The Shane and Colton story is coming along well.  I’m at about 7800 words now, and I have a suspect in custody, plus two sex scenes so far.  I have to admit, I hadn’t planned on the story going this long, but—who knew—mysteries take time to set up and resolve.

It’s been a pleasant day today.  Cold (by that, I mean 60–70) and breezy.  Got some really good cloud pictures, though.

Also, that moment when you open your mouth to take a breath, and a bug flies in between your lips.  Gack!

I’m trying to figure out to whom to attribute the quote, but somebody said, “The definition of fluency in a language is the ability to speak about religion and politics.”  When you think about it, it makes sense; people’s religious and political beliefs are generally shaped by many things: their upbringing, their relationship with their parents, the events they’ve witnessed and how they reacted, and even to some degree what their friends and colleagues think.  As a result, when really discussing religion and politics and going  beyond the simple labels (e.g., “I’m a Christian Republican”), you need a wide vocabulary and ability to construct coherent sentences to get your point across.

It seems that society in general has lost its fluency, but not for lack of grammar (okay, well, maybe a bit because of that, too—r u txting 2?) so much as lack of respect.  People do not respect others’ opinions, and that failure to provide respect results in anger, hurt feelings, flame wars online, and loss of friendships.  I have very few close friends, but one of the absolute criteria that must be met is that we can talk about these two subjects respectfully to each other.  If we can’t do that, we’re not gonna be friends.  I enjoy discussing religion and politics, and to have to limit discussions about it over something so fundamental as respect is unacceptable to me.  Therefore, without further ado, my views on religion—well, spirituality, since I don’t adhere to any organized religions.

I was raised Baptist, and we went to church every Sunday until I was maybe 10 or 11.  At that point, we moved, and my mom couldn’t find a pastor she liked.  Of course, I wasn’t complaining; having Sundays free was wonderful.

I was very sexual as a kid; I fooled around a lot—pretty much any opportunity I could get.  And my Baptist upbringing taught me that was a bad thing.  As a result, I lived with a lot of guilt, and I also lived a double-life.  Publicly, I was the “good kid,” the straight-A student, the teacher’s pet (someone literally called me that).  Behind closed doors, I got into a vicious cycle of fooling around, feeling overwhelmingly guilty and swearing never to do it again, and then doing it again and feeling guilty for it all over.  This went on for quite a few years.  All that time, I prayed hard for God to make me not do that, to make me “normal.”  Suffice to say that things went from bad to worse several years later when I realized I was bi and other things that I won’t discuss here.  Then I really felt guilty.  Yet as I thought more and more about it, things began not to make sense.

I was taught that being a homosexual was a sin (and being bi, I’m at least half homosexual), so that meant that God hated me.  Yet I was also raised believing that God is omniscient, all-powerful, and perfect, and I was raised believing that God made me.  Putting all of that together, a being who hates homosexuals but never makes a mistake created a half-homosexual.  How could that be?  Why would God create something He hated?  Now, I’ll tell you that I’ve made things I hated: I’ve written software that was terrible, written requirements that even I couldn’t fully understand, and designed circuits that just didn’t work.  “Hate” might be a strong word, but I certainly didn’t like those things I created, and I most definitely wasn’t proud of them.  I would not place them on my desk next to me and say, “my, what lovely crap I’ve created!”  But I’m not God.  I make mistakes, and it’s not only understandable but expected that at some point I would create something that displeases me.

But God is perfect.  God doesn’t make mistakes.

It made no sense to me that God would deliberately create something He hated.  But that meant that something I was taught had to be wrong; it didn’t all line up.  I still believe that God is perfect.  I still believe that while God may not have put the molecules together Himself to make me, He started the chain reaction that led to it and knew that I’d be born as a result.  And I believe that He’s involved in my life daily.  So that only left whether He hated homosexuals or not.  Yet the Bible has been interpreted time and again to say that He does, and if the Bible says it, then it must be true…right?  The Bible also says that Jews are damned if they don’t accept Jesus…along with Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, atheists, Hindus, and so on, but that didn’t make sense to me, either, since God created all of those people, too.

It was at this point that I began searching.  I had to have a humanities class in college, so I took a class on religion and got to learn a bit more about various Western and Eastern religions.  I have a tendency towards making things efficient and simple, and what I condensed the “core beliefs” of all religions down into was, “be good to each other.”  I fully believe that at the core of every religion is a little nugget of concentrated goodness that says little more than that.  But then you start heaping on the dogma—”must believe in Jesus,” “must not eat pork”, “must eschew attachments,” and so on—and that’s how you get different religions.  Some religious teachings remember what their core is, remember that above all else, they should be teaching people to be good to each other, but many religious leaders begin to forget that.  Politics, ego, and money get in the way, and they start using religion as a weapon rather than the tool it was meant to be.

Yes, religion and spirituality are tools.  I believe that a good religion or spiritual belief must fulfill three needs:

1. It must provide guidance in times of moral indecision,
2. It must provide comfort in times of  strife, and
3. It must give us some idea of what the afterlife (if any) is like.

Nobody knows everything, and at some point, people need something to lean on and say, “this is what I should do because ____.”  Religion provides that.

I believe everybody is affected by bad times at some point or other, and in our darkest moments, we need something to cling to, to give us that little bit of hope that things will get better when it seems all is lost.

We hope things get better in this life, but for some, the next life holds more promise, and that’s where the third item comes in.  Because people don’t regularly die and come back to life to tell us what it’s like “on the other side,” religion gives us an idea of what to expect.  Humans and animals alike tend to fear the unknown, and a strong spiritual belief gives us something to hold onto, because where death is concerned, it’s better to believe something even if it’s wrong than to be left questioning.

As far as I’m concerned, as long as a religion or set of spiritual beliefs is doing those three things, it’s off to a good start.

But religion should never be used as a weapon.  The notion that “You are going to Hell because you don’t do exactly what I do” is a horrible, terrible way to misuse religion, just as shooting a fellow human being is a horrible, terrible way to misuse a gun, and I view those who use their religion to look down on others with almost as much contempt as those who shoot other human beings.  How dare you pervert such a beautiful gift in such a disgusting way?

Okay, okay, I might have gotten fired up about that a bit.  Getting back to my story, I had learned some things about other religions, but I recognized that I still didn’t really know a whole lot about them.  My dad is one of the best of the “good men” that I know: he has worked his entire life to provide for the family, putting in insane hours at work, flying home, and putting in insane hours to keep things moving at home.  I turned to him for advice.  It turns out he and I had come to similar conclusions, but he had put it more eloquently.  He said, “Son, above all, knowingly do no harm.”

Wow.  It’s so simple, like a good requirement.  It doesn’t dictate how you must act or state “this is bad and that is bad”; it merely commands that you really consider whether your actions harm others or not and avoid those that do.  Coming from a regulatory and compliance engineering background, it is the ISO 14791 of life: consider in what ways your actions (product, in ISO 14971’s case) can harm others and take steps to reduce the risk or severity.  How elegant!

Now, like many board games, the rules are simple but difficult to master, and the struggle is there every day to avoid doing harm to others.

