exceptional artifact. Devere writes of a pair of cowhands he knew at Creede Camp:

Jeff, yer see, thought well of Joe—
Knowed him thirty years or so,
Pal’d together down below.
Joe liked Jeff and Jeff liked Joe,
An’ through all the changin’ years,
Sheered each other’s smiles and tears.Worked together, tooth and nail,
Punchin’ cattle up the trail;
Dealt the old thing; tackled bluff;
Each one blowed the other’s stuff,

The cowboys enjoy a fairly open, long-term committed homosexual relationship…

Uncovering the story of gay people throughout the pages of time is a kind of archeology.   Our past has been carefully buried by layer upon layer of prejudice, hate and oppression.   Sometimes, as in the case of ancient poems, the burial involves nothing more then the deft changing of a pronoun by some past editor or copyist.   A monk, carefully transcribing an ancient text, happens upon evidence of the sin of Sodom and covers it over with a few strokes of the quill, and a same-sex love is thereby turned into another opposite-sex one.   The original manuscript can then be safely burned later, perhaps after saying a few prayers.   Most of Sappho, the greatest poet of ancient times, is lost to us now as is an entire book of letters written by the philosopher Aristotle to Hephaestion, the lover of Alexander.

That erasing of our history continues to this day.   The web page for the upcoming movie, Young Alexander the Great, advertises its telling the tale of Alexander’s teen years thusly:

Alexander is at school, where he lives and studies with other boys, the sons of Macedonian noblemen. Their tutor is the legendary philosopher, Aristotle. The atmosphere is friendly but competitive, however, Alexander experiences all the problems a modern teenager has today, be it bullies and cheats at school, or winning the affections of beautiful girls.

Our history, the poetry of our hearts across the ages, is carefully erased so we can cease to be human beings in their eyes, so we can be their convenient scapegoats.   Cowboys?   Gay cowboys?     In John Wayne’s west?   Are you nuts or something?

Joe gets sick and dies, after being assured by Jeff that he lived a good life, as a cowboy should, and that there’ll be no “gospel sharks” preaching or praying at his funeral. Devere pays tribute to the grieving Jeff:

An’ as for Jeff—well, I may say,
No better man exists to-day.
I don’t mean good the way you do—
No, not religious—only true.
True to himself, true to his friend;
Don’t quit or weaken to the end.
An’ I can swear, if any can,
That Jeff will help his fellow man.
An’ here I thank him—do you see?
For kindness he has shown to me.
An’ This I’ll say, when all is o’er,
An’ Jeff has crossed to t’other shore,
I only hope that you and me
May stand as good a chance as he.

That was written by someone who had actually lived the American west during the period later idealized by a Hollywood where any mention of homosexuality was prohibited by the Hayes code.     We know there was no casual acceptance of homosexuality in the American frontier because Hollywood told us so.   And it still does.   One year after Brokeback Mountain came unexpectedly and uncomfortably close to winning best picture, Hollywood gave us an updated 3:10 To Yuma.   So as to quickly reassure the movie going public that homosexuals, if they existed at all west of the Mississippi, were psychotic killers the guy in the white hat always dispatched at the end of the film, one was tastefully added to the remake.   Micheal Jensen at After Elton describes it thusly…

The new film 3:10 to Yuma delivers yet another coded gay villain to add to the already crowded pantheon. A remake of the 1957 film starring Glenn Ford, Russell Crowe plays the role of outlaw Ben Wade. Christian Bale co-stars as Dan Evans, the down on his luck Civil War veteran desperate enough to try to bring Wade to justice despite the near certainty he’ll die trying. And Ben Foster stars as Charlie Prince, Wade’s villainous henchman and second in command who oozes gay subtext.

To be perfectly clear, Foster’s part is actually rather small, so don’t expect GLAAD to issue a press release taking director James Mangold to task for denigrating the gay community. That being said, there is also no mistaking that Foster’s character is indeed coded as gay and is done so to make him even more unsettling to filmgoers since being a murderous sociopath apparently isn’t bad enough.

When we first see Charlie Prince, he is astride his horse, one hand draped delicately over the other with the limpest wrist this side of the Mississippi river. He is by far the nattiest dresser in the entire cast, and if that isn’t mascara he’s wearing when we first meet him then I’m Buffalo Bill.

