For those thirsting for a jockstrap post, here’s an amuse bouche for your tasting pleasure and amusement. Maybe this cowboy will saddle up in this jock, but maybe he won’t, and I’m not promising you a rose garden or a spread-eagle view of any puckered starfish – you have your imagination and I have mine.
Happy Jocktober – Keep Calm and Jock On.
Fall’s traditional color palette gets a refreshing update with the addition of these pink chrysanthemums – and pink and orange is a combination I’ve always loved. It also loops a bit of summer back into the autumnal splendor, and any echo of a sunnier season is welcome on the days of grey. A lot of people, myself once included, look down upon the humble chrysanthemum as too ubiquitous and common to be more than visual background noise, but I’m in awe and always honor their striking appearance. Just because something is suddenly everywhere doesn’t necessarily make it less beautiful.
More impressive is how every bloom is absolutely unique – one-of-a-kind like snowflakes and people and other flowers. One can get lost in examining and studying a single plant, and quite happily at that. Mindfulness in motion.
The supposedly-macho and often-misogynistic history of country-western music is being turned on its antiquated head as we repurpose and reformulate readings of cowboy lore for this Fall of the Cowboy. As a gay cowboy in-the-hopeful-making, my own pose is one of retro-amusement – and while some may be quick to dismiss this as nothing more than a pose, there are deeper things at work here, such as the distillation of the essence of a cowboy and his primal make-up. Far more than the boots or the animal-caretaking actions, a cowboy is unbridled chaos and passion barely contained within the confines of his denim and rope. He carries the weight of a history almost obsolete and a tradition worth preserving in his dusty back pocket, surviving on a vision and the will of a heart still bound to this earth and all its physical machinations, purposes and pleasures.
The highway, she’s hotter than nine kinds of hell
The rides, they’re as scarce as the rain
When you’re down to your last shuck with nothing to sell
And too far away from the trains
Been a good month of Sundays and a guitar ago
Had a tall drink of yesterday’s wine
Left a long string of friends, some sheets in the wind
And some satisfied women behind
They’d ride me down easy, Lord, ride me on down
Leave word in the dust where I lay
Say I’m easy come, easy go
And easy to love when I stay
A restless spirit is part of many a cowboy’s operation in this life. A desire to be free and entirely unfettered, at odds with all the rope they require, adds to their allure. We mostly want all that we can’t have, and a cowboy carries that power with only the merest understanding of his pull. It doesn’t completely exonerate him from blame, but it lends a charm that makes some of it forgivable, or at least tolerable for those with a decent amount of patience. I’ve only encountered a few spiritual cowboys over the years, and I’m afraid I didn’t treat them well or with the respect they deserved – this was after a bad break-up in which I didn’t exhibit much good behavior. One day soon I’ll tell you about some of them – one of those spiritual cowboys who came into my life as a lesson, which I promptly failed and fucked up, then watched it all play out in the dim hurt of his eyes.
Put snow on the mountain, raise hell on the hill
I locked horns with the devil himself
Been a rodeo bum, a son of a gun
And a hobo with stars in his crown
In my own way, I was a love ’em and leave ’em type of cowboy at the time – unable to process my actions while wading through such a pool of hurt and heartbreak, I lashed out and ruined and destroyed with willful abandon, giving and accepting sex as a weapon and currency – those brief spurts of satisfaction attempting to become something more, and me refusing at every turn, then turning to another. I remember one sweet gentleman waiting at my door with a carved wooden rose in his hand – I came downstairs, opened the door, accepted the gift, then said something so cruel he never bothered coming in. The worst of it is that I no longer even remember what I said, and maybe that’s for the best. I’m haunted by enough of what I’ve done, and the more forgotten, the better I might sleep at night.
So ride me down easy, Lord, ride me on down
Leave word in the dust where I lay
Say I’m easy come, easy go
And easy to love when I stay
Ride me down easy, Lord, ride me on down…
The other half of the Odd House’s dream team, Matty Dwyer is partner and husband to Scottie Dwyer, and today Matty is crowned Dazzler of the Day thanks to his own brand of sparkle and pizzazz. A self-described dream builder and world changer, Matty has brought his bit of magic to downtown Troy, where their Odd House storefront offers queer-centric supplies, apparel, decor, candles, ritual elements, tarot cards and engaging intuitive readings. A potent part of Troy’s vibrant downtown scene, Odd House is also a place of refuge and sanctuary for anyone who feels left out or different, and part of this stems directly from Matty’s own spirit and smiling outlook. Currently Matty and the store are gearing up for a special Troy Night Out on October 30, 2026: designated as The Haunting, it looks to be a spectacular event featuring ghost tours, live music, drag performances and over 40 local vendors from 5 to 9 PM along lower River Street.
