Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

The One and Only Tom Robbins!!

Hail, darlings! Before I sued Donald Trump (and got fired from Elle), the Ask E. Jean advice column solved five problems a month in the magazine. Now, the personal is political. And just for the Queenhell fun of it, we’re solving dilemmas, poking bad men in the testicles, and cheering one another on!

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A Half-Assed, But Heartfelt History of Illustrious Cowgirls

Annie Oakley

The most famous sharpshooter in the world, star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, named “Little Sure Shot” by Chief Sitting Bull, she is said to have shot the ashes off Kaiser Wilhelm’s II’s lit cigar while touring in Europe.

Calamity Jane

Swashbuckling frontierswoman famous for her shootin,’ ridin’ and lovin’ (most famously of Wild Bill Hickok) during the Gold Rush days in Deadwood, South Dakota.

Belle Starr

An American outlaw known as “The Bandit Queen,” she rode with both the James and Younger gangs. One evening Belle, coming home from a dance, was shot dead. Various men are suspected: her husband, Edgar J. Watson, a dude she had refused to dance with earlier that evening, and two of her children.

But the Best Cowgirl of All Was Created by Tom Robbins

It’s the most shoplifted book in history. It was one of the few novels by a male author welcomed in feminist books stores during the ’70s and ’80s. It was made into a bad movie… I am speaking, of course, of the great, screaming, wicked, liberating, hilarious masterpiece, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

Now, Tom has written many great books: Another Roadside Attraction (Jesus Christ’s body is discovered beneath St. Peter’s); Still Life with Woodpecker (an exiled princess falls for an outlaw… and if you think that title is good, Tom is the one who named my second book A Dog in Heat is a Hot Dog, then sent me roses on pub day, and we spent the evening on the phone swelling our nostrils to the size of brussel sprouts analyzing the outrageous smell of the roses); Jitterbug Perfume (a small blue bottle containing the secret essence of the universe is leaking, and a woman with a nose like a coat rack, a king, and a god must save it—which reminds me of the night a litter of dimpled ecdysiasts stepped off the stage, and smelling deliciously of damp violets, shimmied ‘round Tom at the—Reader! I can’t recall the name of the strip club, but, my gawd! What a night racing down New York City boulevards at 2:30 in the morning in my old yellow Caddy with the big top down); Skinny Legs and All (a young waitress takes on the art world, and I have underlined and commented so thoroughly in my edition that, in many places, the typeface has been lost under the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!s, but I can tell you that Tom and his wife, Alexa, a yoga teacher, Pilates instructor, psychic, and tarot card reader, are both skinny, always stay at the Algonquin when they are in New York and dine EARLY on account of Tom once eating jackal-flea-and-lizard soup, or I don’t know exactly what, in Timbuktu); Wild Ducks Flying Backwards (a collection of Tom’s journalism, absolutely not to be missed if you are curious about “The Eight Hour Kiss,” redheads, warthogs, The Doors, Leonard Cohen... and his dedication in that book to your advice columnist at the front); Invalids Home from Hot Climates (Tom’s best book—yet I remember the night he read a scene from Invalids to an immense New York crowd, and a long, long line of gay, straight, bi- and trans women lined up afterwards with their copies of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and when they reached the table where Tom was signing books, they would each tell him—many with tears rolling down their faces, one or two dropping to their knees—how Tom and Cowgirls had changed their lives).

Certainly no sex scene in the history of world literature compares to the eight-page (p171-p179 in the mass-market paperback) description of the “scalding hot softness of girllove” between two straightish cowgirls—Bonanza Jelly Bean and Sissy Hankshaw—by a lake, finger-fucking.

All of that is only part of why I asked Tom to read this Ask E. Jean letter sent in by “Little Lost Cowgirl.”

Alexa Robbins also has sent me the video of Tom reading that missive, and if you would like to see it, you must send me a juicy question about what is going on in your life. Anything troubling you about your career, love affairs, friendships, wardrobe? Send me your quagmire and I will send you a link for the video. Now here’s the audio of Tom reading the letter.

And here’s the letter for all my Readers who, uh, prefer to read:

DEAR E. JEAN:

I'm an unemployed, twenty-something cowgirl from Colorado, and to make a long story short, I'm one of those poor, unfortunate young ladies who was born with male private parts.

Although I've known that something was wrong since I was ten, it wasn't until I was eighteen, when my mother took me to a urologist to find out why I wasn't having sex or nocturnal emissions, that I found out I had a rare genetic problem that makes me sterile. My family has never been able to accept what the doctors and psychologists told them (i.e., that I was a classic transgender case, and that trying to force me to be their son instead of their daughter wasn't going to work). So, we no longer talk. It's sad, but that's the way things are sometimes.

Here's the problem: I thought that after I graduated from college I'd be able to find a job and get my sex-change operation, but things aren't turning out that way. Because all my training has been in astrodynamics, physics and numerical analysis (I've attached my resume), most of the jobs available are connected with research and development for the Department of Defense. Unfortunately, people in my situation (transsexuals) have difficulty getting security clearances, and that makes getting a job with a big company nearly impossible. For instance, after five months in my last job I had to disclose my background in order to get clearance for the next project. As soon as the non-classified job I was working on was canceled, I was fired.

How can I convince employers in the business world to overlook my massive astrodynamics background so I can get a regular, non-Department of Defense job? All my legal documents and IDs have been changed to reflect my correct name and sex (female), but my birth certificate won't be corrected until I can get the operation, so that rules out teaching. It's been very frustrating. I just want to find a job, a place to live, and lead an ordinary, dull, boring life. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.-- Little Lost Cowgirl

And here comes the Ask E. Jean twist:.

Tom read this letter last week, but it was sent to the Ask E. Jean column in 1996. Shall we see how the world has changed in the last 25 years? Is it easier for a Cowgirl to get a job with the Defense Department?

Here is my 1996 reply:

My Dear Girl:

Egads, if you want the job that will bring the money to buy the operation that will make you Woman Triumphant, hell’s bells, honey, bang that big cosmic gong. After all, "astro-" (star) "dynamics" (motion) deals with the movements of objects in space, and Doll, you have the scientific resume to blast your celestial body from here to the planet Pluto. Indeed, your remarkable understanding of human nature—you were born a man and are now the Annie Oakley of Space--should make you sensational at sales (microcomputers, satellites, astrophotography equipment, sky atlases, etc.). Or, if you can't stand that idea, you could launch yourself as a technical consultant to the TV networks and movie studios, or arrange star parties and events for museums, or work for one of the public-relations firms that handle big defense contractors like Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics.

2021 Reply

Cowgirl, Woman!