A couple of hours later and she’s on beer number five. And to be honest, I’m not all that certain how many I’ve had. One thing is for certain though – we’ve both had plenty of whiskey.

At some point in the evening we gravitated onto the back porch which has become the jazz bar of the party to the living rooms’ dance club. Out here things are low key. A few groups of people are smoking pot and the conversation is purely symbolic. I can hear the Beegees blaring out of the living room where rumor has it our host and a huge crowd are doing “the Hustle.”

I peer into the kitchen in between swigs of beer and frankly I’m really at a loss for a good analogy to fit that scene. It’s not a jazz bar. It’s not a dance club. It’s…

It’s way too many fucking people packed into a cramped area. Why must everyone be in the kitchen? How can they stand it? The kegs are surrounded and failed attempts to get into the refrigerator are common. We moved our booze to the back porch a long time ago.

Elizabeth and I have spun through hours of high-speed drunken conversation this evening. in hallways, in the kitchen and out on the back porch. I try to inventory what we’ve talked about. Hopefully I haven’t spilled out too many sappy little stories of my life. I don’t know what to think of her. She’s beautiful and a lot of fun but I’m not too sure how much I actually have in common with her. She’s never heard of any of the bands I’m into. She loves sports — I’m not all that into them to say the least. She makes fun of my frequent references to movies.

She thought she’d heard of this author I was telling her about named T. Coraghessan Boyle but it turned out she was thinking of the former Vice President Dan Quayle. And two more strikes against her: she doesn’t vote and she’s never seen ‘Star Wars.’

I’ve been talking to my ex-college roomie, Farmer Tim for the past half-hour. I’m not even sure where the bombshell is… Wait a minute, there she is. She’s across the porch talking to a couple of MTV House of Style girls. The three of them have been glancing over at me from time to time and smiling I’m not really sure how to read that. I’ve decided it means either, “isn’t he cute” or “the poor fucker…”

“So how’d you hook up with the knockout?” Farmer Tim asks, motioning across the porch. “I mean, you didn’t do too bad up at Mizzou but fuck man… she’s incredible!”

“One of my friends set me up with her,” I say.

“You’re shitting me,” he says.

I shake my head. We glance over at her and take another drink of our beers. “So the Ghost was telling me you just got back from Mexico. How was it?” I ask.

“Ohh man, it was soooo much fun. We had a total blast. The women there loved us,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“They followed us down the street, literally everywhere we went!” he gestures. “I guess they loved our gringo asses or whatever, but we couldn’t get rid of them if we tried. You remember ‘Fish-fry?’ He lived with us right before you moved?”

“Yeah, I ran into him not too long ago. He went down there with you guys?” Farmer Tim is an animated guy. When he gets going it’s almost like he’s on a talk show – the hands are moving, and the head is swinging back and forth like he’s singing or something. And he could be on a talk show because he’s an Anthony Michael Hall look-alike. Not so much anymore, but when he was a freshman he sure did. Which is why we pinned the ‘Sixteen Candles’ nickname on him, changing Farmer Ted to Farmer Tim. Everyone should have a nickname. They make life more colorful.

“No he couldn’t make it,” he continues. “But before we left on the trip he taught us some key Spanish phrases like ‘Can I please have a beer?’ and ‘Please refill my tequila.’ But the most holy one though, he taught us how to say ‘Your beauty sets my eyes on fire.’” I laugh.

“We said that every chance we got and it drove the women crazy. They’d just be all grins,” he says.

“Well I hope he taught you how to say ‘safe sex.’ You guys didn’t come back with any weird diseases did you?” I ask.

“No man, we were all careful.”

“Well I’m very proud of you. And I think you’re gonna have to teach me that ‘eyes of fire’ phrase. The bombshell over there apparently knows Spanish,” I nod over my shoulder. “Maybe it’ll work on her.”

“Oh man! Well, yeah, you gotta learn it then. It’s something like, ‘Mi peña est la peña del fuego…’”

I take a stab at saying it but get it wrong.

“No, it’s ‘Mi peña est la peña del fuego…’” he says, enunciating each syllable. I repeat it a few times with his corrections.

