Manties in a Twist

by J. A. Rock

  “Let’s do it.”

  We took the rubber mitt, a currycomb, a stiff bristle brush, and a soft brush up to the checkout. Plus a riding whip Ryan had found that was long and straight and black, with a silver cap on the handle, and a tiny, thin lash about two inches long.

  The cashier rang us up without a word.

  I nodded at her. “I think for now our niece is just going to groom her horse. And maybe whip it, but only to give cues.”

  She didn’t answer. Handed our bag to us with a flat stare. “Have a good day.”

  I was pretty fucking sure we would.

  We ended up going home and shopping for human-pony stuff online. We used Ryan’s laptop this time so we could sit on the couch. We found a website that was really helpful in terms of telling us about pony gear. But there was so much gear, and we had no idea what we actually needed.

  “Bridle.” Ryan made a note. “Definitely. And I guess just a regular bit? We don’t need the kind that, like, pushes your tongue down, right?”

  “Why would we need that?”

  “It’s for bad ponies.”

  “I’m not a bad pony!” I rested my chin on his shoulder and stared at the screen.

  “Aww.” He leaned his head against mine. “Are you the best pony?”

  “Yeah.” I yawned and made nyop nyop nyop sounds afterward. Settled my chin back on his shoulder. I turned my head slightly and stuck my tongue up and to the side until it touched his earlobe.

  He laughed and swatted me away. “Pay attention. Here’s the form we have to fill out about your pony persona. See?”

  Breed. Name. Age. Height. Weight. Coloring. Distinguishing marks. Temperament. Past owners. Cart pony or riding pony? It went on.

  “So what kind of horse are you?” Ryan asked.

  “A Friesian,” I said immediately. D loved Friesians, and D was one of the coolest guys I’d ever met. He’d shown me some pictures, and Friesians really were literally the most beautiful horses ever.

  “A what?”

  “A Friesian. It’s a giant black warhorse. Here.” I took over the laptop and Googled Friesians. Pulled up a picture of a huge black horse with a long, wavy mane and tail.

  “Pretty sure my sister had that exact perm in high school.” Ryan cocked his head. “That’s a gorgeous animal.”

  “Right? Now imagine I’m that.”

  He looked at me. “If you were a horse, you would totally be that.”

  “I know. Look at that tail. People spend, like, hours putting conditioner on that shit, D said.”

  He went back to the form and typed in Friesian. “And what’s your name?”

  I thought for a moment. “It needs to be something really powerful. Like Thor.”

  He made a face.

  “You don’t like Thor? What about, like, Storm . . . Trooper? Fire Hawk? Lightning Cloud King Flame-Wreath?”

  “That’s a little long.”

  “Thunder Canyon.”

  “Isn’t that a ride at Cedar Point?”

  I nodded. “It is. The best ride. I want my name to be Thunder Canyon.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thunder Canyon the Friesian.” He filled it in. “How old are you?”

  “Um, how long do horses live?”

  “Like, thirty years or something.”

  “Can I be seven?”

  “Sure.” Ryan typed it into the form. “Aaaand . . . sex?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. What’s your sex?”

  “Man horse.”

  “That’s not a choice. Stallion, gelding, mare, colt, filly.”

  I looked at the choices. “What the hell is ‘gelding’?”

  “It means you’re a boy horse with your balls cut off.”

  “Hell no! I’m a stallion.”

  We went through my temperament and training. I was playful and friendly. I listened most of the time. I knew how to walk, trot, canter, and gallop on cue.

  “What are your preferred treats?” Ryan glanced at me.

  “Wings.”

  “Horses can’t eat wings. That’s sick.” He looked at the screen again. “The examples are carrots, apple slices, peppermints, sugar cubes, and oats.”

  “What about . . . wings?”

  “Still not an option.”

  “Jolly Ranchers?”

  “I think Jolly Ranchers would work.” He filled it in.

  Eventually we moved on to the list of beginner pony gear. We found a fetish shop that sold bridles. Very expensive bridles.

  “Ooh, I want the feathery thing on top!”

