I was reminded by telling someone this story that I had forgotten a
whole story from the summer when I was 14. My sister was recently
sixteen and we headed out to Colorado to visit relatives for some
life event or another. While we were visiting we came upon some free
time that my sister and I decided to use hanging out with some of my
uncles wife's nieces. They seemed a little on the wild side compared
to us because their first suggestion for a night out was to go
clubbing. We were not of the clubbing ilk and I was frankly freaked
out about the prospect. Where I was from the cowboys were a click of
rough and tumble high testosterone extra violent kids kids a little
on the dim side. I was always saying or doing something like joking
or dancing that bypassed that already undersized portion of their
brains where they like people and are nice and shot right into their
engorged rage centers and they would want to hurt me. I didn't want
any of that. We went along to see what the story was and the first
place we stopped was a western bar. Our family was religious
teetotalers who didn't even drink tea so a bar seemed like a
dangerous den of iniquity full of easily irritated drunken
hillbillies bent on murder and worse. The bar was separated from the
dance floor and it was early in the evening so the floor was empty as
the locals imbibed some personality and courage. My cousin-in-law was
all about the fun so she took my hand and drug me out onto the floor
and we started to dance in the manner she prescribed. We were trying
to do the arm pretzel that was the necessary go-to move of that era
in couples country music dancing. I was not good at it but I was a
good sport and that is half the fun of anything. We learned some line
dances and spent an hour or so before all of the middle aged
dirt-bags who had some free time for drunken dancing on a Wednesday
evening crowded the dance floor and started to frotteurise the girls
and get a little handsy in general. We called it a night and headed
out for some more dangerous and naughty fun that didn't feel so
immanently rapey.
