Dancing With Mesteño
Tripping on my way through the door was not a good start. I managed to catch most of
the impact on my palms, leaving me numb to the wrist with dull shooting pain to my
elbows, but at least I saved my knees.
"Are you all right?"
My breath caught. My bachelor's degree was in music composition. I had a fine-tuned
ear, able to distinguish twice as many different tones as most people. I wanted him to
speak again.
I didn't even know what he looked like, but I was afraid to look. It might spoil the
perfection of that light Spanish accent, soothed over a warm baritone that would have
made Cary Grant green with envy.
I just nodded. A hand came into view, silvery grey. No claws or paw pads. Long,
expressive fingers with thick nails that were darker at the ends. Whoever he was, he was
equine like me.
I took his hand. It was soft. The muscles of his palm pushed against mine. But beneath
that softness was iron strength. Not a light man myself, he easily pulled me to my feet.
I got my first look at him.
Eyes like dark African wood, with delicate, black eyebrows knit in concern. His muzzle
was slimmer and longer than my own, with wide arched nostrils. His hide was that same
silver grey color, faintly speckled and offset by the ebony of a long, loose mane that
cascaded in curls down to the middle of his back..
He wore a dark maroon button-down polo shirt that hugged his body like a lover, and a
pair of black tights.
I realized I was staring at him and my ears lowered a bit. I got very interested in the
stained wood floor.
"I'd like some lessons," I said.
I felt him nod. His hand was still in my own and I wished he'd let me go before the
warmth in my gut spread any lower.
"Do you have any dancing experience?" he asked me.
"No."
I tensed inside. But the jibe about tripping never came.
"I have a regular class for beginners Thursday nights. Or if you like we can have private
lessons."
My head jerked up. Our eyes met.
"Private lessons?"
He smiled at me. There was nothing forced about it. Nothing coy or patronizing. It was
like watching spring turn into summer on his face.
"Would that be best?" he prompted.
"I think so," I said. "I'm really shy about dancing."
"Well, that won't do. Dancing is the art of display, my friend."
I grinned and flushed to my hooves.
"So," he said, finally letting go of my hand and clopping over to a side office, "what's
your name?"
"Daniel. You must be Mesteño."
His ears rose and he glanced up at me from his schedule sheet. That smile was back, if
only a half smile.
"Or Mustang in English."
I stuffed my hands in my jean pockets and scuffed a dull hoof on the floor.
"You're not really a mustang, though, are you?."
"Andalusian, actually" Mesteño said.
I needed a drink of water. My mouth was carpet down. All I could do was nod again. Our
first lesson was tomorrow, 5pm. Mesteño shook my hand, patted me on the shoulder and
said he looked forward to seeing me again.
I bawled like a baby into the bathroom sink when I got home. Dancing? Dancing was for
felines and stags, creatures that were known around the world for their grace. How could
a donkey like me compare to this vision of equine perfection I had just met?
I looked up at my miserable reflection. The too-wide snout that was almost half as short
as that of a proper horse. The dark-rimmed chestnut eyes, now stained from my tears of
self pity. The short, scruffy mane and a stocky build better suited to football than
flamenco.
"You haven't slept well," was the first thing Mesteño said to me the next day.
"I guess it was nerves," I said.
He flashed me a gentle smile.
"I see."
He took my hand again. Led me to the center of the room.
"First, we must work on your posture."
He put a hand in the small of my back and had me stand as straight as I could. I managed
to hold it for a good five minutes but then my lower back began to ache.
"Your muscles aren't used to working so hard, that's all," Mesteño assured me. "Try to
keep up your posture over the next few days. In dance, you must maintain the line of your
body at all times and you will need those muscles to be strong."
A half hour of warm ups left me winded. I took a drink and sat down, glaring at the floor.
Mesteño put a hand on my back, sitting next to me.
"Daniel, what's wrong?"
"How am I going to learn how to dance if I can't even get ready to dance?" I grumbled.
"Once step at a time, my friend."