  Ryan looked at me. “You want a plume?”

  “Yeah. I gotta stand out, right?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  I pointed at another bridle. “I like that gold bit. And what are those things?”

  Ryan enlarged the picture of the bridle. “Blinkers. They keep the horse focused on what’s straight in front of him.”

  “Let’s get that blinkers one, with the gold bit.”

  “It doesn’t have a plume.”

  “We can make a feathery thing to put on top. It’ll be cheaper that way.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard to rig.” Ryan put the bridle in the cart, and I got a thrill in the pit of my stomach. I was gonna wear that fucker. On my face.

  We found a harness that said it was good for beginning ponies. A lead rope. Some hoof gloves. An information page that explained the difference between riding ponies and cart ponies.

  “I’m not gonna be naked at this show thingy,” I said, gazing warily at the photos of naked ponies. “Okay? Can I be one of the ponies that wears black clothes under the harness?”

  “Sure. Except you’ve got a really good chest. I’d vote for shirtless.”

  It was a fair point. My chest was fucking amazing. Plus abs. “But Friesians are all black,” I pointed out.

  “All right.” He paused. “Tight black T-shirt, then.”

  “Done.” I clicked on another link. “Look at this shit.” This page had rows and rows of hoods. Some had ears and noses; some were like leather gas masks. “These are demonic.” I clicked on a full leather horse head with terrifying eyeholes.

  “Ewwww!” Ryan grabbed for the computer. “Get rid of it!” He clicked back to harnesses, then breathed a sigh of relief. “Just use your regular face for this, okay?”

  “Agreed.”

  “Do we need riding reins or long reins?”

  “Long reins, right? Because we’re doing carts.”

  “Shit, we’re up to three hundred and thirty dollars already.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “And we don’t even have a cart yet.”

  I looked at him. “What do we do?”

  “I think I can get us a cart, actually. If you don’t mind waiting a week or so.”

  “Dude, the less time we have, the sweeter the montage.”

  “Ooh, here’s a really nice black tail. Do you want the butt plug tail? Or the one that attaches to a harness?”

  I stared at him. “The tail goes up my butt?”

  “It can.”

  “Shit just got real.” I turned back to the screen. “Get me the butt plug one.”

  “You sure?”

  “I don’t want some wussy harness tail. Mine’s gonna be up my ass.”

  He added it. “Oookay, and we already have a whip, so—”

  “No! I don’t wanna be whipped.” I slung my arm around his throat and pretended to choke him.

  He played along, making strangled noises for a moment, before batting my arm away. “Look what the pony play site says on this subject: ‘For dressage, the whip is a vital cuing device. It is not used to hit or punish the pony. It takes the place of leg cues.’ See, if we’re doing this dressage thing, we need a whip.” He paused. “What do they mean, takes the place of leg cues?”

  “I dunno.”

  We looked it up and found a video of a ponygirl doing dressage. The human wasn�
��t riding the pony—she stood on the ground holding long reins and was using a thin, straight whip, like the one we’d bought, to tap different parts of the pony’s body. She never hit the pony—like, almost everything she did with the whip was so light and quick you’d miss it if you blinked.

  “So wait, do I have to prance like that?” I asked. The ponygirl was, like, seriously lifting her legs up. And doing some crazy sideways movements.

  “Uh, yeah. Look at the video description. Dressage is the highest form of horse training. It balances obedience, flexibility, and elegance.”

  “How does that equal prancing?”

  “Haven’t you ever seen the horse stuff at the Olympics? The dressage horses have to do all kinds of prancy stuff. They, like, jog in place.” He stood. “Like this.” He jogged in slo-mo, lifting his legs high without actually moving forward.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Maybe you want to be the pony?”

  “Hell no. This is all you.” He sat again.

  “I want a mane. So everyone knows I’m a Friesian.”

  He thought for a moment. “I might have an idea.”

  I rested my head on his shoulder. “What?”

  “I was Slash from Guns N’ Roses for Halloween a few years ago. I think I still have the wig.”