{Check out the Odd House Instagram page here.}
A cowboy was sitting on that bench but now he is gone.
Maybe he’s taking this picture.
Maybe he’s dozing behind a tree, shaded from sunlight and rain while the maples still hold their leaves.
Maybe he’s departed, leaving only traces of himself in a fancy coat and black hat, as if a spooky cat had transformed itself into a hat, and a world-weary cowboy had turned into the colorful blocks of wool that comprised a coat seemingly left behind.
Maybe he is still there but we just can’t see or sense him.
That’s far too many maybes in a world already rife with uncertainty.
Maybe it doesn’t even matter.
Maybe…
A stark and barren instrumental version of Madonna’s ‘Live To Tell’ plays in the background as I write these words. In the attic, I sit alone by the dim light of a lone bulb and the plaintive glow of this computer screen. Writing like this and letting the torrents of words out in some ill-conceived stream of consciousness has only ever gotten me into trouble, or landed with a deafening thud of nothingness – still not sure which is worse, even after all these years of picking up the pieces of both. Behind my veneer of perceived and pursued perfection, even against my better judgment and will, I see the mess I am, the mess I will always be, and the illusory phantom of put-together competence and manufactured proficiency that people have somehow construed as the real thing. As if anything I’ve ever done could be called real, as if all of this wasn’t conceived and run-through in my mind before actually running itself through in public and actuality. As if I could ever be spontaneous and carefree: to be free of care would be a kind of heaven, achievable only by my death or the destruction of my mind. Probably not wise to wish for either, not openly at least. And this damn stream gurgles and stumbles onward, bumping up against smooth stones, through slimy water reeds…
If I ran away, I’d never have the strength
To go very far
How would they hear the beating of my heart?
Will it grow cold
The secret that I hide, will I grow old?
How will they hear,
When will they learn,
How will they know?
Writing at night, in the solitude and the darkness, is best presented in the same fashion, but this post will go up as the first one on a Wednesday morning, because sometimes these things need to be seen in the first light of day to be truly examined, in the hope of becoming something close to being understood. It’s my own sort of therapeutic exercise seeking catharsis until my next actual therapy appointment, where cathartic moments happen with greater frequency and haunting regularity; whenever I think I’m done, a new revelation comes to our discussions, and I realize with frightening clarity that I will never be done. It makes me want to weep from weariness or break the chair on which I sit with one quick burst of primal force – both would be shocking to anyone and everyone who thought they knew me. Only one would be a shock to me.
(Spoiler alert for those guessing: we’ve lost a few lamps over the years, not by accident, so don’t bother with the tissues.)
And yet somehow there is such a relief in knowing and fully realizing that it will never be done, that there is no end-all-be-all ‘cure’ for being human in such a rotten world, that the closer I get to not needing therapy is the further I get from enlightenment. Somewhere in the trying, the searching and the seeking, is the closest path to peace. It’s probably not as far as it seems, though to start believing such things about oneself likely leads me further out of the way, but I’ve lately been one to take the longer path if it appears prettier or more interesting. My therapist has said that whenever I’m faced with a challenge I rise to overcome it, and maybe underneath all my endeavors is the desire for such a challenge.
She also thinks I need a new adventure.
I just want to get out of this life alive.
Fairy stools or toad stools, every stool forms a stool for some fool. These popped up overnight after a few days of rain in the backyard – I’m still waiting on a fairy’s ring to appear, though I’ve heard mixed folklore about whether that’s good luck or bad luck or just imminent danger. I probably don’t want to find out – it’s like tempting the dark spirits for no reason other than causing problems for your own self. Some of us have wreaked enough havoc and caused enough mischief in the world – why tempt more to descend on an otherwise-thus-far-peaceful season? There will be drama enough with whatever next awful realities life has in store for us – absolutely no need to demand or create the conditions for more.
Instead, I’ll imagine these are sitting stools for the most minute of woodland creatures – fairies or frogs or miniature figures that go bump and burp in the night. When I was a kid, I lived mostly in my imagination, and I never got hurt or destroyed in that space… unless I wanted it. Because my pathology was such that, yes, sometimes I very much did want it. Why would I invite more darkness when so much of my heart was already in shadow?
The early days of fall can sometimes be mistaken for a few late days of summer, but I think we have passed that point. The nights no longer hold the heat of the day, and rain has returned to the regular forecast. Soon the first hard frost will wilt the remaining flowers and foliage in the garden, striking down what took months to become – the first stage of putting the plant matter back into the soil, the last stage of this particular circle of life.
