The cost of being a cowboy is slightly different for everyone. Some wouldn’t consider it a cost at all – content and merry to ride through life without long-term care or concern, happy to connect with people along the way without making any binding or committed promises, and perfectly satisfied with being alone should that be the result of their choices and lifestyle. (Not everyone is willing to put up with someone who only wants to roam.)
Wildcat Kelly, lookin’ mighty pale Was standing by the sherrif’s side And when the sherrif said “I’m sending you to jail” Wildcat raised his head and cried
For those who desire the cowboy’s freedom, and seemingly-carefree lifestyle, they would be wise to dwell and deliberate on what that means for the long haul – because a cowboy’s career isn’t typically made to last that long. The physical exertion runs down and ruins the body faster than an office job ever could – and the mental and emotional strain for those who aren’t cowboys in their hearts can be equally debilitating. To do all that just for a taste of freedom, to live life defiantly alone, should it come to that, are choices that come with consequences. A true cowboy won’t mind, or even think of it that way. For the rest of us flirting with the cowboy life, these are things to consider. And for anyone remotely toying with the idea of falling in love with a cowboy, good luck. The heart of a cowboy is pure – and at its core all it wants is freedom without fences.
Wildcat Kelly, back again in town Was standing by his sweetheart’s side And when his sweetheart said “come on, let’s settle down” Wildcat raised his head and cried
“Meet the new cowboy?” came the question for the third time that day.
Shaking my head with an amused grin, I told the customer only Ma had officially met him.
“Seem nice?”
“She said so,” I proclaimed, a little more boastful than intended, “Said he was dusty but knew enough to stock up on soap. Not all the cowboys bother.”
The customer moved away without smiling. I wasn’t sure I’d made a joke, so no wonder she wasn’t convinced.
It was Monday, and the Cowboy hadn’t shown for dinner yet. They usually came by on Sunday afternoons, and Ma had made a little extra fuss for it, even if she pretended she wasn’t. She was adamant about Sundays being for rest, but she still went out of her way to make a big Sunday dinner. It was harder to get my head around such stuff when I was a kid; now I accepted the contradictions because it was easier that way. It felt like growing up was all about accepting things that didn’t make sense, and learning not to question them unless you wanted trouble.
When the Cowboy didn’t show for dinner, we eased into the evening with a little less tension – Ma having a second beer and Pa undoing his belt before he even got up from the table. I was not-so-secretly relieved as well; as much as I wanted to learn from the stranger, I wanted to do so out in the wild, where it mattered – not at the dinner table, and definitely not in front of my parents. They were already suspicious of my reluctance to take over the store, and Ma could suss out an interest of mine no matter how deeply I tried to conceal it. By the time she burped out the ending to her second can, she’d almost forgotten about the Cowboy, until she eyed the extra plate on the counter as she was cleaning up. I watched her put it back into the cupboard as Pa shoved back from the table.
That night it was nice enough to leave the window open to my bedroom. The moon was overhead somewhere – I couldn’t quite see it, but I saw its light, the way it illuminated the backyard and the stretch of power lines, undulating and sagging between their tall wooden poles. The stars blanketed the dark sky – the promised storm had never materialized, not yet at least, and the night was clear. Coyote cries sometimes pierced the quiet, but on this night they were still and silent. April anticipation hung in the air – the promise of spring fulfilled, and yet somehow not quite complete. I was old enough to feel the longing for something that spring inspired, even if I couldn’t quite figure out what it was that I wanted. If you asked me, and no one ever did, I might say I wanted to be a cowboy. With my bedroom door closed, and the window open to the stars and the sky, I let my heart whisper it to the night.
At quite a distance out of town, the Beasleys’ bunkhouse glowed with the light of a single candle. Stepping out onto the porch, the Cowboy walked a few steps into the moonlight, his naked form and shadowed contours looking more animal-like than human. He took in the whole sky, with its stars and moon, and listened for a message on the wind – a wind that never came.
Freedom is the main goal of any tried and true cowboy. It’s the reason they risk so much, stepping so far away from the easier paths that other roads might have offered. Freedom to be exactly who they want to be, to be bound only to the land, the animals, and the cowboy code. There is nobility in that – some danger too – for a cowboy to choose the cowboy’s life requires a certain sacrifice of comforts that most people aren’t willing to give up. But the reward… ahh, the reward… can you even begin to put a price tag on the reward of freedom?
