Diamonds and Lust My brief yet memorable encounter with Miss Sunshine Cow Patty Sweetheart of the Rodeo 1999 Early Twenties division by Jama Shelton

Well, it’s rodeo season again...and, as usual, I’ve been under much financial strain, so I got me a part-time job up there at the rodeo, like I have every year for the past three years–even though after each rodeo season I promise myself I won’t go back. I figured I could work myself to death for three weeks and then take it easy. But, I didn’t make it this year for more than two days. Let me tell you what happened.

I was on my lunch break on my second day of employment, waiting in line for my daily corndog. The transaction had just been completed when I turned around to the condiment bar to drench my corndog with bright yellow mustard. And then I saw her...her head and shoulders floating just above the top of my corndog, the distance between us giving her an elongated oval body of greasy browned cornmeal (which made her all the more intriguing to me).

So I stood still and took small bites of my 12-inch corndog, with each bite revealing a bit more of her body, until the corndog was gone and her red cowboy boots were visible and she stood in front of me some 20 feet away, a vision in tight cowgirl black. She wore black jeans, a black tank with a heart cut out on the chest, just above her breasts, like any good cowgirl would wear (normally I find those shirts completely hideous, but this was an exception), a black belt with a blinding silver buckle the size of a CD, earrings to match, peeking out of her frosted shoulder-length hair, topped off with a black cowboy hat.

When our eyes met, a hush fell over the crowd, and the only sound I could hear over the swoosh of her tight jeans rubbing together as she approached me was the voice of the glittering 13-year-old singing Patsy Cline’s "Crazy" on the karaoke stage. The crowd of cowboys–barbecued turkey leg in one hand, other hand in the back pocket of their sweethearts’ blue jeans–parted as she walked toward me. As she neared, I noticed a crown around the brim of her hat, rhinestones gleaming in the shape of hearts and the numbers 1999. Oh yes, I had heard tell of this girl. Straight out of Pasadena, she won the hearts of everyone at the 1999 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, crowned "Miss Sunshine Cow Patty Sweetheart of the Rodeo 1999 Early Twenties division." Her name–Betsy-Rae Rayburn. We met halfway between cowboys packed tightly into Wranglers that were three sizes too small.

"Hi, Betsy-Rae. I met you last year. Remember? [I was lying.] I work at the Pro-Pork Booth." I laughed nervously.

Let me clarify quickly that I am not a cowgirl...though in my childhood I did dream of competing in the barrel races and traveling with the glamorous rodeo circuit. But when my stepdad broke his arm one winter and the truck line laid him off, we had to sell all the cows (and the horse, too); my barrel-racing dreams left with the last of the rusty cattle trailers that pulled out of our gravel driveway and turned right onto Highway 62 that winter. So, no, I am not a rodeo woman, and no, I do not personally agree with the Pro-Pork Booth’s mission, which is to find innovative uses for every part of a pig possible for human enjoyment, but I needed the money. And I can do a damn good imitation of a good ol’ cowgirl when it is necessary.

Betsy-Rae and I spent the entire day together. My boss at the Pro-Pork Booth figured that if one of her employees was seen with THE Betsy-Rae Rayburn, then it would boost our business. We ate funnel cakes and rode the mechanical bull, had our pictures taken with the rodeo clowns and watched the barrel races, and viewed the 4-H livestock show. Betsy-Rae was a celebrity judge, and because of my extensive knowledge of pigs, she let me pick the winner of the "pig most likely to taste the best as sausage" category. It was truly an amazing day.

As the sun began to set over the fairgrounds, Betsy-Rae and I headed to the carnival, while most of the rodeo-goers made their way inside to hear Billy Ray Cyrus sing. Betsy-Rae had to make an appearance at the concert, but not until the intermission, so we still had a good hour together. We ate cotton candy and rode all the rides that would normally make me sick. As it was, I wasn’t sure if the feeling in my stomach was nausea or lustful excitement, and I didn’t care. We rode the gravitron and the tilt-a-whirl and that ride that is a circular train of cars that goes like 90 m.p.h. in a circle and over little hills with a strobe light and blaring loud rock music (it happened to be Poison’s "Talk Dirty to Me" while we were on it)–our bodies were both crammed into one six-inch space toward the interior of the cart as we spun round and round and round. She screamed with laughter, holding tightly to her rhinestone hat with one hand and gripping my thigh tightly with the other. I knew that, after this ride, it would be time to make my move. Time to take her to the double ferris wheel. See, I learned all these picking-up-cowgirl tricks from the redneck boys who used to try to woo me in high school.

