Sextile

Sagittarians at night

After my fiancé broke off our engagement and moved in with his Ethics professor, I joined a book club to get my mind off killing him. I immediately felt at home with this bunch of brainy gals – a librarian, magazine editor, travel agent, lawyer, pastor, romance novelist, yoga teacher, etc – whose high IQs and barely-repressed libidos offered a sapiosexual buffet of eligible women.

Out of the dozen, usually only half of us attended any given discussion night. Duality was our middle name and commitment, however much we bemoaned its absence in our male acquaintances, was thin in our ranks too. We did a survey once and counted 17 divorces among us, and only half of us had been married.

We all lived within a half-hour’s drive of each other in a large Midwest metropolis. One of the women owned a farm, a 50-acre property she’d inherited from her grandmother. All she had was a dog and two cats but we were always bugging her to get a cute little goat or a miniature pig like George Clooney’s.

Whenever GC’s name came up, we typically lost focus. The librarian had to remind us of our agenda, asking us to refer to any notes we’d taken since reading our assigned book. We’d then discuss the merits, literary or otherwise, of whatever we’d deemed worthy of our scrutiny. Other than George and his little porcine pal.

When we met last Thursday, it was a perfect summer evening. We were gathered on the deck of our hostess’s recently renovated farmhouse. It was a full moon and everyone had brought wine. Instead of sipping coffee and sampling “I’ll have-just-one” pastries, we were getting loaded.

For once everyone was here, and all in good humor. Nobody was complaining about bladder infections, migraines, or menstrual cramps. We suffered only ennui. But WTF, we were 21st century women. Notre pays, c’est ennui.

“Drinking and driving is not an option,” our hostess reminded us. “I have two extra bedrooms with double beds. There’s a sofa-bed in the living room and I have a tent that sleeps four.”

“Actually, it’s so warm tonight,” the travel agent pointed out, “you could probably sleep in the open.”

“Naked,” the romance novelist added, and a titter ran through the group.

“There’s also the barn,” the pastor suggested.

“I’m sure someone suffers hay fever,” our hostess objected.

“One summer when I was a kid,” one gal said, “my cousin and I slept in my uncle’s barn. We made a bed of blankets in the hayloft and told each other dirty stories all night.”

“Do you remember any of those stories?” the romance novelist said.

“Don’t get me started.”

“Fifty shades of hay,” the librarian hooted.

“We should hold tonight’s discussion in the barn,” the travel agent said.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” our hostess said.

“It’s a perfect setting,” the librarian countered. “After all, we’re discussing The Horse Whisperer.”

“There’s a motion on the floor,” the lawyer noted. “Do we have a second?”

“I second that,” the pastor said.

“All in favor of moving to the barn, raise your hands.”

Everyone but our hostess raised their hands. “It’s not… clean out there,” she protested.

“Some of us like it dirty,” said the romance novelist, followed by a group roar.

“The ayes have it,” the lawyer said. “Everybody bring a chair, a bottle, whatever you can carry.”

We all trooped out to the barn, opened its double doors and settled ourselves in a circle of chairs. There were stables on both sides with haylofts above them. Each stall had a low door that functioned as a gate. Most of the doors were open, revealing empty stalls, although a few at the rear were closed. But as far as we knew, our hostess had no livestock.

A single light-bulb hung from a rafter overhead, providing sufficient light to consult the margin notes in our books. As usual, the librarian started the discussion by recapping the plot.

“The Horse Whisperer is about a teenage girl who loses a leg in a riding accident. Her horse is traumatized and becomes so temperamental that her father wants it put down. But her mom learns about a horse trainer in Montana who’s renowned for treating equine PTSD.”

The novel is poignant, and the Robert Redford movie had rendered it an absolute tearjerker. Anticipating an emotional discussion, we’d all brought tissues. The romance novelist was already weeping, probably thinking of the huge gap between her lifetime earnings and that of the bestseller’s author.