Let me be by myself in the evenin’ breeze Listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees Send me off forever but I ask you please Don’t fence me in
Are there ways to operate within this quest for freedom that allow for interpersonal relationships, and maybe even romance? Of course there are – and perhaps I’ve been too broad in the strokes that I’ve used to paint this fall of the cowboy. The core of the cowboy essence, however, remains the same – and one of the main tenets of that is independence and solitude, standing alone and riding off into the sunset and being completely ok with making your way on your own. Most of the time all a cowboy needs is a horse and a horizon.
Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle Underneath the western skies On my cayuse, let me wander over yonder Till I see the mountains rise
I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences Gaze at the moon till I lose my senses Can’t look at hobbles and I can’t stand fences Don’t fence me in
That loose sense of belonging to someone or something, of being bound and tied to another person or place, chafes at the cowboy’s sense of freedom. They erect fences for livestock; they would sooner die than be fenced in themselves. Watch as they gallop off into the distance – watch when they are given an open expanse and an afternoon off: they are movement and freedom and exultation in one.
Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle Underneath the western skies On my cayuse, let me wander over yonder Till I see the mountains rise
It is a glorious thing to see, the way a cowboy revels in their freedom – and the beauty is often in what we do not see, in the price it exacts, the shortened life it leaves after years of harder living. Who’s to say it’s not the way life should be? Why are we preserving ourselves with restrictions and diets and healthy living when thrilling at the pleasures at hand is so easy and feels so good? Why live a longer but unhappy life when you can have an ecstatic shorter one? Maybe this is one reason the cowboys are so often so Zen-like: they have this all figured out.
I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences Gaze at the moon till I lose my senses Can’t look at hobbles and I can’t stand fences Don’t fence me in
Some songs strike at the very heart we try so hard to protect, hitting right through the one chink in the armor you worried about – the hole you were so right to worry about – and in some way you have to wonder if the heart didn’t want for it to happen, like it knew it wouldn’t be complete without breaking, as if that was the very purpose of a heart. Is a life complete without surviving a heartbreak? If not, I’ve no worries – my life is woefully whole in that respect, with several heartbreaks still somehow mending – and it’s always the unrequited heartbreaks that hurt the most – those moments of unexplored could-have-beens that never quite got off the ground, that perished before they gave each other a chance. There’s something sadder about the bud that never blooms.
And time washes clean Love’s wounds unseen That’s what someone told me But I don’t know what it means ‘Cause I’ve done everything I know To try and make you mine And I think I’m gonna love you For a long, long time
This song may very well provide the soundtrack to my entire past of torturous romantic escapades – that it has arrived all these years later to help make sense of those doomed moments touches me in a way that is as surprising as the tears that suddenly rolled down my cheeks in the dimming of this day.
Contrary to likely-popular belief – and it’s ok if you thought it too because it totally tracks – I’m not one for self-pity. No, my pride was too great for that – my tears before tonight were for all the boys who missed out on what I would have been to them. Yeah, that’s right, I got it like that – my pride was such that I mourned for them not seeing how good I could be – how good we could be together – and a bit was for selfishness too, because love makes us selfish and ruthless and cruel, thinking we’d miss out on something that would change the world.
Caught in my fears Blinking back the tears I can’t say you hurt me When you never let me near
Maybe those boys were just wise to me, wise to my failings, wise to my pride – maybe they knew the day would come when I’d bore and tire of them, when I’d realize how much better I was than them – because you can say that when it’s true, when no one else has come along to thrill because you’re the most thrilling and interesting person in any room you’ve ever inhabited. Wise to this sort of insufferable hubris, to the ridiculous inability to fathom how someone could not want to be with me. Yeah, I got it like that…
And I never drew One response from you All the while you fell All over girls you never knew
Oh how I used to cry for those boys – the ones I thought were worthy, the ones I obsessed over, the ones who seemed interesting and thrilling and beautiful in their own right – I cried over them and gave them all the power. There weren’t that many – less than I could count on two hands – and perhaps they were more special than everyone else. They each occupied a precious portion of my life, and I gave them that space willingly – because I knew even back then that it was my nature to love and love and love, no matter the return, no matter the cost, no matter the price and no matter the pain.
‘Cause I’ve done everything I know To try and make you mine And I think it’s going to hurt me For a long, long time
Where was this song then? Perhaps it’s best that it wasn’t around, considering the way it’s already wrecking me at such a distant vantage point. How strange the way an arrow will arrive years and decades after the fact and somehow find its way to pierce the heart at its most vulnerable point. My tears are no longer for all those silly boys – they fall for one singular young man who could be the singer of this song. I see him all these years later as I watch from a place of safety and warmth and relative accomplishment, with hopefully a little more wisdom than I had when I glimpsed him from the mirrors and subway windows and glasshouse panes of my youth. Back then I was too close to him to see his worth, to see his love.
