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Chuck Browning's face is a picture of concentration as he
squeezes his legs around the animal's flanks and wraps the
rope tightly across his palm. As the gate swings open, half
a tonne of snorting, kicking, stamping bull launches itself
into the ring, contorting itself in an attempt to unhinge
its perilously secured passenger. The bull bucks and kicks,
and Chuck clings on like the 10-time rodeo champion he is,
his right hand high in the air in the classic bull-riding
pose. When a hooter sounds, Chuck throws himself clear, rolling
over as he hits the dirt to prevent the bull skewering him
with its horns. Then he picks up his black Stetson hat, dusts
himself down, raises an arm in salute to the cheering crowd,
leaps over a gate in the 6ft-high iron fence that surrounds
the ring - and lands in the arms of an equally tough looking
man.
Hugging is a common sight at the International Gay Rodeo
Association finals, where cowboys like cowboys, cowgirls like
cowgirls and the drag queens can wrestle a kicking steer to
the ground in six seconds. This year's rodeo is taking place
at the Resistol Arena in Mesquite, a dusty industrial suburb
on the east side of Dallas where the city meets the prairie.
From the outside, the concrete, 5,000-seat arena does not
look like much, but for rodeo fans it holds the same degree
of mystique and allure that Wembley does for football supporters.
It is known as one of the last bastions of the old west, where
real cowboys go to watch bull-riding and steer-roping. For
the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) to have been
allowed access this year to its hallowed dirt floor for the
first time is a signal that finally - even if they are not
exactly being embraced by the straight cowboy community -
they are slowly being accepted.
The west is a land deeply rooted in conservative history and
ideals, and what goes on openly in New York and Los Angeles
only happens in cowboy country well behind closed doors -
and, according to some of the competitors, beside remote campfires.
But next month a new film by Oscar-winning director Ang
Lee will tackle the previously taboo subject of homosexuality
out on the range. Brokeback Mountain, starring Heath Ledger
and Jake Gyllenhaal, begins in the 1960s and traces the love
affair between a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy. Based on an
Annie Proulx short story that first appeared in the New Yorker,
Brokeback Mountain recounts how the pair go their separate
ways and end up both getting married to women. Four years
later they meet again, and their relationship is secretly
rekindled. Earlier this year the film picked up the top award,
the Golden Lion, at the Venice film festival. The Calgary
Gay Rodeo Association advised on the production and appears
in several sequences, and for many at the gay rodeo finals
- who are able to enjoy an advanced screening of the film
- the plot has uncanny similarities to their own lives.
John Beck, 56, one of the founding members of the IGRA,
knows all about the prejudice of being gay in rural America.
He grew up in Nebraska, surrounded by "John Wayne types";
the only problem was that from an early age Beck knew he was
gay. As a young man he had had numerous liaisons with men,
but did what many gay men of his generation felt forced to
do: he married a woman. After four years, Beck's wife found
out that he was gay. She left him and told her family about
his secret. His sister in law couldn't wait to tell the whole
town and he spent the next nine months sleeping with a shotgun
as his companion. "First of all the barn caught on fire
mysteriously, then I had 'Leave or die' written in blood on
the windshield of my car," he says. "One night I
just decided I had to leave. It was November, the snow was
blowing, and I got out to the end of the drive and flipped
a coin. The coin was either going to be heads Denver or tails
Florida. Well, I went to Denver and I been there ever since."
Arriving with only $80 in his pocket he tried to scratch
out a living doing odd jobs, but probably would have left
if he had not found the Colorado Gay Rodeo Association. Most
gay cowboys end up having to move to the city, and as a result
they have to leave their work with horses behind. But the
gay rodeo allows them to keep that connection.
The IGRA is now the second-largest organiser of rodeos in
the world, putting on events across the US and Canada, and
raising millions of dollars for charities at the same time.
It is all a far cry from the first gay rodeo that took place
near Reno, Nevada, on October 1 1976. It was organised as
a charity event by a local gay association looking to raise
money to put on an old peoples' Thanksgiving dinner and had
taken more than a year to organise: they were repeatedly refused
permission to use local showgrounds and then could not get
any ranchers to allow gay people the use of their animals.
Finally, they were able to locate five "wild" range
cows, 10 "wild" range calves, one pig and a Shetland
pony. More than 125 people took part in the first event and
there were three winners: "King of the Cowboys",
"Queen of the Cowgirls" and "Miss Dusty Spurs"
(the drag queen).
Over the next decade local gay rodeo associations were formed
in Colorado, Texas, California and Arizona. As the movement
grew - there are now 24 associations that compete under the
IGRA umbrella - rules for the rodeos were ratified and the
season now culminates in the IGRA Finals Rodeo, where the
top 20 contestants in each category compete for the title
of international champion. Most of the events at the gay rodeo
are the same as for any rodeo - bull-riding, roping events
in which competitors lasso moving steers (castrated bulls)
from horseback, and traditional speed events where riders
negotiate their horses through tight turns around barrels
and poles. But it also includes "camp" events such
as wild drag racing, where a man and a woman push a steer
into the arena and a third competitor dressed in drag has
to get on board to ride it over the finish line, and goat-dressing,
in which partners chase down and then put underwear on a tethered
goat. "I guess these are the events that make our rodeo
more fun to watch," the president of the IGRA, Brian
Helander, says from the stands, while two men in the ring
grab a goat by the hind quarters and give it what might be
termed - in schoolboy parlance at least - a very severe wedgie.
