"What did you say, Octy?"
Look, let me be perfectly clear here; I am a very tolerant mare.
I just wanted you to know that, right from the start. And it’s true. But then again, I am a DJ, so, y’know, it kinda comes with the territory. You gotta be prepared to deal with all kinds of bullshit. I mean, I go up there night after night, blast some awesome tunes, spread the wubbage through the club, and make sure everypony has an amazing time. And, for the most part, everypony does. But for every fan, you gotta deal with a hater. And my haters just love to make sure they tell me every single aspect of every single reason why they think I’m absolute scum. All because they don’t like Dubstep. I mean, jeez, it’s not like I force them to listen to it.
My mom says that us Scratch mares are made of tough stuff. Lucky for me, huh? And then there's my marefriend, Octavia, she always asks me how I put up with it. And the truth is, as I said, I’m a very, very, very tolerant mare. It takes a lot to get under my pelt. In fact, the last time she asked me, the very words I replied to her with were: 'Octy, I ain’t one to let anything just piss me off.'
Famous. Last. Words.
So, let me paint the picture for ya: it’s Tuesday evening, and I get a call from the manager at Club Zero, one of my regular spots, asking me to do a last minute set. Now, I'm thinking I'm gonna say no, cause Tuesday night crowds aren’t exactly my scene. But then Octy decides that I should, seeing as we don’t have plans for the night. I’m not really one for all the smoochy woochy romantic stuff, but I’m happy enough cuddled up with her on the couch. So I say to her that I'm gonna say no.
But... then she insists. Ugh.
I don’t know how she does it, but I can’t seem to ever really say no to her. I swear to Luna, that fancy Dappleshire boarding school she went to as a filly? They must have taught her some kind of mind control power. I mean seriously, how else would an earth pony have magic power over a unicorn in a relationship?! I gotta look into that at some point. Maybe there’s a book in the library I can find about earth pony magic?
Oh jeez, now I know I’m getting desperate.
But back to the scene. We decided to make it a night out, seeing as we had a few hours to kill before I needed to perform. So we headed out, and luckily Tuesday nights are quiet, meaning we barely had to queue to get in anywhere. And y'know, the night actually started off alright. We went from club to club, getting steadily more and more wasted as we went. Now, don’t let Octy fool you by how she looks, ‘cause when she hits the town, she really knows how to party. And she holds her drink surprisingly well, but, by the time we staggered into Club Zero for my set, we were pretty messed up.
Well, one of us was.
I’m still a pretty good DJ when I’ve had something to drink, but it all depends on the day. Weekday sets, which I rarely do, have small crowds of the most dedicated ravers. The kinda ponies who’ll go out, get wasted, and dance to anything and everything that’s played to them. In the cases of these kinda gigs, I can afford to drink a bit, but I gotta be able to actually perform decently on the turntables. Being too shitfaced to turn a record, that's how you lose a client quicker than the speed of rainbooms. Weekends though, that's where the real parties are, and I go up sober. I can get wasted afterwards, but keeping the party going? If I'm at the DJ booth, that is my one and only priority.
So we turned up for my set, and Octy barely knew what date it was. But I still got us both a scotch from the bar. Just one more for luck, I know my limits. Little did I know what that one last drink was setting in motion. We toasted to an about-to-be-awesome set and I made my way over to the decks, with the last thing I heard from her being a loud request to the stallion at the bar, one for him to bring her another scotch. After that, her voice was drowned out by the music. ‘She’ll be okay’, I told myself.
Once again: Famous. Last. Words.
So now we arrive at the present. The set went… well, let’s just say that it didn’t go at all like I hoped, and we’ll end that discussion right there. At this point it’s just past two in the morning, and I’m walking home, very tipsy myself but sober enough to carry my marefriend home. Yeah that’s right. Carry. I’m a tolerant mare. But right now, I'm drunk, tired, frustrated, and carrying my half-conscious marefriend on my back. And I'm very pissed off.
“Where are we gooooooing, Vinyl?” Octavia asks me as I stagger towards the door, her singing the word ‘going’ for no apparent reason.
“Ugh... home, Octy.”
“You fuckin’ what? C’mon, I still... *hic* ...wanna party.”