But that only makes up the first element of what a religion must do.  What about comfort?  What about the afterlife?  Here I’ll tell you a story.  Bear in mind that this is my blog, and I tend to be open about things; TWBS.

When I was very young, I must have seen my parents watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  I say that because as a very young child, somewhere between 3 and 7, I remember having a vivid fantasy of being strapped, naked, to a metal frame and lowered into a volcano.  That fantasy stayed with me for many years, although it changed over time.  What can I say, I like things warm, but a volcano would be a life-ending experience, and I don’t want that!  The desire to be restrained, naked and helpless never went away, though, and when I was 20 or so, I finally started doing some research about it and discovered BDSM.  Who knew there were other people who also liked to be tied up and made helpless?  Who knew there were others more than willing to oblige that fantasy?  Shortening the story a bit, I ended up at a leather bar and met some people in a BDSM club.  I joined the club, had some very awesome scenes, and made some good friends.

But wait!  What does this have to do with religion?  Oh, look, here’s another story!

I didn’t date at all until I was finishing college.  My first boyfriend and I met online and talked three months before he flew down here from Washington state to be with me.  We lasted three days in person.  It turns out we had nothing to talk about, nothing in common, and zero chemistry.  It was awful.  I had a Dom for a while (for those not into BDSM, it meant that he was the one “in charge”, and I, as his submissive, was supposed to do what he told me to do).  After several months together, I realized that I had no respect for him and ended things rather explosively.  My second boyfriend who wasn’t a Dom and I broke up something like 4 times over the course of a couple months.  After the fifth time, we decided we were done.  We’ve recently reconnected and are both much wiser now, but we can talk and hang out platonically.

Now for all of this time, I had a coworker that I trusted, and he and I would hang out and chat.  He was straight, but I think he found my non-straight life fascinating even if it wasn’t for him.  He suggested that as much bad luck as I’d been having, I might ought to consider dating a “chick” for a while.  I figured it couldn’t hurt, and not long thereafter, I ended up with my only girlfriend, my “crazy ex-girlfriend.”  Why she’s crazy…we’ll get to later, but suffice to say our relationship was unpleasant for me.  I knew the first day that we shouldn’t be together, but having never dated a girl before, I didn’t want to be one of “those” guys who just dumped her, and so while I told her that I didn’t think we should be together, she said we should and I reluctantly went along with it.

For a year.

Remember the whole me-messing-around-as-a-kid thing?  I was pretty much always the instigator back then, and I began to think that I’d cajoled everybody into it, that they’d only done it because I wanted to.  I felt the same way with her, yet in hindsight, the opposite was true: she was always horny, and I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t fun, but at the time, every time we did it, I’d start feeling immensely guilty afterwards and couldn’t really stand to have her around, reminding me of what I’d just done, but I desperately didn’t want to be a jerk to her, either.  I’d start brooding, we’d get in an argument, I’d say that we shouldn’t be together, she’d say we should, we’d slowly get over it, and then things would settle down again until we had sex again.  This happened every month until I had finally had enough and just couldn’t stand it anymore.  I finally told her that I really didn’t think we should be together and that we were done, that it had been a mistake to drag it out so long.  She told me she was pregnant.

Now, people who know me know that I hate children.  They make me incredibly uncomfortable.  Like, recoiling in disgust or squirming in my chair uncomfortable.  Why is probably the topic of another blog entry.  But basically, the notion that there was about to be a kid out there that I was responsible for felt like a death sentence.

Of course, the first stage is denial, and my friends certainly helped encourage me to do that: “women always say that,” my coworker said (he’s a bit of a chauvinist).  “She’s just trying to get you to stay; there’s no baby,” another friend said.  But she and I went to the clinic together, and they confirmed she was in fact pregnant.

Fuck.

So now there’s this…thing…that’s going to ruin the next 18 years of my life, and there is nothing I can do about it.  She wanted to have it, and I had no right to demand an abortion.  I knew that I could not stay around to raise it, though; as severe as my discomfort is around children, there is no way I could be kind to it, and seriously weighing the options, I decided the harm was less if I wasn’t around than if I was there lashing out in discomfort.

I know some will look down on me for that; “suck it up,” they’d say.  “Be a man.  It’s just a baby.”  I know.  But I don’t know how, and I wasn’t in a position to figure it out.  We all have things that make us uncomfortable.  I have many.  But while I don’t like spiders, I let them live in the camper, and while snakes make me nervous, I’ve let the ones on the property live.  My discomfort around them is nowhere near as strong as my discomfort around children.  I don’t know if that puts it in perspective, but I hope it does.

Back to the story, I was resigned to pay child support.  I don’t shirk from my responsibilities, whether I like it or not, and I realized that if I was going to be paying child support, I was going to have to make some major lifestyle changes to be able to afford it.  I was living in a rather nice-sized townhouse at the time, around 1200 square feet, and while I liked the place and loved my landlords (they were like second parents), the place leaked heat like a sieve, and I ended up with a $450 electric bill two months in a row.  That couldn’t continue.  I had a motorcycle I’d bought a year previously that I couldn’t afford to keep making payments on if I was going to pay child support.  That had to go.  I moved into a much cheaper apartment with much more reasonable bills and sold the motorcycle.  I wasn’t happy about it, but I was prepared to pay child support when the time came.

Okay, wait; this blog is about religion, but this has nothing to do with it.  Last time I mentioned this, I jumped into a—

—Oh, look, yet another story!

My family had miniature donkeys when I was in high school, and that continued when I went to college.  While I had a best friend from elementary school, we had started drifting apart towards the end of middle school, and so I tended to be a bit of a loner—and lonely at times.  One of the miniature donkeys, Jasmine, became, in a sense, my best friend.  I’d go out and just sit with her and pet her, and she’d stop grazing and just enjoy it.  It was simple but wonderful.

I graduated high school and started going to college.  Anytime I came home to visit my family, Jasmine would bray at me as soon as I got out of my car.  I had to go love on her before I even saw my family!  I’d go love on her a bit and then take my suitcase inside and say hi to my parents and sister.

But one day I came home and she wasn’t there.

“Hey, Mom, where are the donkeys?” I asked as I walked in.

“Oh, we sold them,” my mom replied.

I stopped.  “You—what?” I didn’t believe I’d heard it right.

“The last time you left, she went a little crazy and wouldn’t let anybody get near her, and since breeding them wasn’t doing anything, we decided to just sell them.”

1. My best friend was sold, and I had no idea.  I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
2. My best friend “went a little crazy” and wouldn’t let anybody get near her.  What the fuck did I do to screw her up so badly?

I was heartbroken.  Beside myself.  And wracked with guilt.  There’s more to this story, but that’s the part you need to know.

Hey, here’s another story!

Fast-forward a bit.  At this time, I’ve spent some time in the BDSM club (even served as Member-At-Large for a while) and kinda lost interest, and now I’m kinda bored, kinda lonely, and looking for something social to do.  One of my friends from the BDSM club lived in the gay part of town for a long time and got the local gay newspaper.  He suggested looking in there to see if there was something of interest.  While I played trombone throughout middle and high school and college, I wasn’t really wanting to join another community band, but I found a men’s choir that looked promising.  I auditioned, got accepted, and started singing with them.  I made a friend there when we started carpooling.  He introduced me to me my love of dark beers.  When I left the men’s choir a few months later (I realized I didn’t like performing and didn’t like rehearsing…who knew?), he and I remained friends.

