Megan Fox in Esquire Magazine!

Megan Fox won't kick her horse.

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She's just sort of tapping it, using her Ugg-booted right foot to give it a nudge with her heel. But to Bandit (that's the horse), this is more of a suggestion, and what this horse needs right now is a command, a firm whack on the undercarriage with both heels that says "Stop screwing off!" — and this Fox is either unwilling or unable to give.

So we're gonna pause here for a minute or two, just a few hundred feet up the Topanga Canyon horse trail we're ascending, until Bandit can behave.

It's sunny but still mild for L. A., so Fox is wearing an open yellow cardigan over her black tank top. Her jeans, waist-baring low-riders, were rolled up just beyond her calves until Michael (our serene and tan guide for the day) mentioned she might want to roll them back down to avoid "chafing" — the kind of advice you don't ignore.

She's got a self-professed weakness for eye makeup, but she's not wearing much now, just a little mascara. Today's look is all-natural — though liberal cleavage and the "Brian" hip tattoo that occasionally peeks out above the waistband of her black underwear prevent it from being remotely wholesome.

"If you're a real wimp with him," Michael is explaining, "he's gonna keep taking advantage of you." Dominance over horses is established in the first ten minutes of the ride, which means Fox has about one minute left to show Bandit who's boss. "Don't worry, there's no way you're gonna hurt him," Michael says. Definitely not with the little love kicks she keeps delivering.

It's hard to hold this unwillingness to kick Bandit against her, because it is, after all, kicking an animal, but also because she's clearly freaked out — "terrified" is how she puts it — being in the saddle for the first time. "I have a healthy fear of horses," she said when she was introduced to Bandit, and considering he's a thousand-pound brown beast and she's a five-four, hundred-pound twenty-two-year-old actress, this was odd only because the riding lesson was her idea. She wanted to learn, she said, but really she just wanted an escape.

"You are catching me at a really vulnerable point in my life," she says, alluding to the recent breakup with her boyfriend of four and a half years. She's moving out of their home and being chased by an ever-growing pack of camera-wielding bruisers as she tries to get her personal life under control. "I've never really lived as an adult by myself. Like, I've never even bought my own dishes." That's all about to change. So yeah, Fox is spood, and Bandit isn't really helping.

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