Samhain Publishing, $3.50, ISBN 978-1-60504-080-6
Contemporary Erotica, 2008
Google tells me that La Queue de Cheval is French for “the ponytail”. Google also tells me that there is a supposedly famous restaurant in Montréal that has the same name. This La Queue de Cheval, on the other hand, is all about a woman who dresses up in a modified halter and tail so that she can be the “pony” in the sexual relationship. After all, dog collars are so 1990’s. Everyone’s a little pony now.
It all begins when Angie catches sight of one of those super-rich playboy types attending a VIP party with his personal pony-girl. Fascinated by the way the pony-girl is aroused as she submissively allows herself to be led by her lover and be paraded in public, Angie finds her stockbroker date so boring all of a sudden. When she ends up spying on the pony-girl as she lies on a table and takes on all comers – come on, you know what I’m talking about – Angie realizes that she wants to be just like the pony-girl. After all, men always finish up so quickly, as Angie puts it, so why not have more than one at a time?
The man who brought the pony-girl to the party notices how interested Angie is in his “pony”, however, so he has an invitation issued to Angie. If she will kindly attend the discreet establishment called the Bathshire Stables, he may just have a halter that will fit her nicely. Angie falls love in this story and the fellow is a pretty romantic guy, but make no mistake, folks, this one isn’t for the faint of heart. Some of the scenes here are rather unconventional, let’s just say. Not that they bother me in any way. Don’t laugh, but I find the whole pony situation pretty fascinating. There is not enough alcohol in this world to make me want to wear those pony-girl stuff, but I have to say, reading this short story makes for some interesting vicarious trip.
The heroine though, I suspect, will be a problematic character if you expect her to behave like a typical romance heroine. Angie wants to be a pony-girl, she wants to be sold to the highest bidder, so the poor fellow who is in love with her will have to try his best to get her to go out with him on a “normal” date. Again, I personally have no problems with Angie. In fact, I think it’s great for once to have a heroine who is determined to be a slut rather than a selfless fool for love. But I can’t vouch that you will feel the same!
Honestly, if we take away the horse thing, I find this one a rather typical domination-and-submission erotica. The heroine is a career girl disenchanted with boring and emasculated men, she wants to be dominated, et cetera – a typical premise indeed in erotica. Nonetheless, with the horse thing, the story becomes more memorable than it would otherwise be. And, of course, it also helps that the author manages to make the whole fantasy pretty intriguing and even erotic rather than laughable. La Queue de Cheval is more of an erotica than a romance, but at the end of the day, it manages to be both erotic and romantic in a most interesting and entertaining manner.
