Play that Funky Music, Ms. Scratch

The moon was slowly falling from the night sky by the time Vinyl and I left the club. Her friends left to go on their separate ways, saying that they have to get to bed for work tomorrow. The two of us were walking heedlessly down the sidewalk, laughing and singing songs that sang from her mouth, as if challenging me to keep up with her, which I did for the most part. I was feeling very intoxicated at that point, but I was drunk from the infatuation that I was having for this snow-white unicorn.

”And, they were dancing, and singing/And movin’ to the groovin’/ And, just when it hit me/Somepony turned around and shouted/Play that Funky Music, Earth Boy/Play that Funky Music right/Play that Funky Music, Earth Boy/Lay down the boogie, and play that funky music till you die!”

We laughed hard and loud as we hugged each other to keep ourselves from falling over our hooves to the ground.

“I never would have thought that you would know all those songs!” Vinyl said, clearly impressed by my knowledge.

“I listened to those songs all the time on my records when I was a kid. I would play them over and over and over again until they got burned into my brain, and I would play them even more, and it drove my dad insane!” We laugh as we held on to each other. “One time, as a little foul, I was playing that song so loud that he burst into my room, and I was in my underwear dancing my flank off. He yelled, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ And, I looked at him and said, ‘Playing that Funky Music, Earth Boy!’” Vinyl gave a hearty laugh as her head rested on my shoulder while hugging my arm, keeping the both of us warm. “He threw all of my records out into the trash, telling me that I should not be listening to those ‘dick-heads!’”

“Damn!” Vinyl looked at me her, her laughter getting sober with her mane all disarranged over her face. “Forgive me for saying this, but your dad is an asshole!”

“None taken. I’ve known him to be one for the last fifteen years of my life.”

She looked up at me with some surprise by my nonchalant description of my father, as if it was an undisputed fact. “You’ve hated him for that long because of that?”

“Oh, no, no. I wouldn’t be a good son if I let that wedge our relationship apart like that. I followed my dad’s orders and I never listened to them again. I only listened to, as he called it, ‘real’ music. And, I did fell in love them, very much. But, I would still listen to them ‘funky’ music.”

She giggled as she smiled up at me, and I could tell that she had a challenge for me. “What’s your favorite song? And, you have to sing it.”

“Okay,” I remembered that one song that I had memorized for all of my life. “Long, long time ago/I can still remember/How that music used to make me smile/And I knew if I had my chance/That I could make those people dance/And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while,” Vinyl joined in as she remembered the song as well. “But, February made me shiver/With every paper I’d deliver/Bad news on the doorstep/I couldn’t take one more step/I can’t remember if I cried/When I read about his widowed bride/But something touched me deep inside/The day the music died/So, bye-bye, Miss Equestrian Pie/Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry/And, them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye/Singin’, ‘This’ll be the day that I die/This’ll be the day that I die.’”

It was my turn to be surprised by Vinyl’s knowledge of the song. She smiled as if she knew what I was thinking about.

“Believe it or not,” she said, “that was the first song that made me realized what I wanted to do with my life.” We started walking soberly as she continued to hold on to my arm. “Like you, I listened to all of that ‘funky’ music all the time. It did drive my parents a bit crazy, but they were tolerant of it. I was about ten years old when I first heard that song and I didn’t understand it what it was talking about. ‘Music died?’ I thought, ‘what did he mean by that?’ So, I would listen to that song over and over and over, trying to decipher what it all mean. It got stuck in my head that I would start singing parts of it without warning; during class, eating dinner, even my parents told me that I would sing it in my sleep.”

“Do you know what the song is about?”

“Yeah, but I sometimes wished I hadn’t. I haven’t heard that song in such a long time. You singing it really brought back a lot of memories.” She smiled as she looked up at me. I smiled back.

“So, music really means a lot to you?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I really love how it just free yourself from your fears if you let it take ahold of you.” She looked up at me with her sly smile. “It seemed it really helped you a lot.”

I blushed as I smiled as I remembered what had happened to me. “I don’t think that I have ever felt like that before in my life.”

“I’m sure that you would make any mare happy with those moves you put on the floor,” she teased. Then, a cold wind blustered without warning against us. Vinyl pressed herself up against me as she shivered for warmth. “Brrr! When the hell did it get so cold all of the sudden?”

“Maybe you should wear something that that is a bit more appropriate for the climate,” I teased her.

“How can you ponies stand this?”

“If you think this is bad, then you don’t want to visit Ponyville. I’ve seen temperatures dripped into minus 30.”