Foster’s casting tells us a great deal about what Mangold intended for the character. He is a slight man, probably best known as Angel in X-Men: The Last Stand and as Russell, Claire’s sexually ambiguous boyfriend in Six Feet Under. Macho isn’t a word likely to often be used in describing Foster.

Within the first five minutes of Prince’s appearance onscreen, one character refers to him as “missy” and “Charlie Princess,” a nickname usually not uttered to his face, but apparently widely used behind his back. Naturally, Prince is utterly ruthless, killing anyone who gets in his way, and showing no emotion at all – not unless he’s interacting with Ben Wade, who clearly makes Charlie swoon.

You know how this ends…right?

The film’s climax is appropriately dire, with bullets flying every which way. Of course, the odds against Evans’ succeeding seem impossibly high, and I won’t give away the ending (except to say that it is improbable at best), but of course Charlie Prince does figure prominently.

He arrives at the very end, riding in to rescue Wade from Evans’ heterosexual clutches. Naturally, that involves putting a bullet into Evans, an act that so infuriates Wade that he in turn pumps Prince full of bullets himself. Shocked at the actions of the man he adores, the dying Prince looks like nothing so much as a dog being put down by his master.

As Wade watches Prince die, I couldn’t shake the feeling that thanks to the influence of Evans, he now sees Prince clearly for the first time. It is only then that he understands what friendship between two men should be like and it doesn’t involve what Prince yearned for. He may have been an outlaw and a murderer, but make no mistake – that isn’t the reason Prince has to die at the end of the film.

Brokeback Mountain uncovered a painful part of the story of gay people in the American west…if not the frontier days.   It was a surprise hit, and that outraged the Hollywood good old boys club.   In the weeks before the Oscar ceremonies, some members of the Motion Picture Academy, some of whom owed their careers to the closeted gays in the business, bellyached openly that not only were they not going to vote for Brokeback Mountain, they weren’t going to even bother watching it, a violation of Academy rules.   “If John Wayne were alive he’d be rolling in his grave,” said Ernest Borgnine.

Clearly, something had to be done…

What surprised most of all is that the homophobic subtext isn’t a leftover relic from the original 3:10 that Mangold felt compelled to include. That would’ve been bad enough, but instead almost all of the coded gay aspects in the remake were introduced by either Mangold or the film’s assorted screenwriters.

In the original movie, Prince is played by character actor Richard Jaeckel (The Dirty Dozen, Starman). At no point is his character called “missy” or referred to as “Charlie Princess”. In the saloon scene where Wade flirts with Emmy, Prince also spends time talking with her. Nor is it made to seem that Prince is pining over his boss, jealous over the attention he gives to others. At one point, he even discusses his having a wife.

One thing does remain the same in both movies: Prince dies in each, but in the 1957 version it’s at the hands of Evans, not Wade. Thus there is no message sent that Prince is being punished for his “queer” transgressions against Wade (which aren’t even present).

[Emphasis mine…] Perhaps that stopped John Wayne rolling in his grave.   On the other hand, maybe John Wayne would have appreciated a good story and good acting that broadened the audience’s understanding of their neighbors in this life.   Uber patriot he may have been but I don’t recall anyone ever suggesting he was a bigot.   And he starred in at least one western based on a novel written by an openly gay man.   It was William Dale Jennings‘   The Cowboys.   If Wayne read the book prior to making the movie, he had to know about it’s gay subtext.   In fact, the book was a source of controversy to publishers back in 1971 because of it, which sorta makes it surprising it was made into a movie at all, even allowing for the fact the gay subtext was cleanly erased from it.

As you read the story of Wil Anderson,   a small rancher so desperate to get his herd to market after all his men ran off on a gold rush, that he let’s himself get talked into taking on the town’s teenagers as help, it’s easy to just miss the sweet, and at the end of it tragic, teenage love story happening right there in front of you.   It is between Slim and Charlie Schwartz, and it’s tragic because in the end Charlie is shot by the bandits who try to steal Wil’s herd and Slim is the one who carries his dying friend’s body back to the wagon.

