Karaoke Cowboy
By Sacha Bissonnette
I hate being on assignment. Especially around here. But after a few shots of the local gut rot, I figure why not just go through with this. At least I’m getting paid to drink. I’ve found a spot where I can post up and keep ordering while seeing both the floor and the stage. I can actually see the entirety of this one room dive bar. My notepad is open and empty as I impatiently wait for the show to start.
A slim, rough looking man walks out holding a mic tight by his left hip. He gives it a quick spin, like a revolver. The steel looks comfortable in his grip, like it belongs there. The air smells of stale beer and the musk of a hard day’s work. A little disco ball hangs from the ceiling, homemade, a little Styrofoam ball with glued-on broken mirrors, spinning slowly.
“There’s a lot of bad luck in breaking all those mirrors,” the man jokes to the crowd, tapping it with the butt of his mic, “but you see, this cowboy doesn’t believe in bad luck. Or luck at all for that matter. Just the honest judgment of this ice-cold barrel you’re all staring down to see me.” He points the mic at the crowd.
These assignments are getting far-fetched, I think, scribbling in my notepad and pushing down on my pen a little too hard. I look around the bar searching for details to puff nothing into something. I jot down that his voice is gravelly and throaty, but his diction is pointed and practiced.
“I was born into a life of misery,” the man continues. Have his wandering bad boy misfortunes led him to this moment right here? This melodramatic cowboy crescendo, on this tiny stage? He puts the mic to his lips, pausing for effect. He motions with his nicotine-stained fingers for the lights to dim, but there is no light guy. Just a gang of misfit drunks, a band of lonely outsiders swaying in-and-out of a dry-ice cloud. Slivers of light from the disco ball dance across the cheap fog machine.
He lights a smoke. I didn’t know you could still smoke indoors. I can tell that this guy basks in the drama, that he has a flair for the theatrical. He growls into the mic, his rough and fractured voice unbroken.
“Listen, I’ve been smoking reds since the age of twelve and drinking whisky straight since thirteen. It all started when Daddy caught me bent over in my white cotton briefs, rifling through his liquor cabinet, a cowboy killer dangling from my mouth and talking shit like I was already grown.” He pauses again. By now I’m starting to really feel the hooch. My scribbles have turned to chicken scratch. I’m still getting this, but barely.
“I got the first taste of Daddy’s fat belt buckle that evening. Daddy was smoking his reds too, throughout the whole beat down. Left me a scar right through my left eye, just like a bandit. Just like the bad guys.” A long, yellow-tipped finger traces a line over his face. He points at his outfit and says that’s why he wears black. Like a bandit. Like a bad guy.
“I’ve known sorrow my whole life,” the mystery man drawls. The drunks cheer as they stumble over each other, spilling their $3 beer on the floor. They listen to him ramble and spill his long tale, riding steadily alongside him, awaiting the big payoff.
“They love Reg,” the bartender tells me as I slur out another drink order. He must be able to tell that I’m press. “It’s the best night,” he says. I’m not sure if he means for himself or for Reg. I scribble down more notes, anything I can catch. I start to wonder if his mother named him Reginald. What the midwife must’ve written down on his certificate. If he had a certificate at all. This is much better than that piece on Joey the pretzel guy from St-Louis.
“Ma left when I was just a young thing,” Reg continues, woefully, dramatically, “She tried to take me with her. She was gonna hide me in the trunk, she said. That was the plan. Drive us out of state because Daddy couldn’t handle my kind of Cowboy.” He grins knowingly, stares wistfully. “She looked just like a young Jessica Lange when she said it too. Real pretty, Ma was.”
Is he ever going to sing? The lyrics to Tiny Dancer run on the back screen over an ocean vista. His crowd is ready for him. I jot down that they came to hear their Cowboy Poet. They long for their Karaoke Cash.
“She didn’t stand a chance against that raging bull. He left her eyes black as my boots.” He taps the mic against his left heel and spins the spurs. “And left her down and blue like my soul.” He moves his mic to his chest and then lowers it slowly, suggestively. I have to ask the bartender for more napkins so that I can keep on writing Reg’s history of violence.
“Ma was a real tough one. She said if you ever have to shoot a man, aim slight left to the middle of his chest. Aim for the part he can’t give ya. Aim for the heart. Pull.” He presses into his chest. I’m starting to understand why I was sent here. You really can’t make this shit up.
