Write 'Em Cowboy

© 2024 by the authors using the pen names UpperNorthLeft and Jalibar62.

Any hanky-panky, canoodling, or other naughtiness is between consenting adults 18 years of age or older.

===

PORTIA

"God damn it, Portia," Betty sighed in frustration, tossing the manuscript pages at me. "What is this shit? When are you going to write something that I can actually publish?"

"I'm trying!"

"Look - our readers will tolerate a certain level of eccentricity in the male characters. 'Aloof' is fine. 'Brooding' is good. Even 'distant and mysterious' works. But every single 'hero' and believe me, I do use the term loosely, that you've written for the past six months is a flaming asshole! Most women read a bodice-ripper to get away from assholes - not to add one more to their lives."

I burst into tears. "I'm sorry! Every time I try, it comes out the same steaming pile of crap! Ever since..."

Betty got up and came around her desk to sit beside me. Putting an arm around my shoulders, she said, "Honey, it's been six months since that bastard left. However, you've got a deadline coming up. I hate to break it to you; if you can't get your head out of your ass, you're gonna be in breach of your contract.

"I've cut you a lot of slack, but you're still spending almost all of your time holed up in your apartment, eating ice cream out of the carton, and binge-watching the Hallmark Channel. Have you ever heard of Portia control?"

I groaned. "Bite me." Betty was all about the tough love, but sometimes, I swear...

"Seriously, if you continue to lie around in the dark, packing in pints of Chunky Monkey, people are gonna start calling you Caspar the Pudgy Ghost.

"Pudgy?! I prefer callipygian," I tried not to pout.

"OK, I'm exaggerating," she sighed. "But sweetie, if you keep choking down the Cherry Garcia, your pygia is definitely going to get pudgier. It could even end up getting its own zip code."

Then she held up my latest manuscript. "And stop sending me crap like this!"

"I was trying to break new ground in a tired and hackneyed field."

She raised a well-groomed eyebrow. "With a book called Death and Despair in Denver? Where your main character declares all men dickheads and then joins a convent? My god! You have broken the one immutable law of romance writing: There Is Always a Happily Ever After. If you mess with that, your fanbase will hunt you down and throw you into a volcano!"

"I wanted to write something realistic." That sounded flimsy, even to me.

"Portia, honey, I say this with utmost respect. Fuck realism. You need to write something more like your last book, Ranch Rodeo Romance. You know, the one where the cowboy takes the city girl out in a horse-drawn carriage to the park? All of her friends and family jump out and surprise her with a flash mob dance routine, ending with the cowboy's proposal?"

I pouted. "Yes, Mom, I remember."

She picked up a glossy brochure from her desk and handed it to me. "Here. This might break you out of your funk."

I whined. "Flying Fox Dude Ranch? What the fuck, Betty? C'mon — I don't do ranches."

"Oh, yeah? Then why is Ranch Rodeo Romance still your best-selling book?"

"I write about them — I don't actually go to them."

"It's not a request. You're booked there for a week, starting this Sunday."

===

SUNDAY

===

PORTIA

I got up at an ungodly hour for my drive to Bumfuck... err, Bandera, wherever the hell that was. My GPS said it would take 3 1/2 hours from my place in Jersey Village — a soulless suburb of the urban blight otherwise known as Houston. Ugh.

It was more like 5 hours by the time I arrived. For some reason, the I-10 traffic was all snarled up around San Antonio. On a Sunday? Then I got a goddamn flat tire just outside Boerne.

I was just sitting there, crying in frustration, when someone tapped on my window. I jumped, then looked out to see a middle-aged guy in jeans and a work shirt. The jeans were held up by a belt buckle as big as a hubcap, and he was wearing a battered straw cowboy hat.

I cracked my window. "Yes?"

He regarded me, then drawled, "Havin' some trouble, little lady?"

Must... control... sarcasm...

I bit my lip, resisting the urge to beat my head on the steering wheel. I took a breath, forced my best pageant smile, and channeled my elderly Aunt Polly from Pecos.

"Why I sure am, thank you for stoppin'! I reckon I got me a flat tire! Do you think you could help little old me?" I batted my eyelashes at him. Internally, I bitch-slapped myself.

