Douglas Graff is back in the saddle—at least figuratively. And after breaking his pelvis while steer riding at the L.A. Gay Rodeo (see The Ballad of Winnie Bago's Thrashed Undercarriage video clip), figuratively sounds pretty darn good to me. Particularly when you factor in his harrowing ride home to San Francisco from Los Angeles in the back of a truck designed to carry horses where he set himself on fire…
Or something like that. I'll get the facts straight on Doug's post-injury odyssey and return to fighting trim, and share them in a forthcoming blog.
In the meantime, a bit of backstory: Doug grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. He moved to San Francisco in the dot-com boom years (his day job is in software). He's well known on the gay rodeo circuit; he was Mr. International Gay Rodeo Association in 1999.
Doug was competing in his umpteenth gay rodeo when he broke his pelvis in Los Angeles. Though he'd scaled back on rough stock events in recent years due to injuries—torn rotator cuff, broken shoulder, screw in his elbow—he just couldn't stay away. His last words to me before heading off for that fateful steer ride went something like "Once you have the bug…"
When he was taken from the arena on a stretcher moments later, I felt terrible, like somehow I'd jinxed him by questioning the wisdom of getting back on that steer and riding it. Doug assuaged any lingering guilt I had in the hospital a couple days later, when he informed a room full of well-wishers that he thought he'd actually cracked his pelvis at the San Diego Rodeo earlier in the summer. He figured the steer ride in L.A. was merely the coup de grace.
C'est le guerre.
Doug is back and badder than ever. Though he won't be competing in rodeo anymore, he will be doing some rodeo clowning. A natural performer, Doug has clowned with some regularity in recent years. He who has the last laugh…
Doug is rodeo director of the Bay Area Chapter of the Golden State Gay rodeo Association. This year's Best Buck in the Bay (the San Francisco Bay Area Gay Rodeo & Festival) takes place Sept. 14-16 in La Hond, Calif.
Check Underground's calendar at Upcoming.org for more gay rodeo event dates. You can also add your own event dates - be they gay rodeo events or not—at Upcoming and then link to our Underground group so we can tell the world about them.
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