A Thunderlane Trip

It’s nighttime. I’m sitting in the empty bathtub in our bathroom, in my underwear. I’ve been reading one of my roommate’s old yearbooks from like his freshman year of highschool. He keeps it in the bathroom for some reason.

There are many ponies in the yearbook. I touch the ponies' faces with my hoof. I read about fun dances and experiences. I read about science contest winners and sports things. The word “distance” flashes through my headhole on loop, in buzzing neon letters, and I sit there. The pictures seem so beautiful to me. There is no relief from the feeling of the beauty of the yearbook pictures.

Goddamn.

I bite my hooves and I write letters to the ponies in the yearbook, but I only write them in my head. It feels good. It feels like practice. Overall, I am comfortable.

I’m celebrating my new status as the master-champion of the entire galaxy. And I know that when I run from something, there is a bigger part of me that hopes I get caught than there is that hopes I get away. My defense is that I taste horrible. That’s my defense.

My roommate knocks at the bathroom door. From the other side, he says, “Did I leave a shoe in there. If it’s in there, can I get it.” I see no shoe.

The mare on the first floor hasn’t had a job for a while either. She invited me over tonight. It’s too cold to sleep in her room so we sleep in the livingroom on the couch pullout bed. The pullout bed smells bad to me. Maybe she is thinking the same about me. Who knows!

We lie down together and our only light comes via tv, where a friendly old stallion is trying to sell necklaces. At the bottom of the screen there is a phone number and a counter. I watch the counter while she adjusts the sheets on the pullout bed and distributes them evenly between us. She always does that. It’s nice.

“It’s much warmer out here,” she says. “Why is it so cold in my room.”

I ignore her, watching the counter rise. What’s the counter for. The word “intriguing” scrolls across my headhole in neon letters. Maybe that’s the amount of friends the old stallion has. Fuck yeah.

You know what, I’m one of them. I am part of that bigger number. He just looks so friendly. The old stallion I mean. We could do everything together. We could go bowling together. We could dress alike. Me and the friendly stallion man, we could have dates. Try on necklaces. Play catch with a football.

I’d always make sure to just loft the football so I wouldn’t destroy his little old-man arms. What a good guy I am. What a good guy he is.

I understand now why the counter is rising. Yes. Yes this makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is how the counter on the screen isn’t exploding. Like, I’m surprised it doesn’t just begin to ascend rapidly and then melt.

“I think he just winked at me,” I say.

“What.” She turns over a little.

“The old stallion winked at me,” I say. “And it’s because we’re friends.”

She looks at the tv and scratches her nose with a hoof. “There’s no way they’re selling that many necklaces,” she says. She turns back to me and she says, “Hey remember that magician we saw the other day on tv. He was so good. It makes me think like, maybe some of his stuff is real.”

We are quiet. We watch the tv. This is magic.

The counter continues to rise and the old stallion continues to smile, holding necklaces. And I realize I have never once actually been happy in my life. And also never felt any kind of care that didn’t threaten to give up when challenged.

“Man, I just remembered when I was in like, kindergarten,” I say. “Me and a bunch of other foals were in the plastic playhouse thing during inside recess. We were reading a book. I was always the guy who read for some reason.”

“That’s funny,” she says.

I swallow and cough. Then I continue. “My best friend in class, he was this red colt named Featherdust. And while I was reading, I stopped at one of the pictures and pointed at the zebra colt in the picture. I said, ‘Hey look there’s a little zigger one in here.’ And like, I didn’t even know what it meant. I just knew I’d heard other people say it. So it didn’t make sense to me, but then when I looked at my friend Featherdust, he looked so hurt. Like he already knew what that meant. Like, I didn’t even realize it, but then I did. The look on his face was—he looked like he was mad at himself for being my friend. It felt stupid and terrible. Man. It’s fucking shitty I think. I feel really stupid and bad when I think about myself in situations like that.”

When I’m done talking I just want to keep talking so there is no quiet. But I don’t.

She gets on her elbow again and looks at the tv. I can see part of her nipple down her stomach. The word “sex” scrolls through my headhole in big neon letters.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe they’ve sold that many. They could’ve sold that many. How many poniess buy necklaces at night though.”

I stare at the ceiling, on my back. “Shit,” I say. “In that same class I had my first sexual experience. I was like, standing in line to get my homework checked and Featherdust elbowed my shoulder and when I looked up I saw the teacher bending over. I could see her vagina pretty good. The feeling was like, ‘I’m alive.’ That was a pretty significant class for me now that I think about it. I learned a lot then.”

She turns to me like I have just happened. She says, “Huh I remember my kindergarten teacher used to tell us about how he worked at like, some industrial job once and how he’d have black crust in his nose at the end of the day and then he’d have to scrape it out with tweezers every night. I remember that scared me—when I’d think about him doing that.”

