On the Trail

There’s this heartthrob on horseback who gallops through our rural neighborhood in the early evening when slanting sunlight glints off his flowing raven tresses. That’s his hair, not the horse’s mane. He’s often shirtless and wearing snug black jeans. He’s lean with a buff build and dark honey-gold skin; he appears to be possibly of Peruvian or Native American descent, and is maybe in his 20s. Sometimes he rides bareback. He always rides with attitude—the Horseman of the Vanities, one might surmise. No need to have "I Know I’m a Hunk" tattooed across those supple shoulders.

Since my customary walking companion at this time of evening is a dog who goes berserk at the sight of a horse, we have to pull far off the trail to give our rural Romeo a wide berth.

My intention is to avoid spooking the equine and not to ogle the equestrian. Honest. Really. I mean it. The guy looks exactly like one of those fellows who makes a living posing bare-chested on the cover of bodice-buster books. It was impossible to view him as a real person who might have a Ph.D. in something other than narcissism. Plus, the dog didn’t like his horse.

His abundant ego skewed Romeo’s perception. He interpreted my action not as that of a polite hiker yielding the right of way to a rider as trail rules require, but as a display of adulation.

He slowed his horse to a walk. It was one of those Paso Fino horses with a beautiful gait. Although I don’t ride, I’ve always loved horses, weaned as I was on TV westerns. I admired the horse, whose muzzle had gone gray as if she, like me, was a bit long in the tooth.

Romeo had dark smoldering eyes and a mouth poised somewhere between sullen smirk and I don’t know what. I’ve been out of the romance game for a while and some of the facial nuances relating to the Look of Love have sort of faded from memory.

If I was a breathless young thing with a quivering navel ring, I’d probably have locked on those eyes and gushed,

"You’re a…god! Let me scribble my phone number on your bulging bicep!"

But being somewhat closer to a wheezing Geezer-in-Training, all I could muster was,

"Caballo de Paso Fino, right? The ‘horse with the fine walk.’ What a really cool horse."

Maybe this is why I’m doomed to live alone with a beagle.

Romeo’s smirk deepened into an indignant frown. He kneed the horse into a fancy pirouette then urged it into a Paso Largo, leaving us in its graceful wake and a swirl of dust—that’s dust, not lust.

Of course, my reaction was atypical as resoundingly illustrated by my 20-something acquaintance Catelinn, who froze in her tracks like one of those unfortunate hairy Mastodons they keep unearthing in Siberia when Romeo galloped into view on another occasion.

"OH…MY…GAWD…!" she screeched so loudly the scrub jays and rabbits fled the oak woodland we’d been walking through. "Where’s the closest place I can rent a horse?" And this from someone (1) petrified of horses and (2) allergic to them, too.

The next time Romeo and I crossed paths he reined in with a dramatic flourish, blocking my path, and with an equally dramatic flourish tossed those lustrous locks off his bare shoulders.

I was a trifle more challenged in focusing on his horse this time. In fact, I might have peeped out one tiny inaudible involuntary "Wow." My last romance was with a guy who started out looking a lot like Romeo before taking a 360-degree detour into the Marlon Brando Outer Flab-o-Sphere.

This time I peered into Romeo’s eyes. Yeah, this guy could probably sell as much margarine as Flavio or Fluvius (or whatever that bodice buster cover boy’s name was) ended up hawking on TV when he was replaced by some new lantern jaw with rippling pecs.

"So?" I said coolly, "What’s up?" I was determined not to fawn, blush or faint.

"Why does this dog not like me?" he cried in bewilderment. "She barks with such ferocity at me!" His handsome face contorted in genuine anguish. His shoulders heaved in a paroxysm of self-doubt. Call me a meanie, but I sidestepped the explanation that it was the horse with the fine walk, not the rider with the fine bod, who was the object of all the ferocious fuss.

And there you have it, ladies: potential Hunk of the Century material reduced to a dishrag by a beagle’s rejection.