Tall Cowboy

Scott Brennan            

          I have, over the past decade, amassed a substantial collection of vintage cowboy hats (Stetsons and Resistols, mostly), boots (I waited three years for a handmade pair by J. L. Mercer), bolo ties, gun holsters, chaps and spurs. One set of spurs was worn by Clayton Moore, the original Lone Ranger (1949-1957), bought at auction for $7,500. I consider myself, it goes without saying, an aficionado of cowboy culture, and, paired with that interest, a scholar of Country and Western music, yours truly a man enamored with the Bakersfield Sound, my favorite artists including Wynn Stewart, Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, Merle Haggard, and in my opinion the most significant artist of them all, Wanda Jackson, a singer associated with rockabilly, but whose style transcends genres, predicts elements of rock-and-roll, and, I argue, punk rock. (My girlfriend Raven, who has excellent taste, introduced me to Jackson’s work, and she’s in agreement with my observation.) Compare Wanda Jackson’s vocal energy to that of, say, Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols or Iggy Pop. Listen to “Rip It Up” and then to The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Nothing will be more obvious to you. A few of my essays, most recently one on Ms. Jackson, have been published in academic journals (see last spring’s issue of The Berkeley Journal of Sociology—I was thrilled Katherine Smith was open to a piece about music), but I am most proud of the articles that crossed over to nonacademic magazines like Cowboys and Indians and Country Music. My barstools in truth are repurposed horse saddles.
          Raven a little while ago texted me about changes impacting our evening plans. She’s an emerging singer/songwriter, and we attend shows frequently, country and otherwise. We saw eighty-nine-year-old Willie Nelson perform at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino two nights ago, and we are going to see Kurt Vile in Ft. Lauderdale at the Revolution Live, but I was annoyed because she told me she was going to be late due to group therapy, which she can never skip lest she be kicked out, so we won’t have dinner beforehand as planned, plus she’ll miss The Sadies, the band opening for Vile. So much for date night. I like all Vile’s work, but I prefer the early albums, his mumbled, stoned tracks like those on Smoke Ring for My Halo. That said his newer music, especially the duets with Courtney Barnett, the Australian musician (genius), are also strong, and their collaboration, Lotta Sea Lice, made many end-of-the-year music lists, as I predicted.
          Though Raven and I love attending live shows, we can’t escape the oppressive feeling that comes when people stare at us. As a couple we draw attention to ourselves because I am very tall, just under 7 ft, whereas she is a diminutive 4’9”, and then, of course, there is our age difference. She looks young for her age, and she always gets carded. I look a decade older than I am, and my beard, which I wear to conceal a jagged purple scar under my chin (thanks, Dad), turned grey years ago. In an urban context—Miami, where we live—my attire can come across as an affect, an over-the-top fashion statement, but I’ve learned it’s better for very tall men like myself to wear clothes that attract attention rather than clothing that blends in. People can look at my Western attire (the obvious cowboy motifs an invitation) and pretend not to notice my height—me, a man usually two or more feet over everyone else in the crowd. I think in a way my clothing conveys my permission for others to stare at me, so they don’t have to be so coy. Normally I embrace the uneasiness, accept the fact I’m different, but I felt particularly uneasy the other night when Raven, her college friend Sukey, who was in town for a visit, and I went to her mother’s apartment for dinner. Sukey kept staring at me. Well, more like examining me. She had heard so much about me from Raven, and there I was, the giant in the flesh.  
          Hilary, Raven’s mother, owns a lavish penthouse overlooking the Intercostal Waterway. I squirm a bit when I am around her, as she is only a few years older than me. I am made to feel my relationship with Raven is a problem Hillary too often is called upon to explain to her friends and relatives. I wish people could live and let live; they can’t.
