Complete as the bridle was, it was designed to keep my mouth accessible. Now Gardiner forced my mouth apart and pressed a hard, narrow, rubber bit between my teeth. Then he kissed me, right over the bit, and while Preston and the Mounties laughed I finally stopped struggling. I was ready to do whatever Preston said. I felt defeated and I didn’t like this feeling, but at the same time I felt thrilled in a way I had never felt before. Naked, on my knees, bridled, a little bit worked over, and helpless at the command of these four big men, my cock so hard it ached, and I wanted to kiss Preston’s boots, and Gardiner’s, and the Mounties’. I fell forward, but a hard tug on the bridle kept my head suspended.

  “Follow,” Preston said, and I scrambled to follow the measured movement of his boots as he strolled around the area outside the paddock. He used the reins to keep my head exactly at the height and angle that would make my bearing appear proud, if “proud” is a word I could apply to crawling around in the dirt and praying I would have a chance to grovel for this man’s pleasure. He used the slightest pressure to let me know I was to turn to the left or right, and when he wanted me to stop he just tightened his fist on the reins so I felt the thin rubber bit against my cheeks. With every step I felt that dildo rubbing deep in my bowels, filling the cavity, and teaching my asshole to be hungry, as my hips and knees and shoulders and hands moved me along with greater and greater certainty, and the long horsehair tail brushed the backs of my welted thighs all the way past the insides of my knees to tickle my calves.

  I had completely lost track of time when Preston brought me up before Gardiner and the Mounties. A pail of water was waiting, and when I tried to direct my head toward it, Preston pulled me up short and took the bit out of my mouth.

  “I believe this new pony is thirsty, gentlemen. Does anyone have something for him to drink? Why, here’s something now.”

  Preston pulled my head up sharply and turned my face to the side at once so that my mouth was at just the right height for a very long, slender Mountie cock with beautiful veins that looked like wide blue rivers laid out on a map of heaven. The lines and ridges and marks on its head were the intricate byways God had set up to make the sinner’s journey entertaining. I wanted to travel each little one-way street so slowly that I could come to a full stop at every twist and turn, but the Mountie with the open fly interrupted my reverie. He took my hair in one hand and his cock in the other, and jerked my mouth open and jammed himself straight past my gag reflex and out, and in and out, and he never even stopped to find out if I could handle meat that long, and by the time I could cough for the first time he was cumming so far down my throat I never even tasted him till he pulled out gradually, like a hungry snake reluctantly leaving the warmth of its sun-spotted burrow, wiping the head of his dick on my tongue as he passed.

  I was gasping more than the Mountie, but I was getting the hang of it: If this was going to be the future, I started to see how I could have some unexpected fun, and I was ready for Mountie number two. He was thick as a plug, but I clamped him in my lips like a hose in an O-ring and sucked up a vacuum that must have yanked his balls straight up into his body and shot them out into my mouth, which is how he came, one-two. His mouth fell open but mine stayed shut, and I did not meet his eyes as I smiled to myself. I expected Gardiner next, but Preston put me in front of the bucket and I drank what ponies are supposed to drink.

  While I drank I smelled something hot, as if a little piece of air was burning, and when I was through one of the Mounties threw a small piece of meat to the ground in front of me. Was I supposed to eat it? Preston stabbed it with a tiny iron, and it crackled and sizzled and smoked. He pulled the iron away and there was an arrow branded into the meat.

  “I like the way you work, Edgar. That is a pleasant surprise. If you continue to please me, this meat might be you someday. If you continue. But today we have a different task. Stand up.”

  Beyond the paddock was a hedge. As Preston led me toward it I could see the hedge was made entirely of holly maybe two feet thick and dense with hard, curled leaves that were so pointed that the hedge was effectively made of thorns. From closer up the hedge seemed curved, and in a few more steps I saw that its curve hid a gap perhaps twice the width of a real, large horse. Preston led me inside the hedge, and then I could see that it was completely circular, containing a grassy area half the size of a soccer field, with a second gap about the same size set directly across from the first.

