by J. A. Rock
“Hey, Secretariat.” He pulled back. “Save it for the broodmares.”
“My name is Thunder Canyon,” I reminded him.
“Do I call you Thunder for short?”
“If you want.”
“Or Canyon?”
“Whatever you want, dude. You’re my owner.”
He brushed a gnat away from my face. Paused with his hand out, then petted my forehead. I half closed my eyes and bent so he could reach me better. Then I snickered.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
He reached back into the bag. “I’m gonna put your hoof thingies on.”
I held out my hands one at a time while he put the gloves on. I got TRCS again. I also started laughing so hard I couldn’t stop.
“What?” he asked.
I just made little squeaks in my throat until I could talk again. “It’s just . . . so . . . weird.” I held up my hoof-hands. “Look at this! People actually do this shit.”
He laughed too, shaking his head at me. “I know. And you’re gonna do it in like three weeks. So you’d better take this seriously.”
I looked at him, my lips pressed together. The laughter was mostly under control except for a couple of snorts.
He hooked the ends of the reins to the clips on the cheek pieces. “We’re gonna take a walk now.”
I took a deep breath and shook off the last of the chuckles. “What do I have to do?”
“Um, just walk.”
“Do I have to prance?”
“You can just walk.”
“Do you want me to make horse sounds?”
“Seriously, Kamen, all you have to do is walk.” He paused. “Though if you do want to make horse sounds, that would be amusing.”
I tried a whinny.
He pretty much peed himself laughing. So who was the one not taking this seriously now?
“That sounds nothing like a horse,” he said between gasps.
“You do it, then!”
He did. It sounded pretty good.
“Well, it’s easy for you to make horse sounds. You have a cartoon voice.”
“I’m sorry. You’re the pony. I didn’t mean to insult your sounds.”
“I’m never gonna neigh again.”
He gazed at me for a sec like he was trying not to smile. “Guilty hooves got no rhythm?”
“Shut up.”
We walked along the barely existent trail, and I got used to the quiet, and to not having to concentrate on anything but staying in step with him. I looked down at my hoof hands a couple of times. Tried to be as at home in my pony gear as Cinnamon clearly was. Tried to imagine learning how to, like, crab-trot sideways like the dressage ponies, and pull a cart, and not feel stupid when I did it.
“Whoa,” Ryan said softly at one point. He stopped, and I did too. He patted me, like he was totally cool with the idea that I was a horse. “Walk on.” He started forward, and I followed.
Next time we stopped, I took a deep breath, then did that thing horses do where they blow out air and make their lips flutter.
Ryan glanced at me in surprise. “That was good.”
I grinned.
He clucked, and we walked on.
The next day, Ryan went to Geegs before I even woke up, so we didn’t get to have wake-up sex. It was just me in a house full of stuff that reminded me of him—panties, dresses, a bridle, a harness. That fucking whip and the butt plug tail.
I decided I wanted to know what the tail felt like, so I got it out and washed the plug part. Lubed it up and spent a few minutes working it in. It took a while, because the flared part of the plug was pretty wide, and the neck really narrow—I guess so it wouldn’t fall out when you were cantering or whatever.
I walked around the house with the tail swishing against my legs. It felt pretty good, actually. I made some coffee and drank it and checked baseball scores on my phone. Then I wandered into the bedroom and got out my computer. Brought up Ryan’s megalodon drawing and studied it. Dude was talented. I wasn’t an art expert or anything, but I knew what looked cool and what didn’t. It bummed me out that he hadn’t pursued art professionally.
The plug was getting me hard, so I started rubbing my dick—just casually, not with any real intent. Then I got Whitney Houston stuck in my head, and I started swaying a little to the imaginary music. So that thing totally happened where I didn’t hear Ryan come in, and then suddenly he was in the bedroom and looking at me all What the fuck?
“Hey.” I glanced over my shoulder at the long black tail, then back at Ryan. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“It looks like you’re dancing and touching yourself to my drawing of a megalodon while wearing a butt plug horse tail, but I don’t want to assume anything.”
“No, you pretty much got it. But I was also humming ‘How Will I Know’ under my breath.”
He nodded. Watched me for a moment, like he was trying to figure something out. Then he said, “I actually have something I’ve been wanting to show you.”
“Oh my God. What?”
“I was gonna wait until I had a little more done, but . . .” He crossed to the bed and got his tablet. Brought it over to me. He shook his head as he approached. “I almost want you to take the tail out, because I’m trying to be kind of serious, but it’s just too perfect.”
I swished it for him. Took the tablet when he handed it to me.
“I did some illustrations. You can swipe through.”
“Illustrations of what?”
“Just look.”
I looked at the screen.
Holy shit.
I stared for what felt like fifteen minutes. Then I swiped. Swiped again. They were illustrations of “Snow Wanderer.” Four paintings of, like, this arctic suburbia, done in the same style as the megalodon painting, but a thousand times more . . . just more. Snowflakes blowing around, houses with vinyl siding and snow on the roofs, snow-covered trash cans on the curbs—and this kid removing snowmen’s faces. The paintings were the kind of sad that makes your stomach drop for a minute.
