by Lulu Dewey
Samuel Johnson’s 1755 definition of the essay always resonates with me: "a loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular or orderly composition." It sounds like a horrible and embarrassing issue originating in the bowels, which I think mirrors my writing process perfectly.
I do not especially care for horses—they are far too spooky with their long snouts and clippy cloppy feet, their whinnying and neighing and whiskery jowls, and their devastating propensity to grow too old and be made into glue, like poor Boxer in Animal Farm, or to go lame and need to be shot in the head, like Black Beauty’s brother Rob Roy.
I hate for an animal to suffer, and I especially hate the way that horses suffer, with their frothy mouths and the whites of their eyes all showing. If I see a horse out to pasture, gamboling around with its long legs and shiny mane, I’m thinking about how close it is to death—any moment may be its last, and there’s a man waiting around every blade of grass with a well-oiled gun to put it out of its misery.
So you understand that I do not especially care for horses, and I especially abhor rodeo and horse racing and any other equine sport that will certainly lead to the hot crack of a bullet or a quick trip to the factory to be mashed into black-market burger patties. And that’s the other thing: I don’t know why we insist on treasuring horses, why we can’t bear to eat them, but then go ahead and ride them around like meaty bicycles and force them to do all manner of uncomfortable things, like jump over hurdles or carry children around at the county fair. With cows, at least, I know that they’re left alone for most of the day to chew cud and eat alfalfa, except twice a day for milking for dairy cows and the final trip to the slaughterhouse for beefy ones. At least they can live their own lives without being bothered by polo players or jockeys or cowboys. But it pains me equally as much to think of horses locked up in a stable alone at night, in the dark, dreaming only of the wild hillsides that their ancestors came from.
Worse than the horses themselves must be the horse people, who are everywhere, at every turn, inescapable: buying horse biscuits at the pet store or discussing dressage over dinner. First there was Sienna in third grade, who had hair like the silky floss from a corn and who brought her velvet horse-riding helmet to show-and-tell, and then Ms. E., my beloved fifth grade teacher who had a chestnut roan named Minuet, and then Emmeline from middle school who also had the velvet helmet and the silky corn hair, and Stephen, but we don’t need to talk about him, and I guess nobody from high school or college or beyond because people outgrow their love of horses temporarily once they hit puberty only to come back even stronger in middle age, renting a spot in a stable just outside the suburbs so that they can spend each weekend braiding manes and shoveling shit from beneath the heaving flanks of their dear quadrupeds.
Despite having consumed some significant quantity of horse meat in her childhood, my mother is one of these horse people too. She’s been in the market for a horse lately, the same way that when I was a child she was in the market for asthmatic guinea pigs, trios of rats, furious bunnies, cats plagued with increasingly bizarre neuroses, and even a deformed basset hound named Lola who likes to wipe her anus on the living room rug and who once ate an entire brie off the kitchen table before a party, leaving her bloated and flatulent for weeks.
These animals are good fun, and they make good company, and I’m glad that they found a home with us, despite the deranged rabbits sinking their teeth into my buttocks and the many animal funerals we’ve had to hold over the years. But I draw the line at horses—I absolutely draw the line. Have you seen a horse penis? They are monstrous and obscene, enough to make Ms. E send her dear Minuet straight back to where he came from, although I’m sure he’s on his best behavior every time she comes to visit him at the stable. And a horse could scarcely fit in my parents’ little backyard, which means they’d have to find a place for him to live somewhere out in the country, and I can just imagine that poor thing left all alone for weeks at a time while they work each day to house him, a single tear making its way down his unnervingly lengthy snout as he contemplates his own isolation.
Even without taking into account these questions of storage space and penile length, there’s no doubt that my mother’s affection is already spread too thin between the other animals and my saintly dad, who has been known to gently roll up a stray rat in a tiny blanket or catapult the dog across the fence to protect her from the neighbor’s blind and perpetually enraged beagle. There’s no way he could handle a horse amidst all this. Not to mention us three children, who require just as much love and care as the latest creature to cross the threshold, if not slightly more considering my lactose intolerance which has been especially bad this year with all the ice cream socials I’ve been invited to.
And I want to remind my mother about Stephen, what a disaster that was—how heinous it was when he ended up choosing Emmeline as his date to the Spring Fling instead of me, how my heart was torn to shreds, and how awful I felt for years afterwards, imagining them together on horseback, jumping hurdles and careening through fields of wildflowers, her poor hymen battered to bits by the impact. I’d never ride a horse at that age—what a risk. Not that I’m saving myself for marriage or anything, I’m not that sort of girl either, but there’s something so tragic about having your precious gift taken away from you by a horse, especially with Stephen on the premises.