Life, death and rebirth in a matter of months.
I used to mourn when all the green turned brown, when it fell off from the branches and returned to the earth. Now I welcome the end of this stage of the cycle, embracing the oncoming slumber of the garden, grateful for the rest and reprieve to restore and rejuvenate.
The first day back from a mini-vacation is always tough, so I’m going to hit this blog post with a lazy list of links to posts that have already been written on this date going back a number of years. I’m old, I can dig way back like that, and I am going to embrace it. Here’s a look back at this date over the last ten years or so. All in a decade…
Last year was a post about Misguided Ghosts that was set to a song by Paramore by the same name.
Sometimes links beget links, as seen in this Fade-To-Black playlist from the fall of 2024.
A lion prowled the late-season garden in 2023.
Roping my neck, these necklaces gave some badly-needed color to this October day in 2022.
Phasing out FaceBook was first proposed back in 2021, and aside from my three promo posts for this blog I’m largely off of it.
2020, that awful horrible year, reflects its nature in this fall pause.
The hidden and the insidious give hints of Halloween darkness in this post from 2019.
Scarlet berries personified the season on October 13, 2018.
An intentionally discarded heart was found in downtown Albany back in 2017.
Tom Ford already got me ten years ago, as seen int his post from 2016.
Fall anemones are one of the forgotten joys of our garden. Even after admiring their foliage for much of the summer, I’ll often forget about their blooms until the late afternoon sunlight illuminates these delicate pink petals, calling me to their beauty and offering some bit of balm against the oncoming cold. As one of the final acts of the garden for the season, it’s a pretty send-off as the beds go to slumber for another year.
There are a few more pockets of floral loveliness, sometimes in the seed-heads and dried floral umbrellas of hydrangeas or the seven sons flowering tree, but most of the summer magic has long since dissipated. While part of me mourns for the end of the warmth, another part welcomes the downtime, the rest, the opportunity to recharge and rejuvenate over the long winter. Feel free to remind me of that when the complaints come in January.
If Labor Day is the last of the summer holidays, then Indigenous People’s Day is the start of the autumn holidays – which is really the soft launch of the high holidays. This will roll quickly along until the stall and standstill of winter come January – so we must make the most of the days and the light while they last. On with the weekly blog recap…
The last pretty gasp of our pal Clem.
Spreading myself a bit too thin these days, I needed this extended recharge.
A petty cafe culture moment, the kind I do best.
A coyote song for a lonesome cowboy, the only kind of cowboy to be.
Here’s an idea: STFU!
Make it country, cowboy.
The FALL of the COWBOY: Chapter Two.
A good ho down at a good hoedown.
Our Dazzlers of the Day got into the country vibe and atmosphere of this space, with the likes of Zach Bryan, Adam Mac, Justin Green, and Erik P. Carter.
Sunday night before a holiday is the best sort of night there is, taking away some of those Sunday scaries and giving us one last chance to party. Who better than to see us into this night of ridiculous revelry than The Cowgays and their giddy ‘Good Hoedown’ song and video? Let’s get into it. (Also, peep the now-poignant Dolly Parton reference at the start – aww…)
So I call my rowdy friends, tell ’em meet me in the sticks
There ain’t a bad day that tonight can’t fix
I’m one, two-stepping my troubles away
Three drinks in, in a purple haze
I’m on a hell of a roll, there ain’t no stopping me now
Can’t keep a good ho down at a good hoedown
Might be drowning in debt, but I’m swimming in beer
You can call me white trash, but I’m a queen around here
Now that I’m single, I can kiss who I please
Take a ride on my tractor if you know what I mean
There ain’t no telling what I’m gonna do
The good thing ’bout rock bottom’s there ain’t nothing left to lose
Luck ain’t a lady, and neither am I,
I’m more lit than the Fourth of July
Luck ain’t a lady, and neither am I,
I’m more lit than the Fourth of July
While the only sort of lit I’m getting these days is whatever happens beside a candle, I still know how to throw it down, light it up, and kick those bad days to the curb. There’s an underlying resilience and defiance to this song that belies its catchy trappings, and if you can gain some strength while shaking your booty, there’s no better way to live. So step to living and join me in my merry band of hoes – let’s get down!
