Gritty in pink

Cowboys wearing big-brimmed hats and cowgirls wearing Western denims and plaids milled around in the dust behind the line of narrow metal cages or “bucking chutes” big enough to barely restrain the muscular bulls used for rodeo. The cowboys and cowgirls bragged and commiserated, or they walked off the aches and pains that came from wrestling in the arena with stubborn horned animals many times their size.

One lone competitor broke away and sat down in a white folding chair to pray. Dressed in fringed chaps and a dark cowboy hat, her head hung low and her eyes squeezed shut, Ann Kinney looked just like any romantic image you’ve ever seen of the somber cowboy. Lean, with short red hair drawn back from her face, she looked both humble and proud. She was about to climb onto the bare back of a horse that would buck and twist until it threw her to the ground. She prayed first for her safety. Then, she prayed to remember everything she’d ever learned about riding broncs.

Keep looking at the shoulders, she told herself. As the animal twists and bucks, that’s where the movement will originate. See it coming and move in the same direction. Lie back. The farther back, the harder it is for the horse to throw up its hind legs and send the rider over its head into a heap. Roll away from the hooves when you fall.

The only female bronc rider competing in Rio Linda that weekend, Kinney was one of a brave and unique breed of cowgirl. In professional rodeos, female bronc riders didn’t even exist. Women were confined to barrel racing and other speed events that didn’t take as much exertion. Only in amateur rodeos did the cowboys and the cowgirls have the same opportunities to ride rough stock.

The bulls, steers and broncs were ranked for an amateur or high-school rodeo, meaning they were less violent as a rule. Maybe the cattle were a little smaller, but even a small steer, if clumsy, could kill a person. And both the steers (castrated male cattle with horns) and the bulls (uncastrated and much bigger and meaner—also with horns) could be vicious. After all, they weren’t supposed to like being ridden. So a person had to be pretty macho to handle them, and the cowgirls and cowboys who competed at the Sierra Stampede at the Rio Linda Horse Arena were, on the whole, pretty damn macho.

“My thing is,” Kinney had said in an interview, “I don’t let go … there are times when I’d be better off to let go, and I’m still hanging on.”

The Sierra Stampede is Sacramento’s annual gay rodeo, and though it attracts primarily gay competitors, gay audience members, gay volunteers and their families, you’d be hard-pressed to find a sissy among them. The Capital Crossroads Gay Rodeo Association (CCGRA), which produces the Stampede, is made up of a tough extended family of citified gays and lesbians who gather in Rio Linda once a year to get dirty, show off, play hard—in and out of the arena—and dance to country-Western music at Midtown clubs like the Depot and Faces in between two days of brutal competition.

CCGRA members were used to attracting lots of competitors, but since they’d divorced themselves from the larger California association in a messy power struggle a few years ago, they lost their membership in the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA). The competition has since dwindled. Many must have figured it a waste of time and money to come to Sacramento in August if their points wouldn’t apply to their IGRA totals.

The couple of dozen contestants who did show up came from close by, or they came because they just couldn’t stand to miss a rodeo. They competed in regular events like bull, steer and bronc riding, relays, calf roping and chute dogging—during which a steer had to be wrestled to the ground and flipped over. But such events inevitably lacked the style and flare associated with truly gay entertainment, so the organizers also spiced up the festivities with three events that would mortify those on the professional rodeo circuit.

In “goat dressing,” two team members raced up to a startled goat, yanked up its hind legs and covered its backside with a pair of droopy men’s briefs. While the goat flicked its ears in disbelief, the team raced back to the starting line.

“Steer decorating” was similar but more dangerous. Two teammates maneuvered a stubborn steer to the starting line and then held it in place long enough to tie a ribbon around its tail before releasing the lead rope from around its horns. Talk about a dirty business.

Both could be hilarious, but the real crowd pleaser was the “Wild Drag Race.” A regular cowboy and a regular cowgirl pulled a steer toward someone wearing his best Goodwill dress, a wig and maybe pearls, and once they’d crossed over the starting line, the “drag” had to mount the steer and ride it back over the same line.

If that sounds easy, well, it just wasn’t. The drag always got the worst of it, coming out of the arena covered in dirt from head to foot, dress and wig and all.

The rodeo started a little slowly on Saturday, but by 1 p.m., the half dozen or so diehard fans had swelled to about 150 middle-aged men with cropped hair and goatees and a few pretty boys in short shorts slit up the thigh. One lone drag queen threaded his way between them in bright purple sandals chunky enough to navigate the dirt and dead grass of the rodeo grounds.

The Rider-less Horse Ceremony kicked off the afternoon with a procession of CCGRA members in white cowboy hats and Wranglers filing into the arena.