He sucked in his gut, showed me all eight of his snuff-stained teeth, and said, "It'd be my pleasure, ma'am. Pop the trunk and ah'll have you fixed up in a jiffy!"

Well, he was true to his word. Fifteen minutes later, he tapped again and said I was all set. Then he pushed his hat back, and said, "Hey, you reckon you and me..."

My first impulse was to say, "Kthxbai!" and hit the gas.

However, I couldn't bring myself to be such a bitch after his simple act of kindness. Instead, I said, "Sir, you are a kind gentleman and such a good Samaritan. But I couldn't possibly take up more of your valuable time. Besides, I promised my Aunt Petunia I'd help fix dinner at First Baptist tonight. But if you're ever down in Uvalde, please look us up."

"Might just do that." He smiled and tipped his hat. I drove away, feeling a little better about the human condition. Hmm... I might just have to write that nice man into one of my romances. However, for my readers' sakes, I would give him a few more teeth - definitely whiter ones.

The rest of my drive to Bandera was anticlimactic. I parked and checked in at the main ranch house. I didn't seem to have missed much. A few of the other guests were dressed in outfits fresh off the L.L. Frijole rack, and were practicing their moseying around a buffet table, trying to sip cabernet like a cowboy.

I surreptitiously plucked the price tag off an older gentleman's brand-new retina-roasting horror of a western shirt (hot pink with lime green embroidery) and shielded my eyes from further injury.

I managed to find the bathroom and some coffee and watched an annoyingly perky young cowgirl sauntering by in a chambray shirt, jeans, boots, and a white Stetson. She also wore a name tag that said "Howdy! I'm Jessie!" I'd never seen anyone actually saunter before. She handed out information packets to all of us and answered questions. I took one look at the schedule of activities for the week, and was appalled. This was going to be a long fucking week.

I found my room, which was decked out in the expected cowboy decor. After unpacking my bag, I lay back in bed with my iPad and checked my email. Somewhere among the spam, I fell asleep, and didn't wake up until I heard the dinner bell clanging out by the chow hall. I stretched, and got up, feeling surprisingly rested, and reckoned I could eat.

Dinner was decent - fried chicken with all the fixings - but I still didn't feel very sociable, so I retired to my room. After my nap earlier, I wasn't that sleepy, so I stayed up reading for a few hours.

===

HARRY

What we do for our friends. That's why I couldn't say no when my best friend Bill Williams invited me to his bachelor party. However, I was surprised at the location. "Bandera? Why?"

Bill said, "Duh, that's where the dude ranch is."

"Yes, and..."

"I grew up in New York, but I always loved the idea of being a cowboy. That's why I jumped at the chance to take a job here in Austin. I imagined that I'd be living out on a ranch in the sagebrush, surrounded by cactus and coyotes."

"We have cactus and coyotes here in Austin."

"Yeah, but other than that, it's like living in Baltimore or Atlanta or any other big city. And now I'm getting married next month, and I've still never had my Western adventure. That's why I want to spend a week hanging out with you and Joe, being a cowboy!"

Joe Nichols was a software engineer like me and Bill and was also Bill's best man. He also grew up in a big city back east, and was as enthusiastic as Bill about spending a week ridin' and ropin' dogies and playing golf. What the hell. I'd been to weirder bachelor parties. There was that one time in... No, it was too soon. I shuddered.

It's not that I had anything against dude ranches, but I had my fill of "ridin' and ropin'" as Bill and Joe put it, as a kid. I grew up on our family ranch out in West Texas, where I racked up more saddle time than I care to remember, rounding up sheep and goats and cattle. But I gave up all interest in ranching when I moved to Austin years ago. Now it was all in the hands of my sister and our parents. After getting a couple of degrees in computer science from UT, a local AI startup snapped me up. I now lived in the East Oak Hill neighborhood, with a sweet view looking out over Barton Creek and all of the Hill Country honeys who hiked through there. The only thing I wrangled these days was lines of Python code.

Soooo... we all drove down together to Bandera, for a week of male bonding. Yahoo.

We made it down there in about 2 hours, just in time for some chilled wine and cheese in the main ranch house. This was definitely an upscale dude ranch. A cute cowgirl named Jessie brought us information packets and flirted with us for a few minutes. Before she moved on to the next guests, Joe had signed all three of us up for a trail ride the next morning. Sigh. Okay, sure. Why not?