Gene Fraikes, 43, prefers the more macho events, but then
he has never really seen himself as a "nelly" (as
he puts it). In fact, until about eight years ago he didn't
think he was gay at all. "The media portray gay men as
being very feminine and flamboyant. Growing up in a small
town in rural Illinois, I never saw a gay person portrayed
in any other way, and I thought, well, that's not me.
"I used to make up excuses to go away on fishing trips.
I found out that I could hook up with men if I hung around
the right places ... It caused a lot of grief for me emotionally.
But even at that time I had real doubts that I was gay. Even
after my wife found out I was having sex with other men, I
swore blind that I wasn't. We were together for five years
after it came out. But I swore to her I wasn't gay because
I really didn't think I was."
Finally, with two children and four grandchildren, Fraikes
accepted that maybe he wasn't straight either. "It was
only when I went on the internet and I was invited to Dallas,
and I saw men holding hands, I suddenly realised that there
was a whole different world out there ..."
Fraikes is a "chute dogger", which means he wrestles
steers. Wearing a Kevlar vest to protect him from the steer's
razor-sharp horns, he climbs down into the bull pen. The aim
is to drag the animal over a line in the dirt and then bring
it to the ground as quickly as possible. To do this Fraikes
grabs the steer by the head, putting one hand around the animal's
neck and taking a firm hold on one of its horns with the other.
Satisfied with his grip, he shouts, "Pull", the
gate swings open and the two stumble out of the chute as if
they are roped together. Half dragging and half pulling the
steer over the line, Fraikes turns its head towards the sky
while, at the same time, leaning down with all his weight
until the animal falls, almost gracefully, to the ground and
the judge sounds a whistle to signal the end of the bout.
It looks simple, but it can easily go wrong. A scar on Fraikes's
cheek can vouch for that, the result of a bucking steer ramming
him in the face and puncturing his sinus with one of its horns.
As he picks himself up and the chute crew corral the steer
back into the pen behind the arena, he is greeted by Frank
Mazzo, a 46-year-old West Virginian who has been his partner
for more than five years. Together they walk behind the stands,
past stalls selling scented candles - "You won't find
these at a straight rodeo," says one of the stallholders
- and T-shirts with the logos "Forget the Bull - Ride
the Cowboy" and "I've Been A Bad Cowboy. Send Me
To Your Room." "I told you it was a different world,"
Fraikes says.
Dennis "Squeaky" Terrell comes from a family steeped
in cowboy history and folklore. His father and grandfather
worked on the legendary King Ranch - 825,000 dusty acres of
land on the Wild Horse desert between Brownsville and Corpus
Christi in Texas that is known as the birthplace of the American
ranching industry. He says he was born with a rope in his
hands, and has been riding for longer than he has been able
to walk. And he has also known he was gay for as long as he
can remember. "I just knew that there was something.
Even at the age of eight or nine I thought all my dad's friends
were just ... But growing up the way I did, I didn't even
know there was such a thing as gay. I had girlfriends but
hated having sex with them."
While it might not be talked about and it certainly isn't
accepted, according to Squeaky homosexuality has always been
at home on the range. "Of course it is part of the cowboy
way of life," he says. "It has to be. All those
men out there together. When I was in my late teens, I would
be loaned out to the bigger ranches, and a couple of times
stuff would happen in the bunkhouse with older men. But the
thing is, it was never, ever talked about. Not during and
not after." Was he scared? "It was more scary being
with a woman, which just didn't feel natural."
The one thing that did scare Squeaky was his family finding
out. "I guess I figured my family would disown me. Even
now it's not something I've ever told them. I know they know
I'm gay, but I've never talked to them about it."
He believes that if he hadn't met his best friend and rodeo
partner, Andy Anaya, he would have done what so many other
gay cowboys did and got married. Squeaky and Andy are professional
rodeo stars, riding on both the regular and the gay circuit,
and they are pretty much the best in the business. Watching
the pair work together in the team roping event - a fiendishly
difficult challenge involving lassoing the head and back legs
of a steer while, at the same time, trying to avoid high-speed
collisions, entanglements and even loss of fingers - is quite
breathtaking.
They have never been an item - and only found out the other
was gay when they turned up in the same gay bar while competing
at a regular rodeo. "You should have seen the look on
his face when I tapped him on the shoulder," says Squeaky
as they lounge on the back of a flat-bed truck outside the
arena. For years it was their secret, but Anaya gave Squeaky
the confidence not to conform. They would compete on the regular
rodeo circuit using different names from the ones they used
on the gay circuit. "Man, when we started, we would have
been run out of town if they knew," he says. "But
we came out about three years ago. It got to the point where
I didn't care, I was sick of hiding my life. It was weird;
all the young cowboys were completely cool with it. But we
had been riding in rodeos for years and we had proved ourselves.
We were in the top 15 in the world, so they couldn't just
write us off as a couple of queens. We got their respect first."
"Cowboying ain't just for straight guys," says
Lonnie Miller, another Texan ranch hand who is competing in
the rodeo. He adds with a grin: "Andy and Squeaky - I'd
put them up against anyone, they'll spank any straight guy's
butt"
· Brokeback Mountain is released in the US on December
9 and in the UK on December 30.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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