I felt that warm heat rushing through me again. Heading for my eyes. I squeezed them
shut.
"Daniel?"
It was almost a whisper.
"I..I'm sorry," I said. I covered my eyes with a hand.
Mesteño rubbed my back.
"You have been clumsy all your life, haven't you?"
"I'm a donkey."
"That is not a sin, Daniel. God may have made you a burro and me a stallion, but that is
only the clay. It is up to you to fashion yourself into what you can become. Come now,
are you ready to give up so easily?"
I sighed. Daniel put a finger on my chin and turned my head to look into his eyes.
"Always remember, Daniel - Even the dullest moth can be graceful in flight."
It took two months. Mesteño and I met once a week, and each time he gave me
something new to work at on my own. I learned to sit up straight, to find my center of
balance, to pay attention to how my body moved. At the end of our last session of the
summer, Mesteño shook my hand with a beaming smile.
"Next week, you begin to dance, my friend."
It's funny how one single event can become the peak of your entire life. Everything else
seems turned down a notch. Work is like a waking dream, and if you were to try and
remember what you did that day, you couldn't.
I started working on a new composition during the evenings. I cleaned out the local music
store of every Spanish guitar CD they carried. I'd never thought of the guitar as a
particularly beautiful instrument.
Every night after dinner, I turned down the lights and put on one of the CDs. I sat in my
writing chair, eyes closed, headphones on, and shut my eyes while delicate strains of
bittersweet flamenco washed over me like falling rose petals in a breeze. A melody
slowly began to build in my head. I found myself humming it off and on at work some
times.
Mesteño paused in the door to his office when I clopped in. I grinned at him.
"What do you think?"
I turned in place, arms out. My mane was combed, my hide brushed and rubbed. I wore a
dark suit with a bright red tie and black slacks.
"You wear it well, Daniel," he whickered with that gentle smile. "I had no idea you were
such a diamond in the ruff."
"Maybe I'm just a little more comfortable with display, thanks to you," I said.
Mesteño smiled wider.
"You look ready to dance."
Mesteño clopped over to his sound system and tapped a button. The opening chords to
the Beatle's Spanish-flavored "And I Love Her" filled the air. A composition major isn't
supposed to like pop music. The Beatles are my one vice.
He approached me.
"I thought it might help keep you comfortable."
"Thank you," I said.
"Now, we must help you learn to separate your body at the waist. With flamenco, the
upper and lower body move independently. We start with your hooves."
Mesteño led me through some basic dance taps. Our equine hooves acted like natural
dance shoes on the polished wood floor. Clop clop CLOP clop clop CLOP. Slow and
steady, like a canter.
"Hands on your waist. Head back. Shoulders back. Good!"
Mesteño watched me as I watched myself in one of the mirrors ringing the room.
The music ended and Mesteño ordered me to take a bow while he clapped. My ear tips
warmed, but that was all. The old Daniel would have been a puddle of embarrassment on
the floor.
Mesteño handed me a towel. I loosened my tie and dabbed the sweat off my neck.
"Mesteño, I wanted to thank you for everything you've done for me."
Mesteño chuckled and shook his head.
"I keep telling you, Daniel. All I do is bring out what's already within you. It is you who
deserve the congratulations. I can see the difference now in the way you move, even
when all you do is walk through the door."
"Still," I said, "I hope you don't mind if I made you something."
I'd finished "Ballade for Viola and Spanish Guitar" in a rush over the last week. I'd
wanted it ready for today. Mesteño knew I was a composer by now, so when I handed
him the disc, he looked up at me.
"Daniel, you wrote something for me?"
His tone of pure awe brought some of my old shyness back.
Mesteño put the disc in as if handling something holy. It was a very simple composition,
just a viola, two violins and the Spanish acoustic guitar as the center piece. I'd tried to
capture the essence of Spanish music as best I could - the longing, the sweetness and the
pain that mixed together in the strumming of the guitar.