  Preston removed the reins from the bridle on my face. “You will wear the bridle and you will wear the tail,” he said, “but otherwise you will be free to run. If you can escape the enclosure through either opening before I capture you, I will bring you the ponyboy you seemed to admire so much, and put you out to stud with him for the weekend. If I capture you, however, you will join my stable and maybe pull a race cart that I will let him drive.”

  Gardiner appeared in the gap behind us, leading an English-saddled roan that had to be eighteen hands tall.

  “I’ll give you a little head-start,” Preston said, “but I have never yet lost this contest. Enjoy yourself. Run!”

  I made the same mistake I suppose anyone would make just then: I ran. But instead of maneuvering for position at close range and plunging through the gap we’d just come through, where I might have really had a chance, I ran for the far gap, supposing sort of automatically that with the little head-start I might outrun him. Outrun a horse. A big horse.

  The dildo stretched my asshole and wallowed in my rectum and almost brought me to my knees all by itself. The bridle cramped my face and restricted my breathing. My bare feet were exquisitely sensitive to the nuances of little divots and pebbles and gopher holes, and the searing points of dry grasses and nettle seeds nearly threw me to the ground repeatedly. My unsupported balls bounced more heavily than I would have imagined, and hurt surprisingly. Maybe this wasn’t going to be quite as much fun as I’d thought a little while ago. And only then did I realize I was a naked man with a bridle on my head and a horsetail dildo up my ass, running beneath the sky as if my life depended on it across an open, empty field. I turned my head to look behind me and saw Preston sitting in the saddle, leaning forward with his arms folded against the horse’s neck, laughing. Now he was the one having fun. Fuck him. Preston reined his horse and started it in to walk, and then to trot, and then to canter. I turned for the far gap and bolted as fast as I could.

  Preston never meant me harm, I know: This was just a game for him, and I was learning to play. But I had never been so terrified in my entire life as when I heard the rapid beat of horse hooves pounding on the ground behind me, closer with every set of steps. My eyes were blurred with sweat the first time he swept past me and sliced the skin of my ass with some kind of whip. I’m sure I screamed, but I kept on running. He scribed a wide arc in front of me, swept around behind me again, and I felt the terror again as I heard him coming up on me at a dead run when the whip cut my ass again. The breath was rasping in my throat and I’d forgotten all my pain, keeping my eyes on the gap that now seemed miles away. I heard Preston shouting from behind, “Run! Run! Run!” and then a lasso settled over me and pinned my arms to my sides and the horse just stopped, jerking me to the ground.

  Preston was on me as if I were a steer, tying my wrists behind me, binding my ankles, and trussing me up in record seconds. I was panting hoarsely, trying to catch some breath, and Preston’s shirt wasn’t even ruffled. That made me mad.

  “If you were me I bet you’d fuck me now, wouldn’t you?” he whispered in my ear. At first I didn’t have the strength to reply, but he took my balls in one of his hands. “Shall I geld you, Edgar?” And then I found my voice.

  “Please, Preston, no. Please, no.”

  “Well then, what shall I do with you?”

  Suddenly I had caught my breath. I was exhausted more from the adrenaline that had been coursing through me than from the run itself, and I knew that I would ache by morning. But I realized that Preston was lying almost completely on top of me, holding my balls in his hand, and looking into my eyes.

  Lying beneath him naked and bound, bridled and tailed, I got coy and almost smiled. I made music with my voice as if I were an olde-time sweater queen batting my eyelashes at a butch. “Will you please brand me, Preston?”

  Hah! I thought. He wasn’t expecting that.

  But he didn’t miss a beat. “In time, perhaps, but you haven’t earned that honor yet, Edgar. This is just the first day of your training. Perhaps I’ll keep you or perhaps you’ll fetch a pretty price when I get through with you, but you’re an orphan for the moment. You’re in my keeping but you don’t belong to anyone just now, and you have a great deal yet to learn. And by the way, to you my name is Mr. Benten. But of course, ponies don’t talk, and you are not allowed to speak again. Do you understand me?”

