Rodeo Week in Sheridan

It’s rodeo week in Sheridan, see, and from all over the country the professional Westerners come. They cause trouble as much as they can — but only when in crowds, for they are timid — because they sense that they are held in contempt. Who among us is acting most like a woman, preening for hours in the morning, moving slowly throughout the day with a heightened consciousness of appearance? Indeed, and whose women are these, that make an effort to ignore their own appearance, or intentionally degrade it? so as not to upstage their men? Pompous frauds and dangerous weaklings.

Because there is this fear. Among every other man, who is most insecure about his masculinity? Which never recalls without shame his probable circle-jerks (or more extensive experiments sans the female species) around the campfire as callow youths? And from that point onward perceives every relation only in terms of dominance, because anyone who has not been mastered is likely to harbor the very doubts “Why that dog, he probably thinks I” yes, and if it could even occur to you, whose thought was it?

In three simple dealings with this paragon of America, for instance at work, what marks each? That the fellow who so desperately wears his special Hat and Boots and massive, crotch-centered Belt Buckle, perhaps even the gaudy rings and bracelets, so as not to be mistaken for anything else, unconscious that the very need to avoid being so identified irrevocably places him in some repellent company, appears to make a habit of obnoxiousness. Some trivial act akin to snatching the pen, proffering snide comment, must always occur, one step beyond neutrality because neutrality is too close to approval. They fear everything, and hate themselves, and approval is thus anathema it would blur the defensive lines that are the only item marking off the boundary of their void, their “personality.” Like the grossly, immensely fat, they extend a symbolic territory to compensate for a justly-sensed lack of substance within. The coward among cowards will always be the model for bravery among savages.

archive: minifictions

Valid XHTML 1.1!