“You’ve had way too much to drink already,” I reply, gritting my teeth as I heave her through the cloakroom.
You know in all those movies where they jump-cut to the drunk person slumped at the bar surrounded by hundreds of empty glasses? Yeah, that’s what just happened. Well, not exactly hundreds of glasses, but during my set Octavia had downed seven scotches. And now she’s sprawled out on my back, and I’m trying hard not to breathe through my nose, for one simple reason. Her. Breath. Stinks.
“I... know... my... limits!” she yells out, slurring each word brutally and drawing looks of surprise and amusement from the mare behind the desk at the cloak-check.
The bouncer shoots me a sympathetic look as he holds the door open for me. I should thank him, but I have bigger problems at the moment. Much bigger problems. Octy chooses the exact moment we step out into the cool night air to almost slide off the side of my back, and I have to stop to heave her back into place so she won't fall off. We both receive some perplexed stares from everypony still gathered near the doors of the club, and I scurry sheepishly away. Jeez, I hope I'm just blushing because of the alcohol...
“Yeah, you do know your limits,” I say eventually, when we’re out of earshot of all the ponies who'd walked a few doors down from the club to smoke or vape. “Problem is, you don’t know when you’ve overstepped them."
“Oh yeah, let’s... *hic* ...ask this mare if she thinks the same. Hey miss? Err... MIIIIIIISSSS?”
“That’s not a ‘Miss’, Octy.”
“Then what... *hic* ...izzit?”
“It’s a garbage can.”
She explodes with laughter as I round the corner off of Melody Boulevard. Home is just a five minute walk from the Club, but that’s without a full grown mare on my back. At this point, I’m still kinda drunk myself, and the muscles in my legs are beginning to burn like tartaurus.
“We should… should totally… like… get.. *hic* ...a dog… Vinyl,” she gasps through the breathlessness she brought on herself after her giggling fit. And right here, this is further proof as to how wasted she is: she's allergic to dogs. Can't even walk near one without sneezing herself into rigor mortis. But, for whatever reason, I decide to humour her.
“Should we?”
Big mistake.
“Yeahyeahyeah, we totally fuckin’ should,” she says, once again singing one of the words for no apparent reason. “And we can... *hic* ...name it Syndrome!”
Now, I gotta admit, she has me confused here. There was no way I was gonna guess what was coming. Just to hear her swearing is unusual. The first time we got wasted together, hearing her swear in that stuck up Trottingham accent had me collapsing with laughter on the floor, nightclub floors be damned. I didn't even care about the piña colada I'd accidentally spilled just a few minutes earlier. I always thought there was nothing that could top that, but she has this weird habit of always surprising me.
“So… so if it… wait, whatwaswegonnacallit?”
Ugh. Drunks. Okay, I’m a hypocrite. Sue me.
“Syndrome,” I reply, my back now starting to ache in protest under her weight.
“Oh right, yeahyeahyeah.”
If you’re easily offended, feel free to cover your ears for this part. I wish I had, but my hooves were occupied in the moment.
“So if it jumps up… we can... *hic* ...shout ‘Down Syndrome!’ and it’d be okay.”
My eyes widen in shock as her cackles fill the night air, and I quickly look all around to see if there was anypony nearby who may have heard her, and luckily, there isn’t. Granted, Octavia becomes a completely different pony when she drinks, but I never had her pegged for the ‘extremely offensive joke’ type. And, granted, in any other situation, I probably would have laughed along with her. But, at this point her gruff laughter is suddenly replaced by a retching noise, and a warm but wet feeling running down my back.
Oh, what a fun night this had turned out to be. Yep, really fun night... thanks for talking me into this, babe...
“Nice, real nice, Octy,” I reply as I spot the sign pointing out our street, which gives my mind a temporary surge of relief. Then my nose wrinkles up as I try to ignore the stench of her vomit, which is now trickling down the side of my chest, and slowly dripping onto the sidewalk. “About as mature as a prepubescent colt.”
“I used to... *hic* ...be one, you know,” she slurs.
Huh?
“Be a what?”
“A colt.”
I give a small chuckle. She’s definitely had too much to drink.
“No, seriously,” she insists. “I had a sex change when I was... *hic* ...seven.”
