Truth in Advertising by Anel Viz

Truth in Advertising

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“Appearances can be deceiving,” Jody told himself. He could feel his lips shaping the words, but the voice he heard belonged to his Aunt Jo. Not Josephine, whom her nieces and nephews used to call ‘Aunt Josie’ after she came to their rescue when her elder brother remarried and they suddenly had two Aunt Jos to keep track of. “No need to make her change her name – or use it – when Josie is such a pretty name,” she’d told them. Not that Aunt Jo; the other one, Jocasta. She was always reminding people that things were seldom what that seemed and never to judge a book by its cover. Well, she was right.

Not this time, however, he reflected, which just went to show how right she was. From the moment he first looked around, standing with his suitcases in the front room where he’d been told to register, he knew what he could expect from the Hi-Kort, and what he’d seen was what he’d got. When his gay-dar didn’t turn on by itself he popped up the antenna and scanned the premises and the personnel. Not a blip. So he went all out and called on his Doppler gay-dar just in case there was something approaching just over the horizon – El Niño would have been nice – but the forecast included no change in the weather, imminent or subsequent.

It was the brochure that had misled him, either intentionally or because the person who wrote it did not have a good command of the language. Now that he’d met a few of the people there and they’d said hello to him – not ‘hello’ really, more something in the way of ‘howdy’ – he was inclined to give them credit for honest stupidity. Well, he was guilty of the same thing. He ought to have checked the place out through the gay grapevine before committing himself for six weeks.

He’d taken the advice of a friend of his who’d finally got around to watching City Slickers and suggested he try a dude ranch. It seemed just the thing. He hadn’t been to the gym in months because he caught that bug that was going around and couldn’t shake it all winter, and he felt too flabby and paunchy to show himself on the all-male Caribbean cruise he usually took in summer, and the last thing he needed was their buffet three times a day, so he made up his mind to find some kind of vacation that would get him back in shape. He’d let himself go to pot a little, but he wasn’t so far gone as to fit into one of those weight loss camps with their daily weigh-ins, their one-on-one counseling and professional intervention, and the repetitive aerobic exercises followed by a crudités supper and an evening support group. He wanted something outdoorsy, something that would push his body to the limit, where he would build up an appetite while shedding the pounds and go to bed every night with a feeling of real accomplishment, tired and aching all over, but a good tired and a good ache.

It was Rollo Schuman (“But ever’body call me Ro”) the farrier – blacksmith to them, though he didn’t straighten axles or fix anything else made of iron – who registered the three of them. “You two fellers git the room up here in the main house with me an’ the team boss an’ Cookie,” he told them. Cookie, Jody had figured out already, was not the boss’s wife, but the old geezer who opened the cans of baked beans and emptied them into a pot. Then to Jody: “I got you bunkin’ with Wade and th’others down in the hired hands’ quarters. ’Fraid thar’s no runnin’ water an’ the lak, jist a pail on the floor.” Jody was still wondering whether the pail was for washing up or relieving oneself when he added, “Dontcha worry yerself none, though. Ya kin come on up here to share.”

What he meant by “sharing” cleared up the mystery, only now it was too late. If there’d been some clues in that stupid brochure of theirs – for example, if they’d spelled “partners” the way they pronounced it – he’d have picked up on it in time. The photos were of your fairly standard Marlboro men. But what young man of Jody’s persuasion would not have taken the phrase “where real men will show you what it takes to be a real man” as an enticing come-on? He realized right away that the part about “the natural beauty of the most imposing butt in the State” was a typo, but there were others, such as “living it rough in the company of other manly guys who like the same things you do”, “something different going on every night”, “the Wild West back in the days before it was safe for women and children to settle there and prissy it up” and (his favorite) “discover the feeling of being a cowpoke”. He could see with twenty-twenty hindsight that the witticisms and sophistication of the idiom spoken in a major metropolitan area would mean nothing to men who had grown up on horseback and only dismounted to take a piss, but you’d have thought that the other two who’d signed up to work a six-week stint at the Hi-Kort Ranch (and paid for it too!) would have read it the same way he did and come looking for some of the same things he was. No such luck. One of these now successful businessmen had worked the rodeo circuit as a teenager and missed it; the other had bought a few thousand or hundred thousand acres (Jody had trouble visualizing an acre) and wanted some hands-on experience before starting up his own ranch. They had absolutely nothing in common with him beyond standard English grammar.

