Read by Charlotte Worthing at the Literary Kitchen Festival, 2014
Lewis doubted I could become a horse and so I didn’t show him the bottoms of my feet growing coarser. In bed, I kicked away from him and covered my mouth when he fucked me from behind because I couldn’t moan any more without whinnying slightly.
Becoming first appeared in the Chicago Something, where you can read the full text.
He didn’t notice at first — he never noticed much. Ate with his face turned down to the plate and always using one specific fork from the cutlery drawer; he was like a child in this way, and I humored him because I understood that he held onto those things that made him feel safe because he was otherwise scared. The fork with three tines and the outline of little daisies carved into its handle. That was Lewis’s fork.
+
I’d woken three months earlier, heart-poundy, from a dream that clarified all that I was not, but needed to become, in order to feel whole. It was the same dream I’d had, recurrently, as a child but had been forced to ignore. And it had finally come back for me.
In the dream, I am a horse. With a long mane that shines gold with twitches of chlorine blue when the sun comes up behind it, and a heaviness in my limbs that feels stable and serene. My heart is large inside my barrel chest, and I sleep standing up, surrounded by smells of dirt and the hot smells of grass and of sun, and with the stars waiting to be licked up by my giant tongue which rolls out of my mouth against my teeth, lazy like molasses rolling down tree bark. I am not worried about anything, and there isn’t death to think about. I feel certain of my place. That is all it ever is. Being a large thing in a wide-open field and not wondering what else you are meant for. Feeling lonely but in a sweet way, an edifying way.
I’d once confessed the dream to my mother who’d smacked the back of my head and then told me, gently, to be sensible, rubbing my head after she smacked it. I was a girl with long, slender limbs and a refrigerator full of whole fruit. I had a black maid who folded my clothes like it was the nineteen-fifties, or the twenties, or the eighteen-twenties, and a four-poster day bed with a canopy and eight full pillows. I wanted for nothing.
So I did. Become sensible. Went to school and was not a horse because I was a girl. A girl with a small mouth and a somewhat higher-than-normal gum-ridge who did as she was told, who grew breasts and shaved the hair from her legs and armpits and pubis and plucked it sometimes from her chin when people noticed and screwed up their faces at the injustice and unwelcome coarseness of it all.
Lewis didn’t like hair, and was glad I was a girl who removed it, regularly, for money and for pain and for smooth.
+
When the dream returned, and persisted, I tried, again, to ignore it. Every morning, I woke and brushed and cleaned away what wasn’t meant for my girl body with cold water and boiled soap stuffed with little fancy bits of shit like lavender and oat rusk, but it came roaring against me anyway.
Lewis, I’m becoming something new, I told him one morning. It was raining out, and he’d shut the window that I’d left open through the night so I could smell the air rising from the trees. I slid out of the pale sheets of our bed and opened it again as he sat up and watched me, frowning. He wanted to know what I meant. He told me to shut the window because it was raining and the moisture would warp the wood. I told him about the dream, and then he laughed and his laugh was sideways and made me think of how much he loved that fucking fork with the daisies, probably more than he loved me.
I’m going to become a horse, I said. I was very serious. And I don’t think I’ll be able to live here with you once I do.
We both watched the buildings outside shoulder the rain. They were getting pummeled, and they could do nothing about it but stand there.
Lewis rustled in the sheets and sighed very deeply. Whatever you want, he said, rolling his eyes back like people do when they don’t think what you say means much. Do whatever you want.
+
It’s hard not to wrap my whole mouth around things I’m not supposed to. When he fucks me, it’s hard not to bash my head down sharply into the bed like it’s grass, or a big wet pouch of iron-coloured mud, or to rear back and encompass his whole skull between my teeth. Sometimes I do, and the pleasure of it is immense, like running naked into the ocean at night in summertime when the moon is fat and hot white. When you start to change, little things take you by surprise—like how much water you suddenly need to drink, and how heavy and hairy your legs have become.
Lewis doesn’t notice my hooves developing because he doesn’t want to. I haven’t decided yet whether or not I will get shoed—different Internet forums recommend different things. In the end, the only difference becomes the sound you make as you trot; it’s whether or not you want to attract attention, and then it’s just money. Showing off.
Some people worry they are making bestialists of their lovers without their consent. Some do it for people they love. No one does it lightly or for nothing. It’s not that kind of choice. One man is becoming a badger for his Swedish boyfriend.
I tell Lewis this, and he says nothing, ignoring the neighing sound at the back of my throat, the tossing of my long, silky mane after I say it. He’s eating dinner out of a scalloped plastic container and, now and forever, he’s only got eyes for his fork.
(c) Kate Weinberg, 2014
As a child, Kate Weinberg wrote poems and stories to win her parents’ affection. She is still fighting this battle. Baltimore-bred, she trained as an actor and improviser in Chicago and now lives in Brooklyn. She has poems and stories published or forthcoming from several neat places.
Charlotte Worthing trained at The Oxford School of Drama. Her theatre work includes roles for The National Theatre of Scotland, Wilton's Music Hall, The Arcola, The Bush and Theatre 503. Charlotte's work in radio includes BBC drama series Chain Gang and The Private Patient. She is also a narrator for RNIB.
Comments