Tom Robbins - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Here's my concept. You know about my ranch out West? It's a beauty ranch. Oh, it's got a few head of cattle for atmosphere and tax purposes. But it's a beauty ranch, a place where unhappy women — divorcées and widows, mainly — can go to lose weight, remove wrinkles, change their hair styles and pretty themselves up for the next disappointment. You've heard of such places, surely. Only my ranch is different. It does some real good. My staff teaches its clients how to take care of their more intimate beauty problems, the problems swish salons don't dare tackle, the problems other health spas ignore. You know the ones I mean. Why, my ranch is named the Rubber Rose, after the Rubber Rose douche bag, my own invention, and bless its little red bladder, the most popular douche bag in the world.

“So get this. There's a worthless marshy lake at one end of the ranch. It's on the migratory flight path of the whooping cranes. The last flock of wild whooping cranes left in existence. Well, these cranes stop off at my little pond — Siwash Lake, it's called — twice a year, autumn and spring, and spend a few days each time, resting up, eating, doing whatever whooping cranes do. I've never seen them, understand, but I hear they're magnificent. Very big specimens — I mean, huge mothers — and white as snow, to coin a phrase, except for black tips on their wings and tail feathers, and bright red heads. Now, whooping cranes, in case you didn't know it, are noted for their mating dance. It's just the wildest show in nature. It's probably the reason why birdwatching used to be so popular with old maids and deacons. Picture these rare, beautiful, gigantic birds in full dance — leaping six feet off the mud, arching their backs, flapping their wings, strutting low to the ground. Dears, it's overwhelming. And now picture those birds doing their sex dance on TV. Right there on the home screen, creation's most elaborate sex ritual — yet clean and pure enough to suit the Pope. With lovely Sissy Hankshaw — pardon me, Sissy Gitche — in the foreground. In a white gown, red hood attached, and big feathery sleeves trimmed in black. In a very subdued imitation of the female whooping crane, she dance/walks over to a large nest in which there sits a can of Yoni Yum. And a can of Dew. Off-camera, a string quartet is playing Debussy. A sensuous voice is reading a few poetic lines about courtship and love. Are you starting to get it? Doesn't it make the hair on your neck stand up and applaud? My very goodness gracious!”

Julian was impressed, and Sissy, although she sensed that the big sleeves on her costume would be designed to conceal her hands, was pleased. Scratching his jaw-stubble with his cigarette holder, the Countess went on.

“Grandiose, lyrical, erotic and Girl Scout-oriented; you can't top it. Needless to say, however, it isn't going to be easy. Say, do you happen to have any Ripple on ice? I've hired a crew of experts from Walt Disney Studios, the best wildlife cinematographers around. No Ripple; a pity. Forget it; Scotch won't do. Ugh! Didn't know I spoke Indian, did you, Julian?

“Now, I realize that you two are wallowing in a quagmire of marital bliss, and I hate to pry you apart even for a few weeks. But the deal is, the Disney boys will be heading for Dakota any day now to start setting up; these whooping cranes don't like human beings even a tiny bit — probably have a keen sense of smell, poor birds — and the camera crew has to build blinds and disguise its equipment; this is very tricky business. Well, I want Sissy out there within a week. She must meet the crew and familiarize herself with the unusual requirements of the job. The cranes show up at the lake anywhere from late September to late October. You never know from one year to the next, and we've got to be ready, have everything down pat when they do arrive. Got it?

“Also, Sissy sugar, you can do me a personal favor out there. As if I weren't already as busy as a fiddler's bitch, I've got to go down to Washington, D.C., and sic my boys in the White House on those FDA yokels. I won't get out to Dakota until the last minute. So I'd like you to look the Rubber Rose over real carefully, if you would, and report on what's happening there. I've been having some trouble on that ranch and I could use inside information.”

Julian's eyes narrowed. “What kind of trouble?” he asked.

“It's a long story,” said the Countess, his dentures thrashing in his oral cavity like two hard-shelled marine animals attempting to mate in a pocket of pink coral. “It's a long story and no decent drink to wet it with. Well, I'll try to make it snappy. Sometime ago a cute little hellion, a teen-ager from Kansas City who was dying to be a cowgirl, found out about the Rubber Rose and soft-talked me into giving her a job there. She called herself Bonanza Jellybean, and that should have tipped me off. But like a fool, I hired her anyway and put her to doing odd jobs around the house and stables, sort of a flunky for Miss Adrian. Miss Adrian is my ranch manager; she used to run the Minnie Mouse Beauty Village at Opa Locka, Florida, and really knows the business. Well, it wasn't long before this teenybopper was spending more time in the saddle than she was in the kitchen; she was out riding with the cowhands, going on all the pack trips and taking on more and more responsibility for herself. Julian, it's certainly more pleasant visiting you without that poodle mistaking my left leg for Lassie. Do you hear from old Butty regularly? Good old dog!

“So. Early spring, just before the season opened, Jellybean and a couple of the younger beauticians — Christ knows how she won them over — barricaded themselves in the ranch house, holding Miss Adrian hostage, and started telephoning demands to me in New York. They demanded that I fire all the male ranch hands and replace them with females. Shit O dear! Jelly claimed that my company had been exploiting women for years. She charged that I've made a fortune off women and said it was time I started doing something for them in return — as if my whole adult life hasn't been devoted to improving the female sex. Talk about ingratitude! Gracious! She said if the Rubber Rose was a ranch for women, then it should be operated exclusively by women; women shouldn't be relegated to menial and effete cosmetic tasks while men got to perform all the exciting outdoor work. These were her actual words: 'I'm not a hairdresser or a fucking scullery maid; I'm a cowgirl. And there's gonna be cowgirls riding this range or there ain't gonna be any range to ride.' Now where does a young woman from our Godfearing Midwest learn talk like that? Dr. Spock, I ask you.”

Julian pounded his coffeetable edition of Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation with a soft brown fist. “You didn't let her get away with it, did you? By golly, I'd've. .”

“It would have been simple to notify the Dakota state patrol and have them evict the little snots from the spread. Actually, however, Jelly's idea, although selfishly motivated, was rather sound. You see, most of the guests at the Rubber Rose are pretty well fixed, from insurance settlements, alimony and so forth. A shocking lot of my cowpokes proved to be fortune hunters, out to marry those dumb old broads for their money. And even the ranch hands who were honest family men created a problem because during the moonlight trail rides, chuck wagon campouts and other organized recreation the guests were always falling in love with them, mooning over them, following them around, even fighting over them. Dears, the turnover on that ranch was tremendous. It was a mess. But an all-girl staff would eliminate those hassles. And it would eliminate rude cowboys hanging around sniggering outside the building where guests were receiving super-douche, love oil and nipple-wax training; guests and staff alike found that embarrassing. What's more, it would get the dykes of America off my delicate back once and forever. That wasn't the first time I'd been maligned by them. There're a lot of malcontents in this society of ours, if you hadn't noticed. Yes, the more I considered the idea, the better I liked it. In the end, I told Jelly to go ahead and hire me a gang of cowgirls, if she could find any, and that if they handled the work okay I would pay them men's wages and back them all the way. And that's how I've come to be proprietor of the largest all-girl ranch in the West. Come a cow cow hickey, come a yippee ki yea.”