Ro had them sign some insurance disclaimers and handed them each a copy of the rules. “We start now. Y’all haul yer own gear downter where y’all stayin’ an’ fix up yer own bunks the way yers like ’em. Bunk’us is down at the bottom o’ the path. Little wood buildin’ with the pump by the door. Chow’s it six.” Then he saw Jody’s suitcases. “Whatcher ol’ brung with yers? Sheeit. Ah’ll be fucked if a knows where y’all gonna stow it.” (He was telling the truth. He didn’t know, so he wouldn’t get fucked.) “Wale,” he said, drawing the word out into two syllables after thinking things over, “Ah guiss I’ll lit Wade figger at’n out. Yer’ll be under him the whole time yer here.”

Jody wouldn’t have minded being under Wade. He was a kind of foreman, none too swift on the uptake and obviously clueless about him, but he took him under his wing, was attentive to him and treated him with kindness, and he was beautiful too, the only authentic Marlboro man in the bunch and the only one who gave off a strong manly smell of sweat and hay and dirt and farm animals; the others just gave off a disagreeable stench that sent Jody reeling but not one he would have called gender specific. Seeing him from behind and at a distance, Jody’s fluttering heart briefly melted over the gangly stable boy with the jeans that wouldn’t stay on his underage hips, until he got close enough to get a whiff of him and the kid turned around and broke into a wide, idiot smile that showed off his missing teeth, his pimply face, and those squinting, expressionless eyes set too close to a nose that must have been broken several times, probably when he’d lost all those teeth. Otherwise he might have been tempted to tousle that mess of sun-bleached cowlicks he called his hair.

The hired hands were experienced ranch workers who got paid for doing what they did, except for Rude, the stable boy, who was still learning but got paid anyway. All the “sharing” took place in the main house in a private bathroom, so Jody never got a glimpse of the men he slept with – “next to” is more like it – with their clothes off, since they slept in them and only took off their boots, which he’d rather they’d left on. He wouldn’t have seen them if the place had been set up for communal shares anyway, since none of the guys there except Wade ever shared. But he’d have seen Wade, the only one he wanted to see – what he wouldn’t he have given to get to see Wade naked! – and he’d be naked too, and maybe Wade would soap his back or ask him to soap his, and they’d be alone there, just the two of them sharing, since the others certainly weren’t interested in taking a share for themselves. He’d all but given up the hope he never had of seeing Wade with all his clothes off when he did – and at Wade’s initiative too! But that wasn’t until three weeks later.

The other hands were your real life cowboys, which meant that they were strong, unaffected, hard-working men who were passionate about their job, who didn’t play much, but knew their way around a horse and a steer and maybe a lot of other species of livestock as well. It also meant that they were most of them loners, friendly enough, but unsophisticated and dull to be around – unshaven, bow-legged, beer-bellied men who were always either hitching up their pants or spitting or scratching some part of their anatomy. Wade was more your Hollywood movie cowboy type, more Robert Redford than John Wayne, rugged but gentle, a little rough around the edges but smooth as cream inside, no more educated than his fellow ranch hands, but a hell of a lot more presentable, and not just because his fingernails were clean when he wasn’t working. His was an unpresupposing, generous nature, and he loved being around people and loved to talk, and although there wasn’t much he could talk about besides the cowboy way of life, he loved to listen too and was genuinely curious about how the other 99.99 percent of the country lived. His way of fixing his glowing hazel eyes on you showed he was interested in everything you told him, and his winning smile made you feel he liked you as a person. His wavy, not too long auburn hair fell over his forehead, sun-bleached lighter than his deeply tanned skin which, despite years of working outdoors had remained soft-looking was not that much more wrinkled than the skin of men his age who spent their days working in an office. He had a square, masculine jaw and broad shoulders, rippling muscles in his arms that only bulged if he flexed them, and his large, callused hands weren’t knobby and misshapen. While you wouldn’t have called him slim, he didn’t have an ounce of excess fat on him, and he was graceful in everything he did, whether riding a horse or lifting a saddle up onto his shoulder or pitching hay or bending his elbow and throwing back his head to take a swig of water from the canteen or leaning against a tree to catch his breath.

