SmokeLong Quarterly

Tell me about the title of this story. A reference to Bill and Ted? And if so, why?

The title is a reference to Bill and Ted. One reason for that is I just love that movie. San Dimas High School Football does rule. It was also me being sneaky a little bit—the name of Bill and Ted’s band is Wyld Stallyns. The rodeo character quotes them by saying “Party on, dude.” But also, I wanted the story to have that built-in feeling where you start to have an idea of who the ex-boyfriend is because he’s the type of person who quotes Bill & Ted to his girlfriend when she’s afraid that he’s going to get trampled by a horse.

What has been your personal experience, if anything, with rodeo? Why did you choose this as a subject for this story?

I’ve never been to a rodeo in person. But I’m the kind of person who if someone coughs within like a one mile radius of me, I have bronchitis for the next six weeks. Anyway, there was this time where I was sick and just lying at home watching professional rodeo events. And it just blew my mind. I ended up taking a lot of notes about what the scene seemed like, the way the horses and bulls moved. And eventually those notes became a story from a horse’s perspective. Then I didn’t feel like I knew the horse enough or even the person who would ride a horse like that horse well enough, but I did know what it would be like to want to be or want to be with a person who does extreme things.

Can you talk a little about what you think happens ten minutes after this story ends? How about two months? Five years?

Ten minutes later, being realistic, the narrator goes home, wishing she had spoken to the ex-lover. Being cruel, she watches the ambulances load him up because he got thrown off the horse again. Whoops!

Two months? The main character is probably out with her friends, getting a little tipsy, talking about how she used to date a rodeo guy. Her friends are thinking, ugh, this again. The rodeo guy, he’s sleeping, he’s having these recurring dreams about getting stepped on, but then the hoof turns into banana peels and he has no idea what that means.

Five years later, she’s selling all those hats at a yard sale, haggling with some college kids about them. Five years later, he’s training some new young kid to be the rodeo star he once was. He looks and smells like Willie Nelson now. He sells the rights to his story to a movie producer, but nothing comes out of it.

Read more about Megan in her Fish Fellow interview.