COWBOY MOUTH
Written By Sam Shepard
CAVALE
You’re so neat. You’re such a neat guy. I wish I woulda known you when I was little. Not real little. But at the age when you start finding out stuff. When I was cracking rocks apart and looking at their sparkles inside. I would’ve took you to this real neat hideout I had where I made a waterfall with tires and shit, and my own hut. We could’ve taken all our clothes off, and I’d look at your dinger, and you could show me how far you could piss. I bet you would have protected me. People were always giving me shit. Ya know what? Once I was in a play. I was real glad I was in a play ‘cause I thought they were just for pretty people, and I had my dumb eyepatch and those metal plate shoes to correct my duck foot. It was The Ugly Duckling, and I really dug that cause of the happy ending and shit. And I got to be the ugly duckling, and I had to wear some old tattered black cloth and get shit flung at me, but I didn’t mind ‘cause at the end I’d be that pretty swan and all. But you know what they did, Slim? At the end of the play I had to kneel on the stage and cover my head with a black shawl and this real pretty blonde-haired girl dressed in a white ballet dress rose up behind me as the swan. It was really shitty, man. I never got to be the fucking swan. I paid all the dues and up rose ballerina Cathy like the North Star. And afterwards all the parents could talk about was how pretty she looked. Boy, I ran to my hideout and cried and cried. The lousy fucks. I wish you were around then. I bet you would’ve protected me.