Wait for the day You’ll go away Knowing that you warned me Of the price I’d have to pay
And life’s full of flaws Who knows the cause? Living in the memory Of a love that never was
I weep for him now, more than he ever wept for himself, because of all that he didn’t know, and all that he didn’t realize he was giving up in service of another. I weep because I wouldn’t change anything for him, for the fact that going through it all made him into the person I am today. I’m sorry that it had to be that way, but not at all sorry for how it all turned out. If that required some heartbreak, if that needed some fool for a catalyst that impelled him to greater heights, then it was worth it. And it’s worth crying for too.
I’ve done everything I know To try and change your mind And I think that’s going to hurt me For a long, long time ‘Cause I’ve done everything I know To try and make you mine And I think I’m gonna love you For a long, long time
The sad truth is that I gave up on this banana tree when it refused to stay upright before summer had even ended. A few stormy days had it knocked down to the ground, its massive leaves torn and frayed, and after the fifth try at keeping it proper up, I simply let it stay when it decided to go down for the last time. I’m usually better at treating my plants as if they were people, but this end of summer I just couldn’t be bothered. Maybe I am just as cold as some say I am. It would certainly match the air, and I do like to match whenever possible.
In a certain light it was my way of saying goodbye to summer, and pretending, or forcing myself to believe, that it was ok to let it go without a fight. How can one fight the end of a season anyway? It’s a guaranteed loss, even if there is nobility in fighting the good fight in the face of certain end. Truth is, I no longer have that fight in me – and the people who wrested that power from me aren’t even reading this post – so even if my words held any power or sway, they would never be heard or read – and words that fall silent… well, what is the point.
I admire a cowboy’s resilience in that respect. Most people hesitate, waiting to get up again, tentatively evaluating the wisdom of doing the very thing that got them knocked to the ground in the first place. Cowboys don’t wait around for wisdom. Cowboys don’t wait around for much.
If there’s one thing a cowboy does consistently well, it’s getting on with it.
Such is the way of the world You can never know Just where to put all your faith And how will it grow
Lately I’ve found myself on the ground, intentionally dwelling there and letting my body sink into the floor. Gravity is glorious when you learn to just give in to it. So much easier that way, so exhausting to fight what the world wants us to do. And so much easier to rise from the ground than a higher elevation. Maybe that’s something cowboys just intrinsically know, something they feel. It might not be something you can learn or be taught – it’s possible you either have the instinct to rise or you don’t.
Such is the passage of time Too fast to fold Suddenly swallowed by signs Low and behold
I meditate while sitting in the lotus position, low to the ground. When I’m done, I’ll lie down, flat against the floor, letting myself simply melt into the surface. A literal grounding of self when my head is somewhere up in the clouds. There are times when I’m not meditating that I’ll find my way to the middle of the room, sit down and look at it from the lowest vantage point, because it gives a better perspective on the world. To be so small to not see above a coffee table or plant stand – perhaps this is why some children have such wisdom. Their whole world is right there, and everything that goes over their heads simply doesn’t matter.
Gonna rise up Find my direction magnetically Gonna rise up Throw down my ace in the hole
A cowboy retains a sort of childlike wonder at the world. Some might call that stunted, others immature. I maintain that it is wisdom – wisdom laced with folly perhaps, but it’s the wisdom that matters, even if it’s just a grain. A small bit of wisdom coupled with a hefty dose of wonder is a wonderful way to rise.
October’s spookiness is rooted in trickery and laden with treats if you know where to look. The next few weeks are going to bring their own challenging form of trickery as well, with a full moon coming up and Mercury entering retrograde motion tomorrow until mid November. That’s a long time to deal with madness and nonsense, and God give me patient to make it through without hurting too many people, and getting hurt in the process. That sort of shit always comes back around, even when you’re not at fault. (In my past experience, I get the most hurt when it’s not my fault, so I’m totally accustomed to such bullshit.)
In the meantime, I’m going to do my best to stay below the radar of trouble and toil, going easy on others and also doing my best to go easy on myself. That’s the real trick of this season – learning how not to take it out on me. I’m still my favorite punching bag.