Going back to a previous story, you remember the crazy ex-girlfriend and how I said we’d get to why she’s crazy?  Now’s the time for that.  She had no filter.  And I mean that in the worst way.  She told my parents about our in-bed activities.  I mean, I’m open, but come on!  I do have to give her credit, though; she helped me work through a lot of issues.  She always used to say that friends are your friends “for a reason, for a season, or for life.”  I figured she was “for a season” because I knew it wasn’t for life, but it turns out it was most definitely for a reason.  The guilt of having sex wasn’t getting much better, but talking with her about it and her reassuring me that she wasn’t just having sex with me because I’d talked her into it slowly began to click, and slowly the guilt began to dissipate.  I told her about how guilty I was feeling about Jasmine “going crazy” and expressed that I very much missed her but was afraid of making things worse.  My ex-girlfriend convinced me that I wasn’t going to make things worse and encouraged me to try to find her.

My mom and I weren’t talking very much around this time.  I’d come out as bi and other things, and my mom was really having a hard time dealing with it.  It was painful for me because I had always been a momma’s boy growing up.  When I was 14, I remember thinking to myself that I couldn’t imagine living without her.  So the fact that we weren’t talking says that it was really bad.

Now, I must give her a whole lot of credit: she overcame decades of Baptist teachings to decide that she loved her son more than she believed what had been preached to her for her whole life.  I love her all the more for it, and I’m very proud of her.  But at this time, we weren’t there, yet, and things were tense.

I had no idea where Jasmine had gone, and she was the only person who would know.  That kind of stuff was her domain, so my dad (with whom I had grown closer) wouldn’t have known, and that meant that I had to talk to her.  I remember telling her that while I understood that she wasn’t happy with me, I was hurting and needed her help to find Jasmine.  She reluctantly told me, and we had one of many little heart-to-hearts that were both uncomfortable and healing at the same time.  I called the place she told me about, and they said that they had had Jasmine, but she was barren and couldn’t be used for breeding, and so they had sold her, too.  They gave me the contact info for the place, a ranch owned by an oil tycoon that lived in Dallas, worked in Houston, and had her ranch outside of Austin.

I have to admit that I was pretty nervous at this point.  What if she’d been sold again?  What if this was a dead end?  What if she was dead?  What if with this woman being a big-shot oil tycoon, she wouldn’t even respond to my email?  I was pretty on edge at this point.

I was at the gym (I was in amazing shape back then), and I had just finished getting dressed for my workout when I saw that I had an email.  It was from Jasmine’s new owner—or rather the woman who lived on the ranch to take care of it while the oil tycoon was away (I cannot imagine having that kind of money!)—and she had good news.  Yes, they had Jasmine.  Yes, she seemed happy and healthy there.  And yes, I was welcome to visit.  When would I like to come?

Emotions have a funny way of being expressed when you’re on edge like that.  I gritted my teeth, squeezed my PDA (because this was shortly before smart phones) in my hand, trying to crush it, and finally grabbed my headphones, slammed my locker shut, got on the treadmill, set it to like 14, and just sprinted until I was too tired to run anymore.  My trainer at the time said that I looked so pissed that he was afraid to say anything.  It’s not that I’m violent or ever have been, but it’s such a contrast from my usual grinning self, and when I look pissed, I look pissed.

With my head finally cleared enough to think sort-of straight but not clear enough to really respond, yet, I finished my workout, showered, went home, and then read the email again.  This time the emotion was a little more reasonable: disbelief, cautious excitement, cautious relief…  Of course I replied right away.  It was June 20th when we went; I figured that for her help in getting me past my guilt, I would take my crazy ex with me (she wasn’t quite an ex, yet).  We went, and it was actually good because my crazy ex loves to talk, and so she talked to the lady while Jasmine and I got some one-on-one time.  She recognized me; that much was clear.  She was always very food-motivated, but when she and the others came up to eat, she stopped and stared at me for a minute or more before continuing on.  Beyond that, it was hard to tell whether she was happy or unhappy to see me.  She certainly didn’t appear afraid, but she’d always given the best hugs when I was in high school, and she seemed more reserved now.  Still, she did enjoy being petted and brushed (the lady who took care of her was incredibly thoughtful and just so very nice; she gave me a bucket of brushes of all different types to use).  I was convinced it was really her, though.

I have to admit that after finding out that she’d been sold again, and to an oil tycoon—when would somebody like that have time for her?—I had delusions of rescuing her from wherever she had ended up and whisking her away to live with me—I hadn’t really figured out how that would work with me living in an apartment, but I figured “where there’s a will, there’s a way”—happily ever after.  But this place was paradise for her: 1200 acres, other miniature donkeys and miniature horses for company, a caretaker who clearly took good care of her…I couldn’t take her away from all of that, couldn’t uproot her from her home like she’d been uprooted twice before.  I was happy for her but pretty sad for me when I decided that it was best to leave her there.  We thanked the lady—who said I could come back anytime, but I knew that I couldn’t do that—and left, my eyes blurred from so many tears of both joy and sadness.  I got a speeding ticket on the way home.

Now, reuniting with Jasmine and finding out that she was okay and didn’t seem to have any ill feelings towards me, I realized that I missed equines in my life.  By this time, I had left the men’s choir and was again looking for some way to occupy my time.  I figured finding miniature donkeys around probably wasn’t going to happen, I’d focus on horses instead (I didn’t know there was that big a difference at the time), and since I didn’t have a place for a horse or really know anything about caring for them, I ought to find a place to learn how.  I finally found a horse rescue and contacted them to ask them if I could help. My crazy ex independently contacted them wanting to see if she could help with the social side (Facebook was still kinda new).

Neither one of us heard back for over a month, but the rescue finally replied to me, and I started going over there on weekends.  For a while I mostly mucked out stalls (it was relaxing, and horse manure is nowhere near as offensive-smelling as dog– or cat-feces), but eventually a horse came in named Nudge, so-named because he would get right up against you and lean into you, effectively “nudging” you.  He was incredibly young, maybe a year old, if that, and he became a surrogate Jasmine.  I started working with him, getting him comfortable being led, bathed, and handled, and he was coming along quite well.  I got pretty attached.

Not long after that came the break-up, and then the miscarriage.  While I cannot say that I was sad it happened (“relieved” is a much better word), I couldn’t help feeling guilty that I was the only one that benefited.  My parents were excited to be grandparents (even if I wasn’t going to be involved), her family was excited, she was beside herself with excitement, and I was the only one who was really not for it.  While by this time I had made it very clear that I didn’t want to have anything to do with her, I did dutifully take off work and spend the rest of the day with her when it happened until her family could get to her.  I hate children and wasn’t keen on her, but I’m not a monster.

