Karas Alada Pride
Once upon a time I rode horses to school and told everyone that my name was Sienna with two N’s. I rode horses with a trainer named Erik with a K and he was gay. A cowboy who owned a farm with lots of goats, some prized horses, and a few donkeys. A cowboy who wore wranglers, and fucked other men. A cowboy who was queer and kept a farm full of animals and the people that he chose, even on the days where maybe he didn’t feel like it. He liked to say funny things like ‘ride it like you stole it’ and ‘I’m the best goddamn golf cart driver on this side of the Mississippi' and he never once made you feel like you couldn’t one day also be just like him. My mom was the one who told me he was gay; he never told me himself, I don’t think. I remember her telling it to me in the one diner in the town where his farm was. It was dimly lit with the booths and the white and red checkered tablecloths that diners have, especially diners in Montana. They had the kind of french fries that aren’t the nice crisp and bendable ones, but the kind that are battered just a little bit and dissolve when you put them in your mouth. I hated their fries. But they had a grilled chicken sandwich and always with extra ranch. So my Mom and I would go there after I rode two horses in the morning, and then we’d go back to the farm. I’d help Erik wrestle some goats and then I’d ride another horse or two. I was like 12 or 13; I’m not so sure why I was so intense. But I’ve never done anything un-intensely in my life so it made sense, especially at that point when everyone was telling me I was smarter than most kids and I was going to be something greater than the sum of the place that I came from. I guess if you can call studying photography in a big city like New York being greater than the sum of a bunch of mountains and a population of about 1 million people, then sure. But they called me that when I was good at math and everyone thought I was going to be a mathematician, so I maybe should be sorry to disappoint, I’m not really sure. But yeah, Erik was gay and I found out in a diner full of corn farmers, the bar was half full at noon, and if my mom had spoken above a whisper we may have gotten in trouble. But I was 12 and I didn’t care. I loved Erik and he loved me and I learned how to ‘ride em like I stole em’ from him and that was the difference between a blue ribbon and getting your pants covered in dirt, so I didn’t really think much of it.
We Were Eeyores Too
Donkeys are fucking annoying, anyone who has ever heard them make their heehaw sound knows this to be true. They are loud and smelly and they’re not as soft as they look. Erik had donkeys. He had three. They all lived out in the big pastures where his horse herds would graze. I hated the donkeys, I always have hated them. Though, I think I’ve made that clear enough. There was a day where I eventually worked up the courage to ask Erik why he had them. We were out fixing a fence in the big pasture with wires, gloves, and a pair of clippers. I was responsible for holding the reel of wire while Erik twisted it around the fences, and then I would clip it so he could attach everything efficiently. One of the donkeys started hawing and I made a silly face. Erik, of course, noticed right away and asked me what that face was for. He probably said something like “a face like that, you’d get shot real quick if you pulled it out at a poker game” and I probably laughed shyly and then finally asked. ‘Why the donkeys? You never ride them–they just eat and live and cost you money.’ Erik then put the wires down on the fence and explained. I had thought it was a stupid question but Erik, of course, took every stupid question in stride and always explained things with patience, care, and intent. He explained that donkeys are actually absorbers. They absorb the pain of those around them. He explained that in all actuality, even though all they do is eat food and cost money, they end up saving him a ton in medical bills. Donkeys take on the sicknesses of the animals that they live near and it helps the other animals to heal. Donkeys will carry the illnesses easily because apparently they have really good immune systems so they won’t be as affected. They also can help other animals heal if they are sad or depressed. Yes, horses can get sad, lonely, depressed, they can be all sorts of things really. So he has donkeys in every pasture so that his show animals can be healthier, he lets them help carry the burdens of his work. I still don’t really like donkeys, but it gave me a new perspective on them.
Donkeys kind of give me a new perspective on things in general. I have always felt a little bit like an absorber, not necessarily of illnesses of course, but of other people's problems. I allow and maybe require myself to carry other people’s pain for them, I always want to care for people and help them where I can. Erik used the donkeys to keep up the health of his herd, but I’m not sure if the donkeys got the care that they needed. He said they were fine, but Eeyore always seemed depressed in Winnie the Pooh and even though his friends included him they never really did much for his depression. Who takes care of the donkeys? Who absorbs their pain?