  I wanted to spit in his face and I wanted to kiss him, I wanted to rip myself out of my bonds and destroy him and I wanted him to beat my rebellion out of me with his whip, I wanted him to make love to me and I wanted him to crush my balls in his warm, soft, exceptionally certain hand. It was difficult, hog-tied as I was, but this was going to be even more fun than I’d thought. I lifted my legs together and let them drop on the ground—one, two: yes.

  Summer, Eighteen

  Alexander Chee

  When I was eighteen, I was living at home in Maine for the summer, in between years at college, cycling twenty to twenty-five miles a day, trying to be a vegan vegetarian. So I was tan, mostly on my back from cycling, and had big cycling legs, and broad shoulders left over from swimming in high school, no chest to speak of, and was getting skinny. I wore my dark hair short in a way that stood up. I liked to ride my mountain bike on the beach, and then go swimming in the ocean and not shower after. And I had a requisite dumb summer job, as night manager at a seafood co-op on the restaurant side in a beach town that should remain nameless, on the southern coast of the state.

  The co-op had two sides, my restaurant side and then a lobster pound side, and the lobster pound side was run by this guy Steve. Steve had been in the Navy and was out now, had blurry tattoos on his arms, was deeply tanned, and stood slightly shorter than me. He had big-curl biceps and a kind of Prince Valiant haircut. He was part Filipino, part white, with almond-shaped eyes that were bright green, and big white teeth. He smoked a cigarette in the mornings and made coffee in the big coffee-makers on the restaurant side, drinking all of it throughout the day before the restaurant opened at 4 P.M. I know, because I found the remains of his cigarette and the cold grinds. But I didn’t mind. Our paths didn’t cross much at first because of our schedules, him mostly needing to be there late mornings to early dinner, me, dinner to midnight. And then one day, the deck needed painting.

  By now it was July, and I had been there a month. I knew he had half a mind to like me because I was half Korean, and to hate me because my mom was rich. I didn’t really care about putting him at ease, and certainly once I found out he had a girlfriend, I stopped thinking of pursuing him, for all the way we had a certain chemistry that was the reason I cleaned up after his morning coffee. So I really didn’t have him on my mind as I rode out there in my car dressed in rugby shorts and a T-shirt and began painting the deck. I’d forgotten to bring a long-handled brush, and being naturally flexible I bent over. I remember thinking it was ridiculous, but I didn’t really dwell on what it looked like until I paused when I got hot, pulled my shirt off to get some color, and then felt more than sunlight on me.

  There in the dark smudge shadow of the order counter, behind the mosquito screens, I saw the orange light of a cigarette ember. I saw a big smile. I smiled back. We didn’t say anything.

  I went back to painting. I felt him watch me turn. The deck wasn’t very large, really—just four picnic tables outside of a picnic shack that had more picnic tables inside, the whole thing basically being the sort of place where you eat lobster, fried clams, and fries with a view of the ocean. I hosed it all down on a regular basis, high-pressure water and soap. The point the restaurant sat on was really beautiful: slate water, robin’s-egg sky, and clouds going by the size of mountains, like a race of giants running home someplace on the far side of the horizon. Of all of the things I could see, I think I loved the clouds the most, for the way they suggested departures larger than the ones I could make.

  He was still watching when I finished the deck and finished looking at the clouds, and so with my shirt in my hands I went in to the takeout area to get some coffee and see if what I thought was happening was really happening. I liked Steve’s flat, angular muscles, his tight T-shirts, liked his green eyes. I pushed the screen door open.

  “What’s up?” he said. He pushed his cigarette out and brought a finger up to his lip.

  “Coffee,” I said, knowing there would be some, and poured myself a cup. He was looking down, to my sneakers, I thought, but then saw his eyes were a little higher. I crossed my arms on my chest, leaving a thumb under my nipple, for emphasis. There wasn’t a lot of room back there and in order to leave, I realized, he had to pass me. He smiled, as if he could read my mind just then.

