Rodeo, My Way by Tess Kelly

I watched that cowboy through the fog of spray-on sunscreen, sunscreen that oughta be outlawed–up, down and sideways–the way it fucks with oceans, with air, with the sea turtles lolling on the Maui beach where I watched that cowboy beyond the Stay-Away-From-Turtles signs, beyond the lone park ranger, young, female, unable to stop him, I watched that cowboy in his concert t-shirt and board shorts, among families that played in the surf and ignored him, not their business, I heard the laughter of his drunk-at-noon buddies, and watched that cowboy, watched him straddle a turtle, the largest of those who’d flippered across the sand to drowse in the sun, watched that cowboy heave his full grown-ass weight onto that turtle, like a sneaky frat boy who never grew up and wondered about the empty men that cowboy watched during his thirty-something years and the playbook that taught him to raise his fist and swing an invisible lasso, wondered who taught him to rock that turtle with his full grown-ass weight and shout his red-faced Yeehaws and I thought about domination and the social studies teacher who patted his lap and cooed to me come sit, come sit, cooed to a thirteen-year old-girl with no playbook, no moves except to go along to get along – you sure are cute he sighed into my dimpled cheeks and I watched that cowboy and his photo-snapping friends and something snapped inside me, so I snatched some kiddo’s sand bucket and filled it with ocean and crashed that party, charged that cowboy, pummeled his fucked-up head with sea water and bellowed into his wet shocked face you gonna show those pictures to your wife and kids? – he had rode that turtle like it was a thing, like he was riding a mechanical bull, like the kind I rode in a honky-tonk bar outside Dallas, the air thick with silvery smoke, I rode that bull and hung on, hung on while Kasey Musgraves surged through the speakers and the crowd cheered and clapped but I did it only for me, I rode that bull and hung on for my own life, for my own dear life.

Tess Kelly’s essays have appeared in Passages North, River Teeth, Cleaver Magazine, BULL, Sweet Lit, and elsewhere. She lives, writes, and teaches in Portland, Oregon. rainy-day-writer.com