Free Western Swing by Tim Sandlin

all the people on the sidewalk.
    â€œWhere’s Neb?” I asked.
    Roxanne smoked a cigarette, a Lucky Strike. Her long fingernails were painted bright brown to go with her eyes and brown hair. Even back at fifteen, Roxanne fit like a comfortable cat into the sophisticated world of beer, cigarettes, and easy sex. “He said he’d meet us at the door. I talked to him this afternoon and he’s bringing a friend for you like I figured.”
    â€œI never knew a real cowboy before.”
    â€œThey’re the same as those jocks you go out with, only their peckers are pointed like their boots.”
    This got us both to laughing with mouthfuls of beer, which got beer all over the front seat of Daddy’s car.
    â€œCan I try a cigarette?” I asked, opening my other Lone Star.
    â€œSure”—Roxanne handed me the pack—“but only if you inhale. I’m sick and tired of butt beggars who hold the smoke in their mouths and try to look cool.”
    I lit up, but I didn’t inhale. “I saw Ron’s pecker once.”
    Roxanne seemed to think this was about the funniest thing she’d ever heard. I suppose she’d seen dozens by then. “What did it look like?” she giggled.
    â€œI don’t know, like they’re supposed to, I guess. It was dark. He pulled it out in the parking lot after the Brownsville game. Ron wanted me to touch it, but I didn’t.”
    â€œWas it hard and stiff?”
    â€œI don’t think so. It looked kind of gross.”
    This sent us into more giggles and more beerspit in Daddy’s car. I tried to wipe some off the seat with a Kleenex.
    â€œJesus, Daddy’ll kill me.”
    â€œToo late now. Look at that.” Roxanne pointed at a big woman with a bigger cowboy going into the hall. The woman wore a huge, blond sparkly wig and a belt buckle with blue rocks on it. As she passed, the back of the belt read IMOGENE.
    â€œHow do you figure she got those pants on?” I asked.
    â€œA long time ago, then she grew into ’em. Check out this guy.” The original rhinestone urban asshole strutted past. “Maybe he’s a pimp for horses,” Roxanne said.
    Three couples spilled, laughing, out of a pickup truck beside us. The women were all thin and chewed gum. Two had chrome silver hair and the other had dyed hers an unbelievable zit red. Obviously, all three had spent a lot of time and money making themselves look like they looked.
    â€œWhere did all these hicks and freaks come from?” I asked.
    â€œHouston.”
    â€œI need some air.”
    Sixteen years old, half-drunk on two beers, walking in to hear something called the Twitty Birds, I started to think. It wasn’t easy. I’m sure I was the first girl in my class at Bellaire to think a thought someone hadn’t told her first.
    These people around me, some even touching me, all had real faces, open to good and bad and love and pain. These people seemed to believe in their own legitimacy, but they weren’t like me or my parents or any of my parents’ friends. I’d never in my life met an unmarried adult. Or a black person. We had a maid named Bobbie who I took for granted was poor, but I’d never actually talked to her.
    These people on both sides of me didn’t give a damn about getting into a good college.
    That thought staggered me. Here were grown women who weren’t bums or degenerates, but most of them obviously hadn’t been Sub Debs and had never even thought about what they were missing. I bet not one of those three women with the aluminum hairdos knew the difference between a Lucky Circle Girl and a Jolly Jill. I bet they didn’t care. And their dates probably didn’t consider themselves washed-up, skid-row hoboes even though they didn’t hold membership in a restricted country club.
    These people didn’t dress like me, talk like me, wear their hair like me, or want the things I’d