The “something different” on schedule every night at the Hi-Kort for the first week turned out to be nothing naughtier than a cowboy song sing-along around the campfire accompanied by Wade’s guitar and luxurious baritone. The tunes helped Jody master the local idiom, and he was half tempted to adopt it (or what he imagined to be some reasonable facsimile thereof) in order to fit in, but thought better of it. The businessmen who’d signed on with him made no attempt to sound like the staff. On the other hand, they weren’t as inept as he at “real man” stuff the stay at a dude ranch was all about. Except for riding a horse, Jody had to learn everything from scratch, and it was Wade who taught him how... or tried to. He proved hopeless at roping, the one skill that would have come in most handy when he finally got back with his own usual crowd, and what he was best at was not something he would make use of once the summer was over, since he’d never been into scat. The others tried to get through it as quickly as possible, so he ended up assigned to do the mucking out most of the time, because as an anal retentive he made a thorough job of it and left the stables spic and span (for a stable). The first time Ro inspected his work he gave a low whistle and said, “Good job, Jody! Looks lak there won’ be no fu’thah muckin’ here today!” At least he was losing weight and firming up, and he ate the slop Cookie dished out like a horse and tumbled into his bunk and slept like a log.

The something different they featured the second week was a fight, two a night next to the corral, where the others could sit and watch in comfort (if you find sitting on an unpolished, unplaned, wooden rail comfortable), a kind of boxing tournament fought with bare knuckles and without a bell or referee. They didn’t fight till someone got knocked out, at least not the night Jody was there; the winner was decided by the cheers of the fence-straddlers. He was not pressured to sign up, only to come watch, and no one said anything when he didn’t come back after the first night. The winners’ names were put up on a chalkboard by the door of the main house along with an announcement of who’d be paired up with whom the next evening. He stayed in the bunk house for the final round too, which ended up a draw, as he learned when he read the sign the next morning. “2-NITE AT THE HI KORT: RO vs WADE – A REMATCH!” was not something to miss out on, so he went, and rooted for Wade the whole time, which wasn’t at all like him.

Toward the end of the third week Wade took him out to “ride the fences”, another vaguely suggestive expression which he discovered involved no more than slowly walking your horse around the perimeter of the property to make sure that everything was still standing. Till then he hadn’t realized just how vast tens or hundreds of thousands (whichever) of acres were. It took hours of silent riding, for there was nothing around for Wade to point out or explain to him, just miles of empty, scrub-covered, rolling grassland that seemed to go on forever with maybe a lone tree here and there and cut through with an occasional gully. For close to an hour, maybe more, the fence followed a two-lane paved road on which not a single car passed. Jody could imagine nothing more vast except for the blue sky above them. The fluffy, white clouds looked detached from the mantle of the sky, suspended there, not like part of it, as they do when you look up instead of out to see them.

Only once did Wade open his mouth, to comment on the “wall flares”. He didn’t say much about them, just that they were “purdy”, but trying to visualize wall flares kept Jody’s mind occupied for the next hour or two.

