Mid-Adulthood

Two Cows and a Bull

In the late 1970s I was upstate with an artist and her daughter. I'd had to go to the Catskills so they and their baggage could be returned to Lexington Avenue. But of course we poked around the countryside a bit first. I know more than one part of the Catskills fairly well, but I didn't know this neighborhood. Without a car, the artist and her daughter hadn't discovered much. Playing it by ear, we found a miserable little stream, a very ordinary cow pasture.

Ah, but there was one thing about the cow pasture I'll never forget. In the pasture was a bull: and two cows. The bull was munching grass. Both cows, simultaneously, right at the fence, right in front of us, kept sticking their vaginas against his nose. Uuuuunn, the bull lowed. No, that was not an uuuunn of lust; that was an uuunn of annoyance. Maybe the bull wasn't mature. Maybe the bull had just had each of them sixteen times. Maybe the bull was a fag.

Maybe the cows weren't in heat.

If not, then why were they shoving pussy in his face? I have never heard of non-human females giving a damn about bulls or about their pussies except in times of estrus: then, it's here come the Amazons!

Oh, side note: last night I saw Werner Herzog's Cobra Verde with Klaus Kinski for the first time. He becomes a slaver in Africa, gets chased, finds allies, trains an army of women. Bare-breasted (except for Kinski) they reconquer. All the women in that film were fabulous: including those who were dressed.

If you've seen Fitzcarraldo, you know that Herzog can make beautiful women look beautiful on screen as well as anyone. Claudia Cardinale! (Well, not quite as beautiful as Fellini filmed her.) And if you've seen any Herzog, you know what he can do with men: Klaus Kinski! But in Cobra Verde, the women (all of them put together) "equal" Klaus Kinski!