She got crazy after that.  She told the rescue owners in graphic detail about what sex with me was like (they were very uncomfortable, and so was I!) and started stalking me through them, asking them what I was doing, when I came, what I did, and so on.  She began posting things on the Facebook site she’d set up for them about offing herself and sent me an email threatening to do herself in.  It wasn’t the first time she’d done that, and my Dom had done it several times before that, and so I ignored it.  The next day, I got a scathing email talking about how I didn’t care about her and so on.  I replied to her, blind-copying the barn and my family and friends, telling her very matter-of-factly that she was not to contact me, the barn, my family, or my friends again, nor were her friends or family to contact any of us, or I would call the police.  I hated to be so blunt about it, but apparently I hadn’t been forceful enough when I broke up with her.

It wasn’t long after that that the rescue and I had a falling-out, and I wasn’t invited back.  It was possibly the darkest time in my life to date.  It was like all of the sadness I felt about Jasmine spread out over the previous four years condensed into a miserable two-week period.  It’s…coincidental that I’m posting this today.  Today’s the 8th anniversary of the last time I set foot at the rescue.

I know, I know, this is supposed to be about religion.  I’m getting there…I promise.

Now, remember the men’s choir?  They had a “buddy system” where veterans would take newbies under their wing for a season and help them figure out where to get proper attire, how to get places (many of the members were transportation-deprived), how to practice their music, and so on.  My friend became the buddy of a guy who owned horses, and for several months while I was working at the rescue had been telling me that I should go with him to go see his friend with the horses.  At the time, I had Nudge, and I didn’t really care about other horses.  After stopping at the barn, though, I no longer had Nudge, and as awful as I was feeling, even a 2-hour road trip to go see a horse sounded like a good thing.

We went out there, and there were four horses, two black ones and two bay ones.  The guy who owned the place said that he owned the black ones and was boarding the bay ones for his cousin.  The older black one—whose name was Jasmine—was the other black one’s dam (mom).  The younger black one came right up to the fence, and I blew in her nose.  She started mouthing my face to the point that her owner said, “Ebony!  That’s just obscene!”

Ebony is my horse now.  It was love at first sight, and having lost Jasmine four years prior and Nudge just weeks earlier than that, I was afraid to lose another equine I loved.  I bought her December 26th, and we celebrate our anniversary every year with apples.

What started all of this was a discussion of religion.  Do I believe in God?  Without a doubt, yes, and here’s why:

• If I had not been into BDSM since I was a child, I never would have met my friend who led me to the chorale, through which I made a friend who made a friend who owned the horse that would one day be mine.
• If my family had not had miniature donkeys and my best friend and I had not drifted apart, I probably would never have come to love equines the way I do.
• If I had not gone through multiple incompatible boyfriends and ended up with the crazy ex girlfriend, I would not have overcome my guilt related to Jasmine, would not have gone back to see her, and would not have rediscovered my love for equines.
• If the crazy ex had not gotten pregnant, or had I decided to try to shirk my responsibility for child support, I would not have sold off things and started saving up, which means I couldn’t have afforded to buy Ebony in the first place, let alone cover the cost of her boarding.
• Had I not parted ways with the rescue, I wouldn’t have gone to see Ebony.

Somehow, all of those things came together, multiple seemingly unrelated plot points that coalesced into what has been the most important decision in my life to date.  I’ve moved over a dozen times since then, had a handful of different jobs, lived in several cities, had friends come and go, but Ebony has been the constant in my life since that day; she’s very important to me.  The fact that all of those disparate things had to come together the way they did, and the fact that they did fills me with a sense that a guiding hand is watching over me, and if I’ve ever doubted God’s existence, that’s enough to reaffirm my beliefs.

 

Could it all be coincidence?  Of course.  Humans love to find patterns (and are good at it), and we’re also susceptible to confirmation bias.  But given religion is faith-based, I choose to believe that it wasn’t mere coincidence, and that comforts me.  And that is how my spiritual beliefs provide comfort in times of crisis.  I feel better when I pray, and it literally helps me sleep at night when I’m worried.

Lastly, we come to the afterlife, and I’ll tell you now, my explanation for this is way shorter.  I’ll start with a question: if you’re going through school and you fail the sixth grade, what happens?  Do the teachers and principal and your parents all get together and say, “Welp, you failed, so now you’re doomed forever to have only attained a fifth grade education”?  Heavens, no!  They get together and say, “Welp, that sucked.  Try again.  Do better next time.”

Here’s another thought: energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be converted (including into mass).  If that’s the case, then where did the energy go that embodied all of the souls that died and went to Heaven or Hell?  Where is the energy that creates new souls coming from?

I think you can see where I’m going with this.  I believe in reincarnation.  I believe that our souls are constantly trying 6th grade again until they get it right enough to pass.  Truthfully, I haven’t taken it to the level of detail that the Buddhists have (with their multiple levels of a soul’s existence, the reincarnation of various groups of those levels, and so forth), but I feel comfortable believing that when I die, my soul will try 6th grade again in my next life, and maybe it’ll get a few more questions right on the test at the end.

In a previous post, I talked about how some furries believe they are animals trapped in human bodies.  While I don’t believe that, I do firmly believe that my soul was a horse at some prior time.  It explains why I feel so connected to them, why I feel so “at home” with my animals, and why I really enjoy them scratching me back as if I were just another member of the herd.

This has been another long post.  I hope you see now why discussing religion requires fluency in a language to really get into the details, and I hope that my explanations of how I came to follow the life-goal of knowingly doing no harm, why I firmly believe in God, and why I am comfortable believing that my soul will be reincarnated for another attempt to “get it right” make sense, even if you may not personally agree.  They bring me comfort, reduce my uncertainty, and and hopefully help me to be a better human being, and that’s all I ask of my spirituality.

While my blog is still young, it’s almost inevitable that I’m going to start making furry references.  I’ve been a furry for a really long time…something like 12 years, I think.  13?  I dunno.  Anyway, for those not familiar with “furry”, I’m going to try to explain it, demystify it, and maybe share some of my experiences with it.

Fun fact about my writing: I seldom if ever use an outline.  I make a list of things I want to include as the ideas come to me, and then when I find myself running out of things to say, I consult the list.  Not everything makes it in, and stuff that wasn’t in the list sometimes does.  It’s flexible, and that lets me follow along in the story almost as if my fingers have one brain, and I get to read what that brain is typing in real-time.  It’s kinda fun!  But anyway…

Oh, disclaimer time: on the note of me sharing experiences, this is my blog, and left to my own devices outside of work, I am an extremely open person.  Aside from hiding things to protect the innocent, I’m pretty much an open book, and I can’t think of any topics that are taboo for me.  As a result, my forthrightness may come off “too open” for some readers, and I encourage you not to read those parts if they make you uncomfortable.  There are a very few things I won’t share on here—for my own reasons—but as far as I’m concerned, everything else is fair game.

Let me start off by saying this: I am not the first to write a paper/blog/article on being a furry.  Several (or more) have done it before, and they’ve done it quite well.  In fact, I don’t know that what I have to say is an improvement on what any of them has already said, but in the spirit of “this is my blog, and I’ll write whatever I want,” well, this is my blog, and I’m gonna write about being a furry, damn it!  So there.

And look!  Headings!

What’s a furry?