  I stared at him. “You went as Slash?”

  “Why not?”

  “Hey, rock on.”

  Slowly, things began to take shape. We ordered the gear and promised we wouldn’t worry about the price. And over the next few days, while we waited for the stuff to arrive, I watched videos. Not just pony play videos, but real horse videos too. Man, people did some weird shit with horses. Like, what was the point of making a horse run around you in circles? And what the crap was “posting”?

  The human ponies were hilarious. Some of them wore the demon hoods, and some had fancy bridles or latex suits or crazy boots designed to make their legs look like horse legs with hooves on the end. But some just had black clothes and bit gags with reins attached. Nothing fancy. I watched a lot of dressage videos and studied the prancing. I wrote down the names of different gaits and transitions. Walk, trot, canter, gallop. Halt, back up. Dressage: half pass. Full pass. A bunch of French words I couldn’t pronounce. I read about what horses liked to eat, and how they communicated with their ears and tails and stuff.

  One night I made the mistake of clicking on a link about burdizzo clamps. “Ryaaaaannnn!” I called.

  He emerged from the bedroom. “Yeah?”

  “Sometimes pony players have pretend vet examinations and sometimes they use these clamps that get used on real horses to crush their balls and make them fall off, except they don’t actually crush the human ponies’ balls, but they pretend to with the burrito clamps and it’s horrifying.”

  He didn’t quite catch all that, so he came to read over my shoulder. He made some faces as he read. “Those are not called burrito clamps.”

  “Bur-donka-donka whatever clamps. I don’t care.”

  “So are you saying you want to get fake gelded?”

  “No. I am saying that if you ever even think about gelding Thunder Canyon, he will trample you.”

  Ryan put an arm around me. “I vow to keep my pony intact.”

  “Forever,” I said.

  “Forever,” he agreed.

  Later, when he was locked away in the bedroom again with his drawing program, I was looking online for more pony play info.

  That’s when I found the Pegasus Sheath.

  A seven-inch sheath shaped like a horse penis, which could be worn with or without an erection. The idea that Thunder Canyon wouldn’t have one was unfathomable to me. Plus it was on sale. Plus it was black, so it matched Friesians.

  I glanced at the bedroom door. How freaking surprised would Ryan be? I put it in my cart and ordered it, and then spent the next fifteen minutes repeating the words “Pegasus Sheath” in my head and snickering.

  Dave assembled Miles and me at the duplex for a top-secret meeting on Tuesday while Gould was at work. “I wanted to talk to you about Gould’s birthday, which is now two weeks and six days away.”

  Shit. I’d forgotten. And from the expression on Dave’s face, he knew I’d forgotten.

  “He doesn’t want anything big,” Dave went on. “But I was thinking maybe we could throw him just a medium-sized turning-thirty party.”

  Miles narrowed his eyes. “But he’s not turning thirty.”

  “I know. But he’s been getting a lot of crap from his parents lately about how if he’s not married by thirty, his ancestors are gonna start, like, rotating in their graves like rotisserie chickens, and I think it’s getting to him.”

  “Do they know he’s gay?” I asked.

  “He’s not. He’s bi or queer or whatever he’s going by now. And I don’t think they care if he marries a man or a woman, they just want him married.”

  Miles sighed. “He should know better than to listen to that nonsense.”

  Dave shook his head. “It’s not that easy, dude. My mom tells me about all her friends who are becoming grandmas, and it, like, makes me want to instantly have a baby just so she won’t stop loving me. Anyway, he thinks his thirtieth birthday is gonna be completely miserable because his family’s gonna be judging him. So I thought we could throw him a really fun thirtieth two years in advance, without his relatives around, to counteract the real thing.”

  “That sounds awesome,” I said.

  “What if he is married by thirty?” Miles asked.

  “Then you can never have too many pleasant thirtieth birthday parties.” Dave slid a card across the table to us. “I got this for us to sign.”

  The card was for a special bar mitzvah boy.

  Miles frowned at it. “Classy.”

