Dust Up at the Ponies

So she’s says to him, “when I was younger and finally got a prescription for Prozac and Lithium I thought my life was finally pivoting.”

He was nonplussed. He’d been talking about the horses and such.

But she went on: “I hoped the medication would uptake all that awful brain chemsistry and wash my brain in the good stuff. That the darkness that pervades my thoughts, my emotions, my outlook would somehow lighten…”

But he’s still thinking about trifectas and quinellas, and what if the odds are correct for that pedigree. He’s still engrossed in the Daily Racing Form.

What’s that?

The horse racing newspaper, dear.

Okay, and then?

Oh, she hadn’t paused a beat, she was still wound up, she said: “I never wanted to be an ‘up with people’ type person, and attend Sunday services, and say things like ‘praise the lord’ and ‘thank you, Jesus’ in conversation—I still wished to enjoy David Lynch, Joy Division, and Samuel Beckett, without having to live the life portrayed in their art. But much to my amazement the medication—”

And he hit her!

Don’t even!

He hit her with that Daily Racing Form. I remember it was the July 14, 1987 issue. The newsprint left that date marked upon her forehead.

It was the darndest thing!

What I’m Listening To:

“He took a job as an investment banker,
And spent a lot of time at the racetrack,
Playing the Ponies.”

— King Missile / “The Fish that Played the Ponies”