Midnight Cowboys

There's a strange trend that I've been noticing lately and it involves cowboys. I started noticing this trend after I saw Brokeback Mountain a few months ago. By the way; a very good movie, even for someone like me who's ridiculously heterosexual. I think it helps to be very comfortable with your sexuality to enjoy this movie. I mean it helps to be someone who's had sex with a ridiculous amount of women, like I have, to really sit back and relax and enjoy the beauty and melancholy of a movie like that. Some people say that I'm too comfortable with my sexuality, but that's just absurd. You can never be too comfortable with your sexuality. When you've had sex with as many women as I have, you kind of reach another plane of existence. You become comfortable in any kind of situation that might make other, lesser men, nervous, like hanging out in Greek bathhouses, in lockerrooms after soccer games naked with a bunch of guys, chilling late night in the VIP rooms of the really upscale gay clubs in Prague. But a lot of people, including my good friend C, put me down, saying me being comfortable in those places doesn't explain why I frequent them as often as I do. ["You don't even play soccer," he said to me yesterday. Which is true, but you can really work up a sweat watching if you're not in the shade.]

The fact is that I don't need to explain these things, because I've had sex with almost as many women as Wilt Chamberlain, and when you reach this level of existence your sexual behavior is as unexplainable to other, untransmogrified people as is the behavior of a Buddhist monk who has reached enlightenment unexplainable to the everyday masses of hoi polloi. The fact is that I will admit it; I could have sex with a man in a tent in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night just like in Brokeback Mountain, and I would wake up in the morning without even the possibility passing through my mind for the shortest moment that I might be homosexual. That's how comfortable I am in my sexuality.

But back to the cowboys. Ever since watching the movie, I've noticed that every cowboy I see tends to behave in a rather effeminate manner. I mainly see cowboys at the poker tables. That's pretty much the only place I have occasion to see them; you won't run across too many cowboys in Pakistan or North Korea. But from the cardrooms of California all the way to Macao, there are effeminate cowboys all over the place. I don't know if the movie caused a lot of the gay cowboys to come out of the closet and a lot of the straight ones to go into hiding or what, but it's gotten to the point where I see someone with a handlebar mustache sashaying around in an oversized cowboy hat, a bootlace tie slung around their neck, cowboy boots and spurs, I just think 'Gay'. I can't count the number of times I've been sitting across the felt from one of these cowboys and they announce 'All in' in a very feminine voice and I can't help but think there was something sexually suggestive in the way he said it and the way he looked at me (I usually fold in those instances because I've found that's a useful tell). Very strange, though. It makes me wonder if there's always been something about the ornate and frankly quite fruity way cowboys traditionally have dressed that have always attracted those with a homosexual leaning to this profession. I'd like to hear from the readers here; keep your eyes open and let me know the next time you see a cowboy. Judge his sexuality and report back. This is good material here, and anyone's free to use it as the subject of a thesis paper or something like that if they wish.