Houston, Pam. Cowboys Are My Weakness. Berkeley, CA : Washington Square Press 1992. Print.
When he says "Skins of blankets?" it will take you a moment to realize that he's asking which you want to sleep under. And in your hesitation he'll decide that he wants to see your skin wrapped in the big black moose hide. He carried it, he'll say, soaking wet and heavier than a dead man, across the tundra for two -- was it hours or days or weeks?
Description:
I admit I first picked up Pam Houston's Cowboys Are My Weakness, simply based on the title. But after only the first few sentences and paragraphs, I was deeply hooked by the relationship descriptions conveyed in her deft, personal writing style.
These are stories of love, each narrated by a woman who isn't afraid to take chances with questionable men and enter into challenging situations. Her writing is so packed with penetrating evaluations of her environment and the people she encounters, honest hesitations over choices to be made, questionable decisions settled on, and then unblinking acceptance of consequences that I felt author Houston was telling deeply-felt episodes from her own life to me, her confidential friend.
Houston's stories include:
- Hunting with a boyfriend for six weeks as he leads paying customers to locate, shoot, and bring back trophy big horn sheep ... and she hates hunting, never having ever even shot a gun much less killed any animal. Not to mention the miles slogging on her belly to sneak up on unsuspecting sheep;
- Deciding to winter camp in -30 degree weather to ward off the blues, despite never having camped in sub-zero weather, having poor equipment, and only two freezing dogs as companions;
- Rafting down an impossible river that the local park ranger said was too high to run, leaving at night and unable to see the killer rapids throughout their adventure, aware that only the day before on the same river a similar boat had capsized, killing one experienced rafter;
- Watching her best friend deal with repeated cancer diagnosis; hosting a mother who doesn't like her boyfriend's tattoos or lifestyle; tending a horse with a lame tendon (after hitting a gopher hole while she was riding and being thrown over his head and concussed); and working her way through cowboy after cowboy, each with great affection for her, wonderful physical attractiveness and attentiveness, but each carrying a warning sign of some aspect (previous girlfriend he can't leave, possible pregnancy decisions, and just plain old reluctance to stick around and change his lifestyle) that always threaten her deep feelings for each man.
It's her writing that is supurb: thoughtful, concise, emotional, and always honest to her inner most feelings. Whether describing her connections to her dogs, horses, men, or women friends, her stream-of-consciousness narration is always clear and open, revealing her deepest and sometimes not so deep feelings on every page.
There are multiple relationship decisions facing her protagonist in every story, such as:
- She said the wild ones were the only ones worth having and that I had to let me do whatever it took to keep him wild. She said I wouldn't love him if he ever gave in, and the harder I looked at my life, the more I saw a series of men--wild in their own way--who ...I tamed and made them dull as fence posts and left each one for someone wilder than the last;
- I thought about all the years I'd spent saying love and freedom were mutually exclusive and living my life as though they were exactly the same thing;
- There was something about the prairie--it wasn't where I had come from, but when I moved there it just took me in and I knew I couldn't even stop living under that big sky. When I was a little girl....I used to be scared of the flatness because I didn't know what was holding all the air in.
- After the first week in Alaska I began to realize that the object of sheep hunting was to intentionally deprive yourself of all the comforts of normal life.
- [On waking up after surviving a -30 night of winter camping] The morning sunshine was like a present from the gods. What really happened, of course, is that I remembered about joy.
I absolutely loved every story, character, setting, and writing style in each of these short stories. It's one of the few books that I could pick up immediately and re-read, certainly one title that will go into my Forever Library collection.
I sincerely hope you pick it up and enjoy the trials and joys of relationships, whether with men, women, or animals, as I have and will continue to do in the future.
A relationship, you've decided, is not something you need like a drug, but a journey, a circumstance, a choice you might make on a particular day.
[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]
Ehrlich, Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces.
Wonderfully powerful, personal, and highly descriptive essays of rural life on a sheep ranch and other very small town locales in Wyoming.
Happy reading.
Fred
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