“I don’t blame her for leaving. Told myself I’d find her one day.” He quiets. “But Ma didn’t raise no pussy, she just raised one that ain’t too much into it, if you catch my drift.” He pauses for a few chuckles, but the crowd erupts in hoots and hollers instead. He’s their Sundance Kid, their Wild Bill Hickok. Better yet, their Midnight Cowboy.
“I made it five years in that godforsaken town! That’s all I had in me,” he shouts and shakes a fist at a metaphorical sky.
“At seventeen he caught me. Came bursting into the barn ‘cause he thought he heard some animals or something. What he found, was me down on my knees taking Javier in my mouth. What he had heard, was the sucking and lip smacking of hot young love,” Reg slides the mic along his cheek and runs his lips along the side.
“That’s when I saw that raging bull Ma had seen so many times. Daddy pulled out his revolver and moved in on us telling me to stand up. ‘You like being a little faggot?’ He reached over and struck Javier cross the skull with the rosewood grip of his iron.
“You grown now? You gonna save your fucking fairy princess? My own daddy said these words to me. Then I watched Daddy bash my boyfriend again, harder, knocking some of his teeth out. I heard my Ma’s voice in the back of my head while he aimed his gun at Javier. Then like some unbroken stallion set free, I rushed at him. A hundred and twenty pounds of hate and anger in white cotton briefs. That’s all I could think to do.” He pauses for another reaction, but the crowd is hushed. I rest my pen down.
“We wrestled around on the ground for some bit. Sweat, whisky spit, and blood got all mixed up. Javier was done in pretty bad so he couldn’t be much help. That’s when Daddy got over me, started bashing me in too. I could taste my blood. Heard my hip crunch under his boot heel. Ma spoke again, through the ringing in my ear. He was over me like a wild bear, all snarls and strikes. As he came down on me, I rolled over and over, till I felt it. Felt my fingers wrap around his shooter. I couldn’t see outta one eye, the socket was all caved in. I heard Ma again, clear as day. I pointed that gun right at him, at his chest and aimed a little slight left and –”
A spotlight hit Reg. An all too familiar piano intro kicks in. The opening chords to Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive blares through the speakers.
At first I was afraid, I was petrified. Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side. But then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong. And I grew strong.
The twenty-person crowd erupts. They sound like two-hundred easy. It is his song now. The bartender smiles as he points a camping lantern to the stage, the makeshift spotlight following Reg as he peacocks and preens around the stage. He’s beautiful up there. I found the title to my piece: Disco Isn’t Dead: It’s Just Wearing a Cowboy Hat on a Little Stage in Wyoming.
When the hooting and wolf whistles die down, Reg jumps off stage. As he lands on the floor, he winces for a split-second before standing up straight and taking a deep bow. The last call bell rings. He shuffles over to the bar. I fumble with my notepad and napkins, trying to quickly jam them into my breast pocket.
“Hey, I really like what you did up there. But I’m kind of curious, did you really–” Reg’s glare stops me dead in my tracks. He looks me straight in the eyes, cold and hard, his mouth pulled into a tight grimace. Then, as if rehearsed a hundred times before, his eyes soften, and his mouth draws into an ear-to-ear smile. He does a little spin. Tucked into the back of his pants is the heavy rosewood grip of a large revolver. The mic twirls once more in his hand before disappearing into his vest. He leans into me and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Weren’t you listening, sugar? I said, Ma didn’t raise no pussy. Now be a kind gentleman and buy me a drink. Tell me honey, how much are they paying you to write about me?”
Sacha Bissonnette (he/him) is an Afro-Trinidadian, French Canadian short story writer from Ottawa, Canada. He is a reader for the Wigleaf top 50 series 2021. He was nominated for Best Small Fictions 2021 and was longlisted for Wigleaf Top 50 2021. His story “Glass Birds” was shortlisted for the Masters Review flash fiction prize and was a Mythic Picnic short fiction prize finalist. It is currently nominated for a 2022 Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in Wigleaf, Litro UK, Lunch Ticket, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Maine Review, The Emerson Review, and Cease, Cows, among other places. He has upcoming short fiction in Lalitamba and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. He is currently working on a short fiction anthology with the help of a National Canada Council for the Arts grant, an Ontario Arts Grant and a Youth in Culture 2021 Ottawa Grant and was recently selected for the Writer's Union of Canada - BIPOC Writer's Connect mentorship. He loves film and comfort food and tweets @sjohnb9.