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Old Brokeback got us good and it sure ain't over.

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Once upon a time, Jack Twist, not yet twenty, herded sheep up on Brokeback Mountain for a summer, and the pay wasn't all that bad, and he didn't so much mind being up there on the hunched mountain side, so he come along back next year.

Which is when he met Ennis Del Mar, and hell if he didn't just go and get himself into one mother of a ungodly mess.

Then again, losing control is what Jack does best ('cause he sure ain't any kind a rodeo rider), so he didn't bother to look before leaping.

It's been four years since then. Jack got married to a sweet little Texas girl whose family was rolling in money, and he stopped starving, stopped riding the rodeo circuit, and had a little boy.

He's been thinking about maybe sending a note along to Ennis. Just to check in, you understand.

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The screenplay, by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, has this to say about Jack:

This is JACK TWIST: Like ENNIS, a rough country boy with little education, but somewhat different in appearance and attitude, a little less stoic, a little more of a dreamer. More welcoming, appealing, with a quick laugh. Twenty*, but not as tall as ENNIS, more compact and muscular, thick, dark hair, worn jeans, bullrider's belt buckle, faded shirt, stubbly beard, cowboy hat, boots worn to the quick.


* Jack, at the age he entered the bar, was twenty-four. He is now twenty-five. After leaving Milliways for the second time, Jack has lived through another five years in Childress. Time is moving faster for him out there in the real world.


After a visit to Milliways, Jack walked out the door and wasn't seen for months, not by anyone. In that time he grew older, kept up his wife's family's business, helped raise a son and still went up once, twice a year to Wyoming for a visit to the old homestead and a fishing trip or two. But Jack's never had the best luck; hell, you could say bad luck's been dogging him just like his shadow always has, and it's just as loyal. One day he pulled over to change a flat tire on the truck and never came back again. And then there were no more fishing trips and no more times with his son, no more visits to his parents. Jack Twist was gone from the mortal coil he'd walked for such a short while, at the tender age of thirty-nine.

Fortunately for him, there's a bastard of an Endless called Desire, and it turns out this fella has taken a shine to old Jack, wants to keep him around for a spell.

Jack Twist therefore, is back at Milliways and living on the Reynolds Ranch on Shadow. He looks about nineteen years old.

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For outpost_12:

Jack Twist is cocky, obnoxious, full of life and himself, and crazy to get out of Lightning Flat. This summer, he's just eighteen and he's lit out for Signal, WY on account of he heard there was a fella there wanted some ranch stiffs to keep an eye on his sheep all summer.

He's got a beat-up shirt on his back, some worn down boots on his feet, and an itch that's keeping him on the move. He lives for the eight seconds of the rodeo, the fight, the yelling, the dust and mud and blood. Someday he's gonna get him one a those fine buckles to put on his belt for the girls to admire.

Hell, he's got his whole life ahead of him.

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Jack Twist is from the short story and movie Brokeback Mountain, and is the property of author E. Annie Proulx. He appears here solely for the purpose of role-playing in milliways_bar and outpost_12, and ten_fwd, from which no profit whatsoever is being made. Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Jack in the movie, also portrays him in the icons and presumably belongs to himself.

Don't look at me, I'm just alemara and I've got a thing for cowboys. You can contact me at aria dot marier at gmail dot com or here.