  “I gotta go back and see what’s going on over there,” he said, and he leaned in close to pass me, and as he did so, he turned to face me, his eyes down, and his left hand steadied himself on me, touching my right hip, the point of it, the fingers spread on my lower back, the thumb pressing into the nerve I didn’t know was there. Something electric left him and burned into me. He walked off, grinning. “See ya later.” The screen door slammed shut. And then I breathed again, shorts heavy, awake.

  I washed down the deck and picnic house on weekends. I came in early Sunday that next weekend. I wore big rubber wading boots, big rubber gloves, and an old Speedo bathing suit to do it, and it was actually, truth be told, my favorite part of the job. Part of it was knowing how ridiculous I looked, part of it was that I wasn’t above enjoying the hose spray on a hot day. So I filled buckets with water and detergent and in the muggy early morning I set to tossing the soapy water around the room and deck, took the big brushes and scrubbed until I was sweating, the tables and the floor and the deck, and then started filling the buckets again to rinse. My breathing was returning to normal, and I was aware that my suit was dripping onto the deck under me from sweat, when I became aware of the feeling I now recognized. I didn’t turn this time, though.

  I tossed the buckets of water around, and then took the hose and sprayed the foam off the tables and floors, chasing it into the drains, and then went out to the deck, spraying there, still not looking, spraying down the tables and floor there and then turning the hose on myself, raising it above my head, spraying myself down. The cold water took the sweat off me and the soap, and then I shook my head like a dog and looked into the window, where I smiled before bringing the hose up and aiming it through the screen at Steve, catching him full on.

  “Fuck!” I heard what sounded like a coffee cup hit the floor and splash. The door swung open. He came around toward me, walking into the full spray of the hose I aimed at him, and I was laughing, backing up. He pushed up to me, knocked me flat on the top of the picnic table behind me, and with an arm pinning me across my chest he pressed all of himself down on me, reaching his arm out the length of mine and grabbing the hose from my hand. He hooked it inside my swimsuit and hit the lever, sending water shooting inside, down the front of us both. I yelled and he put his hand on my mouth. He was rubbing his crotch into mine now, grinning fiercely, and I was pinned to the table, the boots heavy with water now and sliding off, pinned there by my crotch under his and his hand on my mouth. He took the hose and sprayed my chest, hitting the nipples with hard spray blasts. And then he looked around.

  “Get in the picnic house,” he said. He let me up. As I turned and he followed, he hooked a finger into the suit, hooking it and pulling it tight as we went inside, and when the door closed, he yanked hard, and it came off. He bent me over the first table inside and pressed me into it, a hand on my neck, his other hand pressed in between my buttocks. He bent down close and ran a tongue along my right butt-cheek and then bit down on it. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck.”

  I heard him undo his buckle. His jeans were soaking wet, his shirt too. He pulled them off, not needing now to hold me down. I looked over my shoulder and he looked deeply back, while he got naked.

  He was beautiful, a honey color all over, shiny and smooth. A very little bit of sparse hair crawled up his flat stomach from his wiry bush, where his dick swung out, heavy, brown, and uncut, a pale-pink head showing. “Get on your back,” he said, and I did, and he walked over to where my head was. He tipped my head back off the table’s edge, cradling it in his hand. “Open your mouth.” His dick bobbed up and down and I watched it until it landed in my mouth. He slid it in, and my mouth was dry, I could tell, and he could too, because right then he opened his mouth and a thick string of drool fell out to land on his dry brown dick and splash my mouth, my face. The sudden slipperiness almost made me come. He fucked my face, playing with my body as he did so, running his hands across it until he came back to my crotch. He inserted two fingers then alongside his dick in my mouth, spit down, and then took them and slipped them inside me.

  He was filling me from both ends now, trying to get more of himself in my mouth as he widened my hole. And then he pulled out and stood up, looking down at me. Spit was sliding off his dick onto the wet floor, and for a moment it seemed as if the room were wet all over from the play.

 

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