“Minus 30?” she looked up at me with a shocked expression. “The lowest I’ve seen in Los Pegasus was about 52, and that was too cold for me.”

“You sissy.”

She playfully punched my stomach which I laughed and chased after her as she ran down the street. I caught her by her hand and pulled her into my body. We laughed as we kept our faces near, feeling our warm breathes against out skin. I leaned down and planted my lips onto hers, which she accepted as she pulled herself closer. She really tasted sweet because she had been so good to me that night. With her generosity and kindness, the night, which had already by that point become the best night of my life, was getting even better. I had never thought that anything would have gone so perfectly and I had never expecting something like this to happen. It was almost like a dream come true, and I only wished that it would last longer than the night we were sharing. I may not realized it than, but I was falling head over heels for Vinyl Scratch.

She let go and we smiled as we laughed.

“The park isn’t far from here,” she said. “You want to go there?”

“Yeah, sure,” I answered.

We made our way down the wet sidewalk, our hands clasped to each other. It almost felt like we were a couple that I always see, walking together side by side, connected together with only their hands as if they were one being. Along the way, she would look at me and smile, telling me that she was enjoying herself as much as I was. I smiled back, feeling like the luckiest stallion in all of Equestria to be sharing this night with this beautiful mare. Then, a melancholic sensation ran through my body as I realized that it would only last for that night. By the time the sun would come up, she would disappear from me like a sweet dream. It was then that I realized that I really liked her very much, but I was not sure what her thoughts were about me. I had a good feeling that she liked me, but, possibly, not in the same range or intensity as I. I wondered the whole way if she mined if I asked her to see her again.

We found a picnic bench in the snow and she dragged me over to sit on the top with our hooves on the sits. We sat close to each other to keep each us warm from the cold air. We both look up at the dark sky where the stars were dimmed by the lights of the city.

“The stars shine brighter back in Ponyville,” I commented, a little disappointed that, even with much absence of light around us that the city still interfere with the night’s natural lights.

“I bet they do,” Vinyl said. “Back in Los Pegasus, the stars didn’t shine as bright as this. The only place I could see the night sky all lit up is when my parents and I would go out into the beach and we would just look up and I would try to count the stars. I couldn’t make it past thirty.”

I only nodded as I continued to look up at the sky. I could sense that she turned her head to look at me as if she expected for my response, which I did not have.

“Did you ever do something like that?” she asked.

“No,” I answered bluntly. “My dad always had me in bed by nine, even during the weekends and holidays. So, I would do it myself, to get out of bed and look out the window. Sometimes I would fall asleep there. And, when he comes in to check up on me, he would grab me by the mane to pull me up and berate me for disobeying him and shove me into bed.”

Vinyl looked at me as if she had never heard anything like that.

“Red Badge,” she said. “Why is it every time when we talk, you always go back to your father, and it would be something terrible about him?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking away. I was feeling ashamed of myself for inadvertently ruining the night. It was as if he was there, dictating my actions to keep me from enjoying myself with her. I wanted to forget about him and leave him in Ponyville, and in the back of my mind.

“Do you want to talk about him?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, wondering if I should. I did not want him to ruin the good time I was having with her, but my gut was hot and it want to explode all of my emotion and she seemed willing to listen as she stared at me with curiosity. She gave my hand a gentle squeeze as an encouragement.

“I’m sure whatever problems you have with your father, you two still love each other.”

I didn’t know if I wanted to deny it or lie to her about how we really feel about each other. For a long time, I did wanted to believe that we did love each other, but with each year I found it harder and harder to believe something like that, and it had gotten to the point where I’m starting to think I was just fooling myself. Vinyl seemed to catch my doubtful look as her small hopeful smile changed into realization about my true feelings.

“It’s fine,” I tried to blow the topic away, but she was stubborn to not let it dissipate into the cold night.

“You don’t look fine about it,” she said.

“The fuck do you know?” I snapped at her. “We’ve just met not three hours ago and you think you figured out everything about me? Hell, I’m fucking twenty-five years old right now and I don’t know what the fuck I want to do with my life, but my dad thinks that I ought to return back to Ponyville and take over the store, but I don’t want to. But, every time he asked me what I was going to do with myself, I would not answer him because I don’t have an answer, or that I had some idea but I was afraid to tell him because he would ridicule me, saying that it is not a real stallion job or some bullshit like that.” I turned away, a little ashamed of myself for exploding at her like that. I wanted to stop this from going overboard into the wrong side.

