Chris Packard: Queer Cowboys

Chris Packard ~ Queer Cowboys
From: Palgrave MacMillan

We loved each other in the way men do
And never spoke about it, Al and me,
But we both knowed, and knowin’ it so true
Was more than any woman’s kiss could be.
We knowed–and if the way was smooth or rough,
The weather shine or pour,
While I had him the rest seemed good enough–
But he ain’t here no more!

What is there out beyond the last divide?
Seems like that country must be cold and dim.
He’d miss the sunny range he used to ride,
And he’d miss me, the same as I do him.
It’s no use thinkin’–all I’d think or say
Could never make it clear.
Out that dim trail that only leads one way
He’s gone–and left me here!

The range is empty and the trails are blind,
And I don’t seem but half myself today.
I wait to hear him ridin’ up behind
And feel his knee rub mine the good old way
He’s dead–and what that means no man kin tell.
Some call it “gone before.”
Where? I don’t know, but God! I know so well
That he ain’t here no more!
Badger C. Clark ~ The Lost Pardner

Chris Packard took on a huge task with Queer Cowboys in not only showing that homoerotic elements were always part of the Western genre coded from the start of it’s inception but also through doing this he shows how it was never very “authentic” as far as when I hear people discussing if some Western Gay Romance seems to be “authentic” as a historical. One of the great things about this little book though is how most of it’s research is done with books easily attainable today through Project Gutenberg as Free eBooks that you are more than welcome to read yourself.

Chris pulls from from several different Classic Western Canon during the essay. Hell, without these books the entire genre would probably not have been created and I think his first couple of chapters are best at making his case…

That’s it—that’s just it. I am white—have a white heart and can’t, in reason, love a red-skinned maiden, who must have a red-skin heart and feelin’s. No, no, I’m sound enough in them partic’lars, and hope to remain so, at least till this war is over. I find my time too much taken up with Chingachgook’s affair, to wish to have one of my own on my hands afore that is settled.
James Fenimore Cooper ~ The Deerslayer

The first up is James Fenimore Cooper who wrote the five Leatherstocking Tales

The Deerslayer The Last Of The Mohicans The Pathfinder The Pioneers The Prairie

Chris shows even here in the very earliest Western was the presence of the idealized male couple far more attached to each other than to any women that might interfere with their pioneering ways. Also note as reported even by the earliest critics there is no reality in these characters despite whatever Cooper insists in his prefaces… General Lewis Cass, an Indian fighter, in 1828 says his Indians had “no living prototype in our forests,”. So much for historically authentic despite the fact this was contemporary to the Classic Western era. Now I know where the Lone Ranger and Tonto got their start.

James Fenimore Cooper’s influence, as I said at the beginning of this chapter, is difficult to overstate. The entire dime novel industry relied upon his formula to churn out thousands of paperbacks that were read by literally millions of Americans and immigrants during the 1860s to about 1880. Chris Packard ~ Queer Cowboys

One thing noted by Chris Packard was that during the era of the Pulp Western that the cowboy was always the one to ride off into the sunset with his pardner and it was not until Owen Wister ~ The Virginian that the whole “Romantic” Western is created complete with the ever convenient schoolmarm for the cowboy to marry at the end of the book. BUT! Owen Wister did edit out at the last minute the short cowboys together nude scene where The Virginian told about Hank’s Woman.

“Have yu’ studded much about marriage?” he now inquired. His serious eyes met mine as he lay stretched along the ground.

“Not much,” I said; “not very much.”

“Let’s swim,” he said. “They have changed their minds.”

Forthwith we shook off our boots and dropped our few clothes, and heedless of what fish we might now drive away, we went into the cool, slow, deep breadth of backwater which the bend makes just there. As he came up near me, shaking his head of black hair, the cowpuncher was smiling a little.

“Not that any number of baths,” he remarked, “would conceal a man’s objectionableness from an antelope—not even a she-one.”

Then he went under water, and came up again a long way off.

We dried before the fire, without haste. To need no clothes is better than purple and fine linen. Then he tossed the flap-jacks, and I served the trout, and after this we lay on our backs upon a buffalo-hide to smoke and watch the Tetons grow more solemn, as the large stars opened out over the sky.

“I don’t care if I never go home,” said I.

The Virginian nodded. “It gives all the peace o’ being asleep with all the pleasure o’ feeling the widest kind of awake,” said he. “Yu’ might say the whole year’s strength flows hearty in every waggle of your thumb.” We lay still for a while. “How many things surprise yu’ any more?” he next asked.
Owen Wister ~ Hank’s Woman

What was interesting to read about Owen Wister in Queer Cowboys was his long time association with a cowboy named George West who he visited with often and lent money to and based The Virginian on and there are mentioned letters between them describing their intimate friendship that went on for years. HEH! Reminds me of this scene in Brokeback Mountain I can’t make it on a coupla high-altitude fucks once or twice a year! You are too much for me Ennis, you sonofawhoreson bitch! I wish I knew how to quit you.

“No; hearts,” replied The Rebel. “I used to know a foreman up in DeWitt County,—’Honest’ John Glen they called him. He claimed the only chance he ever had to marry was a widow, and the reason he didn’t marry her was, he was too honest to take advantage of a dead man.”
Andy Adams ~ The Log Of A Cowboy

The last clearly shown example in my opinion really made Chris Packard’s case in Queer Cowboys was Andy Adams who is considered by many about as authentic in the Western genre as you are going to get and yet even Andy still underlines the whole “cowboys do not get married” concept promoted by the Pulp Western in the campfire scene here.

Chris goes on to discuss Walt Whitman and Mark Twain who I consider both to be predominate influences but I did not get anything out of final chapters 3 and 4 to be quite honest. I think the essay got sidetracked with the whole talk about American Satyriasis and Queer Men’s Clubs. Hell, Walt Whitman sounded like he just needed a good supply of porn or something. So no, this book has some obvious flaws and over emphasis in analysis I tend to find in Gay Studies. I do not buy that “all” cowboys were gay or all the writers were trying to discuss homosexuality or anything like that. Again, this is before the Kinsey Report most guys probably never thought of themselves as gay or anything like that and a lot of this could be explained as institutionalized homosexuality which stemmed from lack of available women and being dirt poor.

Even though I am giving this a Grade C for half the book feeling off topic I highly recommend it if you have an interest in where stories like Brokeback Mountain stemmed from. I think it makes it very clear that the Western genre is in essence homoerotic at it’s origins without having to bend over backwards to see it but it also points out that Westerns written to the standards of your typical Hollywood movie are not really any more or less “authentic” than the very first Western myths written to entertain and propagandize young male newspaper readers way back when on the ways of manly men.

Truth and authenticity is usually deadly boring and in this case hard to prove.

Tags: Chris Packard, Gay Non-fiction, Grade C, Historical, Western