Sweet, Sweet is the Night

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Sometimes I wish I was a cowboy.

Not one of those wild west guys. Where I’m standing on a dusty prairie, sitting on the back of a horse, while it’s spinal column hacksaws me in two. I’ll eat pork and beans from a can over a fire built from brush and scrub. The nights would fall cold and I will pull my heavy leather coat closer around me and whittle a dried piece of wood with my knife, OR....And here’s the rub, play a guitar or harmonica.

I wish I could play a guitar or harmonica. I know, I can, if I turn  on the stereo, funny. Very funny. But seriously, That’s what I want. I want to be a New York cowboy, wandering the plains of the subways and uncluttered, un-crowded alleyways. I want to ride on a Harley Davidson and wear two six shooters from holsters on both sides of my waist. I want to roll into Brooklyn or Queens and save the day. Probably run off the nearest gang trying to shoot up the bank, or finish off the neighborhood pest with a gunfight on Fulton Street, Brooklyn.

Then take my ass to a cathouse, or maybe a hotel, most likely a crack house, take a shower (well then that can’t be in a crack house, now can it?) Have to change that to a hotel. I’ll get a common whore, tramp, slut, pro, bang job, boy joy....whatever! And after my shower, fuck her crippled. I’ll sleep with one eye on the door, the other on her and both six shooters in both hands. Anything moves I’ll drill a hole right through them, like I’ll do to the little whore again in the morning with my pea shooter.

Then I’ll walk out to the local bar, or Saloon and sit with my back to the wall, a warm shot of Jack Daniels on the table ahead of me, and one of my pistols lying next to it. I would rear back on the back two legs of the chair and push my cowboy hat forward, down to my eyes, dropping the upper part of my face in shadow.

An then I’d do it. Reach around myself, or reach into my coat and either produce a guitar or a harmonica, and play some jaunty tune that causes all eyes to turn to me. The drunken refuse in the bar would stop talking and listen to my tune of fire and ice, good and bad, hatred and love. I would make that instrument sing so that people wouldn’t think of me as some high plains drifter just coming into their town for a shootout and a fuck.

I am a man of integrity. I had proven that shooting it out with the black hill gang, or to bring it up to a contem- porary setting, the Knock Knocks in Brooklyn. Bringing all twenty of them to justice, helping out the local Sheriff/cops and given the keys to the town in gratitude. I would then climb onto my Harley, wave to the people who would crowd the streets, striking hats against thighs or waving dainty handkerchiefs. I would roar up to the side walk and grab the arm of the daintiest woman in town (A hottie by today’s standard), pull her close, kiss the shit out of her, sticking my tongue down her throat, making her eyes bulge in shock, never having done that in  her life.

Then I’d ride into the fucking sunset, the fat, orange ball on the horizon already playing warm colors on the landscape. Or actually head down the boulevard to the on ramp for the Brooklyn/Queens expressway. I’d weave through traffic, heading up to Yonkers, the next neighborhood section of the great city, looking for trouble, action and adventure.

With a guitar on my back or a harmonica in my coat I'll play sad tunes just to be melancholy because this life is a lonely life and you’ve got to tame it with action and song. Now all I need is a side kick. A Tonto, who by today’s standards would be a Latin American.  I’ll turn to shadow against the bursting swell of the sun on the horizon.

And you’ll say: “Who the fuck was that guy.”

Hobobob