Regarding Goats
Erik was a goat farmer. He loved goats. And he loved them in large quantities. Behind his house he had this huge field with a river and some trees. In that field he kept his goat herd. They were ugly. They were loud. There were too many of them. But they were his. The field behind his house wasn’t really that compatible for any other kind of animals. The rocky earth and the craggy cuts in the ground from spring run offs made it a little unsteady for the show horses, and Erik didn’t really have any horses that he was willing to put back there. It was also out of the way, and behind his house, which no one was allowed into anyway. I imagine that in the back of his house there was a sitting room with big windows, with peeling painted window sills that Erik would sit in after a long day of work and watch his goats. I think he maybe would have been a goat if someone had given him the chance. Or, maybe in another life, I’d be a whale shark, and he’d be a goat. We never would have met. But yeah, about his goats, I imagine he’d watch them while drinking a beer after training all day. His boots finally kicked off and on the floor, cleaned with leather conditioner but still with the grains of dirt lined into their surface. He’d be sighing, alone, but well, with his goats.
Erik had this one goat, she was a runt, and she was gross. But she had such a personality. Erik would talk to her like she could talk back to him and she would follow him around the farm when he let her out of the back pasture. He never really did that with any of the other goats, unless they were sick, or about to be a mom, or something funky was going on with them. This goat…I guess he thought something funky was always going on with her. Which honestly there was, she was pretty dysfunctional. Erik knew that she wouldn’t live very long I think, and that made him sad. And that’s why he let her wander around the farm behind him, he would curse at her and say ‘this dumb fucking goat thinks she’s a human!’ and then proceed to feed her a carrot, or scraps of whatever he had, and smile at her, scratch her head tenderly and continue on. His gentility was never in words. But you could feel his love through his actions, at this point in my life I would argue in favor of this. The number of friendships or relationships I’ve had that have lasted on words alone are exactly zero. They mean nothing alone.
More on goats. Apologies. Erik really liked them so this is just going to be the way that it is. I know I said this is supposed to be about cowboys, but I didn’t define a cowboy at the beginning, I suppose I just defined my cowboy. My cowboys like goats and donkeys and gay sex and strap ons, and starry nights perfect for blowjobs and eating out in the fields. Yes, we ride horses too but that’s not really the point. We know that cowboys ride horses, so I’m not really sure how much I need to cover that.
There was this barn on Erik’s farm. It was not the main barn, it was old and rickety and if you lingered too long leaning against one of the poles you would come off of it with a splinter or six. This barn was for Erik’s other animals. Again, not the show horses, they lived in the main barn. This was the goat and donkey and sex barn. The sex is an addition I make now in retrospect, because remember I was seeing this when I was little so how would I have really known, but my cowboys have sex and they’d do it in this shitty barn if they really needed a space to go.
There’s a whole side tangent on queer sex spaces throughout history, especially the rest- stop in Bozeman, Montana. It’s closed now. The queers should riot. Get it commemorated as a part of queer history in Montana. So unbelievably glamorous, anyways.
In the barn, there was a momma goat on this specific day that I am remembering. She had just had her kids and was still living in the barn to recover before being turned back out into the back pasture with the rest of the goats. Erik had asked me to come help him with something and to bring old jeans that could get dirty that day. He didn’t tell me what we were going to do, but I listened to every word that left Erik’s mouth and brought an old pair of jeans. I listened to every word not because they were necessarily true, but because he was true. I followed him like his goats would, out to the barn. Twiddling my thumbs and tucking my hair behind my ears. I wore a baseball cap like him. We probably looked like family, big brother in front and little kid trailing behind. Or father and son, or daughter or whatever. I was dirty and scrawny, we could have swung both ways. When we got into the barn there was this goat, she seemed grumpy and in pain. And well, she was. Her udders were swollen because she had been producing too much milk as a new mother. Erik pointed at her and told me that we needed to catch her so he could get some of the milk out to make her more comfortable. Now, I knew how to milk goats and cows and the like at this age, but Erik didn’t know that I knew. He told me the plan then, like the way a football coach kneels down to his star quarterback before the last game-winning play of the season. I was going to go in first, because I was small and nonthreatening, and I was going to tackle the goat. Yes. Tackle. I don’t know why I didn’t react in any sort of way when Erik told me what I was supposed to do. Again, the blind trust I had for him at that age, I maybe still have it for some of the people in my life. I would probably still have it for Erik had he not screwed over my mom and made us leave the horse show in South Dakota on a whim, packing my horse and my stuff into a random trailer and hauling it back home ourselves with no warning prior. But that’s a story for another time. He told me to go in the pen, tackle the goat and hold her down while he milked the excess out of her. So that’s exactly what I did. Erik knew my capabilities well; he was my coach after all. He knew how strong I was, how much weight my little arms could hold, how flexibly my back could handle a rough horse, how scared I could be before I cracked. Tackling a goat and holding her down was within my wheelhouse. It probably still is if I am being entirely honest.