“Yeup, you got it,” he says. “If she speaks Spanish you’ll have her swooning.”

“Cool man, thanks. Maybe I’ll get a chance to use that later. Hey…” I start to say, but a couple of arms are encircling me. A drunken Elizabeth is cutely latched onto my midsection. I pat her on top of the head a few times trying to act nonchalant about being hugged by this really attractive girl with glassy, smoldering eyes. “Elizabeth, this is another of my college roommates, Farmer Tim.”

“Nice to meet you Tim. Hey!! Do you know anyone without a nickname?” she asks me.

Tim chuckles. “I doubt it.”

“What’s his?” she says, pointing at me.

“Captain,” he answers before I can stop him. “Or sometimes just the Cap’n for short.”

“Captain?” she asks. “Where did that come from?”

“He was really popular with the women in college so we started calling him the Captain,” he says. “Not too sure how that one started. You remember Craig?”

“No, I don’t have a clue,” I lie.

“So how does this fit in with the Honduran guy you called ‘the General?’” Elizabeth slurs.

“Oh man!” Tim laughs. “I haven’t seen that guy in years. How does she know about the General?” he asks me.

“We ran into the Ghost in the kitchen and I had to spin the ‘Legend of the Ghost’ for her. Remember how the General fit into that one? No pun intended.”

“Ohhh yeahhhh!!” He starts laughing. “‘And this is my boyfriend Terry..’ That was classic! The General. We started calling him that because Craig was the Captain and had all this success with women and old Jacob was so fucking shy and quiet. Really cool guy once you got him started talking but he would never ask women out. He wasn’t gay or anything and he wasn’t homely or anything – just way too shy to get dates. I think we started calling him ‘the General’ to boost his confidence. You just had to know the guy. Calling him the General implied that he was a babe-magnet. Like Craig here was the Cap’n,” he claps me on the back. “But the General was in charge for all matters dealing with women.”

I finish my beer off. “You want another one?” I ask my date.

“I wanna go see my horse,” she asks.

“Your what?”

“My horse,” she says again.

“Oh. Why do you want to see your horse all of the sudden?” I ask.

“I was just talking to those girls over there about him and now I miss him,” she says, putting on a little sad face. Men get all drunk and sappy and start talking about old college roommates named the General. Women get all drunk and sappy and start talking about their horse. Then they want to go see the horse – right now.

“So where’s this horse?” I ask, humoring her.

“My grandparents stable is just up the road, it’s just two blocks north on Baxter.”

“Can we go boogie with Steve for awhile before we leave?” I ask.

Tim makes eye contact and grins at me and suddenly the “guy telepathy” is working. The same power that allows me to send waitresses drink orders with a mere glance also allows me to receive urgent messages from close male friends. Incoming transmission… [ Stable. Nighttime. Dark. Hay loft. Large Breasts. Get a clue. Go! Now! Force be with you, Cap'n. ] He winks at me. I nod subtly. Message received.

“On second thought, I don’t feel much like dancing,” I say. “Let’s go see this horse of yours.”


Futon

I wasn’t about to let her drive. She wanted to. She gave me the, “It’s only a few blocks, we’ll be fine” bit, but multiple shots of Jack Daniel’s made me a little leery of climbing into that rocket again. So did I have to fight with her about driving? Did it have to turn into an embarrassing situation with me having to insist she was too drunk to drive?

No. I utilized something I learned about women all the way back in grade school, something that works every time. I asked her if she wanted to walk since it wasn’t far and was such a nice night and when she complained that she didn’t want to walk that far, I offered to give her a piggyback ride. It took her all of 1.5 seconds to accept my offer and jump up onto my back. In fact, I think she was already jumping as soon as the word ‘piggyback’ left my lips.

So I looped my arms under her legs and off we went down the sidewalk. And I have to say, there’s nothing cooler than plodding down the street with a cute girl on your back.

“Am I getting to heavy for you yet,” she says, pointing me off of Baxter Road and onto a dirt road.

“Not really, you’re pretty damn light – even with all that beer and whisky in you.” She gives me a swat on the ass. “Hey, this is a piggyback ride, not a horseback ride,” I say

“This is fun!!” She giggles and buries her face into the back of my hair.

