April 2009

This March I found myself in Texas. Big whoop, lots of people live in Texas. As everyone was sure to remind me, there are ranches in Texas bigger than my home state of Rhode Island. Yet given the “everything’s bigger in Texas” average girth I saw, I’m not sure that more land means room for more people. A few southern beauties were so big I thought they might try to secede themselves. But I digress. I wasn’t sure how I was going to fair in this dip spitting man’s world. I’m more pro-choice than pro-meth and knew the acronym LGBT long before the NRA was anything recognizable. Oh well, what’s the worst that could happen? I get shot for trespassing by a whiskey-logged farmer? At least it would be an entertaining obituary. So off I went into the wild red yonder.

As we drove to the ranch we passed a nearby store’s sign that read only “LIQUOR GUNS.” I liked this place already. Immediately upon arrival the shirts came off and the guns came out– literally. This wasn’t a Gold’s Gym gun show. With more malicious intentions than Madoff in a synagogue (too soon?) our blood-thirsty-for-Bambi eyes scanned the hills, hoping that some unlucky animal might venture into our rifle’s sights. Having had no luck with our genocidal raccoon hunt that morning, we instead set our sights on the can-laden fridge. Breakfast hadn’t been served yet, but hey, we thought, it’s noon somewhere, right? The thing I love about Texas is that people who would be shipped off to all kinds of counselors in other parts of the country (i.e. me) aren’t much different from all the other crazies. I was a fugitive on the run from the AA team lurking back north. Perhaps it was this discrepancy, or the bottles of dip spit littered around, or maybe it was just that I had a shirt on, but I suddenly realized that I was outnumbered: seven Southern, Republican boys and… me, happily none of the above.

The smacking sound of Rowan* packing a dip shook me from my, ahem, daze.

“Well don’t hit it so hard, it’s not your wife!” Dwayne* called out.

The only girl, I admittedly laughed the hardest at this witticism. Clad in a Dixie bikini, drinking before noon, getting called a gringo on a regular basis by four half-Mexican boys, and firing back with plenty of slurs of my own, I wasn’t sure that I was in a position to be calling Dwayne’s comment offensive. I suppose it begs the question of what should you do. I’m a shoddy feminist. Generally speaking I’m a pacifist too though, and my contribution to “world peace” and “one love” this summer will be… dove hunting. Let’s see how many birds of peace I can rain down with a shotgun.

* Names have been changed to preserve character’s respectability. My dignity, on the other hand, is scarce as a hen’s teeth.

Molly Whitehouse is a sophomore in Yale College.