I waited while Mesteño listened. His back was to me. I couldn't see his face until the song
ended. The disc whirred to a stop. He still didn't turn around.
My heart began to thud. He turned to face me. A pair of tears were rolling down his
muzzle and dripping off his beautiful cheeks.
"It is miraculous, Daniel," he whispered.
Of course an artist knows when he's made some of his best work but...miraculous? I shied
back a step, unable to look at him.
Mesteño walked toward me. He slid his hand onto my cheek.
"Gracias. Desde el fondo de mi corazón."
I put my hand over his, my eyes closed.
"I dedicated it to you," I murmured.
Mesteño nodded.
"I know."
I opened my eyes, looking at him.
"You know?"
"You said in the music what you could not say to me aloud, Daniel," he whickered. "I
have given men many things with my dance lessons. But never the courage to bear their
soul."
I moved before common sense could stop me. I drew Mesteño against me and kissed him.
Our lips pressed for only a second before I parted, backing away.
"I..I'm sorry. I.."
Mesteño pulled me back. They may call it French kissing, but the French have nothing on
Spanish fire. Mesteño's smooth, luscious lips formed a wet seal around mine. I could
smell the light cologne he wore and the gentle musk of aroused male beneath. He pushed
with his tongue, as if asking permission. I gave it. His tongue glided into my mouth and
nearly filled it. Now this was a dance I knew. Tongues twined together, hands roaming
over each other's necks, into our manes. Fingers clutched hair, groins pressed together
and growing warm and taught.
We parted, exhaling.
"Will you still teach me to dance?" I asked him.
"I will teach you more than that."
He gripped the front of my pants and pulled me against him. My hands found his rump as
we kissed again. He gripped my wrists and guided my hands down inside the butt of his
pants to his bare skin.
Our hard, long horse cocks peeked over the top of our pants, throbbing in unison. I
shivered, parting from his lips and resting my head against his firm chest. His arms
wrapped around me. He nuzzled my neck.
"Shall we move to the second lesson?," he whispered.
You don't question miracles. Not if you don't want the dream to vanish. I dove into his
arms and he spun me, lips sucking mine, nostrils flared with the passion of the rut. He
shoved me back against the CD player. I heard it whirr as he massaged the skin of my
neck with his lips, curling the tip of his tongue against my Adam's apple.
The player started up with the same song as before, The Beatles. We gasped in unison
against each other, eyes closed, necks twining. His long sweet-smelling mane fell against
the side of my face. I bared my blunt white teeth, clamping gently onto his ear and
tugging. I heard him groan softly.
His fingers yanked my fly open. He pushed me sideways, my back against the window. It
was cool and smooth even through my shirt. His thumb found the sweet spot just under
my cock at the top of my balls and rubbed it. I moaned through my nose.
Our shirts dropped to the floor together. I left a faint sweat stain on the glass as he pushed
me against it again, cupping my cheeks, playing the tip of my exposed cock with the edge
of his slightly flared equine cock head.
I brayed in a soft panting rhythm, in and out, hee haw, hee haw. I heard Mesteño chuckle.
I opened my eyes.
His gorgeous head was connected to an even more stunning body. Picture an Andalusian
stallion in his prime - his coat sleek with a healthy sheen, skin the color of the Badlands
at twilight. Thick, dark nipples and a faint dusting of hair across his chest, trailing down
his six pack.
His breath alone made those hard athletic muscles pulse. He smiled in pride, that long
wild dark mane cascading down his naked shoulder blades. He was displaying for me, I
realized. Displaying like a stallion for a mare.
I would be kind if I said my own body was unimpressive. My pecs were decent, but soft.
My belly had a slight pudge to it.
Mesteño smeared his hands across my chest, bending his graceful neck to give me
butterfly kisses behind my ear.
My cock throbbed, bobbing visibly. His fingers were gentle as they pulled my pants
down to my knees. He swayed his hips to the soft guitar music, his jeans dropping like a
curtain at the start of a grand opera.
