I remember all the men I've dated who wore cowboy hats, and I have a special place in my heart for them. This strikes me as kind of weird, considering none of them ever showed evidence of a cowboy skill. They didn't bake beans in a dutch oven. They never herded livestock to market. They never roped any wayward calves.

Yet somehow they leapt ahead in the macho race, even if they had a bigger Cuisinart than Julia Child.

If you're going to use a hat to transform yourself, a cowboy hat is the way to go. When people think you're a cowboy, they think you're masculine, and hard-working, and loyal. If you opt for a beret, on the other hand, they just think you've seen Cabaret one too many times.

Still, the three cowboys I've known were more than just dudes in leather headgear. My first used his lifestyle to fuel a music career, writing and performing under the name Chaps. Chaps was a bold-face name in the world of gay disco country. Basically he wrote songs you could dance to that were like twelve minutes long and had coyotes howling for the middle ten.

Chaps was my friend Gary's ex. Gary's life still revolved around Chaps. He called Chaps five times a day. He dropped in on Chaps whenever he was in the neighborhood. Chaps had unceremoniously dumped Gary, but Gary still hung around to make sure nobody else got him.

Naturally Gary leapt in when he sensed I was interested. "He's nice," he told me, "but he can't get hard. He's absolutely lousy in bed."

Those words kept me away for about twelve seconds, but eventually curiosity won out. Chaps and I dated a couple times, then we hopped in the sack. What Gary hadn't divulged was the reason Chaps couldn't get hard: he was enormous downstairs. If every ounce of blood in his body got diverted down there, it still wouldn't have raised its head.

Still, we gave it the old cowboy try. It went from borderline fun to mostly tiring. It'd go up, it'd go down, it'd go up again. I wanted to brag to Gary that I was up to the task, but it was like riding a bucking bronco: there was that initial blast of adrenaline, followed by a rollercoaster ride. It was exhilarating; it was exhausting. After seven seconds of bouncing, I was back on the ground with my hands covering my face, wondering what was keeping those goddamn clowns.

Bob was a businessman roughly double my age. He was a Gary Cooper type: plain spoken, unassuming, unpretentious. The cowboy hat seemed a natural fit. Throw in a mansion south of Ventura and I fell for him instantly.

Bob had built a great life for himself, but he was lonely. The problem was, he identified more as cowboy than gay, which made dating difficult. He didn't want to go anywhere gay, and didn't want to take another man anywhere especially straight. Our first date, then, was at his house. As was our second, and third, and fourth. By the fifth we'd established a pattern: watching Westerns on an enormous TV and eating off folding aluminum trays.

I would have been happy coasting awhile, but Bob had to push things along. He glared at my overnight bag. "Ain't it about time you moved some stuff into the ole bunkhouse?" he asked.

I thought about it for a minute before I said no. We were less sweethearts than sidekicks. I still had some rasslin' and ropin' to do before I rode off into the sunset. Still, once in a while I picture what might have been, that handsome couple in matching Stetsons standing before a man of the cloth.

PREACHER: Is you two fixin' to get hitched today?

BOB AND I: Danged if we ain't!

The last cowboy I knew for two hours. I met him at Floyd's, a country bar in Long Beach. Floyd's was ridiculously authentic. You'd think it would be hard for city folk to look like they just slid down out of the saddle, but gay men are talented. C'mon, if we can art-direct Star Trek, we can slap some dust on a leather vest and steel-wool the seat of our pants. Whereas in any other bar you'd hear talk about sex and gossip and TV and movies, here you could eavesdrop on a thousand conversations and hear nothing but "Yup" and "Shucks."

In those hours, I fell in love with Colt. He led me through endless two-steps where we'd promenade around the bar a hundred times. I kept one hand in his, the other on his solid waist, and stared into his clear blue eyes. I sank into him, swooning over the muscularity and vigor that boded well for further entanglement.

Eventually the lights came on and the music stopped, and words had to be exchanged. "I had an incredible evening," I said.

Colt nodded. "That there's my boyfriend," he said, pointing to a grinning, moon-faced guy in business casual who was waving at us expectantly. "He's filthy rich, and he's generous. You want to have a three-way?"

I gave it some thought. If there's two guys in bed, you can pick the one you want, right? Then I remembered I'd brought a hundred boxes of KFC to various picnics and potlucks but always gotten stuck with wing.

I shook my head and once again I left alone. And that night I gave up on cowboys. In your mind you think they're mystical creatures who ride some metaphorical plain, but in reality they're just regular dudes in fancy hats who want you to help mosey their doggies home.