Cowboy ambivalence is that sort of mood that overtakes you like a fever – and it doesn’t only afflict the cowboy. Cowboys do seem more susceptible to it, however, having some sort of special access to things that others don’t – same thing that sets apart poets and temptresses. Artists and songwriters and sculptors are different in a similar way – anyone who feels slightly removed from the mass of human experience – those people who do what they’re supposed to do, laugh at the right moments, cry on cue, and go through life without ever truly wondering what it’s all about – they merely accept and make the best of it. I’ve often wondered if that is the true key to happiness – just giving in and not challenging or questioning or doubting. A blind sort of faith – willful ignorance, or a deliberate refusal to see anything other…
You know you shook me baby You shook me all night long I said you know you shook me baby Oh, you shook me all night long Ah, you know you kept on shakin’ me darlin’ Till you done messed up my happy home
More than perhaps anyone else, a cowboy lives for the moment. It is their guiding force and their fallibility in one fell, fatal swoop. They ruin their future for the present moment, they wreck their past for the here and now, and they live in the hour at hand in a method of mindfulness that most of us can only occasionally access, and that only if we’re extremely lucky and willing to lose ourselves for a bit. It’s scary to really let go like that. If you’ve never done it, you can’t know the risk involved. The risk or the glory.
You know you moved me baby Just like a hurricane You know you moved me baby You moved me just like a hurricane, uh huh You know you moved me sweetheart Just like a earthquake to the land Oh, sometimes I wonder What my poor family’s gonna do Oh, sometimes, sometimes I wonder What my poor family’s gonna do Oh, you know you, you made me mistreat them honey Ah, oh I’m madly in love with you
You know you shook me, shook me baby You shook me all night long, uh huh I said you shook me, shook me baby Shook me all night long, uh huh Oh yeah, you shook me, shook me baby Shook me all, all, all night long, uh huh
The mood of a cowboy is variable at best. It’s why they operate as cowboys. They go with the flow, whistling on the wind, letting the vibes hit and move them as they arrive. Such a mercurial and malleable existence isn’t one for the stable or stalwart of mind. But oh the heights they sometimes achieve, the loftiness they sometimes reach – the highest of highs that mere mortals tied down by morals and responsibilities and other like chains and locks can never quite attain.
The cowboy knows how to shake.
The cowboy is less skilled at being shook.
It’s one thing to stay atop a bucking bronc intent on throwing you off – it’s quite another to stay atop the heart of another human.
When the sheets are warm and scrumptious, the outside world is pitch dark, and the sound of pouring rain hums on the skylight, it feels unnatural to get up and begin the day. That’s because it is. The daylight is designed to mark when we rise and how long we sleep, and to go against such a set-up is reckless and foolish, yet we as humans constantly defy what the natural universe tries so desperately to tell us.
And yes, more sleep, because on the morning that this was written, I typed it into my phone in the pitch black of what should have been night, not the start of another work day. Staying in bed was not an option; that indulgence would have to wait until the weekend. We are almost there.
Providing the inspiration for this cheeky post earlier today, Dixon Dallas, a.k.a. Jake Hill earns his first Dazzler of the Day crowning thanks to the viral sensation that is ‘Good Lookin’ and an impressive body of work that includes other beauties like ‘Fool For You’, ‘Beggin’ For More’ and ‘Like Whiskey’. (Watch for at least one of those to provide inspiration for a future post.) Check out Dixon’s insta feed here for further evidence of his brash brilliance.
Following this cheeky romp of a post, an even more explicit sex scene plays out in the mind and imagination of our fall-prone cowboy. We’ll let the lyrics and links speak for themselves – I’m just enjoying the way traditional country-western motifs are given new life with a same-sex twist. Artists like Chris Housman, Brooke Eden, Adam Mac, Justin Green, Brian Falduto, and Orville Peck have turned their work into deliciously subversive musical statements – and that only works when the music is good and the song is sound. Case in point is this Dixon Dallas ditty, which is the rare sort of country song that uses the word ‘bussy’ and means it that way.