Near the head walked Kinney’s partner, Nena Kinney, followed by their eldest daughter, Andrea. Amongst the long-sleeved white shirts embroidered with the CCGRA logo in baby blue, Andrea wore an oversized shiny black T-shirt with skulls on it and flames along the hem. At 12 years old, she looked like a girl on the verge of bolting into future teenage rebellion.

“Historically, this ceremony commemorates the unique relationship between a fallen French Calvary officer and his horse,” the announcer told the crowd, as a gorgeous red chestnut horse walked past the procession, its ornate saddle empty, its stirrups adorned with a pair of empty boots. “We’ve adopted this tradition in honor of all those members of the Capital Crossroads Gay Rodeo Association and the many loved ones that have been a significant part of this rodeo and the Sacramento community, that have been taken from us before their time.”

Gays and lesbians had been hearing this kind of salute for years, usually in response to the AIDS epidemic. This time, the salute also acknowledged those injured or killed in competition.

“With the utmost respect and the deepest affection,” the announcer continued, “we will refer to all fallen rodeo riders and volunteers everywhere as ‘contestant number one.’ … Contestant number one has been permanently retired from event competition in gay rodeos. It is now the number of those who have been taken … ”

Sammy Van Galder, the boyish, blond, bull-riding president of the CCGRA, was haunted by the memory of one of the fallen. Van Galder had been there a couple of years ago, leaning into the chute, helping secure the gear on a steer, when the animal reared, throwing his rider backward. The steer swung at the man with his horns and knocked him down into the chute. The cowboy suffered head injuries that later led to his death in surgery. His was the second death associated with IGRA competition in over 20 years.

Van Galder now took safety very seriously, but in gay rodeo, the guys still had to prove themselves as tough as their straight brethren, and the women had to prove themselves as tough as the guys.

As Kinney prepared to ride bronc, she was aware that steers weren’t the only dangerous animals in a rodeo. She was the number two-ranked female bronc rider in the IGRA, but she avoided the procession because she needed time to think, to focus, and to pray.

Kinney checked her “riggin” again. In bareback riding, the competitor sat a narrow but heavy leather collar behind the horse’s shoulders and secured it with rope around the animal’s ribs. On the top of the riggin were stiff leather handles around which she could wrap her gloved hands and hold on for dear life.

Kinney’s riggin traveled with her all across the Western states during rodeo season, along with the rosin she used to make the palms of her gloves sticky, the light-colored leather chaps that hung down to her spurs, and the spurs themselves, which had belonged to her father. She never competed without them.

At home, Kinney kept a picture of her father and mother straddling horses side by side. They looked young and happy and in love. Those spurs must have had some luck in them.

As the only female bronc rider in this year’s Sierra Stampede, Kinny, you could say had no competition. How hard could it be to win? But you could also say, that no other cowgirl was tough enough to try such a ride this year. Kinney wanted to improve her skills, and win a buckle that proved she was as tough as any cowboy. Hers was one horse that wasn’t going to come out rider-less, if she had anything to say about it.

Nena paced around behind Kinney, knowing better than to talk to her. The couple had known each other for about 20 years, and were “married” in December 1997 at the Cathedral of Promise Metropolitan Community Church, known sometimes as the “gay church,” in Sacramento. As Kinney became increasingly nervous, it was easy to see how different these two could be.

For instance, when a friend complimented Kinney on how tough she was, she responded just like a demanding father. “Unlike my children,” she’d said, smiling tightly as Andrea visibly moved away from her.

Nena, on the other hand, a good-natured blonde with a big attitude, was protective and lovey with the kids. She was also a girly competitor, but even when she earned the worst time and spent much of an event recovering from falling face-first into the dirt, Nena came back laughing.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, “because we got the most applause!”

Kinney took rodeo as seriously as anything she did in her life—maybe because it took her so long to find her way back to it.

Kinney was only 9 years old when her father asked her and her brother if they wanted to get out of the Greenhaven area to try a little farming. She’d loved working on the family’s 40 acres outside of Elk Grove until she was derailed by what she would only refer to as “a wild adolescence.” Now she was recovering time, introducing her own girls to John Wayne movies and buying her own seven-acre ranch. She couldn’t wait to teach her daughters to ride.

At 41 years old, Kinney had done about five rodeos a year for five years. She’d learned by doing, and was considering going pro.

The CCGRA funded its own rodeo without contributing to an umbrella organization, so the purses had grown to as much as a few hundred dollars per event, but even if she rode professionally, Kinney wouldn’t be quitting her day job as a concrete pourer any time soon. Men were the ones who got the big sponsorships in pro rodeo.