          Sukey and Raven majored in English in college and earned, in their opinion, “useless degrees.” Like a few of their fellow classmates uninterested in pursuing careers in education, Sukey has become, to make a living, a cam girl—slang for online sex worker. She also works as a high-end call girl, and she regularly gets paid to have sex with a married man trapped, she says, in a loveless marriage. She claims to make on average $2500 a week. Of course I know this topic isn’t for everyone, and I can’t say it is something I am keen to discuss here, but because this fact is part of my reality I can’t deny it exists either. I can’t edit out some facts of my life, but permit others simply because I am uncomfortable with them or don’t want them to exist. Well, I guess I could, actually, but here at least I’m not going to. (If you feel uneasy, don’t worry, as this story is PG-l3.)
         “Camming is an expression of Sukey’s feminism,” Raven says, and I try to be open to that line of reasoning. I bring it up because along with how old I look, or how old I do not look, and how tall I am, sex became a topic for discussion at dinner.  
          Awesome, I thought. This is going to be a fantastic night.
          Hillary, a prominent circuit court judge, listened intently during the conversation, but offered no opinion, while I let my eyes wander over the paintings on the walls and the sculptures on the balcony, Merl Haggard’s Swinging Doors playing on the Bluetooth speaker.  
          Hillary has a world-class collection, literally hundreds of pieces, from Motherwell to Warhol to Keith Haring, and almost all are sexually charged. When Raven and I have dinner at her mom’s place I am often distracted by a painting on plywood by Purvis Young, as it depicts a man with an enormous phallus that extends from the groin area to his feet. On the living room coffee table stands a huge hot-pink phallus considered a holy object in Bhutan, a souvenir Hillary and her companion, Richard, brought back from their travels last fall. She has hanging on her bedroom wall a rare nude photographic print by Allan Tannebaum of Yoko Ono.
          Such openness about sexuality indeed must be healthier than repressing it, but I feel uneasy talking about such things in a social setting with people I don’t know particularly well, which I believe falls within the realm of normalcy, I told Raven, and so the longer the conversation went on the more I tipped the brim of my Stetson a little lower to conceal my discomfort. Could we not discuss something less deliberately provocative? Like the upcoming election? The new documentary on Hammershoi? David Berman’s final album, Purple Mountains? The digitally remastered version of Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? Wanda Jackson?
          I try not to be judgmental about Sukey because I don’t like people judging Raven and me—how people so knowingly jump to the conclusion that she has daddy issues or that we have a problematic power dynamic. Perhaps Sukey describing her work to us helps steel herself to the criticism she faces, both internally and externally? Nevertheless, she ignored me when I asked her what her mother and father thought about it, and when I posed the question Raven interrupted (a perfect intercept to save her friend), told us that if she wasn’t seeing me she would try camming herself, which caused me to have a flash of jealous anger. The way she puts it Sukey uses her body to express her power and her choice. I can wrap my head around that point of view, but it takes a good deal of empathy, a trait I am lacking in but am trying to improve upon.      
          Still, I kept my mouth shut thereafter. I like Sukey. I liked how she helped me clean up after the dinner I made for them at my place the other night (homemade pasta with sea scallops, which took a lot of work on my end), loaded the dishwasher while I wiped down the table, then put the leftovers in the fridge. (Raven rarely helps with any of the chores.)  
          The three of us had a great time in Key Largo touring the site where The African Queen was filmed, too. Featuring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, it’s one of my favorites, a great love story, and I enjoy the two characters’ relationship, the straight-laced, pious woman and the emotional, reckless drunkard. I love the scene in which Hepburn pours all Bogie’s liquor out into the river, and when he wakes up, hungover, he’s mad as hell, but also appreciative because he knows he can’t keep drinking so much. Working together they save one another from their shortcomings as well as from doom as they approach the annihilating waterfall, the Nazis in hot pursuit. I guess Raven and me, like Bogie and Hepburn—we are mismatched couples who end up working things out. Love finds a way, right?