I led her in stumbling dizziness to the double ferris wheel, which we immediately boarded, since the "Miss Sunshine Cow Patty Sweetheart of the Rodeo 1999 Early Twenties Division" didn’t have to wait in line for anything at any rodeo event for the duration of her reign. So...we quickly ascended into the thick Houston sky, looking down onto the fairgrounds–onto the cattle trailers and four-wheel-drive trucks filling up four parking lots, at the carnival-goers and the cows and the cowboys and the security booth and popcorn-eating children and the litter that results from a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people–looking down onto a seemingly distant culture from which we had momentarily been separated.

Our creaking cart rocked back and forth as I nervously shifted my gaze between Betsy-Rae and the small bolt that connected our cart to the larger machine. These cheap carnie rides had always frightened me. We came to a sharp halt when our car was directly on top of the upper Ferris wheel as others boarded the cars on the lower section of the ride, hundreds of feet below and a world away.

"I have some candy. Do you want some candy?" Betsy-Rae Rayburn asked from her ripped red vinyl throne across from me.

"Sure," I answered.

She reached inside her cowhide purse and pulled out a sucker. "Shit, I only have one. I guess we’ll have to share."

"Sure," I answered.

She unwrapped the crinkly plastic with fumbling fingers–nails painted fire red and glossy. It was one of those torpedo suckers–know what I’m talking about? One of those long, pointy crystally rainbow-colored suckers? She leaned forward aiming the torpedo at my mouth, offering me the first lick. I could see her black bra through the heart cut out of her tank top. I took the sucker deep into my mouth, sucking all the flavor out that I could possibly suck out–my eyes focused downward on her boots, her fire-red fingernails in the foreground.

"Ma’am, you sure are good at that," she said in a faux male voice, "but I’ll wager a pack of Red Man and my best hog that you’ve met your match," at which time she leaned forward and extracted the torpedo from my mouth with her teeth and somehow managed to fit the entire length of it into her own mouth.

I reached over and pulled the torpedo out of her mouth a bit, genuinely concerned with the well-being of her throat. She didn’t need to do that to impress me.

"Oh...I get it. You like it like this, huh?" she said as she cupped her lips around the narrow tip of the torpedo and turned it round and round inside her mouth. I blushed. Like I have never blushed before. My cheeks hotter than a branding iron She leaned toward me and put her free hand on my belt buckle snatching it open, and with one swift motion the belt and the button of my jeans were both open...yep, wide as a barn door. Not once did she take her thick-lashed "maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s maybelline" eyes off of mine, not once did she take her lips off the tip of the torpedo, as she unzipped my jeans and motioned with her tiara cowgirl hat for me to stand up. And I did stand up, jerking the cart so that I had to steady myself by grabbing on to the bar running across the top of the cart. (How convenient, right??) Before I knew it, she had my jeans around my ankles and my belt wrapped around my hands which were wrapped around the bar.

"I used to lasso," she said.

"Looks like you still do" was my reply.

I was concerned that our lost rodeo colony below might be able to see what was taking place in our rusty cart, but only for one bronco-bucking cow-tippin’ second because Betsy-Rae said, "Oh, my, I have such a dilemma. This sucker tastes so good...but I think I might like the taste of this better," as she stuck the torpedo inside the elastic waistband of my cotton underwear and pulled them down to my ankles.

"Uh ... hu ... um ... maybe you could have both???" I half-joked, half-pleaded.

"Now that right there’s good thinkin’, little missy," she said in the faux male voice again.

And right there, in the rusted yellow cart of the double Ferris wheel, overlooking a crowd of now gaping-mouthed rodeo-goers, Betsy Rae Rayburn, "Miss Sunshine Cow Patty Sweetheart of the Rodeo 1999 Early Twenties Division," discovered a brand spankin’ new use for that torpedo sucker (one that is most likely illegal in the state of Texas).

And the car jolted into motion. Literally. The Ferris wheel started again. Betsy-Rae glanced at her rhinestone watch–time for her to be at the Billy Ray Cyrus concert. When we stepped off the cart, she handed me the torpedo, saying, "We’ll finish the sucker later, cowgirl," before galloping to the Astro Arena like a mare to the apple orchard.

I slowly followed after her and watched from the entrance as she was summoned to the stage to perform her self-choreographed clogging number to Dolly Parton’s "9 to 5," her talent entry that had helped her take her title.

I slipped out of the arena before she could find me, knowing that we could never finish that sucker. The moment had been too perfect to taint with the expectations of another meeting, and I wanted to remember Betsy-Rae Rayburn just as she had been on our first encounter. And, besides, I sold the torpedo for twenty bucks to the ride operator.

Jama Shelton is a writer/performance artist living in Houston. Her work is currently featured in the book Gynomite: Fearless, Feminist Porn under the pseudonym Sassy Johnson. The book is available at BookStop or online at Amazon.com and gynomite.com.