Browsing Tag

Lisa Romeo

Guest Posts, healing, Regret, Relationships

The Horsey Set

January 29, 2016

By Lisa Romeo

You knew. You knew I was 19. You knew you were 32 and married and the father of two children. You knew I was attracted. I wonder if you knew my attraction (which I didn’t even understand at the time) was fueled so much by your position (your celebrity almost) in that rarefied air we both breathed, in that world we both pranced through – you with ease, me with longing – that dazzling playground scented with horses and money and blue ribbons, with Hamptons houses and equestrian estates and show horses that cost more than my father’s house. Did you know that?

When you flirted with me in the horse show office, when you accidentally brushed against me in the stabling tent, when you waved at me from the rail, when you winked at me from under your hat brim on the sidelines of the polo field, did you know that I thought it was about me? Did you know every time I saw you across a field, across a barn aisle, across the table at a fundraiser, that I wondered if you were there because I was there and not because you were always there? That I didn’t understand it was about you and what you could do, get away with, possess, mark?

You knew, I think, that I couldn’t enter that world, not completely, on my own, with my marginal riding skills and small trove of not-always blue ribbons and my father’s money that seemed so endless on our split-level cul-de-sac, but so puny compared to what the horsy daughters of billionaires spent on their third-string jumper.

Did you know you’d get me, from the start? Did you know I would forget myself, lose my compass, imagine there was a good reason for doing the thing I knew I shouldn’t be doing? Yes, of course you knew, because that was your game, though I wouldn’t know that until you were long gone and I’d meet other young single girls you’d tempted before me, after me.

Did you know that when everyone seemed to know about us, and looked the other way, that I’d think at first that was exciting, edgy, and intoxicating? Of course you knew that, it was part of your charm, as much as your not-so-elegant looks and not-so-refined laugh and not-so-trim physique (though you kept that garbed in preppy pinks and greens, web belts and logo polo shirts). Continue Reading…