The Wrong Heaven

by Amy Bonnaffons

Q: What does it mean to be a horse? A: First, it means not being a person. No credit cards, no fad diets, no existential questions, no more boring meetings or family dinners. No political allegiances or disappointments, no responsibility to anyone but yourself. Mostly: no embarrassment, which (as a great writer once said) is the fundamental condition of being human.

It started happening right after my fortieth birthday, in June: I woke up in the middle of the night with a strange feeling in my feet—not pain, exactly, but pressure so intense it absorbed my whole attention. I cried out in surprise, and Serena rushed into my room, and then we pulled back the covers to see that my feet had been replaced by perfect horse hooves, black and stonelike. As predicted by the pamphlets, I felt disgust, then wonder: The transformation of your own body will be a spectacle arousing both revulsion and awe. I got up and tried to walk around. Serena and I both giggled, manically, the way terrified people do. My hooves were tender, and it hurt to walk on them, like when my feet used to ache at the end of a night on high heels. I felt lopsided and clumsy; these hooves weren’t made to carry a bipedal organism. But hearing their clop-clop-clop around the floors of the apartment, I grew excited: it was really happening!

I grabbed a pen from my purse, scribbled my number on a napkin. I wasn’t particularly attracted to him, but I’d been hugely, aimlessly horny since my hooves had appeared.