“How much do you hate him?” she asked. She had a hint of interest in her tone, nothing judgmental about my thoughts.

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling a little exhausted. “Sometimes I would think that he never wanted me in the first place.” She was about to say something, but I silenced her. “I know that sounded extreme, but if you had a father like him, you probably say the same thing. He never held me, kissed me, compliment me. Whenever we walked by, whether at home or anywhere, I would say ‘Hi, Daddy,’ or ‘How are you, Dad?’ and he would ignored me like I was never standing there. After a while, I stopped doing it and I would just nod at him, but he would never acknowledge it. My mom said that he was very busy with his store, which I understand. He was working to help his family, but was he so tired that he couldn’t even say ‘Hey, son’? And, that the only time we ever had any connection was when he would disciplined me for stupid shit? That, I can’t understand.

“And, now, after refusing to act like a father, he thinks that I should take over his precious grocery store, without acknowledging that I already have a Cutie Mark, and it is my choice on what I want to do, not his. And, because of that, I refused to talk to him, which he seems fine with.” I stopped, feeling a little winded by my little outburst. I looked at Vinyl, trying to figure out what she was thinking about me after I just berated my own father, which I was starting to feel bad, even though I was still angry at him.

“So, how much do you really hate him?” she asked.

“A lot,” I answered causally. “And, yet, there is that sliver of a hope left in me that we could have that loving father-son relationship that I always wanted.”

“So, in some ways you still love him.”

“I guess. But, it is not much, if there is anything meaningful about it.”

“So, what does your Cutie Mark look like?” she asked.

“I…I don’t want to say,” I said. I wanted to get out of there, to end the night on a good note instead of a bad one.

“Alright,” she jumped off from the table and turn to look at me. Then, she started to unbutton her pants.

“HEY!” I yelled, my eyes possibly bugged out of their sockets as she undid her zipper. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m showing you my Cutie Mark,” she said. She pushed down the lip of her pants until it was resting above her knees as her pant legs crumbled.

I quickly covered my eyes as my face became hot, making it sting in the cold air. I could also feel warmth in many areas of my body, especially in my groin area.

“Aren’t you going to look?” she asked.

I promptly shook my head. “Th-That’s okay. I’m sure that you have a nice Cutie Mark.”

“Well how about you look at it and comment on it?” I could hear her smile with the tone of her voice. “It’s okay. I mean, what’s the point of hiding our Cutie Marks if it reveals who we are? I’m not ashamed of it.”

I knew, with those words, that she was one hundred percent right that the Cutie Mark we wore on our flank supposed to tell us what our talent or skill that we inhibit that ponies had to figure out on our own. But, all of the places to put it, why there?

I gathered up the courage to remove my hand from my eyes to look at the white mare. Her smile was aiming at me, but her face was blushing a bit, as if she was wondering why she was doing this to a complete stranger that she had only met tonight. I gazed my eyes downward and noticed that she had a very thin piece of lingerie. A thin black string wrapped around her hips with the cover folding underneath her and between her legs. I could feel my breath freezing in my throat as it got stuck that I had to swallow it. The way that the full might of the beam from the moon shone on her snow-white fur made her even more otherworldly, and I quickly found her even more so a gorgeous creature with every second I looked at her, and I wished with all my might that we would stay like where we were forever, just me admiring her natural beauty like a work of art.

She slowly turned her body to her side until she was standing profile to me, and I could see, just underneath her blank string, a music note tattooed on her white fur. It is a simple design, just two notes, but it spoke so much volume as to what she is. She is a mare who loves music, to make them, to play them for other ponies for them to enjoy. That was her destiny and I saw that tonight at the club.

“Now that I showed you mine,” she winked at me, “you show me yours.”

I was hesitant to pull my pants down in front of a mare. However, I had a little courage that was being fueled by her. I looked around me to make sure that we were alone. I didn’t like the idea of somepony walking in on us and getting the wrong idea. I got off the table and, with quaking hands, undid my button and zipper. Then, I realized that I was still aroused. I quickly zip up my pants, my face burning hotly that I wanted to just run away and die so I didn’t had to feel it any longer. It was too embarrassing and I didn’t want her to think any less of me if she found out. I wanted to get out of there quick and to just let it be just a nice little episode of my life.

“It’s getting a little late,” I quickly said as I fastened my button. “I think I better get back home. I have lots of work I need to get done for my classes.”

