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Urban Cowboys
Author's Note – When there is improper grammar in this ("ain't", "weren't" instead of "wasn't", etc), then it's because that's how Steve (the narrator) thinks and talks. Rated M for language (liberal use of both "f" words – "fuck" and "fag") and sexual content (some of it is pretty graphic).
I hope it won't get confusing, but the italics at the beginning of each chapter is from Steve's project, and some of the writing is deliberately over-the-top (Steve thinks he's a better writer than he actually is).
1. ALL ABOUT THEM COWBOYS
urban cowboys
by steve richter
The building stood at the front entrance; it was the first thing visitors saw after the sign welcoming them to McEntire College. The only outstanding feature of the building were the three men leaning against it as though they were responsible for holding it up. All three of them wore the same outfit as though it were a uniform - white t-shirts, faded blue jeans and muddy Carhartt boots.
The one in the center was clearly the leader of the three; the aura of leadership surrounding him was obvious to anyone that bothered to look. He was six feet tall, and every inch of those six feet was tightly coiled muscles from years of farm work. On his left bicep was a tattoo of a skull and crossbones, and on his head, covering his cropped blond hair, was a dark blue baseball cap.
He held a cigarette in his left hand, like he thought he was some kind of movie star. He was no Clint Eastwood, but there was no denying his masculine energy, the pure cowboy inside of him.
The man on his left was only five foot six, and was not nearly as lithe. Instead of resembling a jungle cat, as the one in the baseball cap did, this man looked more like a friendly a puppy, with his soft brown hair and friendly blue eyes.
As girls walked by, they would glance over at him. When he smiled, they broke into giggles, which only made him preen more. He was clearly a lady-killer.
"Andy, stop gettin 'em all worked up," the blond said, taking a drag on his cigarette. He blew the smoke out of his mouth like he'd been doing it for years.
"I can't help it if the girls love me, Dale," Andy replied, waving to the two girls as they glanced in his direction. "Maybe if you quit with the cancer stick, they'd like you, too."
"I ain't gonna stop smoking for some chick. I got better things to do with my life than impress some piece of ass." Dale shook his head, glancing at the third man, standing on his right side.
"Waddaya think, Steve? Should I quit?"
Steve didn't answer right away, his bottom lip pulled into his mouth as he stared off into the distance. Dale rolled his eyes and waved his hands in front of Steve's face.
"Off in la-la land again?" Dale asked, when Steve finally looked at him.
"Just thinkin'," Steve replied.
"Andy thinks I should quit smoking." Dale took another puff, still looking at Steve. Steve shrugged and glanced over at Andy. He didn't respond, but Dale didn't seem to care as he finished his cigarette. He pulled the pack – Marlboro Reds – out of his back pocket and shook another one out.
If Dale was a panther, and Andy a puppy, Steve was the grizzly bear. At six foot four and two hundred and sixty pounds, he resembled a younger Toby Keith, with his
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Dale pushed the faded and crumpled piece of paper back into my hands, shaking his head, "You don't look like fucking Toby Keith!" he shouted. He shook his head and took another drag on his cigarette. Maybe it was me bein horny, but every time he sucked on that cigarette, I pictured him suckin something else. Sometimes I was such a fag.
"Well, fuck you," I mumbled, folding the piece of paper and putting it back into my shirt pocket, "You said you wanted to read it." Andy shook his head and stuck his hand into his pockets.
"It's all right, I guess," he said, "but you've got us all wrong. You make me sound like a fuckin prick." Dale snorted.
"Andy, you are a fuckin prick," he said.
"If you assholes don't like it, don't fuckin read it." I leaned back against the wall and looked around. Andy's latest girl was crossing the quad, books clutched to her chest. She looked around like she was waitin for someone to jump out of the bushes to grab her. She weren't his girlfriend yet, but it wasn't like he wasn't trying. Every other fucking girl on campus would give their left arm to be with Andy, but the one girl he wanted wouldn't give him the time of day. It was a cliché story line, but it was true.