House of Erik
I spent countless hours on the right side of Erik’s property, that’s where the barn was and the arenas. On the left side, there was his house. I spent maybe 17 minutes on that side; it was a weird day. Something had gone wrong, I think with the horse trailer. We were supposed to be leaving for a horse show that was a few hours’ drive away. We had all gotten to the farm early that day to make sure everything was set to go. Mostly just packing, packing for every possible inconvenience or success or anything that could happen at the show. Horse show pack days are long and hard. Lots of work, everyone goes to sleep probably before their heads even hit the pillow. But that day, things had gone wrong, before we even arrived at the show. Something was wrong with the trailer, I was 12 so I didn’t really understand car and trailer mechanics. It was just broken. Erik was angry that day, things were not going well, he was shouting a lot across the farm to move things, to find the right tools, and yelling if someone could feed the fucking goats. He had a lot of goats, but you already know that.
The day was failing and it didn’t really seem like we were going to make it to the horse show that day. Everyone at the farm was starving because we were supposed to have arrived hours earlier. My mom, trying to be sweet, had gone to a sub shop and brought us back a bunch of sandwiches. We didn’t really have a place to eat because this was a farm, it was meant for animals and work, not rest and relaxation. But she brought it back and then Erik sighed and gestured at his house. There was a moment of stillness as me, my mom, and the stable hand at the time glanced at each other, realizing in full that none of us had ever stepped into his house. We still had a few things to finish up but my mom went in and set up the sandwiches, with a cutting board and knife, and a few napkins. Then we all went in. We washed our hands in the white plastic sink, and we sat down on random chairs in the kitchen and living room. It was the kind of room that was split by a little island counter. On the side near the front door there was the kitchen, and on the side near the back of the house was the living room. It was very blue in the house. The tiles were light blue, but not saturated. They were almost slightly void-like, muted. The white tiles weren’t bright white, they felt grey, even though they weren’t. Erik had old chairs, the kind with metal backs and the cushion seats with the glossy plastic material covering. They reminded me of the kind of chairs they had in ice cream parlors. The Frosty Freeze. We didn’t use plates. We ate the sub sandwiches off of napkins, and the mayonnaise in my sandwich kept leaking out of the bottom of it and falling onto the napkin and occasionally my hand. They were small napkins. Cheap napkins, paper thin and you’d need a million to make a pile thick enough to hold sauce. You know the kinds they have at gas stations or something. It was really awkward, which is why I’m telling you about the napkins because it was one of those times where it's so uncomfortable that you pick a place on the floor or the wall to stare and you just keep staring. Never taking your eyes off the spot. I think my mom tried to make conversation, she always tries to make conversation. Asking her questions, big questions, not just small talk. She’s a therapist.
I can’t really say that I remember much else from those 17 minutes, but I think the pick a spot description does it justice. I always wondered why Erik was so open and honest about so much with us at the farm, but then kept his home totally separate from us. Sometimes I think he was hiding his queerness from us, sometimes I think he just wanted his home to be completely for himself. He never had a partner as far as I know. I think that he also could have just been a person who liked to try and separate his work and home as much as possible, especially since he lived at his work. But I’ve had other horse trainers who have lived on their farms and they have always been much more open about their homes. It has only been a touchy subject with Erik.