“No? I took Lily to an author signing because she’s very into the My Little Pony books right now. They’re back, apparently, the ponies. And, really she’s into the dolls, and the show, not the books, but whatever. We get her the books, it gets her reading. It’s all good. Anyway, we’re at the bookstore, waiting in line, and there are all these guys, boys—I mean, men, really—your age, some of them, some older, even, a lot older—dressed up as the My Little Ponies. With these pink tails coming out of their pants, and pink hair, the whole thing. And I mean, I don’t know, I’m saying to Lily, like, Are you seeing this? I’m a little bit skeptical, let’s say. And Lily of course is totally unfazed. She’s like, ‘They’re being ponies, Tom. It’s a whole thing.’ And I’m thinking Oh-kay. And, like, how must that guy’s parents feel? So anyway, I don’t care that you’re strange. You’re barely strange, Alex. I’m just teasing you. But since you’re not a pony boy, as far as I know, I’m glad you’re not. That’s all I’m saying.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know,” Alex said.

Casey finally came and filled Tom’s glass.

“Thank you, dear,” his father said abstractedly. He sipped, frowned, and leaned forward.

“There are things a father doesn’t need to know,” he said. “But you might be surprised by how unsurprised I would be.”

This did not have the force of revelation, but that was all right. He didn’t want to confess anything to his father. Instead, he grinned across the table at him like a monkey.

“What?” his father said. “Are you a pony boy?”

“Maybe,” he said. “You know that it’s, like, fairly prevalent in the world, right? Like, that’s actually really normal. People do all kinds of things.”

“Worse?”

“What would be the worst thing to you?” Alex said. “Like, what would you really not be able to handle?”

His father seemed to grow smaller with the shift in tone.

“Alex,” he said, leaning forward, “as long as you’re happy, and not hurting anyone, I can make my peace with anything.”

“Not hurting anyone? That’s your rule?”

“You know,” his father said, “you can be very passive-aggressive.”

Alex’s mind had drifted back to Kate. She knew from passive-aggressive. When he told her about this later, she would smirk and say, “You’re too passive to be passive-aggressive,” and he’d accept it.

He could be her pony boy, he thought. He already was, basically. Pony man. Maybe that was the right way to describe his orientation. Was a pony man just a horse? No, he remembered. Ponies were not baby horses. The main difference between ponies and horses was their height.

The Boy Vet