She was a flute player in the pep band. A chubby black girl named Ramona, not his type at all. But Andy was in love with her, and he wasn't giving up.
"She doesn't believe me," Andy said, "She thinks I'm playing her or something." He shrugged, "You think I'm weird for liking her?" He glanced over at Dale.
"No, dude, I hear fat chicks give good head." Dale grinned, showing teeth. Andy rolled his eyes.
"She ain't that fat," he said, "Not any fatter than I am." He shrugged. "And what makes you think that just 'cause she's fat she gives good head?"
"Well there's this thing about like, bein' orally fixed or somethin'," Dale said, "It means they like puttin' things in their mouths. Like cookies. Or cocks." He grinned again, taking another drag on his cigarette. My mouth went dry.
"Cock don't taste like cookies," I said.
"Oh, and you suck cock a lot, huh?" Dale asked.
"You know it," I said, hoping that my off-hand tone would distract from the fact that I was hiding part of myself from my friends. I'd known these guys since I was twelve, but I never got around to telling them I was a fag.
"I hope you remembered to spit instead of swallow," Andy replied.
"Always." I smiled with my teeth showing.
"I got class at three," Andy said, pushing himself off the wall, and turning around. "I'll see you back at the apartment." He grabbed his backpack off the ground and headed off in the opposite direction from us. Dale crushed out his cigarette and looked over at me.
"Wanna get somethin to drink?"
"I gotta work on my paper." It wasn't really a paper. Sixty thousand words by the end of the semester. Any topic, fiction or not, but it had to be a finished piece. I liked writing, but liking something and bein good at it were two different things.
"All right, fine. We'll get a six pack and bring it home." He shrugged and tapped his pack of cigarettes against his leg.
"Christ, Dale, it ain't even five." I shook my head, but he started off down the walk, and I followed him, letting myself take a quick look at his ass in those Wranglers. Not even Tim McGraw looked as good in a pair of jeans like Dale did. I could write my whole fuckin novel about Dale.
We stopped at the corner store and Dale bought a six-pack and a bag of chips before we walked home. The apartment wasn't anything fancy. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a kitchen. Not that we needed much else, just a wicked expensive stereo system, a collection of more than a hundred CDs - George Strait, Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire, Brad Paisley. We didn't have a TV set; we didn't need TV when we had music. In the living room, we had a desk and a couch. On the desk sat a computer, which only I really used. Dale refused to learn how to use one, and Andy had his own laptop for his programming classes, which he wouldn't let me use. But fuck if I was gonna do a year's worth of writing classes by hand.
Dale dropped the six pack on the living room table and headed right over to the CD cabinet.
"What do you wanna listen to?" he asked. I turned on the computer and sat down in the chair.
"I don't really care." Not like my opinion would make a difference. He'd just pick whatever he wanted and blast it as loud as he could stand it with no regard to what I was doing. I had given up complaining, because I knew Dale, and I knew it wouldn't make a difference.
"It feels like an Alan Jackson kinda day," Dale said. A minute later I heard the beginnings of Dale's favorite song, Chattahoochee, and I tried to tune it out so I could work on my project.
If Dale was a panther, and Andy a puppy, Steve was the grizzly bear. At six foot four and two hundred and sixty pounds, he resembled a younger Toby Keith, with his dirty blond hair and brown eyes. Like Toby Keith had, Steve played football for his college team. It wasn't a big team like Notre Dame or anything like that, but football was football to Steve.
The three men shared an apartment together, a ten minute walk from the college campus. They'd been friends since middle school, so when they all got accepted to the same college, it seemed only natural to share an apartment together, too. Steve hadn't quite realized what kind of problem it would be to be sharing a house with his two friends.
See, Steve was harboring a potentially damaging secret, one that he was hiding from everyone that knew him. Steve was gay. And he was in love with Dale. Had been since they first met, and it just got worse every day.
