from A Man in Full

TOM WOLFE

Though I grew up in a farming community, I can’t say I’ve had much exposure to copulating animals. The closest I ever really came to living livestock was a comically disastrous attempt at cow tipping. (It was 3 A.M., but they were all wide awake and most un-tippable. We left with soiled boots as our only satisfaction.) There was, however, a kid on the next block who had supposedly boffed and thereby offed his pet kitty, but even at the time I doubted the veracity of the rumor. I’ve always been a firm believer that humans are the species to have sex with, at least if you’re a human. But this much I am willing to confess: I did once write a prose poem about having seen rhinoceri having sex on TV. It was a very sordid affair. In effect, the lumbering male put his front legs up on the rump of the impassive female; then out came his enormous, candy-cane red, gnarled, pole-vault-pole-sized schlong (okay, not quite, but it seemed that way), and he started banging away. The female remained motionless. He kept it up, his head rolling around like he was at a Dead show, jerking his body back and forth and frothing madly, foam dripping down his chest. Finally, he shot (presumably) and rolled off her, falling heavily into the dust. She paused, reactionless, then slowly walked away without looking back. Sound familiar?

All these thoughts came back to me when a friend told me I should include an excerpt from Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full. The recommendation came with a caveat: the protagonists of the sex scene were not human but equine. But hey, a sex scene is a sex scene, and I’m no anthropocentrist. To be precise, this scene is not so much hot as humorous (it’s a prelude to the real horse smut that follows), and it is most, most informative. So, here’s everything you weren’t sure you wanted to know about barnyard sex . . .

Snorting, highly agitated, the stallion walked into the stock and right up to the rear end of the mare. The mare began twitching and rolling her head and switching her furled-up tail. The stallion’s penis was now a tremendous black shaft. Suddenly he extended his head and his long neck and pushed his nose into the mare’s rear end, into her vulva. She tried to kick with her rear legs, but the hobble straps prevented it. She tried to bolt forward, but the walls of the stock hemmed her in, and the stable hands held her halter. The stallion kept twisting his head, rooting around in her vulva . . .

The deep voice of Lettie Withers: “Good Lord, Charlie, I thought this was the Bible Belt. That looks suspiciously like oral sex.”

But no one laughed, and no one else said anything. The truth was, they were shocked.

All at once a gusher of yellowish liquid shot out the rear of the mare. The stallion pulled back. His lower jaw, throatlatch, and breast were dripping with it. It was urine, which continued to spew out. The stallion shook his head and whinnied and started back toward the mare, his penis fully erect, but two black handlers had him by the halter and were forcing him back, away from the stock . . .

“What’s going on?” asked Howell Hendricks. “Why are they taking him away?” The other guests closed ranks in order to hear the answer.

“He’s not the stud,” said Charlie, “he’s the teaser.”

“The teaser?”

“Yep. You just use the teaser to get her aroused.”

“And she urinates in his face?” said Howell.

“Yep. Always happens.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Terrific,” said Howell. “Reminds me of when I was in high school.”