After dinner, Bill and Joe insisted on having a few drinks in the bar. I wasn't planning on getting drunk, but somehow one tequila shot followed another until we were all definitely feeling no pain. We had one more shot at last call, and then staggered off to our rooms. I fumbled with my room key, and then stumbled inside, shutting the door a little harder than I meant to. I took a leak, and slipped off my boots, but that was about all I could handle. I flopped onto the bed in my clothes and passed out.

===

PORTIA

I started nodding off just before midnight, so I brushed my teeth and changed into my jammies. I slipped under the covers and turned out the light. Even with the relentlessly Western decor, this was a pretty comfy room - especially the bed.

Just as I was slipping off to sleep, I heard someone coming down the boardwalk outside my room. The footsteps paused at the room next door to me. I heard the door slam, and I headed back down the slope into slumber. I was almost asleep when I heard The Noise.

What the hell is that? Where is it coming from? I sat up in bed and listened. What the absolute fuck? It was the asshole in the room next door, snoring like an asthmatic water buffalo.

I wrapped my pillows around my head. That helped some, but not enough. I got up and scoured my luggage looking for earplugs or my noise-cancelling headphones. After searching everywhere, I finally remembered — they were on my nightstand. In my condo. In fucking Houston. Crap.

The rest of the night was horrifying. My neighbor continued his Texas Chainsaw Massacre on my ears for the rest of the night. Occasionally the noise would stop for twenty or thirty seconds and I would begin to rejoice. But noooooo... it always started up again, just as loud as ever. My emotions during these moments of respite began to devolve. The first time, I thought, "Ah, he turned over on his side and is now resting comfortably." As the night drew on, any remaining bit of my milk of human kindness evaporated, and I had much darker thoughts such as, "The motherfucker died! At last!" I am clearly not a good person.

It got so bad that I even tried sleeping in my car, but it was too uncomfortable.

===

MONDAY

===

PORTIA

In the end, I didn't get any sleep at all, and went to breakfast cranky as hell, because fuck you!

I grabbed a large coffee and choked down some scrambled eggs and toast in the chow hall. To add to my misery, 'Howdy-I'm-Jessie' the fucking cowgirl dropped by my table looking for some last-minute recruits for the morning trail ride. Finally, I said I would go, just to get rid of her.

===

HARRY

I woke up the next morning and felt like hell. I had a headache and felt slightly queasy. Goddamn tequila shooters. I noticed that my throat was really sore and dry — I must have been snoring all night. Crap. I had forgotten to take my antihistamine last night before going to bed. Pollen counts had been through the roof lately and had been driving my allergies wild.

About that time some idiot started ringing the bell for breakfast. I was about to blow off eating and go back to sleep when I remembered signing up for the trail ride. I didn't feel like eating anything but thought I'd better get some coffee if I wanted to survive the ride.

===

PORTIA

I'm still not sure how Miss Perky Tits, aka Jessie the Cowgirl, had convinced me that a trail ride would be fun and a great way to start the week. I set a mental reminder to strangle her later — if I survived the ride. I rode along like the Grim Reaper on a horse surely destined for the glue factory, clutching the saddle horn as if it were Jessie's neck. Suddenly my mangy mount started hopping around like a spastic jackrabbit. Great; this was so not how I wanted to die!

===

HARRY

"What the fuck are you doing?" This shriek from the woman ahead of me suggested that my second day at the dude ranch was not going well.

I was feeling the aftereffects of every one of those shooters last night, yet I somehow found myself on horseback, moseying along on a morning trail ride. Why the hell did I let Joe and Bill talk me into this?

Even after being away from the ranch for a while, I'm still a pretty good rider. But this morning I wobbled on my horse with the effortless grace of a catatonic zombie. My horse was clearly bred for the tenderfoot crowd and had a placid, plodding gait. That is until a grasshopper suddenly jumped out of the grass ahead of us. To be fair, it was a pretty big grasshopper, and it triggered his fight-or-flight reflex, and he bolted ahead into the rear of the horse ahead. That horse whinnied, bucked slightly, crow-hopped, and spun around a few times. I eased my horse closer and spoke to the other horse in soothing tones. "Easy, girl, easy... That's it — good girl..."

