The Wild West wasn't as wild as them movies want to tell you. Even
though 'twas wild enough for me in prairie land, there was hard work every
day, 365 days a year, and not one day off. Life on the ranch was pretty
lonely and few things ever happened. The only thing that remained
constant for all these years was the infamous wind. It was that
incessant blowin' that would drive a man in his right mind nuts.
But who says that we were in our right mind?
Anyway, we lived out in Colorado where we could see them Rockies
every day but we never got to 'em 'cause not any rancher would
ever drive his cattle through mountains. Not even a nutty one!
Yet many a rancher just sold everything to hunt for the glory
ore in the mountains. A buck an ounce of the shiny silver was a
lure many could not resisit. Yet daddy wasn't that kinda guy. He
loved the ranch and the prairie and wouldn't trade it for the
whole world.
On the ranch there was daddy and my two older
brothers. We also had a dog, I called Chuck, and when them cows were in
they were everywhere. Yes and not to forget the horses. Oh, yeah
we had quite a few good ones over the years, and it was always great fun to just ride out into the sunset or toward the mountains. From time to time we also hired hands to help us push the horns but mostly we did it ourselves. That was the worst thing! Pushin' horns is the worst a man can do.
There were many days when just I dreamed of the
gold of Central City and the adventure that went with it. I had heared many tales of the glory of the west. In only a few months you could amass enough money to settle in the sunny areas of California. Later I learned that there was no easy gold in the west, that minin' gold or silver was even harder than herdin' cows. But that is a whole different story.
My two brothers, Earl and Bill, always kept to the cows. One
time I thought they just plain forgot what people where 'cause
every time there was a dance or a rodeo or sich they just went
out with the cows and daddy and me went to the dances. Later I
learned it was daddy who didn't want them to be out on dances.
It must have had something to do with my mother but I wouldn't
learn for many years.
The dances were the best the west ever had and I wouldn't wanna
miss growin' up without a good dancin' and a prancin'. The music
was always pretty bad but we didn't care. Ain't nothin' that
could keep us from havin a helluva time. It was there that I
met my first love and it was a gorgeous time. She was a swell
gal with long blond hair and a cutey face. Not a beauty in
movie standards but a mighty fine gal and a skinny one, the
type that I like best.
Sure as much as I fell in love with her, I was also so damn
shy. The loney cowboy type of shyness. If you believe that them
cowboys were wild with the gals, you don't know nary a thing
about the west. The only females they got in contact with were in
them bawdy places but it ain't like it changed their shyness
toward a decent gal like the one I fell in love with. Her name
was evangelic. Even today I still feel warm in my heart when I think of the pure and lovely Mary.
As I told my father about my love, he told me that love was
nothin' but a foolish idea and that if I felt anythin' in ma'
pants he would drive me down to Byers and show me some fine
gals. I protested and told him that there ain't another gal as
pretty as li'l Mary.
"They's got some pretty young 'uns down there," he said to me,
"and I'se think that now would be as good as ary time to show
ya'." I was sixteen years old and my old miser, who always
payed every dollar twice, drove me down to a whorehouse with
as much money as he could handle.
The whorehouse was the dirtiest places I had ever seen. Not
that our ranches were clean but there was something disgusting about this
place that I couldn't explain. The gals that stood in front of
the house all looked haggard and old. I was disgusted as I saw
them but even more disgusted as my father asked me to choose
one.
"I ain't chossin' any of 'em," I said.
"Why not, son?" my father asked seriously.
"They're all ugly as the night!" I said as quiet as I could but
from their faces I could tell that they had heard every word I
had said. Still they didn't go away or slap me on the face.
They only wanted their money.
"Okay, son. That will cost me something but it's worth every
penny if you forget that Mary Soandso bitch."
Then he walked over to the ugliest whore and talked a few words
I couldn't understand and then he came back to me. "Go to that
woman, she'll show you somethin'."
Reluctanly I walked over to the haggard witch, no real witch
could frighten a poor child more, and she led me into the
raunchy old building. The inside was much worse that the
outside. It was damp and smelled of thousand different odors
all intermingling to one hellish stench.