Luckily, Kinney wasn’t riding for the money anyway, though she looked forward to making back the $320 the couple paid in fees just to compete that weekend. Kinney rode for the thrill of it, what her friends sometimes called “her death wish.”

Kinney put one foot on the bale of hay behind the chute, leaned over the metal bars and pulled at the riggin on the horse again to make sure it was tight. Van Galder and another friend came over to help her into the saddle.

The horse just stood there as Kinney slowly lowered herself onto the animal’s back, and as she’d expected, her nervousness ebbed away, or hardened into something else.

A cowboy held onto her padded vest as Kinney got into position, one hand against her chest, the other against her back. If the animal bucked in the chute, he’d help get her out of there. As she lay back, Kinney’s mouth tightened around her protective mouthpiece, and her gloved hands hooked deep into the riggin right between her legs. Her spine straightened out across the horse’s back until her face seemed to sink into her neck. She stretched her legs out as far as she could, steadied herself, and gave the signal.

With a clang, the chute door sprang open, and the horse, as if whipped, took off into the arena, bucking and twisting, tossing Kinney up off its back and down again. She held on, kept her back as straight as she could, and tried to cling with her legs while the animal whipped her around.

Jostled and twisted, flung around and heaved high, she successfully straddled the center of the horse’s back until it seemed, she said afterward, as if she’d been on long enough. She started to worry about getting off.

A buzzer sounded, letting everyone know she’d covered the six-second time limit, but Kinney didn’t hear it. The horse kept traveling across the arena.

Finally, when Kinney got up the nerve, she let go, tried to push off the animal and went sprawling into the dirt.

The entire ride, from beginning to end, was probably no more than 10 seconds, but it was 10 seconds that Kinney would remember as the best of the entire rodeo. With no other female bronc riders (the women competed against the women, the men against the men) Kinney would definitely take home another buckle. Now she could relax a little.

For the Kinneys, as for all rodeo riders, buckles were highly prized. They kept Kinney competing even after she’d nearly been the third death associated with IGRA rodeos.

A couple of years previous, Kinney had been pressuring her doctor to figure out why she was sick all the time. The doctor determined that her spleen was enlarged, but didn’t warn her about physical exertion.

Though she wasn’t feeling well, Kinney flew to Albuquerque to compete in IGRA finals. She placed third in broncs on Saturday, and first on Sunday, but as she flung herself off the horse at the end of that second ride, she took the fall without rolling, and landed hard on her shoulder.

With the pain in her shoulder, she didn’t pay much attention to the gassy feeling that rose in her stomach. She wasn’t thinking about the symptoms of internal bleeding. Instead, she exited the arena and started packing up her gear. That’s when she started feeling woozy.

A friend called for the medic, which meant things were serious. Cowboys didn’t like to involve the medics.

“By the time they got me to the hospital,” said Kinney, “and got me opened up, my belly was, like, half full of blood.”

She bowed her head. “That was a close call,” she said.

Kinney’s spleen had ruptured sometime between the opening of the chute and that nasty fall, and she found herself laid up in New Mexico for a week, with Nena all the way in California with the kids. That’s when they learned how close their little rodeo family had become. At the awards ceremony Sunday night, the rodeo association held a benefit, flew Nena and their youngest daughter to Albuquerque, and gave them a place to stay while Kinney recovered.

Nena swore up and down that her partner would never compete again, but she was eventually won over. She knew Kinney dreaded being an old woman sitting forlornly on her front porch wishing she’d lived out her dreams. And that’s what rodeo was for Kinney, a childhood dream reborn.

“Some of my friends in the rodeo are nuts enough to think it’s, like, really cool,” said Kinney of such injuries. “I don’t know if I think it’s really cool, but it doesn’t bother me.”

The CCGRA took care of her family because that’s part of “the cowboy way.” The members train each other, they protect each other’s safety, and they consistently refer to themselves as family. Even when they tease each other, it isn’t about their abilities in the arena; it’s mostly about their romantic escapades.

One poor competitor was nicknamed the “kissing boy” on Saturday, and the next day, took a terrible ribbing before the “goat dressing” event when the announcer told the audience that he was better at taking things off than putting them on—according to what some had observed at the dance the night before.

Nena and Kinney were usually spared this kind of ribbing, partly because they rarely got to party with their friends at night. On Saturday night, while a cowboy who fit the description of a “tall drink of water” danced with a 6-1/2-foot drag queen dressed in a G-string and lavender fur chaps, and men line-danced in front of audience members who reached out and luxuriously fondled their butts at Faces, the Kinney family was already at home on their seven acres outside of Marysville. They were resting up for the next day’s events.

