I had just graduated with a Master's degree in creative writing from a prestigious private university in Los Angeles, the fruits of which, it seemed for a time, would amount to nothing more than a crushing life of poverty. During these so-called Salad Days, I worked as a legal editor in one of L.A.'s largest law firms, attempting to stave off malnutrition while piously refusing student loans. I was facing graduation and was moderately suicidal, when I began filching postage from the machine in the mail room to use on a blizzard of résumé packets that I would then send off to magazines and newspapers from Seattle to Santa Fe. I was what they call an "unknown quantity" at the time; all I had to show for myself was a pedigree from this expensive school with its world-class reputation, a few published book reviews, and a two-drawer oak filing cabinet full of unpublished satire, which my professors, friends and family all warned me against showing to anyone in a position to hire.

"The Times would never have taken you," Massey chuckled. "And it's sad, because your kind always makes the best writers; but you can be counted on to be egregiously bad reporters. A glaring excess of talent, no patience, defies authority . . . you are a natural editor - better, in fact, than the copy chief - you can invent your own headlines if left mercifully alone; you will be awarded in a year's time the honors and acclaim of your peers, and you'll quit it all with a petulant note chronicling how badly you have been neglected the instant you tear open a check for sixty quid on your first short story."

I shrugged. "Let's have that beer."

Morning came hard in Jackson Hole. I vomited twice in the shower and once again in the sink while trying to stand up to comb my hair. My eyes looked like baked adobe, and I just knew that many decent people in this rustic little hamlet would have cause to point and laugh piteously in my direction wherever I was today. Several times, I stumbled over to the big poster-bed and collapsed, as I probably had less than five hours earlier, but something always forced me to my feet.

The first time, it was room service, which only magnified my nauseous plight. The second time, it was Massey, who appeared in fine shape, with "not the slightest trace of alcohol poisoning. Perhaps you should have gone for the Scotch after all," he winked, saying he'd see me "on the white-water" at 9:30. After I had committed to dressing and had brushed my teeth, I answered the door again.

A freckled brunette of maybe twenty-five, in a white cowboy hat and matching fringed leather skirt, smiled wickedly, wagging her index finger. "Bad boy. Did you keep the house up late last night?" she said, affecting a pout.

On any other morning, I would have tossed her on the bed, gripped her by her beautifully thick ankles, and treated her to a wishbone surprise without so much as a word of introduction; but on this morning I hadn't the strength. I was pathetic, and I think she felt genuinely sorry for me when I had to sit down on the floor, so as not to lose consciousness. "What's the plan for tonight?" I wondered, which was about the soonest I could picture leaving the room.

She knelt and handed me a typed itinerary. "Get some sleep. You'll be miserable out on the river. Believe me, I've done it before. If you like cowboy poetry, we're all meeting at the Bar-J ranch tonight at seven. It's like "Hee-Haw," but it's a lot of fun." She tussled my hair with her long fingers, then she bit her lower lip softly. "I think I'll have to follow you around and regulate your intake the rest of the weekend. You're on our tab now, wild child."

It was when I found myself too weak to masturbate that I knew I was getting old.

"Hey, little piker. What's yor name?"

"Mmm . . .Verdy Ellis."

"You must be Bobby-Ray's youngster. That right?"

"Hi, Jasper. 'Been a while since you seen little Verdy, hain't it?"

For nearly three decades, with the exception of every second year at Christmas and one shocking Pentecostal family reunion just before my eighth birthday, I had been dodging an impure bloodline - on my mother's side, from and around Deaconville, Arkansas, to be exact; and now it appeared the road had finally washed out. They say Mom was always "shy," but the fact is she was plain uppity, and when the new crop of minor-league ball players came passing through that hard-luck north Arkansas hamlet just after her graduation from high school, she hiked her skirt up and made every leg-kick and twirl a seventeen-year old virgin knows how from all those years in the Baton and Drum Corps. She bagged a pretty fair first baseman, so I'm told, who gave up the game a few months later and eventually became a respected executive for a Southern California power company.

Dad was raised Catholic. And while I'm sure I could have enjoyed a warmer upbringing from parents who had both spoken in tongues, the sacrifice seems trifling in times such as these.

I had hitched a ride to the Bar-J Ranch from the surly bellhop at the Rusty Parrot, who earnestly believed that there was no better place to be on the face of the planet on this evening than at the Bar-J, listening to cowboy poetry. "I know it sounds sissyish," he admitted, "but I swear to God, it's the one place a guy like me can compete for choice cuts in this town. I ain't rich. I'm kinda fat. But every year, after this thing's over, I must look like I'm covered in gold-dust. You just wouldn't believe the ladies who've taken me home the past coupla years . . ."

Luckily, we had pulled into the dirt parking lot of the Bar-J before he could get into the malodorous particulars, and I thanked him with a couple bucks for the ride, then jogged toward the entrance of the cavernous barn and made every effort to lose him. Once inside, my eyes took a few minutes to adjust to the relative darkness. That's when I became conscious of the speech patterns of mine distant kin. I also picked up on a peculiar, nasal patois emanating from the front of the hall, and I walked toward it as a lost sailor heeding the call of the Siren.

Massey was slurping coffee from a tin cup at a crowded picnic table just off the stage, trying to ignore the other three members of the media excursion, who sat blankly across the table and who matched impressively his cruel caricature. Next to him, still wearing the fringed skirt, but minus the cowboy hat, the Chamber hostess appeared bored. I tapped her on the shoulder and motioned that I'd like to somehow wedge in beside her. She brightened and wriggled her ample bum a few inches down the bench.

"How are you feeling!?" she shouted over the din.

"Like a human being again," I yelled back.