How I Learned about Vice.

No doubt that horses and vice have been interconnected for thousands of years.

Twitch a gelding’s lip with a chain looped steel rod when your 7 years old and you realize real quick that there might not be such a fine line between violence, force and control. 4”2 and a twist of the arm-between he and you- suddenly an asymmetry exists that isn’t mimicked in the rest of society.

Small overpowers large.

Weak controls strong.

Female subdues male.

Walk down the centerline of a double-barreled barn at dusk, with horses stabled to your left and to your right, the concrete and stone still damp from the mornings mucking and pieces of sawdust floating through the air, momentarily captured in the spotlight cast by the setting sun breeching through tiny cracks in the stall doors and listen.

STAMP.

STAMP.

KICK.

STAMP.

STAMP.

KICK.

Like a dragon in a cave you’ve heard the echo of the stud down the corridors all day and for hours have wondered what he looks like. Your imagination has begun to get the best of you at 9. Fire breathing and cloven hoofed this fear, this unknown, excites you.

Approaching his stall, making sure no one spies you falling prey to the temptation of his ferocity and beauty. Lying at the furthest edge of the barn with a buffer of empty stalls placed around him, a veiled protection for the mare’s nearby who send him into an untamable rage with even their slightest tail swish.

Feigning innocence as you near him. Moving in towards the door as you approach. Tension builds as the hoof slamming pauses and you rise up slowly onto the tippy toe’s of your stained red stripped Sperry’s to see in, holding your breath as though you were underwater.

His nostrils pulse. Opening and closing rhythmically. He takes you in with the wild whites of his eyes and curls his lip into the Flehman Response. With his arching crest stretched high into the air as though he was blind and searching he begins to pitch about the stall snorting and clopping his hooves onto the revealed mat below As if to greet you he smacks the door sending a vibration of energy through your fingertips deep into your bones.

Later that night as your dad drives you home in his 1984 Thunderbird you stretch your hand out the window against the force of the air listening to the gears move from 3^rd to 4^th to 5^th and notice that the vibration of the stud still purrs with power in your bones.