Let’s start with the basics.  What’s a furry?  A furry is an anthropomorphic animal enthusiast.  That word is as hard to say as it is to type, so “furry” is so much easier.  In a nutshell, think every Disney movie with talking animals in it.  Or animals at all because I think just about every animal in every Disney movie ever was anthropomorphic.  Even the damn cockroach in Wall-E was anthropomorphic.  Those animators have a disease…and I caught it: we love anthropomorphic animals—those with human characteristics.  Now, there is a huge spectrum of what defines “human characteristics”, so let’s have a section just for that.  I know there was a keyboard shortcut for assigning headings…

What’s “Anthropomorphic?”

Ah, ha!  Ctrl-option-1.  Yay!  But I digress…

I could give you a dictionary definition, but that’s boring, so I won’t.  As my dad would say, “look it up!”  Instead, I’ll simplify it to, “animals with human characteristics.”  Now, “human characteristics” can mean a lot of things.  Let’s take the aforementioned roach: it can’t talk, doesn’t walk upright, and doesn’t look anything like a human.  Yet because of its body movements, you can tell its emotion.  That is a very mild form of anthropomorphic.  Now, some would argue it isn’t.  You can tell a horse’s (or dog’s, or cat’s) emotion by watching their body language, too, but that doesn’t make them anthropomorphic.  Definitely true.  But this is a damn cockroach.  When was the last time you saw a cockroach cock its head curiously?  That is what makes it anthropomorphic: Hal (apparently the cockroach has a name) is more human than a standard cockroach in his ability to communicate his thoughts and emotions.

A more extreme example is the cricket in Mulan.  That one has a face, all manner of facial expressions, and even cries in shame at one point.  Very anthropomorphic.  Other examples at this level are pretty much every Disney horse (Samson from Sleeping Beauty, Philippe from Beauty and the Beast, Achilles from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Khan from Mulan, and let’s not forget Maximus from Tangled—and a shit-ton more [is it any wonder people like horses?  Disney’s been subliminally making us love them for over three quarters of a century!]), the forest critters from Snow White, and Meeko, Flit, and Percy from Pocahontas.  None of these animal characters speak human words, but most of them pull at our heartstrings with their ability to convey their emotions to us.

Moving up the spectrum, consider Lion King, my mom’s favorite Disney movie, and about the only one she didn’t sleep through when we went to theaters to see it—we went six times, and to this day, she still drives down the road blaring “Hakuna Matata.”  It is a wonderful phrase, after all.  But again, I digress.  In Lion King, the characters are unmistakably lions, hyenas, meerkats, warthogs, and so on.  They walk on the expected number of legs (everybody except Zazu and Timon walk on four because that’s what those animals do).  Yet they talk, sing, pose, and even dance.  Another example, incidentally, is Bambi.

At the top of the anthropomorphic ladder are the characters from Disney’s Robin Hood (the one with the foxes) and Zootopia.  Interesting facts about these two movies: 1) many of the furries I know trace their first furry tendencies to watching Robin Hood, and every furry I know was beside himself/herself with excitement when we heard that Disney was making Zootopia.  It is the second movie that I’ve gone to see multiple times in theaters.  Counting theaters and in-flight movies, I think I saw it something like 8 times, more times than Lion King.  But moving on, the characters in these movies are extremely humanoid.  They wear clothes, have jobs, walk upright, talk, do pretty much everything humans do, except they look like animals.  In fact, you could replace the characters with humans, and it would still (mostly) make perfect sense what they were talking about.  Although not a Disney movie, the An American Tail series is another example of very anthropomorphic animals, and there are others, too.

The common trend among all of the examples I’ve given is that the animals are animated and cartoony.  More on this later, but consider the Jungle Book remake.  In that case, the animals look pretty realistic, yet they’re still able to convey their thoughts and emotions via expressions and even talk, and so they also count as anthropomorphic.

A final note I’ll make before moving on is that sentient animals could, in a sense, be considered anthropomorphic, too.  Nothing is quite as human as our ability to think the way we do, and so an animal that looks exactly like an animal and cannot express itself by making words or human facial expressions is still a form of anthropomorphic.  Exhibit A: The Cat from Outer Space.  I watched this movie too many times as a kid.  Clearly the cat was an actual cat with a voice-over, but in concept, a cat who could speak human words, even telepathically, fits the bill.

Okay, I think I’ve beaten that dead horse enough.  And I don’t like beating horses.  And I don’t like the idea of dead ones.  Because one day mine will die, and it will, in all seriousness, probably be the worst day of my life.  I’ve had her 8 years now, and I love her more than any other living being.  So, her passing will be pretty terrible.  Let’s talk about something else.

Right, furries.  So now we know what “anthropomorphic animals” are, and a furry is just someone who likes them.  Nothing more, nothing less.  That’s the only entrance criterion.  For those who remember the CSI furry episode, I’m here to tell you this: not all furries are into that (I’ll get into what that is later), so don’t judge an entire fandom by what you saw on TV.  If you’ve liked any animated Disney animal character, you’ve probably got at least a little furry in you.

Now, with that said, because it doesn’t take much to be a furry, the fandom is huge.  There are so, so many varieties of furries, it’s crazy, but I’m going to try to break them out into a few broad categories.  But first, a bit of terminology, so that I don’t have to keep explaining myself.

Furry Words

Like many groups with similar interests, furries have invented or repurposed words for themselves.  As a furry, I use these words myself, and you’ll probably find references to them throughout this article.  This list is not exhaustive; it’s just a list of words that I personally use.  Others have come up with more comprehensive lists.

Furry

As a noun, it’s an anthropomorphic animal enthusiast, e.g., “I am a furry”.  It can also be shortened to “Fur”, e.g., “I’m a fur” or “That fur is a great artist!”

As an adjective, it describes something as relating anthropomorphic animals, e.g., “furry art” describes art depicting anthropomorphic characters.

Yiff

Like its non-furry definition, “yiff” means a lot of things.

• “To yiff” is to fuck,
• “Yiffy” means:
  • Sexually arousing or depicting sex—especially in a furry kind of way—when applied to something (e.g., “yiffy art”) or
  • “Horny” when applied to someone (“I’m feeling yiffy right now.”)

The story I’ve heard is that “yiff” is the noise foxes make when they’re yiffing.  Having never witnessed that, I can’t say one way or the other, but it’s the explanation I always give for where the term came from.  Even if it’s wrong, it’s still a good story.

Furry Convention, Fur-con, “Confurence”, or Con

A large gathering of furries for the purpose of celebrating being furries and interacting with other furries.  Think of it as the furry equivalent of a Renaissance faire, a Star Trek convention, or an anime convention.  There are several large ones, including Anthrocon (the biggest) in Pittsburgh, Midwest FurFest in Rosemont, IL, and Further Confusion in San Jose.  These conventions all have 3500+ attendees (Anthrocon had 7500+ in 2017).  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the convention nearest me, Texas Furry Fiesta (TFF), the only convention I’ve actually made it to so far.  What happens at a confurence?  We’ll get to that later, but probably not what you’re thinking.