Mme. Beauvoir, the name of the witch, led me up the stairs and
into an almost completly dark hallway. We went till the end of
the hallway where I could see nothing anymore and as she opened
an almost rotten door, I was blinded by bright light. In the
middle of the room was a large bed with a red cover. On the
wall opposite to the bed was a large mirror which made the room
appear twice as large as it was.
On the sheets sat a very young gal with nothin' on but a bra
and panties. She smiled at me slightly and artifically and I
did not know what to say. I was dumbfounded and petrofied for a
second but that was enough for the wicked witch to slip away
and lock the door. As I felt her missing I panicked and
stumbled to the door. I pounded desperately on the solid door
and screamed things like "Pop, you sonofabitch." and "Boover,
where're you..."
Nobody came but the gal. She had silently crept up behind me
like a weasel on its prey. With her hands she came from behind
and slid them between my arms until finding its goal on my
belly. Shocked I stumbled backwards and we both fell on the
floor next to the bed. She giggled gently and her hands were
again active. Before I knew it, she had opened my belt and was
tryin' to pull down my pants. Still afraid I pulled my pants up
as hard as I could. It started to be almost like a rodeo, only
that I was the horse tryin' to throw off the gal that was
ridin' me hard.
"What are you doin'?" I screamed but she only giggled. I saw
that the whole thing was a lot of fun to her. The belt was soon
back where it was supposed to be but the gal was again on me.
She had jumped on me from behind and I couldn't feel angry
anymore. Slowly I had accepted my fate as a fly trapped in a
cob web when it sees the big ugly spider creeping up to it. But
the gal wasn't no ugly spider.
"What's yer name?" I asked, desperately to talk. There was no
answer, she only giggled. Slowly I believed that she was unable
to speak. Maybe the gals in them whorehouses knew not how to
talk. Maybe all except that ugly monster Beauvoir.
"How old are you? I am 16!" Again she giggled and her hands
moved to my pants to an area that was very private to me. I
felt something swelling, something getting hard. Sure I knew
what it was and I had felt it before. But only when I had
looked at the angel Mary!
This gal wasn't Mary but she was pretty. She seemed so
experienced and I wondered how she knew the way to touch a guy.
Goddamn, the thought angered me. All those sloppy guys,
cowboys, liquor salesmen, indian wrestlers, gunmen, all of them
with this sweet noname gal.
"I am fourteen and they call me Sweet Blossom," the gal
suddenly said, as if pointing out a fact that should have been
known to me for a long time. She continued to fumble and I
continued to be aroused. I couldn't have said anything but she
volunteered more information.
"Been here since I was twelve. I figure, mother sold me here,
because we sure were too pore to get nowhere. But after she's
put me here, I saw them, that's my drunk brothers and my drunk
father, leavin'. They were singing as they passed and
screamin'. Maureen, have a nice time." And after a pause she
added: "And what a nice time I got!"
She had stopped touching me and I saw the agony in her face.
Two years in this place and I would have become just like her.
I saw the brutality of a thousand men in her face, the uglyness
of guys wanting to pay for a young gal with a sweet body.
Innocence was what she had lost two years ago and she had never
found anybody she could talk to. She told me that. Why she
giggled all the time? They told her so. Men don't want a woman
to talk, have her own will. Be submissive. Do as they please.
You get payed well. She told me too that she had quite a lot of
money on the bank. Proudly she handed me a bank receipt.
Two hundred dollars! That was all that the receipt said. Not
much for the dirty work in two years and I felt pity for the
dear gal. Then she fell back to her giggling and smiling and
said that I should get what I had payed for.
"Stop!" I demanded. "My father payed 200 for you and you have
gotten all that for two years. It's a shame!" Her giggling
stopped once again and she moved over to the bed. I was
wondering if she would tell me more of her story. I was longing
for it, so much that I wanted to save her out of the clutches
of that wicked lady as fast as I could.
Unnoticed to my eyes, because I had stared out of the window,
she had undressed completly and moved to the bed. Her body was
as soft as that of Cleopatra, and I only knew Cleopatra from
the only day that I've ever been in school. I remembered that
she bathed in milk. There were no scars on her body but the
scars on the inside were bigger than the Rockies in the
distance.