Whenever contestants prepared for the Wild Drag Race, the scene behind the chutes went through a serious shift. Guys who’d been rubbing the dirt into their jeans moments before were suddenly tugging on oversized wigs and sucking in their stomachs to fit into tight, unflattering dresses or disco pantsuits complete with feathers. One cowboy topped off a glittery ensemble with enormous Hollywood sunglasses.

The same cowboy wore a floor-length red dress on Sunday, and when the audience made catcalls as he hiked it up to his hips, he proceeded to flash them and then shimmy until his teammates brought him a steer to ride.

Nena had become involved with the rodeo by competing for the title of Ms. GSGRA, the queen of the Golden State Gay Rodeo Association, and winning in 1998.

“See,” Nena had said, “I’m the beauty. She’s the brawn.”

But the beauty had since joined the fun, competing in all the camp events, including the most challenging.

Her team’s drag, Travis Gardner, wore a tiny blue sundress that only zipped half way up his back. It made him grin foolishly just to strut around the arena in it.

In the arena, Nena took up the lead rope gently. When the chute opened, she and a cowboy yanked at that steer, pushed at its big back-end and twisted its tail until they could drag its stubborn hide toward Gardner in the baby blue sundress. The two of them tried to hold the steer in place while Gardner made a number of fruitless belly flops onto the steer’s back, sliding helplessly and ridiculously to the ground. He threw a leg over again and stretched his belly along the length of the animal’s spine. He finally got a good hold on the steer’s horns and held on with his cowboy-booted calves. After a great deal of coaxing, the steer took off parallel to the finish line. The audience stared and hooted as Gardner’s butt in baby blue bounced around goofily in all directions.

Out of all the wild drag teams, only a special few ever made it back over the finish line. Kinney’s team managed to do it, but she found herself too exhausted afterward to compete in the next event. By scratching chute dogging, she ensured that her good friend Kelly Koelsch would win the women’s buckle. That was almost as good as having it herself.

Koelsch had made better time than the boys on Saturday, but spent the rest of the weekend with her left thigh wrapped tight.

When it was her turn on Sunday, Koelsch’s friends helped her swing her sore leg into the chute. Slowly, she climbed down next to the steer, her feet and its hooves sharing a small rectangle of earth. She grasped the steer’s horn under one arm, got her other hand into the animal’s mouth and yanked its head up so that she was putting her weight against its neck and holding the animal’s head high.

“Make it blow snot to the gods!” yelled the chute director. Koelsch pulled the steer past a line in the dirt, then threw herself down, twisting the neck of the steer until it came down on top of her and then rolled off heavily.

The small blonde with the pronounced limp took first place for the second day in a row, but damaged her leg so badly that a couple of cowboys came in and carried her out in a chair they made with their arms. Koelsch shook so hard you could see her vibrating from two yards away. A friend put her leg in his lap and held onto the spasming muscle, telling her to relax and to breathe.

Again, they waited a while to call over the medics. Koelsch hugged Kinney’s neck and held on until her leg was rewrapped with ice.

After another minute, she got back her bravado.

“Why do we do this?” she asked Kinney. She tossed back her own answer: “Because we can.”

Nena leaned down next to Koelsch’s ear. “Because the girls like it!” she whispered.

Kinney stayed with Koelsch through the steer-riding event and then came back to the chutes to assist the six half-crazy men lining up for the most dangerous event of the rodeo.

“Bull riders,” said Patrick Burke, who liked to call himself the token straight man in gay rodeo, “were the ones with the big egos and the skinny butts.”

The bull riders drew their bulls’ names out of a hat each day. On Saturday, Burke, who had ridden bulls for 18 years with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) and was now the IGRA’s number two-ranked bull rider for 2002, had chosen Pinto Bean, the one bull that might have qualified for professional rodeo. He had horns that hung down around his face, and he liked to buck in the chute, throwing a cowboy in all directions and bringing back the memories of past tragedies.

Van Galder’s job during the rodeo was to protect everyone’s safety. Kinney’s was to be a volunteer when she wasn’t a competitor. Between the two of them, they tried to get Burke onto that bull, but spent most of their time pulling him away from its horns. They finally let the animal go and got Burke a new bull, but it seemed to break his concentration.

Nothing could have been worse than to pick that same bull again on Sunday, which is just what Burke did.

Kinney and Van Galder held onto his vest as they helped Burke lower himself onto Pinto Bean’s back again.

The animal let him sit tight for a minute before using all of his weight to push Burke off and then turning his horns to the side to try and catch a leg or Burke’s skinny butt as he was lifted out of the chute.