Bulging, powerful manly thighs. Low apricot-sized balls. And a cock that had to be a
good foot long. Thick as my wrist.
"I hope you like it," he said. "Because it's yours, guapo."
I did not taste his cock that day. I was ridden. He rode me with my arms braced against
the wooden balance beam, watching himself do it in the mirrors behind me. He rode me
on a carpet of scattered papers over the desk in his office. And when I had my shirt back
on and was tucking my slacks carefully back into place to avoid wrinkles, he gripped a
wad of my tail hair, spread my cheeks, and rode me right there against the doorframe.
I could shut my eyes and see those two hard globes of horse ass twitching with each
thrust. I could feel the small hard muscles below his navel contract, drawing his slimed,
slick horse dick out of my anal passage before he plunged back inside.
Then it was over. I sat bent over the steering wheel of my car, gazing blankly out the
windshield. I didn't know what to feel. I tried to tell myself to let it go and enjoy the
memory. The heat of the moment, that was all it was. Just one of those things that
sometimes happens.
A week passed. Two weeks. Mesteño left message after message, some times twice a
day. Once I grabbed the receiver and raised it to my ear in time to hear the click. I set it
back in its cradle. I kneeled over the phone, resting on the knuckles of my fists.
The next day wasn't my scheduled appointment. The door to the studio was locked, but I
could see light in the office. I knocked. The main room lights came on. Mesteño yanked
open the door.
"Where have you been?"
"I'm sorry," I mumbled.
He sighed hard.
"Do you want to cancel your lessons?"
"No!"
"Then why are you here, Daniel?"
Those dark Spanish eyes looked at me. Wounded. Angry. I felt something in my chest
knot painful and tight.
I don't know when I started to cry, but I couldn't stop. I turned my back on the gorgeous
horse and rocked myself, head buried in my hands.
"I was scared," I babbled. "It all happened so fast and was so wonderful, I didn't know
what to do."
I sniffed and rubbed my nose. He touched my back and I shied away.
"Daniel...corazón...why are you running away from me?"
"What did you see in me?" I stomped a hoof, turning to face him. "And don't give me
some bull shit about molding myself into something greater. You could have your pick of
any ass from here to the eastern seaboard. Is it because I was easy? Is that it?"
He looked like I'd slapped him.
"How could you think that of me? What kind of a cabrón do you take me for?"
"Then what do you want?" I demanded.
"I want to dance with you again. Free of charge," he whispered.
I blinked.
"W..why?"
His hand slid onto my chest.
"Because, as much as I love to dance, only with you does it become something more.
Dancing with you fills me, don't you see, Daniel? It is like prayer. I can go through the
motions flawlessly." His hand reached up to my cheek and his voice dropped to a feather
of sound. "But only with you can I speak to God."
I quivered, nostrils flaring.
"But....you're so beautiful..."
His other hand cupped my other cheek.
"Not all of us wear our beauty on the outside, corazón."
He pulled me into his arms.
I sucked in a shuddering breath.
"I wish I were a horse. I wish I were like you."
"Shhh."
He kissed my under each eye, his lips wiping the fresh tears away.
"Daniel, you ARE like me. What you do and what I do, they are one. How could I dance
without music? And what is music without dancing? You dance through your
compositions. I make music with my body. But yours is the greater gift, corazón. An
audience may remember a spectacular dance and talk about it for weeks. But a truly great
composition...ah, Daniel, something like that is remembered forever. I envy you."
I clutched a hand to my chest. It hurt. My shoulders shook with silent sobs. Those sweet
words were piercing.
Mesteño held me close. The muscles of his arms and body were like a shield, so warm,
firm and sure. He kissed me between my ears.
"No more tears, now," he murmured.
I sniffed and nodded. Mesteño gave me a gentle chuck under the chin and smiled.
"Are you hungry?"
I gave a small laugh.
"A little."
"Let us see what I have at home, then. You can have a hot bath."