“So what’s this horse’s name?” I ask.

“Bogart!”

“Bogart huh? So how’d you and Bogart get together?” I ask.

“Oh, that’s a really neat story. I’d been riding my grandfather’s horse ‘Lucky’ for years. But Lucky just got too old. So anyways, my father bought me a horse for my birthday. Actually he didn’t buy me one. He gave me a blank check and an advertisement for a big horse auction a week later. I remember the card said, ‘When you see the horse of your dreams, bid on it until you get it. Don’t let the price get in-between you and your horse.’”

“Wow, you have a cool dad,” I say.

“Well, wait… The auction day rolled around and we paced into the Mercedes bound for the country. And my dad just couldn’t get the car started! It was a fucking Mercedes,” she slurs. “They always start! And we finally we get to the auction like two hours late, and all the horses have been bid on except one. And everyone is gone and I start bawling my head off. But my father says we should go look at this last horse even though it’s the last of the day. He’s a horrible optimistic old man.”

I duck under a spider web that stretches across the old dirt road. This must be one of the last vestiges of “the country” left in Chesterfield, the last dirt road. Trees line the little road and I can see an old barn up ahead. But I can also see a strip mall, a school and modern houses about a half a mile away on the next rise of hill.

“So anyways,” she continues. “We end up at the horse’s stall and there’s no one there. And I’m still bawling but that stopped pretty quickly when I see the beautiful horse. I tell my daddy right then and there that I want him. It was like, the bidding hasn’t started yet and I don’t know how well he’s trained or even how old he is. But you should’ve seen him. He was a little dirty, but he was so tall, and white and majestic. It was the horse of my dreams. So I bid on him and got him and I named him Bogart because I used to love watching ‘Casablanca’ as a kid. And now I keep him here at my grandparent’s barn,” she says, pointing ahead.

“Well I can’t wait to meet him.”

“The weird thing was,” she says. “If the Mercedes hadn’t stalled and got us there late I might have left with another horse or wouldn’t have stuck around long enough to meet Bogart. It’s like it was meant to happen, the car not starting.”

“A little synchronicity huh?” I ask.

“What’s that?”

“Synchronicity? You don’t know what it is?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she says.

“Oh man, you must have skipped your preliminary Psych classe that day. I really think you’d better go back and read up on it. It’s was one of Jung’s coolest theories. At least I think so.”

“So what does it have to do with my horse?” she asks.

“Hmmm. How to describe this…” I say. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘everything happens for a reason?’”

“Uh huh.”

“Well most people would apply that comment to Christianity,” I say. “You know, ‘God’s got a plan for all of us’ and all that happy shit? But I think it originated with Jung’s theory of synchronicity. Jung theorized that life is not a great big collection of random events, but instead, it’s a great big collection of related events. He felt that life’s seemingly unrelated events were in fact related, that they could be directly related without any physical causality.”

“Hmmmm..” she says. I think I may have lost her.

“So your horse Bogart being placed as the last horse to be auctioned that day and that car not starting were part of the bigger pattern of the synchronicity of our world,” I say. “The events were related and offset each other perfectly but you couldn’t explain the correlation through any normal measure of cause and effect.”

“I don’t get it,” she says.

“I dunno, never mind. I’ll shut up. I think weird shit when I’m drunk. But it sounds like you and your Bogart were destined to meet each other.”

“We were!” she says, hopping off my back and running for the barn doors. “We were destined to meet.”

“Bogart…” she calls running into the barn. I follow her into the darkness of the barn. You know, It’s amazing how smells bring back memories. The smell of this barn has instantly transported me back to the barn I grew up with. It had birds nesting in the rafters and a rabbit hutch where I raised a couple of French Lop rabbits. This is a different barn but the smell is exactly the same. It’s so many different smells intertwined: dust, hay and barley, saddle soap, aged leather, horsefly spray, sawdust and of course, horse sweat.

