Two pitchers of Flat Tire later and one of my buddy’s friends shows up—she’s born and raised in Houston. This is my first time in a red state and I start right in: “If there’s a separation between church and state, what’s the reason for prohibiting gay marriage, since it’s The Bible that condemns homosexuality? King James was gay. They called him Queen James. If the morning-after pill is considered murder then is male masturbation mass suicide? If you support the troops wouldn’t you be against the war—seeing as how war kills soldiers and all? Isn’t war just a good way to create jobs in a slumping economy? But aren’t you killing your work force?  Isn’t that murder? If the president defies American law, isn’t he defying America as a whole? Isn’t that treason? What’s so great about Texas anyway?” A map of the state, colored red, white and blue, is on beer labels, cigarette machines, car trunks. “It’s not even a hundred years old. 

Wouldn’t Freud argue that the bigger the gun, the pick-up, the ranch, the number of executions, the state itself, the smaller the penis? Isn’t Texas just Mexico stolen by Americans?”

She says, in Texas, everyone’s got a gun. Hers is in her glove box. I tell her I dig cowboy hats and big belt buckles.

We swallow Cuervo shots and six hours later we’re on the front porch of a closing icehouse. Texas country blares through the open doors of a Dodge pick-up. A fifteen-year-old girl, who looks thirty, picks a fight with a shirtless AA southpaw pitcher. My buddy’s in the parking lot hitting golf balls over the strip club. I’m talking to a guy who did a great Eddie Veddar on the karaoke machine. He took steroids in high school and is now sterile. His pregnant fiancé smokes and mouths the country lyrics. She’s eight months in and ready to pop. She’s not sure who the father is—could be one of three guys.
 

The boy will be baptized before his first birthday.

My buddy swings a six iron and smashes a Titleist through a parked F-150 window. We all cheer.

I have no idea where I am.