My leather chaps still fit.
These were made for me when I was 13. But I can zip them around my calves, my thighs and buckle around the low waist, wrapping myself in black leather. From 1985-1990, I rode horses daily.
I was thrilled to graduate from polyester jodhpurs to real-leather chaps as a teenager. The chaps are suede on the outside, with long fringe along the legs; a needlepoint plate in the strap along the lower back spells out my last name; green piping also traces the edges of the belt portion.
These chaps are now hanging on the back of a chair in my rented living room in south Santa Fe, having made the moves from Virginia to New York City to San Francisco to New Mexico at the bottom of a storage box. I have not not actually worn them to ride a horse since 1990. But A., from whom I am renting a house, has three horses and we had talked about me getting on one of them. I am nervous. I used to be a decent rider and horse person.
***
October 2021
This week, I got back on a horse.
***
August 1985
I can’t remember how I met Alex. It was the first summer my mom and I moved to rural Virginia. Maybe it was at the barn? She had a dapple-grey pony named Tramp who had a low-slung potbelly but, when jumping, magically lifted both his knees higher than any other pony in the ring.
I soon got Brag About, another dapple-grey pony with a standoffish personality and penchant for laying down in his stall.
Alex and I were both only children; we both needed friends. She had moved from Grosse Pointe, Michigan the year before, and I had moved from Washington, D.C. after my mother left her alcoholic second husband.
Within a month of meeting Alex her father was killed in a hit-and-run accident. I don’t remember talking much about the accident or death with her. I do remember being dropped off to play with her in the weeks leading up to the start of fifth grade and that loss silently looming over her household.
She lived in a plantation-style house at the end of a long driveway in a town called The Plains. I was impressed with the grandeur, with the fact that she had two twin canopy beds in her bedroom, and that they had a maid, a German shepherd and an Irish wolfhound, and most of all, horses.
Her mother was a horse person and still wore all her riding clothes made for her in the 1950s—rust-colored wool jodhpurs that billowed at the hips, tall two-tone leather boots with small spurs, woolen sweaters.
Before we moved to the countryside in Virginia, my fourth grade year had been a kind of slow-moving alcoholic trauma. At the start of it—in the fall of 1984—my mother and I had moved out of an old row house in Georgetown in the middle of the night and into the basement of one of her friends in Arlington. It was a fast, keen escape from that husband’s abusive voice and hands.
In our new “home” we shared one windowless basement room; her bed and my bed separated by free-standing bookcases. Finally, after nine months living there, she obtained a job at the horsey boarding school in Virginia. The job came with housing in a rural setting and it was in a town known for its anglophilic-riding culture.
My mom was able to convince my dad—still in California and newly monied from a successful company—to pay for things like riding lessons, a pony, and all the other trappings that would help foster a sense of the “fresh-start” move to the country. Yet money and tension was tight in other ways; my mom and I had massive arguments over things like the cost of shampoo and my resistance to going to dancing and etiquette classes.
So yes, I must have met Alex at the barn that first summer. There were other girls too but Alex and I clicked. We were into books, cassette tapes, and the outdoorsy side of riding. Her subversive style spoke to my emotional state. In one of our first afternoons hanging out at her house, she showed me how you could stick a needle under the top layer of skin in your hand.
But there was more—you could thread the needle and do light cross-stitching in your palm skin, writing out words like “Fuck you” in pink thread, ghoulishly sandwiched between dermis layers.
***
June 2006
“I had coffee with Alex today - she gave me an earful. I ended up taking her to her apartment in Winchester and spending 5 hours with her. When you were her buddy was she scattered and forgetful? She is also unconscious about a lot of things - I don't know if this is a personality issue or is this caused by 10 years on drugs. I recommended that she start therapy - her natural father is dead, her step-father (who she hated) is dead and the three boyfriends she has had in the last 10 years are also dead. I love you,
Mom
***
1987-1989
I am in 7th grade now. Here are the things that are important to me: Obtaining a blue Benetton rugby shirt, having enough batteries to keep my Walkman powered at all times, stacks of novels, River Phoenix, and acquiring horse show ribbons which are strung around my bedroom.
