When I was a young girl, I didn’t see them as animals so much as a child’s bedroom aesthetic, something that other girls—not me— chose to decorate their school binders with. The first time I met a horse up close, at a state fair, I was overcome by the unexpected smell of it. It was salty, dripping with thick saliva that did not strike me as icky, but somehow hard earned, like motor oil.
A man—probably the owner of the horse—asked me if I wanted to sit on the horse’s back. Now that I understood the proportions of such an animal, sitting on it seemed like serious business. I worried that I would not fit the part.
I might make a strange face while I was up there. I might not understand the deeper significance of what it meant to sit atop a creature with as much presence as a horse seemed to have. The man interpreted my hesitation as fear and told me that it was okay.
Maybe next year I would be bigger and braver. As soon as he said “bigger and braver,” the horse let down his penis until it nearly touched the ground. It was pink and flakey like a sunburn.
All around us, people laughed out of discomfort—I imagine because I was standing eye level to it and I seemed like a sweet child who maybe didn’t deserve the shock, and what else could you do but laugh? Until then, I had not been aware of the crowd, or that the whole interaction had been observed by so many strangers who now thought that I was a coward. I took the next morning off to drive Nico’s parents to the airport.
They acted like they were doing me a favor by letting me drive a car for once and said that as long as I replaced the gas in the tank, I could use it to move my belongings to the apartment that they still believed was lined up for me. On the drive back into town, I rolled down every window, letting the wind thud against my open hand, whip my hair, dry out my teeth. Even with all that air on me, I still felt trapped.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