There was one where the kid’s hat had gotten snagged in a tree and pulled off his head, but he was too busy eating a snowman’s raisin mouth to notice it was caught on the branch.
It sounds silly, but it wasn’t. Not to me, anyway. These paintings made the whole “Snow Wanderer” idea look nostalgic and strange, and—not nightmarish, but you know those dreams you wake up from knowing that you had something amazing in the dream that you don’t have in real life, like the ability to fly, or a huge house? These drawings gave me that feeling.
“These are beautiful,” I told him.
He shrugged, but his lips were pressed together like he was nervous.
“How long have you been working on this?”
“A couple of weeks. I like listening to you work on the song, and I just thought maybe this would be cool to go along with it.”
“Dude, Ryan, this is incredible.” I couldn’t stop swiping through, noticing new things about the drawings each time—the way the branches of a tree made, like, a cage around the moon. The dog pee stain at the base of one snowman. A little girl’s silhouette in the bedroom of a neighbor’s house.
“Glad you like them.”
“I want these under the song.”
“What?”
I turned to him. “I’m gonna post the song on YouTube when I have a final version. I want these to be the images for the video. If you’d let me. Is that okay?”
“Uh, yeah.” He smiled quickly. “Of course. I didn’t think you’d . . . I mean, that’s awesome that you want them.”
“You really have no idea, do you?” I cupped his face in one hand and kissed him long and slow. He let out a breath into my mouth and clutched me almost too hard with one hand until we were done.
I glanced back at the tablet. “Ricky has this animation program—we won’t turn it into a cartoon or anything—but he can add just a little motion, so it’s like a wind is blowing thos
e snowflakes around. We can make this, like, insane.”
“Okay. I can do more, if you want.”
“That would be— I can’t even.”
When I turned to him again, I couldn’t figure out what was going on in his head. So sometimes when that happened, I just stayed quiet, which was what I did this time.
He leaned his head against my arm. I raised my arm so he could get under it, then crushed him with it. “Thank you,” he whispered.
My chin scruff dragged along the top of his head. “For what?”
“For making me feel like I can do stuff like this, and it’s not . . . childish.”
For a second, I thought this was the Ryan I wanted my friends to see. This incredibly sweet guy who was kinda insecure, but, like, amazing and willing to try anything and funny as shit. Then I was like, no, it’s not two separate Ryans. I wanted them to love even the guy who argued with them and told jokes they didn’t like. Wanted them to love the whole package, like I did. “Dude, how can being a genius be childish?”
He sighed, leaning harder on me. “You don't even know. I’ve done a lot of things because of what I thought I was supposed to want, instead of because of what I actually want.” He paused. “So thanks for, I guess, taking me seriously.”
I just held him after that without saying anything. Because I got it, man.
I got it.
Ryan and I spent the morning watching some pony play videos together. He studied the handlers—their long-reining techniques and the ways they interacted with the ponies—and I tried to study how the ponies behaved and moved. Except they were totally inconsistent. Some of them walked on two legs, some on four. The two-legged ones either had their hands cuffed behind their back, or else they moved them through the air in time with their actual legs. Most of them were really well behaved, to the point where they were kind of boring to watch after a few minutes. But my favorite one was a pony named Belle who’d won “best personality” in some New York competition a few years ago. She was, like, knocking buckets over, freaking out about a set of wind chimes, trying to grab the reins in her teeth . . . She never did what she was told, but somehow she managed to be cute about it rather than annoying.
Ryan didn’t say much about the videos. I had to talk through my thoughts during each one, but he just kinda quietly took them in. We went to Berry Park after lunch and tried the blinkers. And the tail. We had to cut a hole in a pair of my shorts so I could wear the tail and still be decent. Having a tail coming out of my ass was pretty okay, but the blinkers were another story. At first I was like, Cool, this’ll be no big deal. But once they were on and I realized how little I could see, I was kind of freaked. I walked forward when Ryan clucked, but stopped almost immediately.
“Come on,” Ryan urged.
I tried to swipe at the blinkers, but my hands were trapped in the hoof gloves.
I turned my head back and forth. “I can’t see out the sides!”
Ryan came around to my front. “That’s the point.”
“I’m gonna trip over stuff.”
“You’ll still be able to see the ground. I’ll be leading you.”
I lowered my head and stared at the ground. Okay, I could see it fine. But . . . “This is not cool. I feel like I’m gonna run into something.” Man, I felt for bio horses. Blinkers were bullshit.
“You won’t.” He snapped his fingers in front of me. “Hey. Hey, look here.”
I looked at him, not sure how I felt about this.
“You won’t trip,” he repeated. “You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my pony. And I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.” He patted my shoulder real solid, then offered me his fist for a fist bump.
I pounded it with my hoof and smiled slowly.
“Thunder Canyon? What are you?”
“I’m your fuckin’ pony.”
“That’s right. And we’re gonna go out there, and we’re gonna do some long reining. Because we’ve got three weeks to prepare, and we need a serious fucking montage.”
We fist-bumped again, and then he took the reins and led me out onto the trail.