In the end, the true tragedy was having my invitation to Emmeline’s 12th birthday party revoked because I struck the back of her neck with a ruler in Geometry class, having worked myself into a frenzy watching Stephen gape at her from across the room. Her silky hair did nothing to soften the blow, although I’m hardly a hard-hitter when it comes to acts of violence. Stephen though, with his riding crop and tight little horse riding pants, might be capable of anything. Stephen might have leapt across the classroom and turned my own ruler on me, leaving me weeping and bruised on the linoleum floor. But he didn’t, did he? He just sat there, blinking slowly at us with those long buttery eyelashes so that I wondered if he might be in the wrong math class, if basic arithmetic might be more at his level, and whether he was even a true horse boy if he didn’t have enough sense to giddy up when he needed to.
When the day of the party came and my classmates filed into Emmeline’s minivan to head to the stables, I stood on the curb waiting for the bus home and cursed the horse people for betraying me so fully. I swore off horses, chucked my sister’s copy of Seabiscuit in the garbage, and began spending my afternoons draped over the railing at the skatepark, sure that the antithesis of Stephen with his soft hands and elasticated waistbands must be one of these rough and tumble skater boys, clad in all black and smoking pot behind the bathrooms.
But you can’t escape the horse boys, no matter where you turn. My latest boyfriend has begun talking about getting a pair of thoroughbreds when he’s rich, which may be sooner than I’m ready for on account of his bulging bank account and rapid ascent to the top of a financial firm. When he drifts off to sleep each night I press the heel of my palm against his throat, leaving him gasping for breath, and whisper into his half-conscious head no horse no horse bad horse bad horse you hate horses bad bad bad until he stirs, and then right on time I curl up sweetly into a little ball and feign sleep. I like to think I’m doing us both a favor—with a pair of thoroughbreds in the picture he’d lose me for good, like Stephen and Emmeline did all those years ago. I’d much rather he went and slept with the 23rd floor conference room receptionist again, bent over her desk after sharing a few too many lines of cocaine at the office happy hour, than come home with not one but two horses, leaving me last in his affections.
So you see, there’s no use for horses. There’s no reason for my mother to go out and buy one, like a loaf of bread or a flowerpot, only for it to take up all the space in our living room and get pride of place in the family Christmas card. I’m much more useful than a horse, I want to remind her, and I don’t take up much room at all, especially now that I’ve restricted my diet to celery strings and sultanas. When I come to visit I tidy the house while she’s at work and only whine a little when I’m feeling tired or the sun is shining the wrong way at me in the back seat of the car. A horse wouldn’t even fit in the back seat of the car, and a horse certainly can’t help my mother choose out a new pair of shoes while she’s on her lunch break. A horse can’t clean or cook or bring her a cup of tea in the morning when she’s just waking up. A horse can only wrap its weird lips around a handful of hay, and stumble across the pasture like our Uncle Bart after a few too many drinks.
I suppose it would be nice to be reborn as a horse, just to see what all the fuss is about and never have to worry about being loved. I’d have lots of time for contemplation, and people would come and feed me fresh carrots or handfuls of grass, desperately trying to stroke my flanks and whispering sweet nothings into my peachy soft ears. Death, when it came, would be swift and merciful, and I’d be mourned like an only child, even if I ended up at the glue factory when all was said and done.
People are always talking about the intimate connection between horse and rider, after all. I like the sound of this connection, like a centaur or a two-headed snake. I like the sound of any connection, really—especially if it doesn’t involve too much small talk or sustained eye contact. My mother keeps sending me self-help books about making friends and being bold, or having “grit,” or being the type of person who walks into a room and makes the rounds shaking hands and passing out business cards. I want to tell her to send me a book about horses, so that I might slowly learn how to become one.
But I hate the way that horses suffer, with their frothy mouths and the whites of their eyes all showing. And I hate the way that I suffer, steeped in bitterness and vitriol, even though Emmeline ended up engaged to Derek at the Toyota dealership and Stephen is long gone somewhere, probably working in HR or actuarial science miles away from the nearest horse. Most of all, I hate the thought of my latest boyfriend in bed with the 23rd floor conference room receptionist, who for all I know might spend her weekends at the stables too.
I lean heavily on a particular narrative persona in both my fiction and nonfiction writing, which means that even my most sensible attempts at nonfiction tend to end up out in the ether. This is definitely the case with “Giddy Up, Horse Boy,” whose neurotic, horse-hating narrator exists in that lovely interstitial space between truth and fiction and allows me to embrace a sense of absurdity in the ways in which she relates to others. It’s this act of channeling, whether of a specific character or a mood or point in time, that feels most speculative to me.
And finally, Samuel Johnson’s 1755 definition of the essay always resonates with me: "a loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular or orderly composition." It sounds like a horrible and embarrassing issue originating in the bowels, which I think mirrors my writing process perfectly.
—
Lulu Dewey holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and a BS from the University of California, Berkeley. Her essays, stories, and journalism can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, DIAGRAM, Iowa Public Radio, and elsewhere.