The summer I turned eighteen Mike, my only friend, told me he was going to gone for ten weeks on a family vacation. I wasn't happy about it.

"Jeez" I muttered, "what the hell am I supposed to do, wait around for my dad to come once a month for visitation."

"Well, you could get a job," Mike said. "Or get a girlfriend. Maybe even get laid."

"Very funny. I can't even get to first base with the girls in this town and you talk about getting laid." I laughed. "I will have to get a job though. Dad says I have to buy my own gas for that old heap he bought me."

"I can't get you laid...God couldn't do that." I punched him on the arm. "But, I can get you to work my summer job this year."

"Where's that?"

"Bent Tree Acres," he said, "that's the place where I board my horse. It's hard work but it pays a dollar an hour."

"Man, I don't know shit about horses."

"Shit is about all you need to know. Follow me out to the place and I'll introduce you."

He was right. The job consisted of feeding the horses, shoveling shit, watering the horses, shoveling shit, turning the horses out to pasture, bathing and grooming the horses and, of course, shoveling shit. Horses, I learned, shit a lot. After a week I was an expert in the stuff. What was interesting was how easy I, a city boy, felt working around such large and imposing creatures. It was as if I had been working around them all my life, lifting hooves and cleaning them, brushing their coats to a high sheen, leading them, tying on leg wraps.

"You're a natural, boy," Mr. Collins, the owner, said. "They like you, the horses do and that says a lot about you."

"I like them too," I answered. "I didn't think I would but I really do."

"That's good because I have a deal for you. The misses and I are going to be gone for about three weeks. Be leaving in two. I'm gonna teach you real good so you can take care of the place while we're gone. I'll increase your pay to a dollar and a quarter and pay you in advance before we go."

"You think I can do this? I mean, what if one of the horses gets sick or gets loose or something?" I asked.

"Call the vet or catch him." He laughed. "It ain't hard son. Just remember that horses can't do for themselves. They can't do anything 'cept be horses, so you have to do all the thinking for 'em. You have to make sure that they have everything they need. You do that and use your head for something other than a hat-rack, you and they'll be fine."

They drove away in their motorhome leaving me alone and in charge. I was responsible for the care and well-being of eleven equines: Dancer, their prize stallion; four brood-mares, two of which had foals still too young to wean; three geldings, one of these was my friend Mike's, and an old mule named appropriately Ess-O-Bee. I looked around and realized that once again I was alone. It seemed to be a pattern I could not change.

I slipped into a routine at Bent Tree. I'd drive out to the place by six in the morning, feed and water the horses, then eat my fast-food breakfast. After I got the animals all turned out to pasture, I mucked out the stalls, filled the hay bags and refilled the feed buckets for the evening feeding saving me doing it as dusk fell.

Once the chores were done I had little to do but hang out and watch the horses graze or go into to town and look for something to do. The third option was to go home and sit around watching television, but then I would have had to listen to my mom wonder why a "good looking young man" like me didn't have a girlfriend. I didn't know how to tell her that I was trying to get a girlfriend but none would have the 'new geek' in town. So, for that first week I went into town, trying to find anything to do or anyone to do it with. Inevitably I failed on both counts. I was miserable, lonely and unsure what to do about it.

One morning as I was feeding the horses my mind wandered to the only subject a sixteen year old boy can stay focused on: girls. Or to be more precise, sex. The guys at college all talked about their escapades; how long, how hot, how tight, how wet, how many times and of course how many different girls they'd slept with. That's how they always said it, 'slept with'. I suspected that they were mostly lying but who was I to say. Everyone assumed that I was a virgin and wouldn't know a good piece of ass if it stared me in the face. The fact that they were correct made it all the worse. I was ashamed that I didn't even know what a girl looked like 'down there'; in health class the drawings of the female reproductive system were always cut off before they got down to the good parts.

"Jeez," I said aloud, "I am a friggin geek." Daisy, the bay mare whose bucket I was filling at the time looked up at me and nickered.

"You laughing at me too, Daisy?" She ignored the question and began to eat her rolled oats and sweet-feed. I finished the feeding and began to get all my charges to their proper pastures leaving Daisy for last for I had had an idea. When all but Daisy were grazing I went to the front gate, closed and padlocked it. I pulled my old Mercury around behind the barn so that from the street it would look as if I'd gone to town again. Then I went back to the barn. I was determined to get an answer to a nagging question: what exactly did the female sex organ look like up close.

Daisy had finished her feed and was waiting patiently for me to let her out.

"In a minute girl," I said closing the stall door behind me. "I just want to see something." I ran my hand along her flank as I walked to her hindquarters letting her know where I was by feel. Gently I lifted her tail by the root and, standing to one side so as not to be kicked, I stared at what I had only glimpsed when she had swatted flies.

Just below the base of Daisy's tail the black hairless skin puckered into a raised donut that was her anus. Below that her vulva descended to a teardrop of flesh which was divided by a vertical slit about four inches long. I knew that a mare's genitalia were much bigger than a girl's, but I knew enough to know that they were similar in function, if not design. I reached with my free hand and touched her there. Her vulva was very warm and dry to the touch, supple and velvety. Daisy shifted her weight and then stood still holding her tail up without need for any assistance from me. I took both hands and explored further, separating the lips to see inside her. It was a whitish pink in there and with a slight sheen of moisture. I inserted a finger. Daisy looked back and shifted her weight again, this time into my hand. She nickered softly.

"Easy girl," I whispered in low tones, "easy." I worked the finger in and out, exploring by touch rather than sight. I could feel slight contractions on my finger as I pulled it out and a relaxing of the pressure as I pushed it to the limit. I inserted a second, then a third and finally the fourth finger until, with the exception of my thumb, I had my whole hand inside the mare's vagina, pushing and pulling, stroking her firmly, but slowly. Daisy stepped back, pushed back as if to get more of my hand into her.