Alex and I are still riding daily after school—either a ring lesson, sometimes without stirrups to strengthen our legs, or a trail ride. In the fall of 1987, I see blood in my underwear in the barn bathroom—it’s my 12th birthday. I am instantly ashamed knowing that I am getting my first period. I don’t want to cross this threshold. I don’t tell anyone for a long time.
That Christmas, Alex gets a four-wheeler ATV as a present. She and her mother have moved to a different English-style manor house that backs up into a warren of hunting and horse trails. Her mother has remarried to a rich real estate developer; Alex tells me she hates her new stepfather because he asked her to take a curry brush and brush his hairy legs.
Her room is still a marvel to me. Those same twin canopied beds are in one room which connects through a bathroom to a playroom where she has cats, a television and an Apple Macintosh computer. Like sisters, we become obsessed with The Monkees, playing LoadRunner, using mousse to add height to our bangs. Often we go out on her four-wheeler—she drives and I hang on to her. We are basically free to roam and do what we please; boys, cigarettes and beer are coming soon.
My mom and I are no longer living at the horsey boarding school and she now leaves for her work commute before I wake up for school. I often oversleep and show up for school at 10 a.m., or later, as I can walk to my elementary school. My grades are slipping, I am defiant and read novels under my desk in class, I get sent often to “The Bench.”
Two personalities start to twist around each other inside me. There is The Good Girl, one that is basically a young nerd, wears Laura Ashley, and enjoys reading and math and still wants to win show ribbons. And then there is The Rebel. She is desperate for acceptance, affection and attention, she covets acid-wash mini skirts, and starts smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, won’t be told what to do. In a funny way, the horse world comprises this split as well—where earnest and punk leanings mix and mingle.
After school Alex and I are advanced enough to go on trail rides on our own. We stuff our pockets with gummy bears or other little snacks in the winter outings; we find little coups to jump or just walk the horses; sometimes we gallop down roads but are careful not to gallop across empty fields where a gopher hole can snap a horse’s leg. We also fox hunt together along with the adults; we do a few cross-country races; we go to horse shows.
I trade up from Brag About to a sweeter bay mare who I have named East of Eden after the Steinbeck novel. I am a good rider, not the best, but pretty good. I win some blues and more reds and yellows. I like being at the barn and the camaraderie; I like the playfulness of the horses, and communicating with them; I especially like the coarse humor of horse people, the dirt, and being away from parental gaze. The best joke being to tell a newcomer that there’s a horse with a scratch on his belly (when a male horse drops his penis.)
At some point Alex and I stop riding together anymore; I changed trainers and Alex wasn’t part of that and I think she stopped riding altogether. I don’t remember the details but our friendship now becomes about partying. She tells me if I coat a cigarette with toothpaste, let the toothpaste dry and then smoke it, it will get you high. We try it. We have an awkward party with beer and two or three boys and play spin the bottle.
By the end of 7th grade, I get a strong lecture from a respected teacher, about how I am wrecking my future. My grades and attitude improve. I am able to pull myself together enough to apply to boarding schools in the fall of 1988.
I move away in the fall of 1989 at age 13 to Massachusetts and I will never live at home again. I only rode a horse a few more times in the next 30 years.
###
March 2008
I make the walk from Houston and Broadway to Houston and 2nd Avenue during my lunch hour. There is an AA meeting at Second Ave and Second Street everyday at 1 p.m. I am barely off “counting days” and now I have almost 100 days sober from drugs and alcohol. Even though I am under-employed, it turns out it’s just about the right amount, working 20 hours a week editing a weekly email newsletter. It allows plenty of time to get sober and attend a lot of meetings. I am in enough of a stupor that I am just doing what I am told: Go to a meeting everyday.
I hustle as fast as I can on the south side of Houston Street, avoiding garbage and piles of ice, and burying my chin into the high neck of my coat. I am exhilarated and depressed with these meetings. I don’t actually know what I am doing—the language is strange. How can a disease talk to you? I’ve considered myself a fairly ordinary party girl with an Ivy League education and yet now I am sitting in a room with junkies, homeless, and ex-cons. I will come to love them too, one day; I am still mostly scared but also in awe.