Call my rowdy friends, tell ’em meet me in the sticks
There ain’t a bad day that tonight can’t fix
I’m one, two-stepping my troubles away
Three drinks in, in a purple haze
I’m on a hell of a roll, there ain’t no stopping me now
Can’t keep a good ho down at a good hoedown
Goldenrod, scientifically named Solidago, gets its common name from the golden flower clusters atop stiff stems that are like rods. located within the aster family, they join that group in their late-flowering glory which is cresting right about now. Seeing goldenrod has always brought a catch to my breath, as it used to indicate the start of school right around the corner – a dismal bit of foreboding to a grader schooler with social anxiety. That has changed only slightly over the years, childhood trauma being near impossible to entirely eradicate, so I view its prettiness with a weary eye.
In the wild, goldenrod is often found blooming beside purple asters, creating a visual feast that sees the end of the season out in a sort of blazing glory. Fall carries its own floral enchantments for those who bother to look.
I’ve occasionally given thought to planting a stand of goldenrod in the garden but its late blooming time would go to waste. One final word of warning: do not be fooled into thinking this is one of your allergy-inducing plants: the pollen is not usually airborne – and most people are affected by the more visually-unobtrusive ragweed that appears at this time of the year, the goldenrod in its striking coloration just gets all the blame.
It was April 2nd when the Cowboy first ambled by the store that my great grandfather opened so many years ago. That much I know is true, since it was the first time I was tasked with signing off on the day’s receipts by myself – an unwanted bit of independence and the natural progression toward taking over that my parents had in mind for me. It was also the first hot day of spring that year, following a rare stretch of rain; Ma told me to watch for the ocotillo leaves – a remnant of childhood affection, something that depended less on the season and more on the weather, and the welcome arrival of rain. Ma always tied such things to God somehow, which led to my growing disenchantment with both mother and God. If some omnipotent figure such as God was in fact in control and power, and he or she was good and kind of heart, why not provide enough rain to keep the ocotillo green and pretty year round? Why is anyone suffering at all for that matter? Years ago I learned not to ask those things out loud, especially not at the dinner table with Ma and Pa after a long day at the store.
Years ago I also understood that my dream to become a cowboy would have to be kept a secret, much like my questions about God and morality. Now, at the age of twenty, it might be time to put that cowboy plan into the initial stages of motion. On this first warm day of the season, I’m feeling the restlessness of boyhood clashing with adulthood.
Working at the family store, where I’d worked since the age of thirteen, was the trajectory that my life was expected to take. When a kid understands this, they either embrace it and run toward it, or they rebel defiantly, running as fast as they can in the opposite direction. Neither of these choices seemed prudent or desirable to me, so I made a long term plan: I would secretly stash and save money while at the same time surreptitiously learn the cowboy ways every season they’d come to town.
I knew from experience, even at this young age, that to show want or desire towards something was the surest way of being denied it, so I acted as aloof and distant as possible when it came to all talk of cowboys. Had I shown the least bit of interest, both of my parents would have ensured that I didn’t see or talk to a cowboy until I was teaching my own offspring how to care for the store. The vilest parts of human nature don’t skip certain people just because those people are your parents – we only think they do. We only want to believe that, and the rest of our adult life is spent figuring out how to reconcile all of it.
I should probably explain my love of the cowboy life, since it wasn’t only my parents who were against it. From the outside, it might appear that the cowboys our town briefly employed – because they never lasted beyond a spring or summer, and if they did it was only a year or two further, never more – were vagabonds and drifters and not good for much more than quick heavy spurts of manual labor to get the ranches on track or the animals in order, or take care of the heavier lifting that the spring and summer required. But I saw the cowboy life as a way out of the shittiest little town, where nothing ever happened and I was already doomed to follow in the stultifying footsteps of Ma and Pa.
More than that, I saw in the cowboys that I met a thread of peace and serenity. Yes, they could be wild, and they could be destructive, and they could do the best day’s worth of work only to disappear that night never to return, but there was something intrinsically serene and calm about them – they had this inner-sense of peace and surety, no matter how wicked or wayward they might act out. And I loved that no one else saw or sensed this. It made me believe that in my heart I might have been born a cowboy, and was simply misplaced or set on the wrong track.
It’s tough for a boy to feel so out of place, and that’s all I’m going to say on that. My plan to become a cowboy depended on a careful reserve – the secret and silent machinations that would see me safely out of Levi’s General Store and off into the world until I could make my own way and find my own inner peace. I already knew then that it would never be in my parents’ place. I would come to have other reasons as well, but at this point I couldn’t know that – I only understood that my cowboy experience had to be gained quickly and quietly, and under the nose of a town that seemed hellbent on defining who I was before I knew myself.