Room Party

Given most confurences are hosted in hotels, visitors often have private rooms.  While no convention I’ve attended or heard of condones public intoxication or public sexual conduct, what happens behind closed doors…happens at room parties.  That said, they’re not always about sex, booze, and drugs.  Actually, I’ve never been to one that was about drugs, and if con or hotel staff catch a party with them, everybody’s quick to alert law enforcement.  Furries often get a bad rap because of CSI and similar depictions, and so in my experience, they’re extra careful to self-police and cooperate with authorities.

That said, I’ve been to one room party that was sexually charged, and it was kinda nice; everybody just enjoying each other (we all knew each other anyway).  Would probably do it again, given an invitation.  Most room parties I’ve been to involved drinking, although seldom to excess.  It’s true, some furries spend the entire convention blitzed, but they’re not the norm.

Furmeet, Fur-Meet, etc.

A meeting of furries on a much smaller scale than a confurence, maybe as few as two or three or as many as a hundred or so, usually hosted at a park or some kind of eatery that can handle the sudden influx of however many attendees there are.  While confurences are usually held once a year or so, furmeets are often held monthly and occasionally as impromptu gatherings.  Where confurences typically have admission fees to help cover the cost of the venue, furmeets are usually free or free as long as you bring something to eat or drink to share with the group.  Can’t say I’ve ever had sex or alcohol at a fur meet; because they’re typically hosted in public places, furries are generally pretty well-behaved, albeit they’re probably the most fun group you’ll ever see if a fur meet happens to spring up near you!  More on that later.

Fursuit / Suit, Fursuiter / Suiter

Probably the most iconic symbol of furries is the fursuiter, a person wearing a fursuit—a costume of an animal.  Fursuits come in many different species, styles (cartoony to hyper-realistic), costs ($50 you spent to get some materials and put it together yourself to $10K for hyper-realistic costumes with fancy features).  I once spent $1300 on a fur suit that was delivered three months late, broke the first convention I wore it to, and was promptly stolen from my storage unit out in BFE (that’s Bum-Fuck Egypt, a synonym for “the middle of nowhere”); it’s not something I plan to do again.  Moral of this story: get to know your fursuit maker before you commit to buying from him/her.  Some are way better than others, and there’s more to making a fursuit than just sewing stuff together to make it look pretty; it should be durable, comfortable (you’re probably gonna want to be in it a long time), and it should breathe (those things are hot!).

Some furries like to have sex while fursuiting.  I played with a guy in a suit one time, and I have to say, I probably wouldn’t do it again.  The suit reeked, and having a pretty strong olfactory sense, the stink was too distracting for me to have any fun.  I’m told that some ‘suiters are better at keeping their suits clean than others, but it would have to be a lot cleaner than that for it to work for me.  To have sex in a fursuit, you need a way to get through the fabric.  These are called…

Strategially Placed Holes (SPHs)

These are holes placed in specific areas in a fursuit (or plushie) to enable sexual intercourse.  Locations of SPHs typically include the front (for penile or vaginal access) and back (for anal access) of the groin.

Plushie

A stuffed animal.  Like anything, they can be enjoyed platonically or sexually.  I have four of them (three horses and a deer), but I’m not sexual with them.  Mostly these days they’re bed ornaments, but they’re good to hug when the herd isn’t feeling very affectionate and I’m feeling lonely.  Some furs have SPHs in their plushies so they can have sex with them.

Fursona

A portmanteau of “Fur” and “persona” (we like using “fur” in portmanteaus, if you haven’t noticed), it’s a personality or character that a fur creates.  They can be simple or detailed and used for different purposes.  For instance, some furs create a fursona for online role-playing (see that entry), some create them so they can have art made of them, and some create them as alter-egos.  Some have only physical descriptions for art-making, while some have entire life histories, depending on the creativity of the fur who created the fursona.

Physically, fursonas can be any species (mammals are called “furries”, reptiles are called “scalies”, and birds are called “avians”—can’t say what they call amphibians, having never met any).  The animals can be real (like dogs and foxes), mythical (like dragons), and some people even create entirely new species. Sergals are a common “made-up” species.  They can be any size, from “normal” and “kinda normal” (i.e., the actual size of the animal or a human-sized version), tiny / micro (maybe palm-sized or toy-dog-sized) or macro (huge, like Godzilla).  Practically speaking, fursuits are human-sized, but they may represent fursonas that are of any size.

From an artistic standpoint, fursonas can look realistic or cartoony.  Very realistic would be along the lines of the live-action Jungle Book, very toony would be like Mickey Mouse or many Sunday comic characters, and Zootopia and Lion King would be somewhere in the middle.  Fursonas can range in “anthroness” from feral (they look and move just like the actual animal) to very anthro (walk upright, might have fingers instead of hooves, might be humans who happen to have cat ears, and so on).  They can be any build (average, super-muscular, toned, fat, skinny, lithe, etc.), can have any color of fur/skin/scales or even really fancy patterns, glow-in-the-dark parts, and color-changing parts, and some fursonas can even shape-shift.

Fursona personalities are just as flexible as their physiques.  They can be bad-asses, timid, friendly, standoffish, shy, outgoing, flirty, prudish, consistent or capricious, lazy or high-spirited.  Or anything else.  And fursona back-stories are just as flexible; it’s all up to the imagination of the furry creating the fursona.

I’ve had a few over the years.  My first one was a dragon (I think we all go through the dragon phase; it sticks for some but didn’t for me).  My second one was a donkey.  I named him Jack Doe.  Why?  A jack is a male donkey and a doe is a female deer, and I really liked furry deer characters at the time.  Aren’t I clever?  And immensely good-looking?  And oh-so-humble?  Kidding.  Definitely kidding.

Over the years, I became a little bit vainer (apparently that is a word) and decided I wanted a sleeker look, and so Jack became a horse.  His look didn’t change much from when I first created him, although he did get a cold brand added to his shoulder (for non-horse-folks, a cold brand kills the pigment-producing cells around a hair follicle, turning the hair white without permanently damaging the animal’s hide).

His personality has undergone a lot of changes over the years.  I originally created him to be my opposite for role-playing.  Where I tended to be extremely responsible, introverted, sexually repressed, and worried about everything, Jack was carefree, easy-going, and sexually liberated.  Over time, his personality and mine merged.  I heard from some psychologists (they study us every year at TFF) that it’s impossible to keep two separate personalities distinct longer than…I think he said seven years.  I dunno if that’s true for everyone, but it certainly was for me.  I became a little more laid-back, and Jack became a little more responsible.  As I aged, so did his personality, and I began to see him more as the tall, dark, handsome, quiet type and less as the giggling-at-himself-and-everything-else type.  Now if anything, Jack is my role model: he’s laid-back when he needs to be, ferocious when he needs to be, in great shape, and—as always—sexually liberated.

As he stands now, Jack is about 6′ tall, has an athletic build (but not overly built), is black from nose to hooves, keeps his mane neat and his tail about 2″ off the ground, has hooves on his hind legs and hands on his forelegs, wears tight-fitting blue-jeans and no shirt, and has a white ‘4E’ cold brand on his left shoulder and steel-gray eyes.  His demeanor is calm and reserved left to his own devices, but he’s friendly and opens up quickly when others strike up a conversation.  He works as a blacksmith and in his spare time frequents the local pub.