I do know that I can’t drink anymore; that the ability to choose when I stop drinking has become entirely evasive. The warm feeling that drinking creates inside of me is wonderful and it makes all my internal noise stop temporarily; it turns me into someone I am not for a few hours. Like most alcoholics, however, I just want more — and more after that — of that feeling. Until the stage fades to black. And the reality is that alcohol also makes me a depressed, crying hungry ghost, full of self-hating and self-pitying thoughts. When I am not drinking all I can think about is when I can start again. Day after day. So I ask for help to stop.
But on that March early afternoon, my mother called to tell me that Alex is dead. We are both 32 years old. Alex’s mother found her in the powder room of their home in Virginia, her face blue and with a needle in her arm. I had known that the last decade for Alex had been a long descent into addiction—a faster, harder version than my story. I had only seen her once or twice since that last night partying in 1990.
***
August 1990
We didn’t have drivers’ licenses yet so we got into the back of a Honda; two boys in front and Alex and me in the back. I have ridden a horse a few times that summer but my dad pushed to sell East of Eden since I am in a boarding school scene now. And without my own horse to ride, it’s just over. Like that, my riding career had ended by the end of eighth grade.
In the Honda, we have a case of Bud Lites and many packs of Camel Lights, which we chain smoke out the window; we’re blaring AC/DC into the darkness as we speed down curvy country roads. We’ve ended up in an open hay field, with black clapboard fencing, and a coup jump for fox-hunters to enter and exit the private field. The beams of headlights don’t go far in the night. We park and gather on the rear trunk of the car and smoke more cigarettes while the summer bugs dance in and out of the thick yellow light in front.
At some point, a gesture is made between Alex and one of the guys—let’s call him R. They walk to the front of the car and have sex on the hood; when they are done R blows up the condom like an obscene balloon and ties it to the radio antenna. I badly want to go home and get away from this situation but I know I have to be cool. There doesn’t seem to be any pressure on me to do the same but only to cosign this act with howling laughter. We drive back into our small town with the hideous balloon flapping on the antenna.
After that night, my friendship with Alex was wordlessly over.
October 31, 2021
When I woke up on this past Sunday, I was excited. It’s fall in south Santa Fe—windy but still warmish. The golden leaves have been turning for weeks—and unlike the East Coast fall, there is no rain to strip the trees. I had planned what to wear the night before and I tried on my chaps again to confirm they still fit. I put on my new paddock boots and walked over to the barn for our appointed time.
When I got there, A. pointed to Chrome and told me that’s the one I’ll ride. He’s a huge German horse with a long trunk and giant hooves the size of small plates. He’s older and polite when I offer a carrot; the other two horses are younger, pushier, eager to grab their carrots. She hands me a rubber curry brush and gently reminds me how to use it; then a regular brush. Within minutes, my hands and mind remember what to do—I am patting Chrome’s velvety firm neck, murmuring to him how beautiful he is. Muscle memory shows me how to put the saddle on, tighten the girth.
“It’s like riding a bike, but not really,” A., says. I laugh. It is exactly that.
I still know what to do, how to move around the horse on the ground, how to pull myself into the saddle, and wiggle slightly to find my seat. We walk around the land, and after a few tries at trotting, I can feel my inner-thigh muscles connecting memory and strength to post. However, I can’t seem to remember what to do to get Chrome to well up into a canter—I don’t have the strength or confidence right now. Maybe next time. But the rest is all still there for me: the gentle sway of sitting on a walking horse, easy conversation while walking in a field, loose hands on the reins, the view from six feet higher.
How did I get here on this horse? But here I am, seemingly many lifetimes after the last time I was in this position.
Alex and I shared a few years of friendship, riding, and, most importantly, the last year of girlhood. Why did I get recovery and why didn’t she? In some ways those reasons feel obvious, and in other ways they are not. The forging of self at 10, 11, and 12 is a mysterious alchemy. Addiction is a brutal sport as is adolescence.
But horse riding is simple. It’s full of presence and just doing the next right thing. I look forward to putting my chaps on again.
powerful stuff