  “I know, right? He gets me ‘For the world’s best grandma’ cards every year, so this is only fair.”

  Miles signed the card, then passed it to me. “Drix and I can make a cake.” He took out his phone. “I’ll let him know.”

  I looked up from the card. “I can sing him a Marilyn Monroe happy birthday.”

  “Cool.” Dave nodded. “I haven’t decided on the exact theme, but I figure we’ll go to dinner somewhere that serves gluten-free beer. And obviously, everyone’s welcome. Partners, friends. Friends of partners.” He looked at me and grinned. “Even Ryan, if he can behave himself.”

  That kinda gut-punched me, but by the time I even got my thoughts together, Dave was talking again.

  “We’re gonna plan the greatest non-thirtieth birthday ever for one Mr. R . . .” He stopped. Squinted. “Oh my God. What is Gould’s first name? Robert or Roger?”

  I hesitated. I’d never called him anything but Gould. And yeah, pretty sure some drunken night years ago I’d asked him what his full name was, but hell if I could remember. “Uh . . .”

  Dave’s mouth hung kinda open. “This is ridiculous. He’s our best friend. His name is on my lease. I know what it is. I’m just having this epic brain fart.”

  Miles raised his eyebrows and continued typing on his phone. “They say your memory begins to deteriorate after age twenty-five.”

  Dave waved at him, frustrated. “Miles, you have a beautiful mind. Is it Robert or Roger?”

  “I think it’s Robert, but I’m not sure. He was introduced to me as Gould. Even Hal called him that. Who’s his mail addressed to?”

  “Mr. R. Gould.”

  Dave glanced at each of us. “Seriously, nobody knows his first name? And we’ve been friends with him for how long?”

  “Forty-seven years.” I tried to draw a nice heart next to my message on the card, but it looked like a butt.

  “Nobody has been friends with him for forty-seven years.”

  “If you count past lives.”

  “Nothing you’re saying is real.”

  “I think it’s Robert,” Miles said.

  Dave sighed, drumming the table. “It’s either Robert or Roger. How can his last name be so Jewish when his first name is
so something you would name your cat to be ironic?”

  “What about his parents?” Miles tried. “We’ve definitely heard them say his name. Right?”

  Dave shrugged. “I don’t know. His mom used to take us shopping at Kohl’s and be like—” he put on a British accent “—‘Robert, do you need any drink-specific glassware?’ Or maybe it was ‘Roger.’”

  I slid the card back to him. “Dude, his parents aren’t British.”

  “I know. A lot of people are British in my mind, though. Like Miles.”

  Miles rolled his eyes.

  “I’m gonna call him.” Dave took out his phone and dialed. I could hear the ringing on the other end, and then, faintly, Gould’s hello.

  Dave leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Hi, R. Gould?” he said, in a fake polite tone. “It’s your friend David. Yes, David Holbrook. I live with you.” He listened for a moment. “It’s okay—I’m told I’m not very memorable.” Another pause. “What am I wearing?” He glanced down. “Uhhh . . . your clothes. I dress in your clothes while you’re gone and have tea parties with myself, pretending to be you.”

  He listened some more. “Wonderful. Anyway, I wondered if you could solve a dilemma we’re having. And please don’t think I’m a bad friend. But what the fuck is your first name?”

  A pause. “Is it Robert? Or Roger?”

  Another pause.

  “Miles and Kamen don’t know either.”

  I couldn’t quite make out what Gould was saying, but I could tell he was laughing.

  Dave slumped. “Pleeeaaaase just tell us?” He made a face at Miles and me as he listened. “Rathbone? That is not a real name.”

  He placed a hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “He’s being difficult.” Into the phone, he said, “It’s Robert, seriously? See, now I can’t tell whether you’re screwing with me, or . . . I see. Well, I can’t wait until you come home and hold me until deep in the night.”

  He laughed at whatever Gould said next.

  “Gould! I don’t even— What does that even mean?” His jaw dropped. “Oh dear God. Is that seriously a thing people do? Okay. Then yes. You can do that to me when you get home.”