Astute readers will note that the name of my fursona is also my pen name.  You didn’t think an engineer working in a conservative job would use his real name to publish furry erotica, did you?

As you can see, a fursona’s description need not be particularly complicated.  And a picture’s worth a thousand words.  When role-playing, if your profile picture is of your fursona, that’s frequently plenty to describe yourself and get straight to the action.  Some furs put a lot more detail into their fursonas, and some put less.  Like everything else about a fursona, how much effort is put into it is up to the fur creating it.

I had a lot of fun role-playing Jack, but eventually I kinda lost interest.  You do eventually burn out on typing the same kinds of sex scenes over and over, but I do have to give it credit: I wouldn’t know how to write a sex scene if it weren’t for all those years of doing it and honing the technique.

My latest fursona I created as a companion to Jack.  His name is Jamie, and he’s a buck with six spots.  He’s cute but masculine.  He’s the old-Jack’s replacement in the “young and innocent” regard, but he’s a lot more reserved.  I don’t actually roleplay as him; I have art done of him and Jack together instead.

Role-Playing

Role-playing can be done in-person, but when I refer to it, it’s almost always online.  Using whatever chat client you like (sometimes via bulletin boards, sometimes via AIM [back when that was a thing] or YIM, maybe via a browser-based chat client on some furry site, or pretty much any other public or private textual communication means where such activities are allowed), you send messages back and forth with one or more people while acting like your fursona.

The topic of the role-playing can be anything.  Frequently it’s sex-based because many furries are guys in their late teens and twenties, and let’s face it: that’s a pretty horny time of life for a guy.  Can’t speak for girls; I’m not one.  But as someone who has chronically been afraid of STDs, role-playing was great for me because you can’t catch any STDs typing on a keyboard.  Not all role-playing is sex-based, though.

Regardless of the topic, the point is to interact with others while acting like the character you created.  For instance, if confronted with an attractive fur in a real-life setting, I personally would be far too shy to say anything, but Jack’s character would walk right up and grope the guy (or girl—we’re bi).  See what I mean?  While I’d constantly be worried about STDs and topping (butts gross me out), Jack has no such compunctions.  And so using Jack’s fursona was a very freeing experience for me; it gave me the ability to interact in (pretend) situations that I would generally avoid, and it was a lot of low-risk fun.

The setting, actions, and level of detail can be anything, from jumping straight into yiffing on a barely-defined couch to regaling each other with tales of our past sitting at an old wooden table in a cozy 19th-century pub with a roaring fire at the far end of the room and drinking from giant glass mugs of beer while the bartender (a burly, dark gray rhino in an grayed white apron) washes dishes and other patrons chat about their adventures.

Fun fact: I still have that bar etched in my memory, yet I’ve never been there in person, while I can’t remember specific details of any yiffy role-play I ever did. Role-playing can be vivid, and it’s like an interactive story if you get a good role-play partner.

On the note of role-play partners: there are between ten and a hundred lousy ones for every one good one.  A hint that you’ve got a lousy one is when you type a paragraph or two to move the story along, and the other person types “murrs happily.”  *face-hoof* (that’s like a face-palm, but for fursonas with hooves, well, you use your hoof instead…face-hoof).

On that note….

Murr

“Murr” is some kind of noise of happiness used in role-playing and general furry conversations.  I’ll admit, I don’t know where it came from specifically, but basically, it’s the noise some animal makes when feeling content.  I liken it to a cat purring, but in a single sigh rather than an extended expression.  The most “expected” use of it would be if touching a person in a way that is pleasurable (either relaxing like a massage or sexually stimulating like slowly fondling his fuzzy orbs with one paw while using a claw to graze the underside of his shaft with the other), “murr” would be a pretty reasonable response.  However, I personally feel that this word is horrendously overused by the Fandom, like “LOL” in texting, and in such contexts when said as “Oh, murr!” it could be used to mean, “I approve,” or “That’s hot!” (in the yiffy kind of way).

Scritching

Second only to hugging as the way that furries physically express affection to each other in public places.  Furries on whole are extremely friendly people who will hug you as soon as look at you, but in a completely welcoming way and not in the creepy-guy-just-wanting-to-touch-your-skin-so-he-can-fantasize-about-wearing-it kind of way.  But scritching is the furry version of scratching, and it usually consists of scratching someone’s back, or if you’re wearing a suit with paws (or paw gloves), then just rubbing the person’s back.

Therian

Therians are furs who genuinely believe they are animal souls trapped in a human body.  I have at times wondered whether I was really a horse trapped in a human’s body, but in my case, it was a passing fancy.  Therefore, I can’t speak too well to what it’s like being a therian.  I have to imagine it’s frustrating in a similar vein that  being transgendered must be frustrating: your body does not match what you feel inside.  I have empathy and compassion for these guys, but that’s about all I can say about it.

Furry Standard Time

I live in Texas, and here we operate on Central Daylight Time during the summer and Central Standard Time during the winter.  Furry Standard Time here is something like Pacific or Alaska time: about 2-3 hours late.  Now, someone in California operating on Furry Standard Time would of course operate on something between Hawaii time and a time zone completely uniquely their own, an entire day behind the Marshall Islands.  In short, an awful lot of furries are erm…punctually-challenged, and so if you schedule something (like a fur meet) for noon, many won’t show up until two.

Okay, I think I’ve gotten most of the furry terms out of the way.  I’m sure I’ve missed some, but I’ll just add them later.  Yay, blogs!  Now, where were we?  Oh, yeah, let’s talk about the types of furries.

So, without further ado, ctrl-option-1…

Furry Types

Furries come in many flavors.  There are furries who:

• Enjoy furry art / music / stories,
• Make furry art / music / stories,
• Roleplay as one or more fursonas,
• Socialize with other furries / talk about furry stuff,
• Dress up in fursuits,
• Have sex in fursuits…or without fursuits, and/or
• Genuinely believe they’re animals trapped in human bodies.

Some furs fall into only one of those categories.  Some fall into more than one.  I can say I’ve dabbled in each, but I mostly identify as the first one.

Let’s not forget, too, that furs are people, and people are complex.  Like in any other fandom, furs bring their non-furry interests into things, too: you’ll have furs who:

• Are obsessed with cars, guns, or planes (I’ve known all three),
• Are also into BDSM (talk about broad topics, I could probably write a dozen or more articles on that!) in one or more of its many forms.
• Also like to pretend that they are adult babies, youngsters, or (non-furry) animals,
• Are amazing artists and musicians,
• Are technologically savvy (many furs I know work in IT or other technical fields),
• Also enjoy other traditionally “nerdy” things like anime, Star Trek, tabletop RPGs, LARPing (Live-Action Role-Playing), and just about everything else.
• Are socially awkward (I’d say this describes a pretty large swathe of the Fandom), introverts, extroverts, lives of the party, and everywhere in between.