I was about to turn away, but Vinyl grabbed my hand to keep me from leaving. I stopped and looked at her, wondering why she stopped me. She had her head leveled, her eyes not looking at me, but I could see that her face had a small smile and there were some redness leftover on her cheeks.

“You…”she started, her voice low, “you haven’t showed me your Cutie Mark.”

“It’s…It’s nothing remarkable,” I said. I wanted to escape from her grasp, but that spell of hers froze my hooves to the ground as they refuse to budge. I didn’t mind all that much in showing her my Cutie Mark, I just wish that my basic impulse haven’t took control of me. It had been a very long time since I felt this way about another mare, and it was scaring me a bit about how she would translate it. I fought it off, but I could not hold control over it and I felt that she would find it disgusting. “Just forget about it,” I vainly said.

“It’s okay,” she said sweetly. She looked up at me and smiled understandably. “I mean…” she was flustered as she played with her mane, twirling a string with her finger. “It’s not like I haven’t seen one before, and it is natural for you, and…” she stopped, her face getting redder as it spread over her face. She looked as if she thought that she was ruining the night instead.

“Well…” I started to scratch my mane, confuse by what was going on. “It’s….I mean…you are such a…beautiful mare and…” I gulped, wondering if I had said the wrong thing. “I’m sorry, I’m not use to this sort of thing. I mean, I’ve never even kissed a mare before you.”

“So, you never had a girlfriend?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I mean, I never…honestly, I never thought that tonight would end up like this, me hanging around with…such an amazing mare as yourself. And, I’m a little shock that you would spend time with a stallion like me.”

“Well, it has been a while since I dated anypony, and, to be honest, I wasn’t…I didn’t think I would be interested in any stallions right now. Not that I think they’re all bad. I know plenty of good stallions. I just didn’t think that romance is my kind of thing.” She look straight into my face, and I knew what she was saying that the honest truth. “But, right now, here with you, I feel like a high school filly hanging out with her biggest crush.”

We stood that way for a while, ignorant to the world around us as we could only acknowledge the pony that stood in front of each other. What she just said was the closest thing that a mare would come to saying that she liked me. A huge surge of emotion flowed through my body and it was hard for me to keep it down as I let it show on my face with a smile on my face as my lips arched upward. I felt like I had won the gold medal at the Equestrian Games that I had achieved something that I never imagined that I would get.

Vinyl let go of my hand and quickly pulled up her pants locked them in place. She looked flabbergasted, like she had forgotten why she had them down in the first place. “I-If you don’t want to show it to me, it’s fine. I’m sorry for pushing you like that.” She turned around and started to leave me, but I was not about to lose her if it meant never seeing her again.

It was my turn to reach out for her as I grabbed her hand. She stopped and looked at me with surprise. I hoped that she was not annoyed by my action, but her eyes told me that she was glad that I stopped her. I could feel my mouth getting flooded with saliva and I gulped it down so that I could speak up.

“I…”I paused, trying to figure out how to say it to her. “I…I like to show you my…my Cutie Mark…” I said as my face burn hot. I start to laugh nervously as I finished my sentence. “I just…I don’t want to show it to you out here.”

Her lips curved into a smile as she walked up to me, standing just few inches from my body. I didn’t know what was going on with her. It seemed that I was looking at two sides of the mare, each taking over her with each inflection to match the situation that she was luring me in. It made her even more mysterious and I wanted to know more about her to satisfy my appetite born from my curiosity. “Why not?” she said in a teasing tone. “No pony’s out here but us.”

I didn’t have an answer prepared, but she continued on, her smile becoming seductive.

“Alright,” she said understandably. “My place isn’t far from here. You can show it to me there, if that’s alright with you.”

My breath blocked my lungs, but I managed to swallow it down. I could feel my heart punching through my head and the sound of it echoed inside of my ears. I wondered what the right answer was. I knew what I wanted, but I wondered what was making that decision. Was it lust, or something that was much more sweeter? Even though I’ve only known her for only that night, I felt more comfortable being with her than being with any ponies who I have known longer, including my family. In fact, the only pony that I’ve always felt this much comfort being around was my mother, but that was something completely different than what was happening with Vinyl Scratch. I felt like this was my only opportunity to explore what this feeling could be, and I should not waste it.

I only answered with a swift nod of my head, and she pulled me along like I was the most prized object of her life. We didn’t talk as we journeyed through the city in the cold night to her home, but it was the most comfortable silence I’ve ever experienced, even though my mind was racing with hopes that I would not ruin the magic of the night.