Slim and Charlie arrive at Wil Anderson’s ranch with the town’s other young teenagers and instantly Anderson picks up on the fact of their close friendship.     Slim looks to Wil to the the most mature, sensible kid in the bunch, while Charlie, who has a game leg, doesn’t look like he’ll make the cut.   Wil doesn’t want to take on a cripple and right away Charlie seems a bit of a hothead.   But Slim is very protective of his friend and Charlie eventually proves to Wil that he can do as good a job as any of the other kids.   When Charlie gets thrown in the midst of a stampeding heard of horses, Slim races out to rescue him, almost getting himself killed in the process when his own cinch breaks just as he snatches his friend from the path of the thundering herd.   Wil chews them both out for the mistakes they made that nearly got them both killed…

Then he turned to Slim and shouted as if the boy were a mile away: “And you Mr. Galahad, just you listen to me!   You better get down on your knees and pray God that cinch of yours really broke.   Because if I find it’s in one piece and only came loose I’m running your tail out of here today.   If you don’t know how to saddle a horse proper, you don’t belong on the Double-O!”

Mr. Galahad… It seems they are inseparable.   But Charlie is suddenly taken with Cimarron, a beautiful young Mexican drifter who wanders onto Wil’s ranch looking for work.   When Charlie decides to be Cimarron’s bunkie during the cattle drive, Slim gets a tad jealous…

Slim was eating alone off to one side.     Charlie Schwartz brought his plate over and sat down beside him.

“What’s the matter Slim?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on.”

“Well, shouldn’t I be kind of took back at the way you threw in with the bean-eater?   When your soogan burned in the barn I just naturally thought you’d be my bunkie.”

“He asked.”

“Did I have to ask?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“You gonna keep with him?”

“I guess.”

Well I never thought you’d choose a stranger over me.   And for sure not a bean-eater.”

“Call him Cimarron.”

“That’s not his name.”

“That’s his summer name.   It means somebody who ran away.”

“And that ain’t all.   It’s a name for somebody wild and lawless and won’t join in.   It must have been gave to him.   It’s too good for him to take himself.”

“He’s not really like that Slim.”

“And I’ll tell you something else, Charlie Schwartz.   I happen to know he has a desperado flag in his war bag.”

“A what?”

“One of them red sashes the old cowboys wore when they wanted to show off and raise hell.”

“Slim, I’ll thank you not to talk him down.   He’s my friend.”

“All right.”

Later on the drive, Wil takes note of which boys have partnered with which…

Early in the drive they began to split the blankets.   After a hard rain, they found that if they doubled up they could sleep on a tarp as well as under one.   Unexpected pairs tried each other out and became bunkies.   Only Slim and Weedy slept alone.   Nobody would have Weedy, and Slim would have nobody.

It almost goes right over your head because, well, that sort of thing just Never Happened in the old west.   Jennings doesn’t come right out and say what’s going on between Slim, Charlie and Cimarron, but as you read this next passage from the book, one that didn’t make it into the film, note that in Jenning’s glossary of cowboy terms at the back of the book, “bunkie” for “bedmate” is related to “bunky”, which is a horse that pitches…

Wil began to fret when Cimarron didn’t show up. It just about had to mean the beautiful little bastard had got himself into some sort of trouble down to the south. The Old Woman said, “No, maybe he just got himself loose in the foots and free in the fancy. Cimarron ain’t no fireside boy, you know. He don’t belong to nothing and nobody except himself. Could be he just cut his pocket pin and drifted.”

Everybody was looking at him. Wil felt tired and mean. He turned to young Charlie Schwartz and asked, “You’re his bunkie. You think that’s what he did?”

Young Charlie looked at the ground in what would have been blushing confusion if he hadn’t been so tanned. Then he looked up and set Wil Andersen back on his heels. “It takes more then sleeping with a man to know what’s on his mind.”

Wil looked at the ground. The Old Woman was smiling, but it was a good point. Wil almost liked the boy for a moment, because you could see he was worried about Cimarron too.

It’s easy, given how much of our past has been deliberately erased, for people to point and say that Jennings was a militant homosexual activist imposing homosexuality on a time and people in our nation’s history where there was no such thing.   But among other things Jennings relates in the glossary of cowboy terms,   a “gimlet” is a tool for boring holes, but   Gimlet-ended” to the cowboy meant a man with a small butt and to “gimlet” your horse was to ride it so hard it got a sore back.   As Jennings writes, something is clearly being alluded to there in cowboy slang.

Slang is worth paying attention to because it’s where words become art that everyday people use to describe their lives and their world.   The world of the cowboys was a real place with real people in it.   Some of whom, were same-sex couples.

An’ This I’ll say, when all is o’er,
An’ Jeff has crossed to t’other shore,
I only hope that you and me
May stand as good a chance as he.

Someday, we’ll have our history back.   All of it.   And…our poetry.