Brandi’s hand moved from the radio dial to my leg, resting lightly on my denim-clad thigh. Beyond the windshield, the road was swallowed by the night, the car’s headlights barely scratching the surface of the dark.
"I just love Dwight Yoakam," Brandi said, her voice slowed by a southern drawl and booze. "Don't you?"
Her hand squeezed briefly before she grabbed the wheel again to negotiate a curve. Below Dwight's singing, I heard the sounds of Mitch and Laura making out in the backseat. The last time I'd turned around, not too long after we left the bar in Cody, Mitch had Laura's shirt bunched up around her neck, his hands working at her bra. I wondered nervously just how far along he was now.
"I just love the way he plays guitar. I saw him once in concert," Brandi continued, oblivious or ignoring the noise from behind her. "He's dreamy."
Her hand was on my leg again and her eyes kept flicking from the darkness-soaked road to my face.
"Oh shit," I thought, "Shit, shit, shit."
The road was bumpy; I couldn't see the turns before we made them; everything was spinning. Dwight crooned, Mitch kissed, Brandi squeezed and steered, and I thought I was going to die. The headlights caught the aluminum sign at the entrance, sent it glaring into the night: Castle Rock Ranch. We bumped a few more feet along, then Brandi pulled in by her trailer. I opened my door and puked. Perfect. This was the best thing I could have done. It guaranteed I was done with Brandi for the night.
Mitch zipped his fly and half-carried me to my bunkhouse, laughing gently at me. "Man," he said. "That girl wants you. You gotta get yourself some of that." The screen door slapped shut behind us. He dropped me on my bunk and headed out, back to Laura no doubt. The noise of the door had woken the four other guys in the bunkhouse and Gary, who had a bunk to himself in an alcove, stuck his head out and looked at me. I kicked off my boots and stretched out on my bunk. Then the room spun around me; I lurched, thinking I might puke again.
"Piss drunk?" asked Gary, "Keep a foot on the floor and the room won't spin."
With that, he left me alone. The room stayed still, my foot grew cold, and I woke the next morning, achy and cotton-mouthed, feeling like I'd made a narrow escape.
That was my fifth night in Wyoming.
The next morning, Gary woke me up by snapping his fingers over my ear. The bunkhouse was still dark as he hissed at me: "Get up! I'll start breakfast, but you better get your ass to the kitchen quick." He left, easing the screen door shut behind him.
I rubbed my gummy eyes and looked around. The other three guys were blanket bundles, asleep in their bunks. So I could risk it. I grabbed my towel and a set of clothes and tiptoed to the bathroom at the end of the bunkhouse. The bathroom without a door: two toilets, two sinks, one shower, which, thank God, had a curtain. I stepped into the shower stall, stripped, turned the water on. So cold at first, blasting away the fog of sleep and the beery hangover, then warm. I washed and, as I always do, saw what there and what was not there. There: two small but insistent breasts, reminding me I was female. Not there: anything between my legs. Anything, at least, that Brandi might have been groping for. The sight of my pale breasts and arched hip bones filled me with disquiet, a sense of vulnerability. I have never felt my body matched what I should look like, but the feeling of weakness, the danger of exposure was greater, more intense, here in Wyoming, here in this bunkhouse. It was a feeling of not belonging, not just in my body, but in this place.
I stuck my face under the stream of water once more before turning the shower off. A quick rub dry with the towel, an even quicker pulling on of my clothes, still inside the curtain's privacy. Damp, but at least no longer naked, I walked back to my bunk, past the sleeping forms of Mike, Ray, and Greg. My bunkmates were good guys, hard-working, funny. But I preferred them asleep. Awake, they were prone to rough-housing, faggot jokes, conversations about girls, masturbation, and all other sorts of late-adolescent male topics I knew nothing about. I pulled on my boots and headed out after Gary, giving one last look at the sleeping guys. "They're going to kill me," I thought, as I gently shut the screen door. "If they find out, I'm dead."
Outside it was gently light, cool. I heard the tumble of the river, the south fork of the Shoshone, high with snow melt from the mountains, as it rushed behind the bunkhouse. Away, to the north, rose the ranch's namesake rock. The gray sky beside it was shot through with pink and gold – a typical sagebrush sunrise. As I walked past, the horses rustled in their paddocks. The shivering fear of discovery left me, even the banging headache of my hangover felt reduced. I breathed the dry air, looked at the red rock – there was a reason I had wanted to come to Wyoming.
The kitchen was large enough for me and Gary if we each stayed on our own side. By the time I got there, he had the pancake batter mixed and was working on eggs.
"Make the coffee. Then do the biscuits," he yelled at me.
He loved giving orders. At least with Gary I wasn't worried about my real gender being discovered – I'd have to dance naked in front of him for that. He was older, maybe late forties, and wrapped up in his own world of self-defeat. Never married, never settled, cooking at a place until he drank himself out of the job. He lived to tell me what to do. The day we met, he had dubbed me "Harvey" on account of the fact that I was a Harvard student, and nothing pleased him so much as bossing me about the kitchen with this name. "Harvey, clean the grill." "Hey, Harvey, don't they teach you how to cook rice at that school?" So long as he could tease me and order me around, Gary would see no further into any matter.
The first set of guests, dudes we were supposed to call them, hadn't arrived yet, so only a handful of ranch employees were around cleaning out cabins, fixing up the grounds. I heard the mess hall door slap shut behind Darryl, the owner, and his wife and kids. Darryl had run the ranch for about ten years; he was a big man, with a booming voice. When he'd picked me up at the airport three days ago, he hadn't bothered to mask his disappointment in my appearance.
"I thought you'd be taller," he said as he loaded my backpack and guitar into the ranch truck. "And you're gonna have to get rid of that earring. This is Wyoming."
I took out the silver hoop right then, just as I would tuck into a hamburger, ending seven years as a vegetarian, that night at dinner. "This is Wyoming," I thought to myself. "This is not just another summer job washing dishes." I looked at the silver hoop in my hand, felt briefly like a coward, a traitor. But maybe I wasn't so much forsaking who I really was as reinventing, getting the chance to be what I wanted to be.
After Darryl, the guys from my bunkhouse came in, heaped their plates with eggs and biscuits. They were the general laborers of the ranch: cut the grass, fix the fences, pick up the garbage. The girls followed in a cluster, five of them, all friends who attended Ole Miss together. They were the maids, the babysitters, with ponytails and pink shorts – girls who loved horses and kids and spoke sweetly in their southern drawls. Brandi smiled at me as she took some pancakes.
"I hope your head feels better than mine," she said. "Lord, I am not going to be good for much today."
I smiled back but couldn't think of a thing to say. What does a transgender guy who fears for his life in rural Wyoming tell the Mississippi Belle who has a crush on him? Nothing. Smile. Nod.
Last in were the wranglers. Josh, the head wrangler and his four assistants: all college age or a bit older, all real men. The stubble on the cheeks that I did not have, the t-shirt pulled tight across the flat chest that I did not have. Their Levis worn snugly, loose only at the bottom for their boots. Looking at them, trying not to look at the big belt buckles, the tight legs of their jeans, I was glad for my apron, tied modestly around my waist. Its starched white cotton was the best disguise for covering my chest and legs. A blank front. Perfect.