There’s something ’bout the way you look in my eyes Like a starry night, you light up my skies You lean in closer and my heart starts to pound I heard you sigh, you know I love that sound
He’s bouncing off my booty cheeks, I love the way he rides I can hardly breathe when he’s pumping deep inside I kiss him on his neck and then he kisses on my bussy Call him “Daddy” while I holler, man, that boy’s so damn good looking
We made love and then he kissed me, I don’t want it to end Every day we spend together, I fall more into him That boy he takes my breath away, I can’t find the words to say So I wrote this little note, kiss it, seal it, so you know
I’ve got some time, if you’ve got some time too You’ve been on my mind baby, let me remind you while I lay you down I can’t get enough, I’m stuck in your love That’s fine with me, nowhere else I wanna be
He’s bouncing off my booty cheeks, I love the way he rides I can hardly breathe when he’s pumping deep inside I kiss him on his neck and then he kisses on my bussy Call him “Daddy” while I holler, man, that boy’s so damn good looking
“October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.” – Hal Borland
On this morning, I arrived early – around 8 AM, which is early for me on a Sunday, especially for a drive to Amsterdam. When I entered the trail, I found this magical scene where a tree of yellow leaves was in the midst of dropping them – partly from the colder weather, partly from the dewy frost weighing them down, and partly, I imagine anthropomorphically, because it was just tired of holding onto them. The first thing I do when entering any bit of forest is to listen.
For someone who enjoys the quiet, a forest is one of the finest places to be found. On this day, however, there was an irregular cadence of the softest scratches and lightest thuds as the leaves fell in random, slow non-patterns. No bit of AI or technology could ever precisely predict where each of the leaves was going to fall – far too many variables for the most advanced computer, no matter how quickly it might work all of the physics out; nature would never be found out that easily, and the mysteries of how, when and where a leaf would fall and end up are gorgeously out of reach of man’s greedy hands.
I stood there in the stillness, transfixed by the falling leaves – their sound, their gentle trajectories – like some slow-motion falling of rain, and just as delicately melodic. It was rare to find a tree at the precise moment it was losing all its leaves – I’ve seen them do so in winds or storms – like the cherry blossom petals that would fall into our pool with the April and May breezes. This was different because there was no wind in the atmosphere – just a tree slowly letting go of its finery on the first cold morning of the season. I felt grateful to be there at that particular moment and witness such an elegant disrobing.
When Mondays and Wednesdays and rainy days hit a little harder than usual in the fall, a bluesy song like this one is the only thing that will do. The words don’t even matter – it’s the music, it’s the atmosphere, it’s the vibe. It’s getting through the shitty days with the best of friends, commiserating and finding solace in the common drudge of it all. We’re all in this together, you know?
A cowboy gets the blues as much as anybody else – sometimes a bit more because they live and love just a little bit harder than everybody. They thrash and burn and buck and bruise and if they’re lucky they live to see another day to do it all over again.
Lord, have mercy Lord, have mercy on me Lord, have mercy Lord, have mercy on me Though I’m tryin’ and tryin’ to find my baby Won’t someone please send her home to me
And because the original above is done much too soon when you really need to feel it, here’s an extended version by the great B.B. King.
Way back in 1992, this week marked the release of Madonna’s ‘Erotica’ album and ‘Sex’ book – one of the most infamous career moments in what had at that point been nothing but one more outrageous act after another. This one-two cum-and-go assault from the pop stratosphere was an unprecedented and thus far unmatched height of controversy and capitalism. ‘Sex’ the book sold out, ‘Erotica’ sold less than the typical Madonna album, and Madonna was everywhere in the news (witness the covers of Newsweek, Vogue, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, NME etc.) It was a highlight for any diehard Madonna fan, and my fandom was at its most powerful and potent, resulting in an absolute obsession with this particular period of Madonna history.
My personal and family life was a bit of hellish nightmare, finding me in a state of extreme depression and despondency, desperately and dangerously close to suicide – a continuation from the previous year – and the attempts became more concrete. Credit Madonna’s ‘Erotica’ album for keeping me alive one more day, just to hear how it all played out, and sometimes that one day is the difference between survival and something else.
With over three decades of time to digest and critically assess the work of this period, it seems to me that ‘Erotica’ actually fares slightly better than ‘Sex’, and both are neat little time capsules of early 1990’s sound and aesthetic. The ‘Erotica’ album brought such enduring classics as ‘Deeper and Deeper‘ and ‘Rain‘ – both sound as delicious as they did the first spin around, while lead single ‘Erotica‘ still slinks and struts with spiky heels in sinister fashion. ‘Bad Girl‘ is both more potent and more poignant all these years later, and final track ‘Secret Garden‘ remains an underrated masterpiece in sonic atmospheric moodiness. It’s telling that on her most recent Celebration Tour, Madonna included, by my count, four selections from ‘Erotica’ – clearly she has some love left for this cheeky section of a career that has since rebounded and rebuilt itself, while maintaining the defiance and ballsy brash ebullience from her earliest days.
