I will make you immobile. I will turn you into stone-- stone boy, sweet boy, sunny momma’s angel, dickless dimpled cherub. I will stuff you full of cherries, stick pins in your side; I will locate your veins slit them open like slugs, drain you until your skin is as white as your teeth-- your teeth as white as purity, piety or the Madonna’s holy panties. Then I will open you up, peel back your chest as if it were a vest and you my doll. I will stick my cold, hard hand in and take hold of your heart. I will squeeze it until I feel it’s rhythm slowed, made moderate, made predictable. I will match it to my own. I will make you over; I will make you over, make you new. I will make you. But what is this? What crazy tragedy is this that has delivered the greatest work ever written into the hands of a man who cannot read? The boy surrendered himself and was brought before me-- “Kill me! Kill me! Find me and Kill meeeeeeeeeeeeee!” It is this that I am talking about. It is that pressure, that unmistakable look in a child’s eye when the broken vase lays broken, and the child stands alone. His death-- inevitable, and my hand’s inevitably stained. At the first meeting I was already seduced, his eyes seeing things I believed did not exist. He sang a song in conquest and planted his seed. Later that night I went to sleep and thought myself victor! I dreamed of carving up children whose faces bore his face. He-- both God and demon. He-- both killed and resurrected. Me. I now exist in flames. Before him I picked apart children like nuts, separating the shell, I took the offending meat and left them. What more could they need? I told myself this-- convincing words like “Normality,” “Acceptability.” To be or not to be fit in society, was not yet a question. I ask it now. He is sick-- it is true. Deranged blessed, dark honey that flows from a whore’s lips. A cold body on the verge of death that is resurrected in warm blood. A creature that would destroy you who let’s you take it’s mangy mane instead and mount. He is. Afterwards, he said they always embrace. It was sexy-- that beast we call horse to the boy-- Dark God. Into the magical field of Ha-Ha they would ride. Allan’s bare flesh, bare against hide. Boy and horse that for one hour every month under the watchful moon became more than just mortal flesh but a vehicle for everything God should represent-- Fear, yes; power, yes; love; anger; desire all these things YES but most importantly PASSION. “Equus son of Flecuus, son of Necuus…” There was nothing else-- “Raw! Raw! I’m raw! Raw! Feel me on you! On you! On you! On you! I want to be in you! I want to BE you forever and ever!” If God were a man and his son truly his son it would have the body, the power, the unmistakably fierce, solar energy of a horse. Man and beast joined as one-- God and boy joined as one. While I sat at my desk and looked at pictures Alan flesh grew into horse-- horse flesh grew into Alan-- until divinity was given an image (Horse and rider shall be one!) While the dull world rolled on dully I looked into Alan’s eyes and felt for the first time the cruel nails that held me crucified. My hands bleeding while into the horse’s mouth Alan placed the jingle jangle. Hard, cold, heavy blades of steal that sever flesh undeniably, undefyably, forever. Yet I realized that Equus could take it and that I invariably could not. Not God, yet standing in those chains, wondering if I was even human. It was later that the boy broke touched woman naked like Eve and wanted to crown her but the head of his hairy God jealous nostrils flaring crushed Alan to the ground. Telling the boy what he already knew that it was to be-- forever and ever and -- *“You are mine and I am yours. May all others fall like dirt into the sea. I bare you to me, see you to me, feel you to me, kneel you to me always and always and-- Look to the eyes of another and you will fail. Never shut me out. I leak like poison into your mouth. I will never let you fall. May no death put us asunder.” As of yet I have not done it horse and rider still are one Alan as I know him is still. My colleague tells me to put aside myself, it is as it always will be child before adult. She tells me with her eyes what I already know that I have the power to turn Alan’s flesh into stone. You will be normal. You will reproduce. You will work for the rest of your life. You will wear a three-piece suit. You will laugh but you will never cry. You will touch horses and be able to look them in the eye. You will be Degutted. Inevitability rolls on and I know that one day I will take your naked skin and the horse’s hairy flank, strip it all away and leave you bare-- bone hard, bone hallow. I will place my lips upon you and suck the marrow out, your blood already gone, your skin already gone-- and you think that all you will lose is the pain… For this I should be killed but you will be convinced I am now the mahsea. And yet I stand to you back turned, in the corner. Inside myself, inside my bones I know that I am a coward and Equus who has become my own, my demon, my terror, my perverted chance at redemption stares at me with bloody eyes and says, *“Ha, Ha.” I want to smell the dark, dusk scent of Equus moving below me. I want to taste his sweat and feel his skin. I want to be weightless, unburdened to myself, his hair like knives to rub against my own naked skin-- naked because all else is pretence and I would feel myself a liar. Equus, Equus, take this man with his questions, this man who has become more burdened than the boy who’s blood will one day line my hands, take me Equus now that you have killed me and born me anew to darkness where gold flecks shine like stars and music plays like the voices of sirens and I am driven mad. And I find myself wondering what is better, a life that is never lived or a life lived in passion that can only end in flames? Equus, Equus-- God Slave, I need a way of seeing through this field where I exist with you-- raw to all things I no longer know who I was, nor do I want to remember. All life, all things live in the hair of your hide and leak like blood from your bloody eyes. Too beautiful you appear to me and too terrible. For me even blinding does not shut you out and I can feel myself extending my hand and placing before you my heart that beats in tune to the stomping of your hooves. Joined forever- man and God, I pledge myself to you. No one can put us asunder, we ride like a warrior emerging through thunder to crush all those below… And I am afraid. All quotes taken from the play Equus by Peter Shaffer except for the ones marked with an asterisk.
