Jake, Heath, and the real McCoy

For those unable to wait until the Friday release of Brokeback Mountain, here’s a photo from roughly a century ago of cowboys dancing together: Erwin E. Smith, “Dancing, seemingly not hampered by lack of women, 1908-1912,” Amon Carter Museum Not quite as racy as the upcoming movie, I’m afraid, and in terms of what the photo means, your mileage may vary. (Research credit: I first came across the photo in D. Michael Quinn’s Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example [University of Illinois, 1996].)