The next time I sleep with someone, I’m going to call him Hoss. No insert name here, no Daddy, no Papi. Just Hoss. Always in the third person. Instead of you can get it, Hoss can get it.

And when Hoss is getting it, I’m not thinking of the character from Bonanza: that lovable giant with the paunch and cowboy hat. But I am thinking of a cowboy who was wearing suede pants still smelling like cattle before I took them off. And I’m thinking about trying on his boots and rattling the spurs.

Hoss says, Where’d you go? when I’m thinking that. And I say, Hoss’s spurs. Then Hoss tells me about the horny bones on a rooster’s legs, good for cockfights, because he knows about roosters and cockfights.

I crow. Hoss says, Don’t crow.

And when he asks if it’s racist to call him Hoss, I give him a firm No: my ex-boyfriend was white and made me listen to a lot of fucking Allman Brothers.

Hoss accepts that, but he doesn’t like when I say Hoss is fucking me like a Hoss. He’s confused and doesn’t know I mean to say horse. He still doesn’t like it when I tell him I meant to say horse. He calls me a lunatic. I tell him crazy people have crazy sex. He says, You mean crazy like a whole lot of sex? I mean crazy like batshit crazy. He asks, The people or the sex? And I say, Hoss, stop talking.

So when Hoss stops talking, there’s the sound of the creaking foundation and the dehumidifier sucking air to get the water out. My mouth is dry. My eyes are so wide open — because Hoss is still getting it — that a tiny tear comes out and I’m pretty sure, with the sweat and everything, that my makeup’s gone raccoon.

Remember those spaghetti Westerns, Hoss? Where they made white people up to look like Indians because they didn’t want Indians? Hoss says, What of it? They made some of them dark as me. Hoss says, What of it?

And now we’re not having sex, or, technically, we are but we’re not moving. Hoss asks if I only sleep with white guys. I say he’s a hassa for asking me that.

Hassa? Hassa: Al Pacino says it in Scarface. It means a pig. He says he hasn’t seen Scarface and I say Perfect.

And when he’s gone, I think of how I’ll call the next guy Hoss because it’ll be so long from now I won’t remember this Hoss, and how white women never say we’re stealing all the good white men when black women always say that the white bitch stole a good black man. And I’ll tell the new Hoss he can call me Girlfriend with two snaps and a circle because aren’t we just types: types of body parts, boy/girl, man/woman?

But I won’t mean that because I really do want a cowboy, a specific cowboy, or, really, just a specific guy who doesn’t mind if I pretend he’s a cowboy. There’s nothing wrong with a fetish. Fetish, like an amulet or a charm. Because isn’t it charming? That hats off to the lady, that happy ending for a twisted happiness, a twist like a creek through a desert, creeping out to sea — and that anxious sea landlocked in its movements (up, down, back and forth) until something breezes through on a sunset and moves it more.

This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 2, 2013.