Treadmill or Horseback

Several years ago deep in a psychosis I believed that my mum was a secret agent Belgium operative who had fostered me from childhood in order to wreak havoc upon my innocent life. She used to wear this thong, right, and I thought that she’d stolen it from the Princess of Belgium. I thought it was a holy religious artefact, like the spear that pierced Jesus, or Buddha’s tooth, or Muhammad’s beard. That was the reason I kept looking at it whenever she had it on, because the bygone relic contained some kind of inherent divine and sacred power. I was only a kid at the time, I’d never seen one before; in adulthood my theories about my mum’s G-string reached outlandish proportions.

It started with a hallucination. I was a young naked boy hanging on a wooden frame on the wall. It was obviously some kind of torture device. My mum was this indescribable demoness who looked nothing like my real mum. Her features were torn and ragged, like they’d been carved into her. She was taking turns between performing fellatio on me and stabbing me softly in the heart with a knife. Apparently she had done this all throughout my childhood (which now would explain how tender my heart sometimes feels). Remember, Myocardial Infarction = Bum Ticker. Your own mum, sucking you off and stabbing you in tandem, I know, how sick can you get?

This was a particularly ailing patch of the old psychosis. I mean, incest? It’s taboo. But with sado elements, on a child? I could hardly imagine anything worse. It was some kind of international ritual because I wasn’t of natural birth, I’d been born supernaturally in a cupboard or something. So the world had decided to play a game to punish me. I’d been placed with the new Princess of Belgium because she was the most powerful sex object in the world.

I wasn’t faring well while enduring this hallucination. That was until Bennie showed up, one of my protective spirits. She arrived out of nowhere and started walking an imaginary treadmill towards the hallucination. Her body language on the treadmill was slightly comical, inspiring, and determined. She looked like a warrior striding into battle. I was so pleased that someone out there didn’t agree with this and was prepared to do something about it. Go get her Bennie! I screamed in my head. And she did. She battered her.

But here’s the $64,000 question, bearing in mind that Bennie used to be a show jumper: Would I rather see Bennie on the treadmill or on horseback? She was so helpful on that treadmill, the way she marched up it to face my fear and my foe, a true combatant trooper scared of nothing, a raw battling conscript assigned to take on my enemy, the Mother Goose of all childhood power, Belgium Princess, with revered, hallowed underwear. Or would I prefer to see her on top of an untamed animal, jumping over ditches behind flashing lights? It’s such a tough question. She would look magnificent in action on horseback, Bennie would, of that much I am certain. Just give me a moment to decide…