In his book The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe, William A. Rossi writes, “Foot fetishism or intense foot partialism is common enough to have earned itself a medical term, equus eroticus.” Erotic horse?! Is Rossi kidding? How is “erotic horse” relevant to feet? I simply do not get it. Cecil, please explain.
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There does seem to be some confusion in the world of BDSM (bondage-discipline-sadomasochism) about the meaning of equus eroticus. I found only a few references to it in the sense of foot fetishism, none of which shed any light on the term’s origin. But who cares? The more common and interesting meaning is “ponyplay”–that is, an erotic scenario in which you treat your partner like a horse. If you’re into props, which seem to be a big part of the BDSM scene, you can rig up your pal (or have him/her rig you) in a full leather harness, complete with blinders, bridle, and bit.
Lesser folk might prefer it otherwise, but there’s no sharp line dividing liquids and solids. A supercooled liquid, the term applied to glass for many years, has been rapidly chilled past its normal freezing point and apparently become solid without assuming the regular crystalline structure typical of solids. The term du jour, amorphous solid, means an apparently solid substance that lacks crystalline structure and instead has the random organization of liquids. In other words, we used to think of glass as a solidlike liquid, and now we think of it as a liquidlike solid. Big frickin’ deal.