Burke crawled back in again, and again the animal protested, but this time it reared up, nearly trapping its hooves and neck in the high rungs of the chute, and then thrashed after Burke, who was being lifted out by many hands. While people held their mouths in shock and yelled, “get out!” Burke was finally launched by volunteers out of the chute and into the arena.

Again, the animal was released.

From the audience’s perspective, it must have looked less than thrilling, though the size and power in a bull is enough to knock Burke to the ground and kill him with one well-placed hoof.

Though the real drama happened in the chutes, the audience observed only a few seconds of wild bucking, and then cowboys, one after another, thrown to the dirt. Burke was just one of many.

Since the last event of the rodeo hadn’t attracted any competitors, the rodeo ended right after bull riding with a disappointed sigh. The stands emptied and competitors wandered away with the bowlegged stride of the saddle-sore. It was then that Kinney started yelling for Andrea. Volunteers and hangers-on started wondering over the commotion until the rumor started to circulate. Andrea, only 12 years old, was going to try her first steer ride—if they could find the girl.

When Andrea was finally located, she came back behind the chutes dressed in a black shirt covered in impressive purple and white flashes of lightning. She sat down in a white folding chair, put her elbows on her knees and bowed her head, praying for a safe ride.

A few of the men, including Van Galder, began to adjust the riggin on a small steer with impressive horns.

Nena sat back with her youngest in her arms. She kept up a light-hearted banter, but she also said that those boys over at the chute had better take care of her daughter. If they thought bulls were tough, she said, they should try dealing with the mama!

The bullfighter—a rodeo clown who travels with the animals and keeps them from goring the cowboys and cowgirls—sat down on the steer first and showed Andrea how to hold onto the animal with her knees, let him know she’s there. He touched the horn and ears of the steer to calm it down, and then showed Andrea how to sit high on the riggin.

He got off and the determined girl climbed into the chute and lowered herself slowly onto the animal’s back. Kinney helped her add rosin to the palms of her gloves, then she held onto her vest, one hand flat against her chest, one hand against her back, ready to grab and pull.

A piece of gum was secured between the steer’s shoulders to keep Andrea’s attention. If the animal was going to twist, the movement would happen there first.

Sitting back from the chute, Nena said she needed a cigarette.

With the same Kinney determination, Andrea’s face grew serious. She settled herself into position and the chute was opened. The steer charged into the arena. For a few seconds, Andrea managed to stay centered while the steer threw her up off its back and down again, but then she started listing to the side. She held on for a few more halting strides, and then took a hard fall, missing the animal’s hooves and legs.

In a second, she stood up on her own two feet and exited the arena to wild cheers. Her first steer ride had lasted 3.43 seconds. For her first time, it wasn’t bad.

A small boy tugged on her shirt.

“Are you going to do it again?”

It was an almost imperceptible shake of the head. “Not right now,” said Andrea.

Kinney let her daughter soak up the praise. Then, she pulled out her bronc-riding buckle from the year before and quietly gave it to her daughter.

“I’m proud,” is all she said.

At the awards ceremony in the back of Club 21 that night, cowboys and cowgirls received their ribbons and buckles while their friends and supporters sipped on drinks and squinted in the dark.

None of the awards were particularly surprising. Koelsch won for chute dogging, Burke for bulls, and Kinney for broncs.

When all the awards had been distributed except for the two most prestigious, “All Around Cowboy” and “All Around Cowgirl,” Van Galder took up the microphone.

Not everybody saw, he said, but something happened at the end of the rodeo that just could never have happened at a sanctioned IGRA rodeo.

Van Galder eased into an introduction of Andrea’s wild ride. “She wanted to try something hard,” said Van Galder, while titters went around the room. Nena stood up and gave Van Galder a hard look. He started again. “She wanted to try something her mother had tried …” He shook his head, embarrassed. “That still didn’t sound good,” he whispered.

Kim Dawson, the arena coordinator, eventually took the microphone from Van Galder. She started by mentioning that since no women had competed for steer riding that weekend, the steer-riding buckle would normally be returned to the sponsor. But tonight, she said, it would go to someone very special.

Dawson called Andrea up to the stage, and the girl came, hunching up her shoulders in embarrassment. She was presented with her first rodeo buckle for steer riding, and it brought the people to their feet.

The Kinneys watched proudly as their eldest daughter accepted hugs from one after another of her fans in the audience. If this didn’t turn Andrea into a real cowgirl, nothing would.

The whole scene could only have been improved by one thing, and when Ann Kinney was named All Around Cowgirl, she threw her head back, squeezed her eyes shut again, and happily took up yet another buckle for her family’s collection.