In the hottest part of the afternoon they reached a wide, muddy-looking, yellowish, lazy-flowing river, and Wade suggested they take a break and go for a swim. Jody eagerly agreed, and would have if it hadn’t meant undressing. Just in case Wade had it in mind that they’d keep their boxers on, Jody quickly ripped everything off and dove in, hoping that Wade would follow suit (or unsuit), which he did.

Jody was a much stronger swimmer than Wade. This was the kind of exercise he enjoyed. They only stayed in for a quick dip, then they lay down side by side in the tall grass to dry off. They didn’t have a towel.

“Swimmin’s nice,” Wade said, “an’ you big city guys all know howter swim, sure looks lak. How d’ya all learn? Swimmin’ pools, I reckon. Ain’t none roun’ here what I know of.”

“Yeah, there’re pools. All the gyms have one. Mine too. But most of us learn when we’re kids. I did. And there are the beaches too.”

“Ocean beaches?” Jody nodded. “Tell me ’bout ’em.”

What he wouldn’t have told him if his gay-dar had ever, ever picked up the tiniest blip from Wade! Naked, the man delivered on all the promises he made with his clothes on. Finally, an example of truth in advertising. If only action had been one of those promises!

He got to admire Wade’s buns as he followed him out of the river, two of the nicest he’d seen – well-shaped, tight bubbles covered with a light dusting of fine blonde hairs that clung to the wetness, and a delicious big dimple on the outside of each. He had a nice back too, that curved in to where his buns curved out. When he stretched out on his back Jody got a superb view of the front of him: hairy chest, as he knew from his open shirt, and a flat stomach over a curly bush and compact uncut cock, which must have looked bigger unshriveled by the cool water. He could risk staring because Wade had draped an arm over his eyes to shade them from the sun.

They didn’t stay naked for long before they rode back, barely as much time as they had spent in the water, for the insects were fierce and considered themselves underfed. Jody bid a final fond farewell to Wade’s dick as his jeans slid back up over it, catching for an instant under his balls and flipping it in the air they way their horses tossed their heads when they snorted. He noticed that the man went commando, so he needn’t have taken the precaution he did to get him out of his boxers. Instead he could have stood by instead and enjoyed watching him strip down at leisure.

When Friday rolled around Wade offered to show him the town. Jody had driven through it to get to the ranch and knew there was nothing there to see, just a movie theatre, a barber shop, and stuff like that. “Anything going on there?” he asked.

“Wale, it’s the weekend now, so there’ll be cowboys at the saloon. We could have ourselves a coupla beers, talk some with whoever’s aroun’. Mostly jist a change a scen’ry when ya git raht down twit. An’ thar’s the jukebox.”

Jody could imagine what they played on it. Not disco, certainly. “Hookers?” he asked, not wanting to get himself into something he couldn’t handle.

“No ho’s, nope, not at the saloon. Gotta drive us another fifty mile ta git us a piecer tail.” He looked quizically at Jody. “You innerested?”

“Not if it means an extra hundred miles. I can live without.”

“The saloon’id be fun,” Wade went on. “We kin play us some cards – poker, blackjack. Got checkers thar too, ifya lak that. No women, Ah’m afraid, least not at the saloon. Yer’ll lak Glinda, though. Yer top, I think.”

His “top”, no less! These people sure had a funny way of pronouncing some words. Didn’t he wish!

They both took shares (separately) before heading into town, and it was already dark when they arrived. The saloon was all lit up, not with light pouring out into the street – it didn’t have the swinging doors you see in the movies – just its name in bright red neon: “The Ruby Slipper”.

“That’s some name,” Jody said. “Not what I expected to find in a frontier town.”

“Nice, ain’ it? Auntie and Glinda give it a new name when they bought the place ’bout ten years back. They’s both of ’em inter them romantic stories with happy endin’s lak Cindareller.”

Cinderella, was it? Definitely clueless.