With a towel I went over to her and covered her small breasts.
It was an awkward thing to do because I sure was frightened of
a gal that was all nude. I had never thought I could get close
to a nude gal. I was very weak as I put it over her so that she
had thrown it away in a second. It seemed as if she felt
obliged to do what I had payed for and I felt that whatever I
had payed I could never do to her what countless other, dirtier
and smuttier men had done.
Soon she embarced me and started to cry. I slowly patted on her
back and wanted to say that everything was going to be alright.
All my hormones, even though then I had never heard of that
word, were activated. A naked gal in the arms of a greenhorn,
crying for unspeakable crimes.
"Let's go!" I said. "Let's run, you and me we'll find another
place."
"No!" she said vehemently and then she added quietly: "They'll
find me and then, do you know what they do with a gal who
runs?" I didn't, I could not imagine how anyone could do
anything to such a sweet gal. "They beat you so hard you get
ugly and then they throw you out in the middle of town. The
good women of that town will shun you and no man will ever
touch you. You condemned to live a life in misery."
"I would come and take you," I said sincerly but she shrugged
it off: "Yeah, you would." In a few minutes she transformed
from an innocent young child to one of the old haggard women
out there. It was an awful thing to imagine that she would be
out there one day and look like them.
"Look we have to hurry," she said, "and do it, because if we
don't, they'll blame me and I won't get money for a long time."
"But why do you need money if you can never leave?" I asked
helplessly. Love was fickle in these days, and so I had already
fallen in love with Maureen, if that was her real name.
"I'll need it when I'm older. I can go when I'm twenty-one."
"Then why not go right now? I will protect you from them!" I
promised her and I meant it.
"No! You can't fight them. They will come and kill you. I
couldn't bear to see you killed. I love you."
"Then I wait five years. We can still be together by then!"
"Five years," she mumbled melancholically and after a few
silent seconds she went back into her routine. With her soft
hands she went over me and undressed me with little effort. For
the moment I had given up. She advances as far as my underpants
when I jumped out of the bed, taking my clothes with me.
She started to cry again. I told her I would tell everyone that
we had done it. I would boast about it and tell how nice her
body was. I guess I must have been a fool but she fell around
my arms and thanked me over and over again. Still I had the
feeling that she did not trust me. What I found incredible was
that if any man who had done it with her, could claim he didn't
and she would be punished.
I guess she felt that I had something in the hand against her.
And she begged me with her eyes to love her. She said that this
time it wouldn't be for the five dollars but for love. Her only
love. I knew that she was right, she would never have another
love. Men would have sex with her but never would she find
another love for the rest of her life.
Love brought us together then in that dirty little room with
the large bare light in the middle. We kissed each other for a
long time and we came together. Not like two unknowns in a
brothel but like two old friends who had found love for one
another.
I will always remember this night, not for the sex, but for the
incredible love that we felt for each other. Later I told her
all about me and she kissed me after each sentence. We made
promises about the future, I would wait for her, and she would
save all her money so we could make it in the world. I felt so
wonderful. The whole night went over so quickly that when my
father dragged me out of the arms of Maureen, I could not not
help but cry myself.
We both cried and threw each other kisses. After the best night
came the worst separartion in my life. The last I ever saw of
her, was her beautiful body standing in a window. My father was
saying: "Boy you must have had a night, now you'll forget that
love thing! It can only bring you trouble."
And it was trouble, more than I or even my father had bargained
for. Maureen took her life only hours after I had left. With a
knife, so they reported to me, she had cut her wrists and then
quitetly laid down on her bed. She had left me a letter on the
bed and only fifty years later, right now that is, am I able to
read it.
Sam,
I love you so wery, wery much that I hope you'll understand
what I'm about to do. I am so sorry Sam, but I can't continue to do what I did all
these years and I see no other wey out of it. Don't take it too
hard, it wasn't your fault,
I will always love you,
Maureen.
PS. Excuse for the bed riting but I've been only in school two
years.
