January 26, 2026 
I was given an assignment by my editor: “Imbibe the Show Pony.”
“The Show Pony?”
“WEF has a signature drink now.”
I did some googling and found the press release:
“The world’s most celebrated sporting events have their defining drinks—the Mint Julep at the Kentucky Derby, the Honey Deuce at the US Open—cocktails that become part of the lore, the experience, and the sense of occasion.
In 2026, the Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) debuts one of its own: the Show Pony, the event’s first-ever official signature cocktail, crafted exclusively in partnership with Chrome Horse Society Tequila.”
Well, this is interesting, I thought, but I begged off initially out of pure miserliness: the signature cocktail cost 25 bucks and the fact that the price included a you-get-to-keep-it souvenir glass didn’t tempt me.
However, on Saturday, they were giving them out for free.
Coming into VIP, I was approached graciously by an outstandingly attractive woman, who handed me a Show Pony—not, however, in its souvenir glass but in a smaller, plastic-ier version.
I took a sip. It was awful. I did not want to feel that way. I thought of the circuit in California, I thought of all those five-stars popping up all over the Middle East (complete with fisticuffs in the warmup) and leaving the Swamp for these dusty desert places (though I do love myself a desert if I’m on a camel and sleeping at night in a bedouin tent).
“I MUST love this drink,” I thought, and tried stirring with a little spoon that came with my on-the-table charcuterie. “Maybe if I get whatever this pink stuff is that has settled into the bottom of the cup, the taste will be improved.”
It was not. I shoved it aside and ordered bourbon. I didn’t need to specify no ICE. Despite VIP rules stating hard liquor not be served neat, the server was smart enough to know this Minnesotan couldn’t abide it.
One drink that did please me mightily earlier in the week was the Passionfruit Martini, this year’s signature cocktail at the JustWorld Gala. I don’t know exactly what was in that thing, but it was a most magical concoction. So magical that I imbibed three just while engaging in a brief convo with friends next to the bar.
Something in that drink made me tingle from head to toe. I started to wonder if someone had spiked it. Or was I just happy? Was I just basking in the glow of friends and reality TV show stars (two cowboys from Farmer Wants a Wife sat at my table) and the appearance of Juan Pablo Romero Fuentes, CNN Hero and founder of El Patojismo, an extraordinary educational institution in Guatemala that is funded by JustWorld?
I was approached by a beautiful young woman, someone who had been invited to my table, but who had found that all the chairs were taken. She was apologizing. She was offering to skedaddle because our table was full. “What are you talking about?” I said in my drunken delight. “Look at our table,” I said in intoxicated ecstasy. “Look at all the friends we have. Can you imagine this? And now you come and add to it, so we cannot even fit all the friends we have at our table! How blessed are we? How grateful are we that you have come to our table and overfloweth it so that we see so clearly all the friends we have and how lucky we are!”
I continued in this way, overly verbose and vomiting joy, offering up my neighbor’s lap as a seat and my other neighbor’s salad (I had already eaten mine) as sustenance.
One of the cowboys at the table leaned forward and told me, “We had a hard time getting in. They said they didn’t know who Erica was.”
“EXCUUUUUUUUSE ME?” I replied and my joy turned to towering rage, or so it appeared to those seated with me. “THEY. SAID. THEY. DO. NOT. KNOW. WHO. ERICA. IS?!?!”
I had my fourth Passionfruit Martini in front of me. It was actually not just my fourth, but my fifth and sixth as well, as it had been determined that much of the bartender’s time could be saved by supersizing a drink for me rather than repeatedly mixing the mini (standard) size.
This version had ICE in it though, so I barely touched it.
I hunched my back and made smoke come out of my nostrils and the cowboy said, laughing, “I’m liking this energy.”
By the end, I had him convinced I was somebody, somebody everyone should recognize, even though I’m nobody, nobody at all. No one important, just a body, just a mind, just someone who has appeared briefly on this rocky sphere floating in space in a universe whose existence we can barely imagine or comprehend—no one deserving of anything more than anyone else, than any immigrant, documented or not, who exists in this country or another.
“I Have Said to the Worm: Thou art my mother & my sister,” I whispered to myself, quoting Blake.
Back in VIP on Saturday night and I am seated by a member of The Lillies, the super-secret, ultra-exclusive Lillie Keenan fan club. Before any of us were seated, she shouted her prediction of the winner of tonight’s four-star Grand Prix: Lillie, duh!
“Nah,” said someone. “I’m going with Ben Maher.”
“Nah,” said someone else. “It’s gonna be Richie.”
“No way,” said another. “I’m giving it to Nina.”
When Lillie entered the ring, this bright ray of sunshine, her superfan, left the table to get as close to the ring and her idol as possible. I wanted her back, I needed her enthusiasm next to me to warm my ICE-chilled heart.
The jump off was the same—she disappeared, pursuing proximity.
And there was her idol sitting at the top of the results with only one rider left to go.
“I think Bertram’s got it,” said someone.
And there he was, entering the ring at a full gallop (“like he’s heading out of the Okeechobee Steakhouse,” said someone in a much-too-loud voice), on the back of Darragh Kenny’s five-star horse, Eddy Blue.
But for Bertram, it was not to be. Ill-timed applause broke out at our table as he knocked a rail, echoing in the hush of the attentive crowd, embarrassing me and the superfan with our instinctive, discourteous display.
“You’re a terrible influence,” I said to that beautiful sunshine, “Just terrible.”
She just shone brighter in response, her rippling laughter like music.
