A Horse is a Horse; of Course, of Course.

by Cathy Pepe

“I think I’d rather be a cowboy. I think I’d rather ride the range.”

-John Denver

The first thing I remember being fascinated by as a child was horses. I thought they were the most majestic things I’d ever seen. I was obsessed with them. Freud posited that little girls love horses because of penis envy. No way I would ever agree with that theory. Although I did want to be a boy, it had nothing to do with a part of the anatomy that I had never seen before. I wanted to be a cowboy because in the late 50s and early 60s there wasn’t a whole lot of data about cowgirls.

The cowboy/cowgirl thing was my first insight into sexism. Only cowboys rode horses, and I was pissed that I was born a girl. Girls were stupid, boring, and played with dolls. I never had a doll. Boys from my neighborhood were my only friends and role models. There was my cousin Carl, who lived across the street, Dom Bonarosa, who lived next door, and Vinci Vincigera from one street over. I remember going to bed every night, praying to all the depressed-looking saints that adorned my grandmother’s apartment downstairs, that I would wake up a boy. I think that if my family was in this situation now instead of in the 1950’s I would be petitioning my parents for sexual reassignment surgery. The more I wanted to be a boy, the more my mother tortured me by dressing me up in frilly pink dresses that almost made me pass out from embarrassment

Horses were the first things I taught myself how to draw. I started collecting statues of horses and my goal was to have one statue for every breed. That was back when you had to look them up in an encyclopedia instead of Google. It was one of the few times I ever researched anything. Just as Carl mentioned his uncle Severio’s famous encyclopedia collection; I’m pretty sure I got my information from across the street at the Restivo’s house too. I knew all about Morgans, Appaloosas, Pintos, Mustangs, and Arabians.

Even when I finally accepted that God would not change his mind and morph me into a boy one magically unsuspecting night, I still couldn’t let go of the cowboy thing. I pledged my horse devotion daily to the altar of my plastic horse collection. I vowed that not only would I have one in the backyard, but this horse would be my trusty friend for life.

My father would humor me by telling me that “maybe” we would get one. When my dog got hit by a car, he made the mistake of “showing me the money”. He showed me a glass piggy bank filled with coins (mostly pennies) and said that when we had enough money, I would have my pony. At the time, it was the only way he could assuage my grief. I think he was hoping that the horse thing was a phase. When it became clear that it was a genuine obsession and that it was a mistake to show me the money, he began an “anti-horse” campaign. He kept bringing up things I did not want to hear. One of the things he told me was that horses could sense fear and if you were nervous on a horse, it would make them take off and try to knock you off the saddle by slipping under tree branches low enough for them to get by, but high enough to eliminate you. I thought that was the stupidest thing I ever heard until it happened.

The family was vacationing on Cape Cod and somehow my two cousins and I talked my father into taking us horseback riding. I was incredulous that he agreed to this. Sitting for the first time so high on that horse suddenly made me anxious. Then, remembering what my father said about horses sensing fear, I tried to focus on not being afraid. The more I focused, the shakier I became. In a flash, the horse deviated from the trail and starting galloping through the woods, trying to impale me on a branch. No one even knew this was happening. I managed to look back and my cousins and father were still on the trail having a pleasant, uneventful ride. Eventually, the horse ended up at the barn we had departed from. Yeah, another thing my father told me was that horses will run back to the barn when they get spooked.

Still, I wasn’t to be deterred from my devotion to these two thousand pound killing machines. I made friends with a girl who had a friend with a horse. Janice became my best friend only for what she could bring to the relationship. She brought me to her friend’s house, who was not home but insisted we could ride the horse anyway. I had no idea that Janice was just as inexperienced as me. She lugged the saddle over to the horse, fiddled with some straps, and then hoisted me up on the horse. Before I had a chance to try to talk myself out of being scared, the saddle slowly started creeping down the side of the horse’s middle, until I was hanging upside down under the horse and then fell off.

That was painful, but not enough to deter me. However, the last straw was when I finally got back on and the horse meandered over to a patch of grass and started munching on it. I didn’t panic when I saw a snake on the other side of the patch of grass because I remembered that my father said something about horses not having good peripheral vision. I had seen Gunsmoke enough times to know how horses react to snakes. I don’t know how I kept my cool, but I got the horse to back up and eliminated what could have been the horse vs snake episode.

I eventually became obsessed with other things like frogs, lizards, boys, and cats and became more realistic about horses. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of being a failure because I couldn’t conquer the fear of something I loved so much. Finally, one day, when I was about 22 and living in California, I drove to Half Moon Bay to a place where you could ride horses on the beach. Sure, I was scared, but I just had to do it. I got this great horse that was programmed to follow the other riders. We got down to the beach and the horses started galloping along the water’s edge so fast that I felt like I was flying. Here I was, my picture-perfect version of myself since childhood. Having a rapport with my horse, flying along the ocean with the sun shining and my hair flowing in the wind. (this was before you had to wear helmets, which takes all the sex appeal out of the experience.)

A note to Sigmund Freud, it’s not about Penis Envy. It’s about power. Little girls figure out very young that you must fight for power. If Mr. Freud ever rode a horse along the California coast, he would have figured it out.