In those days, cowboys were notoriously cagey about some of their ways, and such secrecy was partly what drew me to them; I didn’t much like sharing my business with the world either. I think I’m happiest when alone, and I have yet to find anyone’s company preferable to my own. Ma never liked that kind of talk. According to her, God didn’t like it either. She was always trying to get me to socialize more with people in town, encouraging me to go out more and hang out with the other kids. She put my time at the store second to any social events or opportunities that came along, even when the cowboys were involved. She and Pa had a certain level of status in town thanks to the store, and as a boy I wondered if they cared more about that than about what their only child wanted to do with his life. That sounds more maudlin than I mean for it to be. It’s just my way of explaining how I got away with being out of the store so much, hanging with the cowboys, and the few friends I mustered.
When the Cowboy came into town and moved in at Mr. and Mrs. Beasley’s ranch, Ma sized him up as trouble, but rather than keep me from him, she pushed me right into his path, reasoning in her mind that seeing such a problematic lifestyle would put me back onto the path she wanted me to take. Parents sometimes forget their own youth, their own dreams, their own hopes for something more, and they play it safe to keep their children safe, and I suppose there is love in that. When the Cowboy appeared at the store for the first time a few days after his arrival, Ma introduced herself, quietly judging his disarming smile and bushy beard, as well as the reddish-brown hair that hung just a little too low under his cowboy hat.
“Mr. Marnas gives a cheap but good haircut and shave out back on weekends here,” she said, accustomed to her words being taken as orders and executed as such. She told us later that the Cowboy only smiled and nodded without committing. “And someday soon we’ll have you for dinner – just me and Pa and my boy Leve, who can show you around town.” The Cowboy picked up his items – she said he only asked for soap and some leather oil – then left.
In bed that night I tried to picture him. I remembered the dust that was flecking his beard and hat, and his saunter, like he already knew where he was and where he was going, even if it was his first time here. He had the surety of a cowboy, that intrinsic bit of self-possession that some people called Zen and others condemned as flaky, and that very essence was precisely what I wanted myself.
~ The FALL of The COWBOY ~ Autumn 2026
Cameron Hawthorn gives a poignant and quietly powerful take on ‘Cowboy Take Me Away’ originally performed by the Dixie Chicks. A few pronoun switches and this is a gloriously-gay anthem and love song, a lovely little accompaniment to the burgeoning gay romance of our cowboy story just starting to unfurl here. Wistfulness is a key component of many a cowboy’s character. A certain sort of unrequited longing is part of it too.
I said, I wanna touch the earth
I wanna break it in my hands
I wanna grow something wild and unruly
I wanna sleep on the hard ground in the comfort of your arms
On a pillow of blue bonnets in a blanket made of stars
Oh, it sounds good to me
I said, cowboy take me away
Fly this boy as high as you can into the wild blue
Set me free, oh, I pray
Closer to heaven above and closer to you
Closer to you
As much as a cowboy might believe in the solitude and independence of his lifestyle, there are those cowboys who want nothing more than to fall in love and make another person a part of their lives. Does it go against any tried and true cowboy code? No – at least nothing that’s written down. A cowboy doesn’t like to put anything in writing (and that’s a big fork in my cowboy path). Today’s cowboys aren’t bound to such old-world traditions, which largely established themselves due to the transitory and challenging life of cowboys of the past. Love and marriage are more possible now than way back then, and are in fact fostered by society’s questionable pushing of such traditions.
I wanna walk and not run
I wanna skip and not fall
I wanna look at the horizon and not see a building standing tall
I wanna be the only one for miles and miles
Except for maybe you and your simple smile
Oh, it sounds good to me
Yes, it sounds so good to me
This winsome song sweetly describes a young man’s search for love, which he seeks in the form of a cowboy who might sweep him off his feet. Ahh, youth and romance and the idealistic dreams of anyone who’s ever fallen in love in this mad world. In the beginning there is frenzied, tormented hope and promise, ever in danger of not being more than a passing moment, and if the object of one’s affection doesn’t quite feel the same, well, that hurts in a way most of us of a certain age have all but forgotten.
Cowboy take me away
Fly this boy as high as you can into the wild blue
Set me free, oh, I pray
Closer to heaven above and closer to you
Closer to you
Closer to you
I said, I wanna touch the earth
I wanna break it in my hands
I wanna grow something wild and unruly
Some cowboys never forget, though – and I’m in that camp. Love has bruised and scarred in ways I don’t want to forget. Every bit of hurt and heartache was proof that the moment mattered – even when it was all in my head, it still mattered, it still felt like love, it still changed my life as if the love was real – and in that way, it was.
Cowboy take me away
Fly this boy as high as you can into the wild blue
Set me free, oh, I pray
Closer to heaven above and closer to you
Closer to you
