LJ Idol Week 4 -- "If Wishes Were Horses"
It’s amazing the things you can hide when you’re living with your father in a two bedroom one bath house.
By this point, we’ve settled into a routine. He goes to see his boyfriend on weekends, leaving me with twenty dollars for takeout and a chestnut gelding named Pimento in the backyard. I order enough Chinese to last me the weekend (fried rice with crab rangoon and sesame chicken), fork over the twenty to the rumpled, sleepy delivery driver, and drag sheets and pillows into the barn, so I can sleep with the sound of Pimento’s steam-engine breathing in the stall next to me.
My dad knows I get Chinese every weekend, not that I turn stall number two into a makeshift bedroom. It’s probably a better job than his interior designer boyfriend could do. He should hire me as his assistant, except that then I wouldn’t get to wake up covered in hay on Sunday mornings.
Pimento was a gift from my dad’s ex boyfriend. He saw an empty barn in our backyard, so he got a horse to fill it. And then he got a Mexican day laborer to clean up after the horse. Carlo’s nice, he makes me tomatillos and migas on Sunday afternoon. We drink Tecate and talk about his daughter Ana. And Pimento’s just the right kind of horse for a girl like me to have. We clip clop around the neighborhood on Saturday afternoons, checking out yard sales in the summer and Christmas lights in the winter, and then we blaze up and down the nature trail a few miles away if it’s not too rainy. He’s big and rangy and I feel like I can stretch out into infinity if he runs fast enough. He’s not my forever horse, but it’s hard to make a forever horse out of an idle wish. Like I said, my dad’s ex bought him because he thought we were the kind of people who should have a horse. (Newflash: we’re not.) It’s just luck that I happened to know how to ride.
For a long time, my dad had this huge shadow of a secret; he was gay. But my secret is darker, never mind less socially acceptable. The bite of the blade and the scrape of a safety pin against my flesh was my bloody port in this stormy world for a long time, as long as I can remember. I’ve been treated, been through all the requisite therapies. During the week, I keep busy with my dad and my work and my books so the itch doesn’t find me. Once the weekend hits and the quiet descends upon the house like a lone hungry wolf, I seek out Pimento to act as my savior. The shine of his silver bit, the smell of leather as familiar as an old friend; these things put up sturdy walls between me and the urge. I don’t want to think about what might happen if my fortress should one day fall. I have a routine. It works. The idea of deviating, of taking a weekend off from Pimento and the early morning sweet feed, is almost too scary to contemplate.
Some girls drink rum and Cokes all weekend; I make bran mash and fill his water bucket and give him baths with the garden hose. After I have tomatillos and migas with Carlo, I go back down to the barn and he snoozes on me while I read Hemingway, propped up on my Hello Kitty pillow from when I was six. Around five, I haul everything back into the house, throw the horse-smelly stuff in the washer, take a shower and wait for my dad to come home. Sometimes he’ll sniff me as he’s coming in the door and say, “Been spending some time out with Pimento, I can tell.” No, Dad, you really can’t, and I like it that way.
By this point, we’ve settled into a routine. He goes to see his boyfriend on weekends, leaving me with twenty dollars for takeout and a chestnut gelding named Pimento in the backyard. I order enough Chinese to last me the weekend (fried rice with crab rangoon and sesame chicken), fork over the twenty to the rumpled, sleepy delivery driver, and drag sheets and pillows into the barn, so I can sleep with the sound of Pimento’s steam-engine breathing in the stall next to me.
My dad knows I get Chinese every weekend, not that I turn stall number two into a makeshift bedroom. It’s probably a better job than his interior designer boyfriend could do. He should hire me as his assistant, except that then I wouldn’t get to wake up covered in hay on Sunday mornings.
Pimento was a gift from my dad’s ex boyfriend. He saw an empty barn in our backyard, so he got a horse to fill it. And then he got a Mexican day laborer to clean up after the horse. Carlo’s nice, he makes me tomatillos and migas on Sunday afternoon. We drink Tecate and talk about his daughter Ana. And Pimento’s just the right kind of horse for a girl like me to have. We clip clop around the neighborhood on Saturday afternoons, checking out yard sales in the summer and Christmas lights in the winter, and then we blaze up and down the nature trail a few miles away if it’s not too rainy. He’s big and rangy and I feel like I can stretch out into infinity if he runs fast enough. He’s not my forever horse, but it’s hard to make a forever horse out of an idle wish. Like I said, my dad’s ex bought him because he thought we were the kind of people who should have a horse. (Newflash: we’re not.) It’s just luck that I happened to know how to ride.
For a long time, my dad had this huge shadow of a secret; he was gay. But my secret is darker, never mind less socially acceptable. The bite of the blade and the scrape of a safety pin against my flesh was my bloody port in this stormy world for a long time, as long as I can remember. I’ve been treated, been through all the requisite therapies. During the week, I keep busy with my dad and my work and my books so the itch doesn’t find me. Once the weekend hits and the quiet descends upon the house like a lone hungry wolf, I seek out Pimento to act as my savior. The shine of his silver bit, the smell of leather as familiar as an old friend; these things put up sturdy walls between me and the urge. I don’t want to think about what might happen if my fortress should one day fall. I have a routine. It works. The idea of deviating, of taking a weekend off from Pimento and the early morning sweet feed, is almost too scary to contemplate.
Some girls drink rum and Cokes all weekend; I make bran mash and fill his water bucket and give him baths with the garden hose. After I have tomatillos and migas with Carlo, I go back down to the barn and he snoozes on me while I read Hemingway, propped up on my Hello Kitty pillow from when I was six. Around five, I haul everything back into the house, throw the horse-smelly stuff in the washer, take a shower and wait for my dad to come home. Sometimes he’ll sniff me as he’s coming in the door and say, “Been spending some time out with Pimento, I can tell.” No, Dad, you really can’t, and I like it that way.