The smirk on my face disappears. She can’t be serious, can she? She’s gotta be joking. I mean she... she literally just told one of the most offensive jokes I’ve heard in a long time, she’s probably just playing another. But… I poke a little deeper.
“Why’s that then?”
She thinks for a while. “I guess… I guess I wasn’t ever... *hic* ...happy being a boy,” she says in a voice that’s barely louder than a moan. “Even when I was young, I... *hic* ...always preferred playing with dolls and stuff, and I hated... *hic* ...hoofball and all that boyish stuff I was supposed to like.”
She sounds serious. She’s drunk, yeah, but she really does sound like she’s telling the truth. I know her, and she literally can’t tell a convincing lie. Not if the fate of all of Equestria depended on it. I can read her voice just as easy as reading sheet music.
“So, my parents... *hic* ...agreed to let me have the operation to become a filly, and they sent me... *hic* ...to an all-girls boarding school in Dappleshire. They wanted to stay in our... *hic* ...old family home, but they were just really secretive about the whole thing…” She drifts off towards the end of that, and by the time I spot our house, she's snoring away peacefully, without a care in the world.
So... at this point, I’m still kinda in shock. Sure, every instinct in my body is telling me to laugh it off as a joke, pretend she never said it. I did still kinda hope she was joking too. In the state she's in, she’ll never remember telling me about it. But as I approach our front door, and step through into our living room, I just can't shake the feeling that this... this isn’t something I can ignore. If she was being serious just now, and telling the truth, then there was no way I could forget about this. Not with her. I care about her too much. I love her.
I love her...
I lower her gently onto the couch, and make sure she's laid out in a comfortable position. There’ll be all tartaurus to pay in the morning for all those scotches, but for now, I figure she can be as snug as possible. After a quick ten second shower, just to get all the vomit off my back, I wrap myself up in a towel and go upstairs to our bedroom, to get the duvet from our bed to cover her up.
As I pull it off our bed, I stop, remembering something. The photo album of her when she was younger, it's sat right there on the bookshelf. I have my doubts, of course, that she was telling the truth. But I figure if there's gonna be any way of getting a definite answer, it'll be right there in those pages. So, I fold up the duvet, put the album on top, and carry the bundle downstairs.
Octy's barely budged from her spot when I get back, so after I put the photo album on the coffee table, I drape the duvet over her, and tuck her in to keep her nice and warm. I move in to adjust her head position, but she chooses that exact moment to let out a small belch, and I end up with a faceful of her rancid breath. I don’t throw up, I promise. But I come pretty damn close.
It takes me a while to recover from that. I’ve seen my share of gross shit, believe me, I did some pretty crazy stuff at college, but this was just something else entirely. Once I finally shake off the feelings of queasiness, I ignite my horn and light the fireplace in the corner, illuminating the room in a soft orange glow. Being a unicorn has its advantages from time to time. Octavia doesn't seem to like the light shining in her face, so she rolls over and faces away from it. As she does, my eyes turn to the photo album. I levitate it and walk over to my chair, and as I settle down into the deep plush cushions, I place the album on my lap.
And… for a few minutes, I just stare at the cover. We’ve had this thing in our house for ages. Sure, we only became an ‘official’ couple a few months ago, but come August, we’ll have been sharing a house for six years. And for all of that time, I’ve never given this thing a second thought. Sure, she’s brought it out plenty of times, and I know what she looked like when she was younger, but…
Then it hits me.
I almost can’t believe it, but I immediately open the book. The baby photos go on for several pages; each one with a small note attached, written in neat hoofwriting. I look closely at each one, and… there’s smudges. Really faded smudges, ones that are hard to spot if you’re not looking for them. Right where her name is. As if an old name had been rubbed out, and a new one written above it.
This goes for all the baby photos, and in each and every one of them, she is wearing a diaper. No nude photos at all.
All right, that sounds kinda weird, but in every baby album I’ve ever been shown, there is always at least one... err, well, let's just call them 'bathtime' photos. It's like some crazy unwritten rule of being a parent, to have embarrassing baby photos. When I was in college, I had a string of stallions that I dated, and, of course, there were summer breaks where I went to visit them at their respective family's house. Their mom’s always got out the albums, and there were the bathtime pictures. Every time.
