Buckin'

life lessons I learned while riding mechanical bulls

A few weeks ago I saw Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour at Soldier Field in Chicago. This was my third time seeing her perform live, but it should have been my fourth; two years ago, I had to sell my tickets to the Renaissance Tour because of my injured hip, which made travel by car or walking through a giant stadium impossible. Beyoncé’s live shows continue to level up in ambition and scope, and I remain awed by the fact that she is two and half years younger than me and continuing to get better with age.

I thought about this a lot, especially when a gold metal mechanical bull rolled onstage. As Beyoncé sang “Tyrant” astride the spinning bull, I remembered that while dealing with my injury, an actual thought that crossed my mind was whether I’d ever ride a mechanical bull again (I chickened out from asking the orthopedic surgeon).

Beyoncé!!

The first time I ever encountered a mechanical bull was during my junior year at UNLV when I joined a friend on a camping/horseback riding trip on a dude ranch in Kingman, Arizona. After a long day trail riding through the desert, we returned to the ranch to pitch our tents and cook fry bread tacos over the campfire. Near our campsite, there was a corral with a metal barrel set up as a rudimentary practice bucking machine, and the ranch hands let us try riding it as they cranked it back and forth with ropes. They took it fairly easy on us city kids from Vegas, soft from living on cafeteria pizza and Keystone Lights (the PBR of Nevada). I was relieved I didn’t fly off and land in cow shit. A little bit of yeehaw had stirred in that corner of northern Arizona desert amongst the Saguaros and piñon pines, but it wasn’t until eleven years later that my inner cowgirl was truly awakened, at a conference for attorneys in Baltimore, Maryland, of all places.

I was in my early thirties and working as a meeting planning assistant, and after a week of Continuing Legal Education seminars, the closing reception took place at an upscale country & western-themed bar. At the registration desk earlier that day, the staff had been joking about who, if anyone, would actually ride the bull in front of all their work colleagues (“Don’t wear a tube top!” one of my co-workers advised). Attorneys milled about the large bar, some still wearing suits and name badges from the conference, commenting on the bull but no one taking the bait, until a woman from the Young Lawyers division hopped into the saddle. The lights brightened, a fog machine kicked on out of nowhere, people cheered. She rode without abandon, not giving a shit about who was watching or what anyone thought. It was inspiring.

During my childhood I suffered from debilitating shyness. In high school at the cast party for 42nd Street, I was voted “Shyest Cast Member” and I basically had to transfer schools to get over the mortification. (Side note: do you know who else was shy as a child? BEYONCÉ.) By adulthood, I learned to manage my social anxiety, but I was still pretty reserved at work; my tendency was to blend quietly into the cubicle walls or spend my lunch break sitting alone in my car where no one could see me reading the Twilight books. A former coworker once told me he didn’t know I had a personality.

But after a week of running around the conference space, hiding my tattoos in business attire and pantyhose, there was a restlessness rising inside me. I was tired of letting fear hold me back, and ready to throw caution to the wind, even if it was in front of several dozens of franchising attorneys. I signed up, threw my leg over the bull, then threw up the devil horns while my other hand gripped the rope. It was my first time on an actual mechanical bull ride, one that could spin and buck at high speeds, and the longer I stayed on, the more the crowd cheered. I figured out how to counter-balance my weight and grip with my legs on the spins, and I acquitted myself nicely (lawyer pun!). It was an exhilarating feeling, and I almost fooled myself into believing that I had tamed a wild beast with my riding skills, though in reality it was a fake bull in a fake ring with a bouncy house floor in a fake honky tonk. Unless… the beast was my inner self-doubt?! Plot twist!

