The Cowgirl Monologue
The past revised with help from Claude - Sonnet 4.6 AI
THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
She stands center stage, lit by a single spotlight. She's dressed sharply — professional, but there's something untamed about her. She speaks directly to the audience.
Hi, it’s me. Your Problem.
The one who speaks too loudly, curses around family, raises my voice through clenched teeth. Last year I ruined Christmas — maybe all of them.
And when I’m nice I’m too sweet, too slutty, or wasn’t she wearing that yesterday? Mom thinks I need to eat more but anorexia and bulimia are too many syllables for public life to process.
You want to know where I've been?
I've been everywhere.
Because even if I didn’t go there, of course you think I did, and maybe I will for grins. Sometimes it lights me up to surprise you - all these man-made rules and regulations around my mind my body my choices before I even had thought in my mouth to spit at you.
While you whittle me down to a party of one against the world, we may have had some fun. You love it when I’m drunk - drunker than drunk, catatonic even. God bless the willing!
When I’m alone I know you’re not all the same - in a Man’s World, you’re born with potential! I keep searching for love in all the wrong places, have a knack for finding ones best at flirting, favoring, manipulating — a manmade economy thriving off our collective confusion.
Say I never wandered out of the bar and into corporate life, perhaps I never would have discovered other truths about growing up. Thank God who is merciful! Suit up or saddle up - my female hustle is still worth $0.81 on your man’s bottom dollar.*
And when we’re shacked up, Baby pray I treat you nice. I try again and again to get it right and when I fail in small and larger ways I think DAMN now I’ve really done it - dropped into a lower echelon of Hell reserved for women who just couldn’t hack it. Would you and Mr. Boss please negotiate a raise for our common household? I’m hanging on by a thread trying to get the kids to brush their teeth, much less look prettier than your secretary before we go to bed.
Say I go it alone - kids at my side (demonize me if I don’t), now I’m not ready but getting the Wild West. Something about a woman without a man shouts (or whispers insidiously) LESBIAN! CHEATER! WHORE! She’s going too far, wanting too much. Everyone, anyone stop her before she fulfills my wildest nightmare!
Insides in turmoil, suffering in silence is the safest place people make for me - I learn to hold it with grace. Surely I asked for it, something about me made this all my fault. Shame keeps me in spirals of sabotage and self-doubt - please forgive me in my brokenness when I hurt you too. Sorry sometimes cannot hold all that I am.
Forgiveness must be learned, I know, before it can be given. I’ve earned mine through so many tears and years of sweat, blood too. Women are the only beings able to love, work, and give life from loin as we do - shouldn’t we have an equal say, an equal share of God-given provision so far as that remains separate in this State of affairs?
(a long beat)
And here I’m standing asking who?
Lights fade.
*According to the United States Department of Labor Women’s Bureau Data & Statistics Earnings and earnings ratios by sex, race, and occupation group - all women (Asian, Black, Hispanic, White/not Hispanic) earn 0.81 compared to men of the same race, and 0.72 compared to White/not Hispanic men - accessed 29APR2026.