She’s standing in front of one of the stalls and puts a finger to her lips as I walk up. I peer down into the stall and there he is just like she described him – a massive white horse. He’s lying on the floor of his stall with his legs tucked under him. I had forgotten that horses do that, lay down that is. I can’t come close to describing it but it’s really awe-inspiring to see an animal that large lying down with its eyes closed. I mean, they’re so tall and so much larger than their riders and to see them down at that level sound asleep… Bogart opens his eyes and shakes his head, noticing us for the first time.

“Heya Bogart,” she whispers. The giant horse picks itself up, getting his feet back under himself and rises. He shakes a little dust storm of sawdust off himself and comes over to greet us.

“Wow, you picked a good one,” I say. He’s beautiful. And he’s huge! But how the hell do you get on him?”

“I have to use a fence,” she giggles. “I can’t reach the stirrups when he’s saddled.”

I rub Bogart under the chin and I can feel his breath on my hand, smelling me in big inhales of breath. He shakes his head a little bit and looks at me down his long curving head. Horses are such beautiful animals.

“This is really cool,” I say.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“I guess I’d forgotten how cool horses are,” I say. “I’d forgotten how wispy and soft the fur feels on the bottom of their chin. I’d forgotten how they rub their heads against the stall door when they have an itch. Just walking into the barn and smelling that old barn smell has brought back a ton of memories.”

“Do you miss it?” she asks.

“Yeah. I guess I do. I remember when I was younger I’d be out on the town and get home at like two in the morning and before I even attempted to sneak into the house, I’d always sneak into the barn as quietly as I could just to get a glimpse of the horses sleeping. They look so peaceful and helpless when they’re laying down,” I say.

“I do the same thing,” she says smiling. She hands Bogart a handful of hay and he chomps it down in no time.

“I’m gonna let him out into the pasture,” she says.

“Aren’t you afraid he’s going to be a little hard to catch when we’re ready to leave?”

“No, he obeys me,” she says. “When I want him back in I just put a little grain in a coffee can and shake it and he comes running in from the pasture like the flash. He loves food.”

She opens the stall door and Bogart comes shuffling out. She attaches a lead to his halter and steers him out the back entrance to the barn. And as soon as he’s loose, the horse streaks off into the darkness. In the moonlight I can see him from time to time galloping around the pasture. One minute he’s at the top of the pasture and the next minute he’s at the bottom. Then he disappears into some trees and then suddenly flies past us at a full run.

“For a horse that big he sure is fast,” I say. “It almost seems like there are two of him out there.”

“Yeah, I almost named him Spooky,” she says, sitting down on well-worn log. I sit down next to her. For a few quiet minutes we watch her horse run back and forth across the pasture, snorting in the night-time air and shaking his head as he runs through the moonlight.

She swats at an unseen bug that’s apparently landed on her neck. “So how’d you like the party?” she asks.

“It was a blast!” I say. ‘It’s weird to go to a party thinking you won’t know anyone and then run into a bunch of old college buddies. Steve is a really cool guy too.”

“Yeah, he really is,” she says. “This is sort of an annual event for him. He has to watch his parent’s house while they’re away on their spring vacation. And that was bullshit by the way, that thing about having a few classes with him this semester. I’ve known him for years. We have this running joke where we pretend not to know each other very well.” I wonder why that’s supposed to be funny but I let it pass. Maybe it’s an inside joke or something.

“He’s pretty cool,” I say. “And you should have introduced him as a Rams player. I had no idea.”

“He doesn’t play that often,” she says. She bends down to scratch her ankle and on her way back up the view is pretty incredible. Her tank top is hanging wide open. There’s the lacy patterned bra, there’s that wonderful hollow that runs between the breasts… And there she is catching me looking. Fuck.

“Sorry, I always get caught.” I laugh. “I have a knack for it. I really, really try to be discreet about it but it doesn’t do any good.”

“That’s alright.” She grins. “I caught you looking quite a few times tonight but I pretended not to notice.”

“So does it bother you?” I ask. “Or do you give all guys a break, you know, because they’re guys and ‘they do that.’”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Sometimes when I’m in a bad mood it bothers me Or if some guy downright leers at me or something. But mostly I find it flattering.”

“Well you should because they’re very nice.”