Throughout my thirties, I never turned down an opportunity to ride a mechanical bull, which I seemed to encounter a surprising number of times during my travels. I jumped back into the saddle just a few months later, at a roller derby championships afterparty in Colorado. I rode again on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and successfully stayed on without vomiting up hurricanes. At my sister’s bachelorette party in Las Vegas, I showed up prepared for mechanical bull riding, wearing Lululemon yoga shorts under my dress, and after my turn, each woman in the group borrowed my shorts so they could ride in their cocktail dresses. It was a real Sisterhood of the Traveling Yoga Bottoms. There was even a brief but beautiful window of time when there was an urban rodeo league at the bar Joe’s on Weed in my home city of Chicago. I assembled a rag tag bull riding team made up of my sister Lauren, my friend Ray, Kurt, and myself, and we called ourselves the Buckle Bunnies. We were a moment in time, as rare and dazzling as a solar eclipse, and you didn’t want to look directly at us either.

Since my hip injury at forty-four and going through months of rehabilitation, I’ve eased back into my previous active lifestyle, testing out my body one hike at a time. Seeing Beyoncé on the bull reminded me that this was something I still hadn’t attempted. If Lindsey Vonn can return to Olympic-level competition after a partial knee replacement, surely I can ride a bar mechanical bull despite my hip labral tear!

The opportunity didn’t present itself again until my husband Kurt and I spent a recent weekend in Dallas, Texas. We were walking through the nightlife district of Deep Ellum when I spotted a mechanical bull through a bar window, beckoning me with its siren song. The seed was planted in my brain, ready to be nurtured and watered with Old Fashioneds at the Twilite Lounge. When we returned to the rodeo bar later in the evening, it was packed with twenty-something-year-olds. EDM thumped through the bar, incongruous with the country & western theme. It became important that I complete my task before we were coerced into buying test tube shots from a server who was born the year I aged out of my parents’ health insurance. I beelined for the bull sign-up list. There were two young women in line ahead of me—everyone was so young! Their skin so dewy, their perfect bronde barrel curls unaffected by the Texas heat. I just turned forty-six, and to quote a meme I recently posted, I now exercise for medical reasons.

But on the bull, the younger women were nervous, gripping on with two hands, making it through a few weak spins and bucks before bailing out the saddle. It was my turn.

Suddenly I remembered the time I thought I could still perform a cartwheel after not having tried in years, only for both elbows to immediately buckle under my own body weight. Would my bubble of bull riding hubris burst in the same way? I swung into the saddle and dug in with both Bombas-clad heels, my ankle socks yet another age signifier amongst this Gen Z crowd. But as soon as the bull lurched into action, a wave of exhilaration roared back like a freight train. Out of muscle memory and basic physics knowledge, I leaned back when the bull dipped forward, grasping the rope with one hand, throwing the horns with my right, then spinning a pretend lasso like Beyoncé.

The operator picked up that this wasn’t my first rodeo, and gave the bull some speed. I was up for the challenge, riding out the bounces, gripping with my legs, having an absolute blast. This body-ody-ody may be middle aged and recently recovered from shingles, but she is back, baby!

doing my best Beyoncé

Eventually, the speed caught up with me and I took an ungainly tumble onto the bouncy mats, revealing the same Lululemon booty shorts under my t-shirt dress. One of the youths high-fived me as I exited the ring. Sure, Beyoncé finally won the Grammy for Album of the Year after years of being underappreciated, but look at MY triumphant return! ;)

The first time I rode a mechanical bull in front of a crowd of drunk lawyers, I did it to no longer be invisible, a spontaneous moment of personal expression and a bit of rebellion. There is a common narrative around aging that women become invisible when they reach middle age, and frankly, I reject it. I am not going gentle into that good night. Like Beyoncé, I plan to only get better with age and life experience. Even if my socks are embarrassing.

---

• Are you furious about ICE detaining people as they show up for their scheduled immigration proceedings? Or the Trump administration setting the stage for revoking National Monument status for public lands? Or the US Secretary of Health, who is a vaccine skeptic, removing the entire current Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices? And so on and so on? There are planned ‘No Kings’ protests happening in cities big and small throughout the country this Saturday, June 14. If you’re heading out, be safe and smart, take care of yourself and the people around you, and be heard!

• If you’re unable to march, there is still so much you can do! Check out the 5 Calls app for a tool that simplifies the process of contacting your congresspeople over issues that matter to you.