So You Wanna Be a Cowboy?

Just because this is gay rodeo doesn't mean Shorty likes to see men acting like women. While finishing a cigarette a few moments ago, he heard two men catcalling effeminately to each other.

"Shit," he said quietly. "Those are the ones who give us names."

Later, realizing the insult to gay culture's time-honored tradition of campy behavior, he backpedals. "How can I put this without stepping on anyone's toes?" he wonders. "Uh, well, I'm not into the more feminine-acting type. For me, it seems like a show, an act in some way."

For Shorty, being an authentic cowboy is about more than whether the boots and the belt match the hat. It's about strutting your low-hanging brass.

That's why he's running for Mr. Missouri Gay Rodeo Association. He wants to make sure the next state representative for this little-known clique of homosexual cowboys will know how to handle a rope.

He's out to prove something as he approaches a cattle chute, one of six metal-barred hoosegows beneath an American-flag-draped grandstand at the Wyandotte County Fairgrounds. It's a cut-rate venue with concrete-hard clay that, until a week ago, was littered with shrapnel from a demolition derby. Beyond the bleachers are trailers, camp sites and booths stocked with sexually evocative wares: leather collars, chaps and T-shirts with slogans like "If you can rope me, you can ride me!" A full bar has been pouring to sunburned men and women since midmorning.

Shorty, whose real name is Nelson Mueller, stands a wiry 6 feet 6 inches tall. He sports a horseshoe mustache and a golden belt buckle that reads "Bodacious."

Clad in a protective vest, he lowers himself into a chute that holds a spotted steer with a set of horns that look like sharpened handlebars. He surveys the animal's weaponry, estimating each prong at 10 inches, maybe longer.

"Of course, I'm not a size man."

He's a chute dogger — a term for steer wrestlers. When the gates open, he'll try to drag the steer into the arena, then pile-drive it to the ground. Putting the moves on something this big doesn't always go as planned. At a rodeo in Oklahoma earlier this year, he was trampled and suffered a deep bruise on his right biceps. In Denver, the animal reared up and kicked him. Yesterday, he drew a "butt boy," a steer that ducked its head but kept its ass in the air until Shorty finally kicked it. That took about eight seconds — forever in this sport in which the object is to get 'em laid as fast as you can.

Now it's a Sunday in early September, the last day of competition at the Show Me State Rodeo. And because final scores are tabulated by combining both day's times, he'll need to finish fast — in three seconds or less— to stay in contention for the first-place silver belt buckle.

When Shorty joined the Missouri Gay Rodeo Association in July 2003, it was obvious that the organization had some holes to fill. This year he was appointed group historian and assumed scrapbooking duty. Then he decided to do something relatively unprecedented: actually compete in rodeo events.

The organizers of the gay rodeo circuit standardized their rules back in 1982 so that gay cowboys could compete on almost the same level as their straight counterparts. There are traditional roping events in which contestants stand still or ride horses to lasso moving steers, or two-rider teams rope steers by their heads and haunches. There are traditional speed events, such as barrel racing, flag racing and pole bending. And there are traditional rough-stock events: steer, bronc and bull riding, all pure machismo.

But gay rodeo also involves camp events, which is where things get queer. There's steer decorating, a partner event in which one cowboy ties a ribbon to a steer's tail while another removes a rope from its horns. There's the wild drag race, a threesome event requiring a man and a woman to drag a steer into the arena and someone dressed in drag to mount it and ride across a dirt finish line. And there's goat dressing, in which partners chase down a tethered goat to pull a pair of jockey-style underwear onto it.

Last January, before his first rodeo, in Phoenix, Shorty enrolled in a one-day rodeo school hoping to learn two powerhouse events: chute dogging and steer riding. After he witnessed a woman break her arm getting thrown, he thought about his limited health insurance and chickened out of riding steers.

Pinning rough stock remained an interest, though.

He struck out on the circuit after Phoenix, hitting competitions in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Wichita, Kansas; Denver; and Chicago.

Now, at the Wyandotte County Fairgrounds, he watches four opponents get bucked off or disqualified immediately. The steers are bolting fast and pissed, sometimes dragging would-be desperados with them. That's the kind of rough ride Shorty likes. "I like to get down there, grab and go. I like to get in and get the hell out."

In the chute, he maneuvers the steer into a broad headlock, reaching a gloved hand around its skull, gripping its chin and inserting his fingers into its mouth. He places his other hand on the horn in front of him, like it's a steering wheel.