“Really?” she asks, making eye contact.

“Uhhh. Yeah. And don’t take any offense by this but they’re so perfect, I’ve been trying to figure out all evening whether or not they’re real.”

“Oh, they’re real,” she says, and there it is againthat smile like a dare.

“Can you prove it?” I kid her. “Can I see your registration papers?” She stands up and turns to me smiling. And without warning she pulls her tank top off.

Jesus! My eyes must have just bugged out cartoon-style because she can’t help but start laughing at me. She clutches the small clasp between the two cups of her bra and toys with it, smiling at me. She’s probably just teasing me. Ahh the cruel punishments of life, I’m thinking when… Snap, and off comes the bra.

Jesus!! Jesus on a mountain wearing a crash helmet!!!

“Oh my god…” I manage to utter in awe. Breasts are my thing. They don’t have to be large or anything for that matter as long as they’re real. I love them. I like eyes too. But of course, they’re number two on my list. And I have to admit, I’ve been wondering what hers looked like all night. Sometimes it was hard to keep my mind on the conversation. Was the bra hiding additional size? How firm would they be? How large would her nipples be and what color? Questions answered: larger than the tank top belied but beautifully round, very firm, nipples about the size half dollars with a rosy pink complexion.

“Go ahead…” she says, glancing down at her breasts. I think she’s giving me the go ahead to touch them… It takes me about 1.5 seconds to accept her offer. And wow, they’re real and very soft and very… what’s word I’m looking for here? Pliable? Squishy? Heh – no. You know, that’s how any girl could talk me out of driving drunk. She could say something like, ‘It’s nice night. We could skip driving and walk and I’ll let you feel my breasts on the way home.’

“Am I slobbering by any chance?” I ask. She giggles and backs away after a few moments of my groping. “Hey! Thanks for the proof!” I say standing up. “I’ll stick up for you now anytime someone doesn’t believe you. You just call me up. Of course, I might need an occasional refresher course. You know, to spot check that you haven’t had any recent enhancements.”

“I might take you up on that sometime,” she says.

“Women probably take their breasts for granted but I happen to love them. For me it’s near infatuation,” I say, taking the risk of sounding like a pervert. “I mean, I’ve often thought of turning it into a healthy hobby or career or something – like those character artists on beaches or at theme parks? They draw your face on a tiny little body and then maybe there’s a ‘theme’ like you’re holding a baseball bat because you like baseball or something. Then they write your name at the top in some stylized font? Well, I’d put a new spin on that. I’d think I’d like be a breast character artist. Women would pay me to draw their breasts. No faces, just two breasts in the picture. I could even do the ‘themes’ thing. Like, here’s a drawing of your breasts with the St. Louis Arch in the background. Or, here’s a sketch of your breasts sitting on top of an electric guitar, or a sketch of your breasts and your dog.”

I have her laughing pretty hard. Finally she stops laughing and there she is, standing there smiling and totally topless. What comes next?

“Hey, you wanna streak?!” she asks.

“Whhhhaatttt?!!!” I exclaim. I don’t know what I expected this topless girl to say. Maybe, ‘the hay loft is over here, or ‘I’m a little cold.’ But ‘you wanna streak?’ was the last thing I expected to hear.

“C’mon, let’s take all of our clothes off and streak around,” she says.

“You’re fucking kidding me..” I say.

“No, really. It’ll be fun. It’s a nice night,” she says, mimicking what I said earlier.

“Oh, man, I dunno…” I say apprehensively.

“Hey!” she yells, he voice echoing across the pasture. “I took my shirt off for you. I let you feel me up and now you won’t streak with me?”

I glance down at her breasts and then down her stomach to her belt, and then to the roundness of her thighs… “Ok. I’ll do it,” I say. I take off my shoes and socks and undo my belt. The shirt comes off. The pants get peeled down and there are my favorite boxers on display for the second time tonight. But unlike earlier in the evening the boxers will only be on stage for a limited performance. I shrug out of my pants and then the boxers come off too.

She grins. “Pretty nice,” she says, backing up for a better view. “Can I check to see if it’s real?”

I laugh. “You bet.”


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