He left the bit out for the first few minutes, as I tried to get used to wearing the blinkers. He stayed beside me, and he definitely didn’t let me trip. I got familiar with the different pressures of the head straps depending on where he was steering me. Then we stopped, and he put the bit in my mouth and clipped it to the bridle. I started drooling within, like, two seconds. “Grooofffhhh.” I was trying for “Gross,” but talking only made it grosser.
He ran his hand up and down my back, and holy shit that felt good. He gave my harness a light tug. “Hey. You okay?”
I nodded.
“I’m gonna get behind you. Stay there.” He gathered up the reins and went to stand behind me. My stomach flipped. It was crazy to me how different things felt when I couldn’t see him.
He shook the reins lightly over my shoulders and clucked. I walked forward. Easy enough. I was breathing kinda loud and slurpy-ish around the bit, but whatevs.
He tugged the right rein. It stretched the corner of my mouth. “Can you feel that?”
“Yehhh,” I said around the bit.
“Is it too hard?”
I laughed. “Nhhhoo.”
He pulled the left rein a little lighter. “How’s that?”
“Pehw-hehhh.”
“Perfect?”
He totally understood my pony-talk, so that made me feel better. “Yehhh.”
He pulled back on both reins, and I stopped. He walked up right behind me. I could feel him, but I couldn’t see him, because stupid blinkers. He petted me again. Like, just the way you would a real horse down the neck and over the shoulder. “You’re doing so good,” he said.
I hadn’t actually done much of anything, but I still felt awesome when he said that.
“Can I ride you?” he asked.
I swung my head toward him. “Yewannuhryyymehhh?”
“Yeah.” He gathered the reins into a shorter loop.
I nodded again. “Ohhkhharrr.”
I crouched. He climbed up on my back. I hooked my arms under his legs. I wanted to point out that we were finally Freak the Mighty-ing it, but I had the bit in.
I groaned as I got to my feet, and he slapped my shoulder. “Shut up. I’m not heavy.”
I mock staggered back and forth, while he laughed. “Kamen!” He kicked at my sides. “Thunder Canyon! Go forward. Go, pony!”
I shook my head and snorted, then started jogging.
“Oh God.” Ryan clutched my shoulders, then slung his arms around my neck as we headed down the trail. “This was a terrible idea.”
I hitched him up higher on my back and jogged a little faster.
“Yeehaw!” Ryan yelled.
Suddenly I tripped for real, and wiped out.
We collapsed in a heap, laughing and groaning.
“Okay.” Ryan rolled himself off of me. “We are definitely not riding anymore.”
“Wooo huff hoo guuhh buikhh ern vuuh fa-uhww.”
He laughed and unclipped my bit. “What was that?”
I moved my mouth, wiping away the spit. “You have to get back in the saddle.”
“You’re a cart pony. We need to stick to carts. Once we have a cart, that is.”
“Yeah, what’s going on with that?”
“Patience, patience.” He looked around. “And we have to find somewhere better to practice.”
I thought for a minute. “Our apartment has a long hallway. If the cart’s small enough . . .”
He shook his head. “We need to be outside. I’ll check around on Fet. See if anyone has any private property. Or find out where other pony people go, at least.”
I considered this for a moment. “Actually, I might have a better idea.”
I met D for lunch on Monday at a place called Ham on the Corner. It served mostly ham. On buns that were toasted in a skillet full of bacon grease.
&nb
sp; I bit into my sandwich. “Dave says that you have land. Outside of the city.”
He nodded, paunch rising slightly as he inhaled. “Yes. But if you would like to build on it, I must decline. I have—” his gaze shifted “—plans for it. But if you’d like to camp with your very small partner, that is acceptable.”
“I don’t want to build. Or camp. Ryan and I just need a place to practice something. Is it private?”
“Very much so, and I am surprised you would even need to ask.” His eyes narrowed. “What, may I ask, are you practicing?”
“It’s just a thing we have to rehearse.”
“It’s not a . . .” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “It’s not a flash mob, is it?”
“What?”
He sighed deeply and ate some more ham. “David recently told me about flash mobs. I’m not judging. But I am troubled.”
“I promise it’s not a flash mob.” I stared at my sandwich for a second, then decided to go with the truth. “Ryan and I are trying pony play, man.” I hadn’t really meant for the “man” to slip out. It was just me trying too hard to be casual. I even added a shrug.
D brought his sandwich slowly to his mouth. Without taking his gaze off of me, he bit and chewed. Those blue eyes were intense.
He swallowed. “Pony play.”
“Yeah, like where a person pretends to be a horse.” I shrugged again. “You know.”
“Yes. I know.” He took another slow bite.
“I, uh . . . I know you like horses.”
He didn’t comment.
I cleared my throat. “A Friesian.”
“Pardon?”
“That’s the kind of horse I am. A Friesian. Because I remember you telling me how great they are.”
His expression softened. “I’m not sure whether I am honored or disturbed.” He paused. “I will go with honored.”
“Please don’t tell Dave. It would kill him.”
A strange guzzling sound came out of his throat. I thought for a sec he was crying. Then I realized he was laughing. Hard. “Ohh. I’ll try. I really will. But . . .” He wiped under his eye with one finger. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m just . . . imagining David . . .”