Dammit, even my Mom does it. Me and Octy went to see her and my Dad when we got together, and guess what? Out came the baby photos. And guess what again? Bathtime. It’s like every parent actively wants to embarrass their child. It's one part of parenthood that I’ve never understood. So why aren’t Octavia’s pictures the same?
She's so adorable. But as well as looking cute as a baby, she also looks… gender neutral? Just looking at her as a baby, I can’t tell if she’s a boy or a girl. Then I turn the page. And there she is. Seven years old, getting on the train to head off to boarding school. No photos in-between this one and the ones of her when she was just a few days old. The photos are sorted chronologically, so there’s no chance of progressing further into the album to find the missing photos. And all the photos from this point onwards have similar notes attached, but none of them have the smudges by her name.
I lean back in my chair, not entirely sure what to think, or how to feel. I mean, the evidence isn't exactly damning. A time-gap, some smudges, and her alcohol-fuelled testimony. Adding them up, you could easily say it's not exactly conclusive. But I dunno... she's never exactly been an open book about her childhood. She has the photos, but any time I ask her specifics, her answers are always kinda vague. The feeling in my gut says that tonight, she finally let slip a truth she's been hiding for a long time.
Should I feel betrayed that she never told me? No. In fact, I can’t say I blame her. I mean, we live in progressive times and it’s nothing she should be scared of talking about, but I can kinda understand why it would be a touchy subject for her. And then I kinda start to feel guilty. How did I never notice this before? Six years. Nearly six years, we’ve lived in this house, and I’m only now noticing this huge gap in her childhood photos? She got the album out plenty of times, so it’s not like there weren’t any chances to notice it.
And then, it really starts to hit me. I feel scared. Very scared. I do love her. I love her so much, and I thought she felt the same about me. So why did she never tell me about this before? Maybe she doesn’t love me as much as she says she does. I mean, why else wouldn’t she tell me? Maybe she’s scared. Scared of what I might think.
Maybe she’s scared I might not love her any more, if she told me the truth about her past. But that’s ridiculous; she knows how much she means to me. Who she was in the past sure as hell ain't gonna change the mare I love right now. When I’m with her, I get this warmth, this tingle I never feel with anypony else. I dated a lot of stallions in college, but over the last few years, when I really started to explore my sexuality, I just found a new happiness I’d never felt until I was with her.
She must know that. Right?
Okay... okay, maybe I’ve beet a bit shy about my preferences, when it’s me and her around other ponies. Yeah, I said we’ve only been an ‘official’ couple for about six months, but we’ve been together much longer than that. I've been telling myself six months, but realistically? Oh, jeez. It’d have to be closer to two years...
Fuck, how can she put up with a marefriend like me?
Okay, maybe it took me a while to openly admit that I’m gay. But she’s got much more reason to be afraid than me. The things she’s probably been through... jeez, what if she thinks I’m ashamed of being her marefriend? It might explain why she's shied away from this subject for so long. If she thought I didn’t love her as much as I really do, that might explain… quite a lot actually.
Thinking about it, and I mean really stopping to think about it, my mind comes up with a lot of times I’ve been really shitty to her because I’ve been more concerned with my public image. When I actually came out, I got a lot of support from my fans, and Octy seemed to be really relieved. At the time I thought she was happy because we could openly say we were a couple, but thinking more realistically, she was probably just happy because I wouldn’t have to pretend any more that she didn’t mean as much to me as she really does.
She belches loudly again, snapping me out of my train of thought. I look over to her, curled up in her duvet, smelling of booze and vomit and likely to have the mother of all hangovers when she wakes up in the morning. And I realize I don’t care about any of that. I’ve been a terrible marefriend up to this point, when she’s been nothing but supportive of me. I stand up and walk over to her, giving her a long and tender kiss on the cheek. She gives what sounds like a contented groan, but other than that she barely stirs.
Tonight’s given me a lot to think about. Things have been put into perspective. Earlier I was mad that I had to carry her home, but now... I’m just glad that she’s a part of my life. She’s put up with so much crap from me, and it ends now. She means the absolute world to me, and it’s about damn time I started to show it. Sure, her past is troubled, and I’ll have to talk to her about it some time in the future, but that’s another story.
I love her, and even if it takes the rest of my life, I’m going to make sure she knows it.