My Year of the Racehorse: Falling in Love With the Sport of Kings by Kevin Chong

Author:Kevin Chong [Chong, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation, Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, BIO026000, Equestrian, Horse Racing, SPO021000
ISBN: 9781553658405
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2012-03-02T06:55:47+00:00

10 Learn Another Language

AN INTERMINABLE MONTH, the plumpest patch of summer, passes between races for my horse. During this once-a-year spasm of uninterrupted sunshine in Vancouver, it’s as if every man, woman, and child in the city has come upon a $20 bill on the street. The people I know scramble around manically, making weekend plans on island cabins or campgrounds; work becomes an obligation that’s discharged half-consciously, the way you load your dishwasher.

Still wired from the horse’s success, I want to while away this intoxication in public, where I feel my magic will have the greatest effect. Of course, the horse figures in all my social interactions, my trump card to end conversational threads involving child-rearing and yoga classes. The only hitch for me is that when I tell people I’m a part owner of a racehorse, it automatically prompts them to wisecrack, “Which part of the horse?”

After hearing that joke about six hundred times, I attempt to alter the wording. I say I am a fractional owner, a co-owner, a shareholder of a racehorse. But people still ask me which part of the horse I own. Eventually, I turn the joke around by saying I’m only part of an owner.

“Which part?” I’m then asked.

“I’ll give you a hint,” I say, holding up the back of my hand. “It’s one of these fingers.”

In June, I find myself at the wedding reception of a high-school friend in the ballroom of a harbourfront hotel. I’m seated with a couple I’ve met only twice before—the others at the table are strangers. After a prolonged debate about the wisdom of measles vaccinations for children, I allow myself to expound on Blackie. This, naturally, leads to a brief overview of horse masturbation techniques.

“Colts please themselves by thrusting their erect dinks in the air or bouncing them against their stomachs,” I say, flapping and jabbing my forearm to simulate both kinds of masturbation. The guys’ eyes gleam like polished silverware; their companions’ carry expressions of dismay.

“So would a horse breeder want to eliminate this as a way of preserving the stud’s juices?” one guy, a cousin of the bride, asks me; his wife hands him the stink-eye. “Or would the horse have enough to go around?”

I scratch my chin—only because it’s itchy. “According to my information, a horse doesn’t usually ejaculate when he masturbates,” I say. “But I also read a scholarly article that says that breeders will discourage stallions from masturbating through ‘schemes and devices such as stallion rings, brushes, and cages.’”

(In that same article, entitled “Spontaneous Erection and Masturbation in Equids,” its author, Sue M. McDonnell, also observes that “when the horse was bouncing or thrusting the penis, the facial expression usually suggested pleasure and contentment similar to the kind observed during solitary grooming. A trance-like, glazed-eye appearance was occasionally evident.”)

There’s one woman at the table who’s been brought to the wedding by her boyfriend. Earlier in the evening, our conversation about books halted shortly after she told me she only read titles about gender theory and spirituality.

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