Mesteño's apartment was on the ground floor, with a single window that faced the back
alley and the garbage bins of the seafood restaurant next door. He kept a painted shawl
draped over the closed shades, showing a brilliant azure seascape lit by a setting sun.
There were flowers and potted ferns, even a bonsai tree set under a small portrait of the
Virgin Mary. Post cards were tacked in a neat column next to a wall calendar. I
recognized one of them as the Alhambra.
"The bathroom is near the back," Mesteño said.
The shower was a baptism. I actually felt physically lighter on my hooves. Fifteen,
sixteen years of anguish, poured out against the chest of a horse I had to admit I hardly
even knew. A horse who could make me produce music that was miraculous.
I smiled under the hot water. Miraculous. He'd said that, and it was my handiwork.
I clopped out of the bathroom. Mesteño was singing along to the Gypsy Kings' version of
"Hotel California" while he tossed sizzling vegetables back and forth in a wok.
The table was already set for two. A pair of candles stood ready to be lit. I glanced from
them up to Mesteño's hard, swaying ass. He bobbed his head to the music and tasted his
creation before glancing over his shoulder, grinning, and flashing me a wink.
I blushed and sat down.
"If you like the Gypsy Kings, I have some local music from Andalusia you'd love."
Mesteño ladled the stir fry onto a pair of tortillas and sucked a bit of sauce off one thumb.
I sniffed the steaming vegetables on my plate.
"All right," Mesteño admitted, "so it's not authentic Spanish. I'm a dancer, not a chef."
"No, no" I said, "I'm just not used to it."
Mesteño stopped me before I'd even rolled my tortilla.
"You'll loose half the food if you roll it like that. Here,"
He walked around the table and bent over me from behind. His gentle, warm fingers
guided my hands at the wrists.
"There. See how I did it?"
I nodded. Mesteño changed the music for something softer and lit the candles. We ate in
silence for a few moments. I kept looking at the blue tiles of the table until Mesteño
dipped his head to catch my eye.
"What is it?"
I shook my head.
"I'm not used to being treated like this."
"Do you want it to stop?"
"No," I said.
He smiled.
"Good."
He rose and crossed over to stand beside me. He offered his hand. I smiled back, taking
it, letting him lead me into the center of the room.
"All right, let us see how much you remember."
'And I Love Her' filled the apartment. Our hooves moved together. I kept my eyes on his.
Mesteño's smile grew broader. I never missed a beat.
The song ended and I let the stallion draw me against his waist.
"So," he whickered, "the moth learns to fly."
I hesitated, then kissed him. A gentle pressing of lips that he accepted without comment,
but gave back willingly.
"Let me teach you something else," he said.
I laughed again.
"I don't know if I'm ready to learn another dance right now."
Mesteño smiled.
"This one is very simple. Here, give me your hand."
Mesteño took one of my hands and put my other at his waist. With a voice that was
almost a whisper, he gave me the instructions as we circled around the floor in each
other's arms, snouts bent downward toward our feet.
"Not so hard, eh?" Mesteño said.
"No," I admitted.
"This is just the basic dance, of course. The rest is embellishments. For instance..."
Mesteño gave a gentle push at my waist, spinning me away from him, then back toward
him again and bending me over backward.
I couldn't help the slow grin on my face.
"I think I like this," I said.
"Now you try."
I copied Mesteño's move. He was taller and more muscular than I was, but donkeys are
built stocky, bred for carrying heavy loads. I bent him low until his long black mane
pooled on the floor.
His hands slid down my waist and gripped my rump as I pulled him back to his feet.
"I'm glad you're back, corazón," Mesteño said, nuzzling my neck.
You don't question miracles. Was it divine intervention that urged Mesteño to see more in
me than I could see in myself? Did destiny decree that we balled the sheets of his bed into
sweaty knots while his body rolled against mine, his delicious black pole once again
claiming me until I was braying like an animal?
I've always been agnostic on these things, love included. But standing under the steaming
water next morning, feeling Mesteño's lips on my neck, the water streaming off his wet
mane and over my own, I found myself starting to believe.