“So mother and daughter take the horse to Montana where the horse whisperer cures its neurosis and, as a bonus, has an affair with the daughter. When mom learns this, she rides off in a huff and gets caught in a mustang stampede. In saving her, the horse whisperer is killed. Mother and daughter return East with the horse, and a bun in the daughter’s oven.”

She paused. “Who’d like to start? Any thoughts on story, character or theme?”

“What’s that smell?” the pastor said.

“What?” the librarian liked to run a tight class, and this immediately threw her off stride.

“Smells like horse.” The yoga teacher turned and looked toward the stables in the rear. As she twisted in her seat, rotating her shoulders, she crossed one leg over the other and twined her ankles together. You had to admire her form, she was a total yogini.

“It’s just the hay,” our hostess said. “It’s been so musky this summer.”

“Musty, you mean,” the editor corrected her.

“Say what you will, it does smell musky.” The yoga teacher stood and sniffed the air. “Horse musk.”

“Nonsense,” said our hostess. “The place just needs to be aired out. Let’s move our chairs closer to the door. Better yet, let’s return to the deck.”

“What’s that sound?” the pastor said. She was small, but had the nose and ears of a church mouse.

“I didn’t hear anything,” our hostess said. “There’s nothing out here… to hear or smell or feel…”

“Feel?” the editor said. “You mean, to see?”

“Quiet,” the librarian snapped and we all shut up.

There in the silence of the barn, a dozen women holding their collective breath, we heard a muted whinny, like a horse that needed to clear his throat in the middle of the night but didn’t want to wake you. We all looked at each other.

The travel agent looked at our hostess. “Do you have a horse?”

“A horse? No.”

From the back of the barn came another whinny and the stomp of a hoof. We rose and moved like a herd in that direction. The travel agent opened one stable door after another. We crowded behind her as she came to the last one.

A good-looking guy stood leaning against the door, half-naked and built like a football player, a tight end or something. We could only see him from the waist up but so far, so good. We all crowded in a little closer.

The scent of horse was strong. At first whiff I didn’t really like it but it quickly grew on me. I inhaled deeply. It was like your first scent of man stuff – musky, yeah, but maddeningly so. Full moon and all, it was enough to make a gal tip her head back and howl.

Everyone turned to give me a look. Even the guy in the stable looked alarmed. God knows how much our hostess had paid him to show up for this, but now he was probably wondering what he’d got himself into. Were we a coven of witches who liked to barbecue long-haul truck drivers on the full moon?

“Sorry,” I apologized to the group. “You know I have Tourette’s.”

The travel agent extended her hand to the guy. “I don’t believe we’ve met. My name’s Pam. Do you like books too?” She peered over the gate to get a better look at the rest of him.

Before he could answer, she shrieked, “Oh my God, he’s a centaur. Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, where’s my phone? I’ve got to get a picture of this. Of me. With him. Or it. Definitely me and… and…”

“No phones allowed in book discussion,” the librarian reminded us. Our phones were all back in the house, in a Rubbermaid container atop the fridge.

“Just as well,” the  yoga teacher said. “No telling what could happen here. Maybe we don’t want any evidence.”

“What happens in the barn, stays in the barn,” the lawyer said.

There was a bunch of damn-rights and no-shits from the group.

“I’m serious,” the lawyer said. “Motion on the floor for non-disclosure. All in favor, show of hands.”

With everybody holding both hands aloft, we looked like a herd of excited elk with horns erect. We pressed forward as the travel agent opened the gate.

“Whoaaaaa.” The centaur did a nervous little prance, like he’d just realized there were a dozen she-wolves in the house.

This was one fine piece of centaur. Below his sculpted six-pack the hair on his belly was thick and glossy down his legs and along his flanks to the rear. Bracing her hands against his chest, the travel agent raised herself on tiptoes to kiss him.

“His breath smells like apple cider,” she swooned.

He whinnied and did another little prance. It was both adorable and arousing, like two Lords of the Riverdance in a horse costume at a bachelorette stag party. And the scent of him, my god, it was intoxicating, it made you just want to vault onto his back and ride off into the sunset.