"Fuck!" I said, deleting the entire last paragraph I'd typed. It sounded ridiculous. Besides, I didn't want the story to be about me and my obsession with Dale. I didn't even know if I was really in love with him or not, and I didn't want to spend sixty thousand words whining about it.
"No talkin' dirty to the computer," Dale called. While I had been working on the computer, he'd moved into the kitchen, probably working on supper. Come in here and I'll talk dirty to you instead. But I didn't say it out loud. That's not the kind of statement you can pass off as a joke.
"What are you cookin for dinner?" I asked, walking into the living room. Something smelled good, but damned if I could tell what it was. If writing was my specialty, and math (and computers) was Andy's, then food was Dale's. Even if we couldn't pronounce the names of half the shit he cooked, it was still delicious.
"Chicken fettuccine alfredo," he said, stirring something in a pot on the stove.
"Which means what?"
"Chicken, cheese sauce and noodles. Should be good." He stirred again, and then put the top back on the pan. I wanted to push him against the counter, trap him with my arms on either side, and stick my tongue in his mouth. I wanted to fuck him in the middle of the kitchen. I licked my lips in an attempt to curb my thoughts, and decided that I needed some alcohol before I went nuts.
I grabbed a beer and went back into the living room, sitting down on the couch, sighing to myself. No one would ever guess by looking at me that I was a fag. I wouldn't guess myself to be a fag from knowin me from the outside. I mean, it wasn't like I got a woody in the locker room or anything like that. I mean, I saw naked guys all the fucking time. And these were football guys, too. Big, muscular guys that made the girls go crazy. I had no problem with any of them. I mean, yeah, they were attractive. But I could control myself around them guys.
But Dale only had to look my way and I would forget how to breathe. Sometimes it was like in the movies, when the gorgeous girl walks in and the wind blows through her hair and everything slows down. I felt like that a lot whenever I looked at Dale.
I thought about writing my piece for class about Dale and me. Only make it like a fantasy where Dale was in love with me too. But that would be too easy. Then I thought about just some story about space aliens, or Dale Earnhardt or something. But if I didn't write about us, nobody would, and we'd never be remembered. We were kind of like the last of a dyin breed.
"Dinner's ready!" Dale called from the other room. I finished my beer and went into the kitchen, which doubled as our dining room. He'd set places for all three of us, even though Andy wasn't back yet. Along with the noodle stuff, there was a loaf of bread and some green beans.
"Looks good," I said, but I didn't really care if it looked good or not. I knew it would be.
"Yeah, well, I want to wait for Andy before we start eating," he said. We waited for about twenty minutes past when he normally got home, but when it didn't look like he was coming any time soon, we started eating. We were cleaning up the dishes and putting the leftovers in the fridge when Andy came busting in the door, looking seriously pissed off. He threw his bag on the floor and flopped down in the chair with a loud sigh.
"Brian Webster is a huge fucking asshole," he said, but in a way that I knew he wanted us to ask for an explanation. Brian Webster was one of those preppy frat boys with the polo shirts and spray-on tans, the kind that never did a lick of hard work in their life and had the nerve to look down on people who did. Who thought they were smart just 'cause they were rich.
"What did he do this time?" Dale asked. Andy shook his head.
"Fucker told Higgins that I cheated on the Calc exam."
"Did you?" Andy wasn't the kind of guy to cheat, but the question still had to be asked.
"No! Why would I? I can ace the test with my eyes closed. But Brian thinks that just 'cause I'm a redneck I can't do good at anything. So he thinks I cheated, and he told Higgins."
"And what did he do about it?" Dale asked, "he didn't believe the asshole, did he?" Andy shrugged and shook his head again.
"He said I've been a strong student so far, but he had to do something. So I had to stay after and take another version of the test while he monitored me."
"And?"
"I'll get it back on Thursday. Then I can rub it in that asshole's face." He rubbed the back of his neck, but didn't say anything else for a minute. Well, I thought to myself, I can probably get another couple hundred words on the frat boys. Them and the issues we had with them could be a whole chapter by itself.