Then her vulva did something I had never seen before. It winked. For just a second, her clitoris which was about the size of my thumb, protruded from the lower inch of the slit which at the same time opened around my invading hand exposing the deeper parts of her. Thinking I had somehow hurt her, I quickly withdrew my hand and watched. She did it again. About every three seconds or so the genitalia would convulse in a wink. (I found out later that that is exactly what it is called; winking) As I watched this display I realized I had not hurt her but had 'turned her on' as the guys always said about their girls. She was 'hot'. And, I discovered, so was I. Not horny, hell, I was always horny... hot!

I left her in her stall, went to the tack room and returned with a large washtub. Daisy had not moved. I turned the tub over, put it behind her and stood on it. It wasn't high enough. I climbed to the loft and tossed down a couple of bales of hay. I took them and placed them side by side on the tub and stood on them. A little too high but it would have to do. I ran to the door of the barn and checked the landscape for visitors, knowing that it would be a bad thing if a neighbor had picked just then to see how I was doing and instead found out what I was doing, or who I was doing. The coast, as they say, was clear. I entered Daisy's stall, closed both the upper and lower Dutch doors, and lowered the drop-down covers on the window to the breezeway and the one facing the paddock outside. It was dark, lit only by the dirty skylight high overhead.

I stood again on the bales of hay behind the mare and, looking down on her, quickly unfastened my jeans and let them drop around my knees. My penis, released from its denim prison stood at attention, harder than I had ever before seen it. I was trembling.

Placing one hand on Daisy's massive rump, I slipped the other under her tail and began to rub her nether region again, pushing in fingers, testing her response. The tail, which had gone back down while I made my preparations, began to rise again. She was still willing. I couldn't take anymore. I leaned forward and, holding the base of my organ between thumb and forefinger, pressed the purple head of it against her, rubbing it up and down the pre-moistened opening of her sex. Again Daisy shifted her weight back, this time it buried me in her.

It was, to say the least, a loose fit; my rather average penis in a vagina made to take one as big as my arm, but I had no complaints. It was as if I had penetrated a living volcano, liquid, hot, pulsating, and large. For a moment I just stood there, stunned by sensations I had never even imagined were possible. I slowly began to pull back, to withdraw. As I did, I felt the mare gently grip the shaft with her inner muscles. I had never before realized that a vagina even had muscles. I pushed back in, back home, back where a penis was supposed to be. Several more times I pulled and pushed, probing as deeply as I could, feeling all of it, remembering, measuring, wanting to know it all. I watched as the trunk of my organ appeared from inside her until the glans corona, the ridge around the head, just peeked from the vulva then disappeared again.

Slowly, I increased the pace, getting it even and steady until I found, and shared with Daisy a rhythm as ancient as the Earth, as natural as rain, and as inevitable as the tides.

I felt her wink around me, taking all of the little that I had to give her. She turned to look back at me, watched me for a moment as I danced behind her and gave a little whinny. I leaned forward until I lay upon her hindquarters. Spreading my arms I tried to hug her, to touch all of her, to embrace this creature fully. I kissed her where her spine met her hipbone. I closed my eyes and lost myself in her. I listened to the wet, sucking sounds of our loving, I smelled the odors of sex. Sweat formed on my upper lip and on my forehead and ran down my face to drip onto her back. I kept thrusting, wondering what she was feeling, wondering if she liked it as much as I did.

Twice, I felt an orgasm begin to build, the base of my penis expand as if loading shot into the breech. Both times I stopped thrusting into the mare and waited for the sensation to recede. When it did I picked up the rhythm again, harder each time. The faster and harder I thrust, the better Daisy seemed to like it, spreading her hind feet and squatting down a bit as if about to urinate.

The third time I began to climax it started at the base of my spine, the pressure traveled down and forward and built up until it would not, could not be contained. With my eyes closed tight, I gripped her flanks and thrust as hard as I dared and felt the first salvo unload into her. Again and again I pushed as deeply as anatomy and physics would allow and loosed another shot of semen into the mare's reproductive tract.

When at last I was through, I lay over her rump and tried to catch my breath. I felt her breathing almost as hard underneath me and felt her vagina squeeze me, as if to pump and drain the last of my fluids into her. She flicked her tail against my thigh and again squeezed my deflating penis, this time pushing it out of her. I stood up, hoisted my jeans and climbed down off my perch. I walked to Daisy's head and gave her neck a big hug.

"Thank you Daisy," I said. "Thank you for that." Daisy turned her head and lipped the hair over my forehead. I put my hands to either side of her muzzle and pulled it down to me and gave her a kiss on the nose. She licked at the sweat on my chin. She obviously liked or needed the salt because she licked my cheek next, then my nose. I, still enthralled, licked back. For just a second or two our tongues touched. I tasted fresh hay and sweet-feed. She pulled back and raised her head to look at me, studying me for a moment. She gave me one more lick and a blow of her breath, then turned to the stall door. She was ready to go, to join her kind.

I clipped the lead rope to her halter and walked her past Dancer's paddock to the pasture she shared with the other mares. Once through the gate, I removed the lead and stepped back. She turned and started to walk away, then stopped and looked back over her shoulder at me. Satisfied by whatever it was she was looking at, she began again to head for her friends across the field, her tail held high enough that I could see the drying stains of our lovemaking.

As I watched my lover strut out among her fellows, it occurred to me that I was no longer and would never again be a virgin. I was a different creature than the one who had arrived at work that morning. I would be different for the rest of my life and I was glad for it. I knew that from that day forward I, too, would be able to strut among my own kind.