“I want to ride him,” someone screamed.

We started a chant. “Ride the pony, ride the pony, ride ride ride the pony.”

“Girls, girls,” the librarian warned. “We don’t know if it’s safe.”

“Have you ridden him?” the editor asked our hostess.

“I’d rather not say.” She blushed with cheeks on fire.

“I’ll draft a risk waiver,” the lawyer said, “that we can all verbally agree to.”

“To which we can all agree,” the editor amended.

“Is this for real?” the pastor said, “or an out-of-body experience? I confess, I’ve prayed for something like this, but I never thought it would actually happen.”

“First dibs on the rights to his life story,” the romance novelist said. She’d made little from her books, and wanted to write a screenplay for some serious money.

We all crowded into the centaur’s stall. We didn’t care how dangerous it was. We were women. We ran with wolves. We watched vampire movies. We had periods. We could ride this pony to hell and back.

“God, feel those legs.” The travel agent ran her hands down his two forelegs and moved to his rear. She fondled his knees and worked herself up. “Oh my god, this guy is so ripped. And his butt…!”

This set off a stampede but the stall was too small for all of us to fit back there at the same time. So we adopted the typical buffet-table flight-pattern, circling clockwise like vultures, letting everyone get a taste.

The centaur was cool. He let us run our hands over his chest and legs, and kiss him on the lips. The yoga teacher mounted his back and writhed up and down his spine. It didn’t look like any yoga pose I knew, but the expression on her face was pure nirvana, so I guess she knew what she was doing.

When the pastor finally got to the rear, she’d barely touched his haunches before her eyes rolled up in her sockets like someone possessed. She seized his tail and started whipping herself with it, screaming, “You’re a naughty girl, bad girl, wicked girl. You’ll burn in hell, simmer in a cauldron of boiling semen…”

“Boiling oil,” the editor said. “You can’t boil semen or it will turn to custard.”

“That would be such a waste,” the librarian said. “Semen should only be served at womb temperature.”

After we’d been around the horse a few times, felt him up from fetlock to flank, we rushed to refill our wine glasses. Everyone knew this party wasn’t over, but it would take a lot more than a whiff of horse musk to push a bunch of classy women over the top. How much more? Nobody knew, but pretty much everyone seemed hell bent on finding out.

I lost count of how many bottles went the rounds to quench our collective thirst. But it was a hot summer night, and we’d kicked up quite a bit of barn dust, getting frisky there in the OK corral.

The yoga teacher got the pastor calmed down with some deep breathing. This wasn’t an OBE, she assured her, but the real deal. Show a little faith. Get ready to go where angels feared to tread. Her Come-to-Jesus moment was nigh.

By now, we were all lubricated to the melting point but also a little bit scared. Within the circle of sisters, we’d hefted his balls in our palms. We’d dared to run our hands along a shaft the size of a baseball bat. But after that, a shivering blank screen, a place our imaginations weren’t ready to go…

God bless her, the travel agent was the first to venture into unknown territory. Encouraged by our supportive cries of ride-’em-cowgirl, she went alone to his stall. She was gone for a long while. At one point, we heard her moaning and almost sent someone to check on her. But then we heard insane laughter and we knew it was going to be a long night…

It was dawn before we were finished but eventually everybody got to ride on the pony. Even the pastor bore witness to The Second Coming. Needless to say, no one drove home that night. The beds in the house filled up. A few of us took the backyard tent. Someone slept in their car, and the romance novelist passed out naked on the lawn.

The morning after was not pretty. It’s best not to think about it. And we are certainly not going to talk about it. What happened in the barn stays in the barn.

~~~

Alan Annand is a writer and astrologer with the moon in Scorpio. Find his New Age Noir series and other mystery novels at Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Kobo and Smashwords.

Tags: book clubs, centaur, george clooney, nicholas evans, robert redford, sagittarian professions, sagittarius, the horse whisperer