I watch the number rise on the counter. And imagine the same counter for me, but it goes into the negatives. Win. The old stallion holds the necklaces in his hoof, still talking, still smiling.

“He amazes me,” I say.

We both watch. We are not touching or communicating. I like it. It feels real to me. It feels like practice.

Alternate version:

We sleep on the pullout bed tonight because her room is too cold. The building is always very cold. We lie on the pullout bed together and we do not touch or communicate, watching a shopping channel on mute.

She looks at the tv and she says, “I will agree that he is a cute old stallion.”

I lean over the edge of the bed and reach to the floor. “See,” I say. “He is absolutely adorable and he is tremendous.”

“Why tremendous.”

“I don’t know.” I take my phone off the floor and I alternate between the tv screen and my phone, dialing.

Somepony answers. I focus. “Hi,” I say. “Hi, is this the necklace channel. Ok. I was wondering if I could talk to the beautiful old stallion who is looking at me right now with a necklace in his hand. Ok. Sure.”

I push a button on my phone and put the phone back down on the ground by my pants.

“Think I’m going to shut off the tv, I’m tired now,” she says. She shuts off the tv and lies down against me. “Goodnight,” she says.

“I don’t give a shit about you at all,” I say.

We both laugh and it feels good. It feels like practice. “Good night,” I say.

I have agreed to go to a birthday party tonight for somepony I don’t know, because my roommate wants to have sex with the birthday mare and he is too afraid and awkward to go to the birthday party by himself. (And also because I am a ponitarian.) The birthday mare lives in an apartment building across the parking lot from our apartment building.

On the walk over, my roommate tells me she refused to have sex with him before because, “He didn’t have abs.” He kicks a rock. “And she’s fat too,” he says. “So what the fuck.”

I say, “If she wants abs, she will gets abs, and you fail. You have to be ok with that. Don’t make it her fault.”

We manage to kick the same rock across the parking lot, over ice and some areas of snow too. And we manage because we try. At the birthday party, there are ponies all around me and it feels un-good. Like heat, somehow. No I don’t know.

I sit on the couch looking straight ahead. This is my etiquette. I am proud of how good I have become at calmly not participating in things.

The birthday mare comes up to me and introduces herself and then she starts rubbing my shaved-head, stopping only for a second to fix her birthday hat. “Can I do this,” she says.

“It feels terrible to me,” I say. “But happy birthday.”

“Thanks, can I do this.” She keeps rubbing my head. It feels bad at first yes but then I notice that I’m getting a dangerously fast hardness in my dick area. Magnet fast. Dangerous!

Her coltfriend comes over and they walk away together, him looking at me. He probably wanted to rub my head.

Later on, when I’d really accomplished a good feet-stare, this mare starts falling all over the apartment, yelling about how she is Fillypine. She falls over to a pony and yells in his face, “I’m Fillypine!” Then she does it again with another pony.

The apartment is small enough that everypony heard it the first time I think. I’m pretty sure she accomplished her communication with the first try. But she keeps telling more ponies. She walks all over the apartment yelling that she is Fillypine. And for a finale, she falls over behind my back onto the couch, into immediate sleep.

There’s another stallion sitting next to me on the couch. He is somepony I don’t know and he is rolling a cigarette and he is looking at it. He laughs. “She went from yelling to sleeping faster than anyone I’ve ever seen,” he says.

“There’s still hope for people,” I say. I pick her head up and put a pillow beneath.

“Don’t touch me,” she says, mumbling, “Or I’ll punch your skull off, I’m Fillypine.”

I brush her mane behind her ear with my hoof so her mane won’t get in her mouth as she’s threatening me. I want to see and hear the threat. And I sit on the couch, looking at the sleeping Fillypine mare.

A little bit later, my roommate and I leave and we manage to cooperatively kick another stone from the birthday mare’s apartment all the way back to our apartment. It is amazing. Once back, we stand just inside by the dark entryway taking our boots off.

My roommate locks our door. “See you tomorrow,” he says.

I say, “I know.”

Then he goes to bed and I go out the backdoor to the deck. I stand on the deck. It’s very cold out. There’s a color and ringing to the sky that lets me know it is close to morning. I look at the clouds and I feel uncomfortable. The word “humongous” scrolls through my headhole in neon lettering.

The sun’s coming up and my roommate and I are standing on the deck. Last night we went to a birthday party for some mare he kind-of knows.

He has a cigarette and he is looking at where the sun is appearing. “This isn’t so great,” he says.

I agree by saying nothing.

He finishes his cigarette and puts it out against the bottom of his hoof. After a very long silence, he says, “Getting older means you have less and less fun.”

I agree by saying nothing.

I have the type of cold feeling that makes your chest muscles, like, bubbly. Hope I don’t get sick and die. The dream I have when I go to sleep involves me crawling through a very narrow wooden corridor for a very long time.