Catholic Guilt and the Joy of Hating Men - By Regan Wolfrom Page 0,6

was probably a useless gesture.

There were at least a half dozen men inside. But not one was looking over to me.

They were mucking the stalls, slowly and methodically and in complete silence, all dressed in old t-shirts and ratty blue jeans with holes in all the wrong places.

I don’t know how to put this, but a couple of them looked like they could work in a barn, like illegals maybe, like the Fitzsimmons’ have working for them at their barn up by Pine Plains. The rest didn’t seem to fit in, two black guys, two whites and a very large man who was probably Chinese.

Most of the grooms my aunt had hired were teenage girls who couldn’t quite afford the boarding fees. Working in a stable is like gymnastics with horse poop, whatever the opposite of a sausage fest happens to be. Some kind of party with hot dog buns...

I watched them work for a minute as I stood half in the door; they were acting like robots, picking up the manure and the soiled shavings and throwing them in the long wooden cart, without so much as a grunt. It’s unnerving to see mucking without the chatter; I don’t know what guys talk about when they work together, but I figured they’d talk about something.

I didn’t feel frightened by the men... I felt more unnerved. I slowly walked towards the first stall being mucked, by one of the black guys. He was wearing a Florida Marlins t-shirt and jeans with an unexpected flare at the bottom.

He didn’t seem to notice me standing beside him.

“Excuse me... sir,” I said, trying not to sound condescending to the man with a shovel-load of horse shit.

No response. I figured he was just waiting for me to just get on with it.

“I need some help,” I said. “I’ve gotten myself a little turned around in here.”

He didn’t even look at me.

I turned to look at the others. No one was bothering to acknowledge that I exist. I’m an eighteen year old girl; I’m not used to older men ignoring me outside of church.

“Hello? Are any of you guys going to talk to me?”

Nope.

I walked on past him, toward the other end of the stable.

Usually a girl in basketball shorts gets some kind of notice, like a guy or two checking out her ass, at the very least. I’m not a volleyball player, but still.

For a moment I almost thought I saw the Chinese guy glancing at the back of me as I walked by, but when I turned to look he was still scooping horse poop like before.

At about four guys deep, the other door opened and another woman stepped in, maybe around twenty or so. She was dressed in breeches and boots.

“What are you doing in here, missus?” she asked, looking at me. “You shouldn’t be in here alone. And why are you dressed like a rugger?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Hold on a tick... who are you?”

I didn’t know what to say. About who I was, or why she was speaking like she was British with a New England accent.

“Uh... who do you think I am?” I asked.

“You’re not a boarder. Why the devil are you here?”

“I was just leaving.”

She started walking toward me. I wondered if I was going to have another mouth to punch.

“Don’t be daft,” she said with a smile. “I’ve gotten all to cock in here sometimes. I’ll help you find your way back.”

“Uh... thanks.”

We walked together down the aisle, the men still paying no attention to me. They didn’t seem to notice her, either.

“These blokes are on work release,” she said. “Minimum security and all that, but it’s still not a terribly smart idea to be in here by yourself.”

“You were about to come in here by yourself.”

“Oh, I can handle these lags. I know the tricks.”

“Where are you from, anyway?”

She smiled. “From right here. I’m trying to sound posh... you know?”

“I guess.”

She glared at me. “Well I didn’t ask for your opinion, did I?”

“Sorry.”

She opened the sliding door and led me into another well-lit hallway, but one without any horse stalls. The one wall was lined with a row of metal doors like self-storage units.

We turned right and kept walking.

“Are you a friend of Cadance’s?” the girl asked. She seemed friendly again.

“Acquaintances,” I said.

“I could see that.”

We came to a final metal door that looked just like the others, except that it seemed like a push instead of a pull. The girl took out a key card out of her