The horse calmed down, but not the rider. She had managed to stay on, but was clearly furious. She began to flay the flesh from my face with her pure, profane, pejorative patter.

After establishing that I was a worthless motherfucker, a pus-filled boil on a mandrill's ass, and a pile of cold fuck on spilled baby shit, she and her horse resumed their plod up the trail.

I blinked. And to show I meant it, I blinked again. 'What the fuck was that all about?' I moseyed my horse up a little closer to hers and said, "I'm really sorry. I didn't mean for that to happen."

"Fuck off and die, asshole!" she snarled, with eyes clenched shut and fingers clutching the saddle horn. I rocked back in my saddle at her unadulterated fury. Wow, that girl had some issues.

One of the wranglers ambled back toward us. Well, his horse ambled, he just sat on it. He did, however, give us the stink eye and ask if everything was all right.

The crazy woman hissed, "Oh sure, just peachy. Asshole over here," she jerked her thumb at me, "tried to kill me, I'm only half awake, and this horse stinks." Her mount turned her head to regard her and nickered a mild reproach.

The wrangler turned to look at me, and I said, "Sorry. My horse got spooked and bumped into hers. Completely my fault."

He eyed us for a moment, then nodded. "Okay. Just... couldja keep the profanity down please?" And he headed back up the line.

Psycho Lady turned to glare at me, then grabbed for the saddle horn again as her horse jerked into motion to follow the one in front of her. I heard a muttered, "Fuck!"

I was beginning to get the idea that she might be upset with me. Okay, fine, I can take a hint. I let my horse drift back in line and finished the rest of the ride in silence. After we turned in our horses back at the corral, the woman tried one more time to incinerate me with her eyes, and then stomped off.

Fuck it. I didn't want to be there anyway.

===

After the lovely trail ride, I decided to pass on lunch and went back to my room to take a nap.

As I swiped my room key over the lock, the door next to mine opened, and out walked the Harpy from Hell that I had met that morning.

She was in no better mood. "Jesus wept! You tried to kill me this morning! And you're also the asshole who kept me up all night with his snoring!"

I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly and looked at her. "I'm really sorry. I forgot to take my allergy meds before I went to bed."

She glared. "Yeah, right."

"Between the allergies and my deviated septum, I can't sleep worth shit if I skip my meds. But I'll be a lot quieter tonight. Again, apologies, but I really need a nap now." I went into my room and shut my door.

===

PORTIA

Hell, I was tired too. A nap sounded pretty good, so I went into my room and plopped down on my bed. I closed my eyes and let my head sink deep into the fluffy pillow. My brain began to slow down. Sleep would be so nice, so fine — if only the fucking buzzsaw didn't fire up next door...

My eyes popped open when the dinner bell rang. Wait — did I actually fall asleep? Omigosh, I felt so much better now. Maybe the drugs worked on the fucktard next door. Or, maybe the bastard died in his sleep. I could only hope.

I got up, stretched, and went into the bathroom to wash my face. Hmm... I didn't feel half-bad. The dinner bell rang again, and my stomach growled. Well, I guess I could eat.

===

HARRY

When I woke up a few hours later — Hallelujah! My headache was gone. I took a shower and then headed over to the chow hall for dinner. The cooks were grilling burgers and brats outside, and the smell made me drool. I grabbed one of each, as well as a big scoop of beans. I found onions, ketchup, and other fixings over at the condiment table.

I looked around for a free seat, and spotted Bill and Joe. I sat down and noticed that they both still looked a bit green around the gills. "Aren't you guys going to eat anything?"

Bill retched slightly. I should have been more sympathetic, but fuck that. Bring me to this damned dude ranch? Get me drunk last night and then wake me up for a trail ride? I was ready for some sweet, sweet schadenfreude. I made a point of taking a huge bite of burger and chewed it as noisily as I could. "God, this is so good!"

I slurped a spoonful of beans and saw Joe beginning to lose it. I kept on chomping and making yummy noises. They finally broke, and ran outside.

Now that I was no longer actively trying to make them hurl, I noticed that it actually was a pretty good burger. After the brat, I had a slice of apple pie and all was right with the world.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the Wicked Witch of West Texas over at another table. It looked like she was trying to avoid being drawn into a conversation with the middle-aged couple sitting across from her, who were cheerfully oblivious to her moody mien.