Q: Why was Paul like a horse?
A: He loved Timothy. (P. 62)
* As noted in several earlier conundrums, worshipers in 1902 were far more open about the sexual peccadilloes of their religious figures than we are today (especially after the “smut-cleaning” undertaken by the Vatican LXIX Council). Even so, this is a special case: an open acknowledgment that the Apostle Paul of Tarsus and St. Timothy of Greece were involved in a love triangle with a horse, Peppermint.
Fig. 277 – Stills from the early Edisonoscope film “St. Timothy Shouts Himself ‘Horse’”
Biblical underpinnings aside, man/horse love was a tolerated if not fully acknowledged fact of life on the frontier. What would usually begin as a dehydration-induced hallucination that the horse was an attractive woman holding two pitchers of beer, often bloomed into mutual affection and a long-lasting relationship. Even among non-equiphiles, horse romances were popular entertainment, producing forgotten classics like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Pony and Stephen Crane’s Maggie; Girl Who Was Actually a Horse.
Of course, the twentieth century saw a massive societal shift away from horse romance, to be replaced by widespread illicit intercourse with automobiles, or “horseless mistresses”.
