The Republic of Texas

Ass-Headed Bottom: That thar's Mr. Buck, a friendly white-tailed ten-pointer to be found at the Bear Creek Pioneers Park in Harris County, Texas. Indeed, this morning he was found there without his head, as a poacher used bolt-cutters to break through the fence in order to take an easy trophy. Mr. Buck was, according to the absurd Houston Chronicle, "a gentle old soul, the joy of visiting schoolchildren, and so tame that you could walk right up and scratch his chin through the fence." And now he's gone! Some heartless butcher--"the lowest of the low"--bereft his beloved doe (Uva) of her beloved mate, and robbed us all of a friend. If I ever get my hands on this motherfucker... Well, perhaps I'll leave it all to the Texas rangers (the law enforcement agency, not the Christian baseball team), who plan to charge the bastard with "felony poaching, animal cruelty, trespassing, criminal mischief, damage to county property, and we'll go from there when we determine what type of weapon was used." They've already got bloodhounds tracking the motherfucker. They are full of righteous indignation. We all are, here in Texas.

I am surrounded by people unable to recognize the remotest correlation between a "culture" in which everyone is encouraged to own multiple weapons with which to kill bucks and sever their ten-point heads and mount them high on the wall, and this crime. These people--like the barbarians of The Golden Bough--believe that putting a universally hunted creature in a designated spot will make it sacred. They think that calling an animal "Mr. Animal" will make the deer-hunters love it like a friend and gift it to their children (those little tikes with their popguns and wash-away camouflage paint!). They see an absolute line between the innocent sport of hunting and the damnable crime of poaching. They see no... They think... They don't think... I can't tell you how FUCKING riDICulous this place is! This place is... Oh for the love of God! I'm really not gonna make it. I'm supposed to be living here for good or something. Here in Texas. Somebody please fucking help me get the fucking hell out of this hell on earth!

Slothrop: Slothrop’s never been shy about liking Austin, especially when he’s comparing it to the dirty syphilitic whore who raised him. Too often, though, the Siren Song conceals its major issues. Like, for example, it being hot enough to melt The Ice Storm dvd if it's left in a car for a few seconds anytime between March and October. And you can’t swing your cock without it hitting a car stuck in traffic or a crane ruining the warm skyline. There are a plethora of mini-mall black-holes, and Barton Springs’s water has become murky with developer piss. It’s surrounded, on all sides, by Texas and the Dallas monster lurks nearby. Bike lanes don’t exist (though free community bikes do). The North part of town could secede and nobody would notice. 

So it was an unlikely moment: stuck in traffic at a large intersection, Slothrop realized that he cares more deeply for Austin than any other place he's ever lived despite his peregrinating ways. It felt like the moment when you start to love somebody because they’re fucked up, not because they sometimes aren’t. And soon thereafter he thought about the delicious hidden crepes trailer right next to the only burger stand that doesn’t fuck up its cows; and about Boggy Creek Farm, where you can get vegetables plucked right out of the ground on Saturday mornings; and about a nursery where the resident artists make vegetative installations out of books and shrubbery; and how cold and clean it feels to swim at Deep Eddy and the crunch of the dirt around town lake; and that even though there are goobers of monied Strangers lurking to make a profit, there reside in this town communities of passionate people who fight against such takeovers; it helps, too, to have the best theater in the whole fucking country which plays JCVD marathons and lets you get drunk while watching Prince videos; the best sushi restaurant in the world; Slothrop’s favorite supermarket which sells him delicious clam-chowder and is making him reconsider his dietary preferences (for the better); and a lake twenty minutes outside of town on which Slothrop is learning to sail, as well as his favorite ten-mile running trail. It’s got hills, and sunsets and people who say hello. A red-velvet-curtained music joint that plays sweet old-school Paris Jazz on Mondays as well as a Blues shack that instills shame into the hearts of those who have never made real love to a black woman before; a shuffleboard joint where an old man named Happy Jack wears trucker hats dedicated to slapping Bush upside his Dallas-loving, Country-ruining, Cob-webbed-skull (Fact: Austin had a  higher percentage of people who voted for Obama than did New York). And a nice tennis court in a park where Slothrop likes to not play tennis with Koko.

It’s a fallacy to think a place sucks. Places are either blameless or neutral. It’s the people who define a place, really, and Slothrop loves his home. The Ass-Head, while he was here, held a grudge against it most likely because he was getting sodomized by his dissertation every day. But Austin is not a religious town and therefore believes in forgiveness. So come back, you donkey. We miss you.