Jody wasn’t much into women, but if he had been Glinda sure as hell wouldn’t have been “his top”. She had a thick, curly, shoulder-length golden mane that looked more like a wig than what the Good Witch of the North wore in the movie, and under it a face that he found about as attractive as the calluses on a chimpanzee’s backside. Auntie, who tended bar, wore her hair in a bun and a baggy old dress like Auntie Em, and an apron she wiped her hands on. Her round face was all creased with the same smile wrinkles, and she also had her big bosoms and down-home look, except her tits sagged halfway down her belly.

“Cold piss,” Jody said when he tasted his beer.

“Cold piss. That’s a good one. Cold piss. Ah lak thet.”

Glinda had overheard them. “That’s what they all drink here, honey,” she rasped in her husky smoker’s voice. “Cain’t say what they see in it. Me an’ Auntie keep our personal store a microbrews upstairs in the fridge. Ah kin bring ya down a couple if ya want.”

“Bring two for my friend here as well. I’ll teach him how to drink.”

“Go ahid an’ teach ’em all howda drink. Be good fer business. Hefty markup on the stuff.”

Except for the female owners the saloon was all stag that evening, mostly old geezers or guys who looked old. Wade and Jody, in their early thirties, stood out from the rest of them. The absence of women did not mean that they didn’t like women. If they didn’t, Jody was sure it was because they preferred doing it with sheep to another man.

Glinda brought them their brews.

Wade smacked his lips. “Hey, Jody, this here macrobrew a yourn’s real good, damn good! But ’spensive. I think I’m gonna stick with the cold piss. Glinda laks me, so I might jes’ git a discount, but not if th’others take to ’t. Poker?

“Nah, blackjack. Poker’s no fun with just two playing.”

Wade was nowhere near as good at blackjack as Jody imagined a cowpoke would be, and he whipped the pants off him, metaphorically. They shot some pool too. At least now that he’d seen how he could swim and win at blackjack and shoot a wicked game of pool, Wade wouldn’t think him that much of sissy anymore.

“So, whadja thinka Glinda?” Wade asked him on the way home in the car.

“Nice lady, but not much of a looker.” Wade smiled. “What made you think she’s my type? The microbrews?”

“Hell no. I didn’ know nothin’ ’bout no macrobrews. I jes’ thought...” Wade hesitated. “Wale, ya see, ya sorta remind me of a feller come upter the ranch a coupla years ago, an’ him an’ Glinda hit it off real good together, if ya take my meaning’. Not Auntie, a course. He don’ truck none wif strangers.”

Jody’s mouth dropped open, and a worried look came over Wade’s face. “Hope you ain’ taken’ this the wrong way er nothin’. Din’ mean no offense by it.”

Jody just stared at him.

“Don’ matter none to me. Ah hain’t lak them others back at the Hi Kort. They git all hot unner the collar jes’ thinkin’ ’bout all them doin’s. String ’em all up on the neares’ cottonwood they would, if they got their way. Not me, no sir. Live an’ let live, thet’s what I alluz says.”

“I... I...”

“Gee, if Ah upsetcha er sumpin’, Ah’m sorry, real sorry. Hale, Jody, I sho’ didn’ think it was goin’ ter rile ya up none, you bein’ from the big city an’ all. Nivver woulda said it if I did. There’s plenny a fellers lak that in the cities, from what Ah hear.”

Jody was still at a loss for words.

“An’ I kinda got the feelin’ you was checkin’ me out when we went for that there swim. Couldn’ be sure, though. Wale, was yer?”

Jody nodded.

“Thet’s OK. Ya didn’ think Ah wen’ in fer that sorta hanky-panky now, didja? Hale, say sumpin’ already!”

“No.”

“No what?”

“I don’t think you’re gay. And I’m not mad, Wade. I’m just... stunned.”

“So’re ya gonna open up to me?”

“Not tonight, Wade. Later, maybe. This is all so new to me, so unexpected. I need to think it over. I’m just not quite ready yet for sharing.”

Posted: 07/13/07