          Prior to meeting Sukey—the memory couldn’t help but cross my mind as I cut into Hillary’s salmon, which was undercooked as usual and a little slimy—it had been twenty years since I had interacted directly with anyone in the sex industry, not since I knew Dale and Jonathan, who specialized in gay erotica. I remember (eyes wide open and trying to play it cool) watching Dale edit a short film on his computer called Piss in Boots, a play on the fairy tale Puss in Boots. 
          Molly and I (my girlfriend at the time and later my first wife) would take the 3 Train to their apartment in Park Slope to watch Star Trek and get high Sunday nights, and Jonathan would serve us fancy desserts when the munchies kicked in. I will never forget his homemade banana-walnut ice cream topped with whipped cream and served with warm, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Their brownstone apartment, with its floors painted blue and collection of antique, art nouveau lamps, felt so homey, and as a couple they emanated warmth, intelligence and love. So many of their friends had been struck down by AIDS, and perhaps bearing witness to that tragedy sharpened their appreciation for life. The ashes of their former roommate, Jeremy, who had hit on me once at a Fourth of July barbecue (I’ll always remember our conversation about Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow), were interred in a pink Gucci handbag placed on the fireplace mantle. My sister is trans and my daughter is gay, but back then, having been raised in a conservative, Catholic family, I lacked sensitivity. Consequently, I usually sat on the sofa in silence, watched Captain Picard save the Enterprise from destruction, ate my ice cream and let Molly do the talking. Now I wish I could go back in time and relive those Sunday nights. I would be more friendly. I would try to contribute more to the conversation.     
         

          Sukey, as she poured herself another glass of wine, paid Raven’s mom a compliment, said, “I hope I look as great as you when I am your age.”  
          The winter wind off the Atlantic began to pick up, but it was still a pleasant enough evening on the balcony. We watched a yacht go by, the wake it left behind crashing over the seawall, and a hobbyist’s drone passed between two high-rise buildings, took nighttime photographs of the swimming pool below. Haggard’s version of “Silver Wings,” one of my favorites, played on the speaker, and I tapped the heel of my boot with my fingertips, wondering when Raven and I could leave, head back to my place.  
          Hillary responded to Sukey by saying, almost boastfully, “The truth is I have had some cosmetic surgery,” and then she went on to praise the merits of retinol-based face cream and to warn us that as far as skin goes, “The sun is your enemy.” Raven, wearing her mom’s white fleece, which went well with the turquoise bolo tie (I inherited it from my grandfather) she had swiped from my dresser drawer before we came over, glared at her. “You don’t even look like my mother anymore,” she said.  
          I couldn’t believe Hillary didn’t flinch when Raven said it. She and her mom, they sling insults at each other, argue every time they meet. I sat there, uncomfortable as usual, and tried not to get involved.
Even as close as we are, I can’t help but feel the clock is ticking on our relationship, that Raven and I are star-crossed lovers. Twenty-five years from now, when Raven is my age, will she really want to be with an old man? Given the emerging knee and disc problems I have now, would I even be able to walk then? Would she have to be my caregiver? Push me around in a wheelchair? Yes, unquestionably, she would have to.  
          Though my beard turned white a decade ago, and the wrinkles around my eyes are pronounced, Raven says she loves me, doesn’t care, and I believe her. Maybe she helps me appreciate my life, or maybe her directness shakes me out of the lies I tell myself. Maybe it’s just because we get along, share a similar taste in music. Maybe it’s that she calls me out when I’m inflexible, pushes me out of my comfort zone. As for me, I support her when she gets anxious about her music or frustrated about her life. We are there for each other, at least for now.
          The wind increased and the temperature began to fall. Sukey checked her phone, started texting someone. One of her clients, perhaps? Raven, seeing her friend distracted, got up out of her chair, sat on my lap. She has taught me most of what I know about how to be genuine, and she’s my best friend, but when she snuggled close her mother frowned, removed the bottle of wine from the table.