In short, furries are an incredibly diverse group, and ultimately, the only real common theme is an interest in anthropomorphic animals.  Oh, I should mention, there’s a huge crossover between furries and bronies (adults—particularly men—interested in the show My Little Pony).  It was actually in the process of commissioning my tail that I learned what a brony was, so yes, there’s a lot of crossover there, but like everything else, not all furries are bronies and vice-versa.

Now, one point I want to make clear is this: on the whole, furries are not interested in sex with real animals.  That is a different interest called either zoophilia or bestiality, depending on the circumstances and semantics.  As I mentioned, furries are a huge group, and there may be some furs who are also zoophiles, but that is not the norm.  Most furries tend to go to great lengths to distance themselves from zoophilia/bestiality.  It’s very unkind to accuse a furry of wanting to have sex with an animal.  Remember that the common theme of furries is anthropomorphic animals, not real animals.  There’s a huge difference in wanting to have sex with a guy dressed up as a sexy tiger and wanting to have sex with an actual tiger.  (I have to imagine that the latter would probably be considerably more life-threatening.)

If there is anything I hope that I can convey from this article, it’s that you should probably not believe everything you see on CSI or the rumors about furries spread by ignorant non-furs.  Most of us are nice people, a little (or a lot) on the nerdy side, frequently shy, and maybe a bit socially awkward.  The vast majority of furries are not sex-crazed druggies, pedophiles, or horse-fuckers.  Believe it or not, confurences are completely family-friendly, and people often bring their kids to see the huge group of cute furry critters.  Speaking of confurences, let’s talk about them a bit more.

Confurences

I know I had a definition for this before, but let’s talk a bit about what to expect.  When I went to my first confurence (the inaugural year of TFF, incidentally—one of the staff cajoled me into it, and I’m glad I went!), I had no idea what to expect.  I had been talking online with furries for many years at that point, but I had never been to a real-life convention before.  Would there be sex?  Did I have to wear a fursuit?  Would it be creepy?  Fun?  Boring?  Interesting?  What would people be like?

That year, in order: no, no, no, extremely, not at all, very, and amazing.

Sex and Public Displays of Affection

As I said, confurences are family-friendly, and some ban even BDSM gear (collars, harnesses, leashes, etc.) to keep things PG-rated.  Affectionate scritching and hugging is rampant, but people are generally pretty good about asking first.  Fursuiters in particular tend to be huggy, and they’ll often spread their arms wide to invite you to hug them.  Some furries, however, don’t like to be hugged (in suit or out of suit), so it’s always better to ask first (also see the section on furry etiquette).  Sex happens in private rooms and is the business of the people in there, not the general convention.  And don’t ask me how you get invited to a room party; I have no idea.  The only ones I’ve been to were cases where I was already friends with the furs in the room, I went there to hang out, and—bam!—a room party happened.

Fursuits, Partials, Tails, and Badges

Most people who go to a furry convention do not have a suit.  As I mentioned, a quality suit is often in the >$1000 range, and most furries don’t make enough to afford one.  Hell, I make pretty good money and still had to save hard for mine.  There is absolutely no requirement to have a fursuit to go to a confurence.

Some people will wear partial suits.  A partial suit (“partial”, for short) is basically a component of a suit that stops short of being the whole thing.  Where a whole suit might be a single-piece body suit plus shoes, gloves, and a head, a partial might be just paw gloves (wrist-length to shoulder-length fuzzy gloves with big, fuzzy paws where the hands would be) or a head.

Stand-alone tails are probably the most common accessory.  I picked one up my first year (just a generic, fuzzy, nondescript tail) and quickly replaced it with a horse-tail made out of yarn.  I’ve had it forever, and if you ever see me at a confurence, I’ll be wearing it, whether I’m wearing anything else furry or not.

Other things include ear headbands, those knitted hat things with attached gloves that look like cartoony animal heads, and hoodies with animals on them.  You’ll also find a lot of backpacks and badges (small art pieces worn on a lanyard).  Okay, correction: badges are the most common accessory.  I have probably a half-dozen, but I don’t necessarily wear them all at once.  They’re kinda like jewelry; you wear the ones you want to and keep the others at home to look at and say, “ooh, pretty!”

Incidentally, you can get most of these things off-the-shelf or commissioned at either the artist alley or the dealers’ den (more on those later).

Furries at Confurences

You know how Chuck-E-Cheese’s motto used to be (might still be) “where a kid can be a kid”?  Furry conventions are where adults can be kids (sort of).  I can’t speak for everybody, but I personally really came out of my shell at my first confurence.  My (little) sister happened to be in town and frankly didn’t recognize me because I was so elated and light-hearted.  I’ve got a mind like a steel sieve (I forget everything), but I’ll never forget just how giddy I felt.  I was surrounded by happy, affectionate people who shared my interest in furry things, and I was discovering just how much more furry stuff there was to do!  Now, none of my other convention experiences were as good as the first one, but nevertheless, there are common elements.  A lot of furries will be really happy, really huggy, and really animated.  Fursuiters’ voices are generally so muffled by their suits that they resort to body language instead, and experienced ones tend to exaggerate their motions to make it obvious what they’re trying to convey (e.g., the aforementioned arms spread wide gesture to invite a hug, but also waving enthusiastically, giving “embarrassed” or “aww, shucks” looks, and so on).  Many fursuiters love attention and will make it fun for adults, children, furries, and non-furries.  Pretty much every hotel we’ve ever been to has loved us because other conference attendees (one hotel always had a dentists’ conference the same time we had ours) interact with the furries and end up raving about it.  Seriously, it’s a fun group.

There are also other types at confurences, including:

• The loner who comes out to the convention and then sulks by himself,
• The elitists who stay in their clique and talk bad about everybody,
• The drunks-who-hide-it-well who spend all night drinking and then wander the convention enjoying how much funnier everything is when you’re still tipsy,
• That one creepy fur who looks at you like you’re a piece of meat (this did actually happen to me one time, but I didn’t let it spoil the con—if someone is really bothering you, report him/her to confurence security; that’s what they’re there for), and finally,
• The awkward guy/girl who only gets out once a year, and it’s evident by his/her lack of social graces.

These types are common at all conventions that I know of.  I’m just describing them to people who have never been to any convention.  The last group is particularly memorable because a skit one year at TFF (more of a public service announcement, I think) portrayed the socially awkward/gross type as “The Doritos Guy”.  He carried an open bag of Doritos with him everywhere, chewing with his mouth open and spilling copious amounts of Doritos down his front.  Even the hot tub was not spared his Dorito-munching, and the other furs in the hot tub quickly vacated.  The Doritos Guy also did not know what soap or personal space were.  You get the idea.  The line at the end of the skit was, “don’t be the Doritos guy.”  More on this in the “Furry Etiquette” section.

In general, furries are a really nice, fun group.  Some people will prefer to be left alone rather than hugged, and that’s okay; everybody’s there to have a good time, so you do your thing and let them do theirs.

Things to Do

What I didn’t realize beforehand was how many things there are to do at a furry convention.  There are panels on all manner of topics, grouped into similar topics called “tracks.”  There will probably be tracks on:

• Art that cover things like how to make art, how to sculpt, how to make money doing art, and so on,
• Fursuiting that cover how to stay cool in a suit, how to make a suit, how to clean a suit, etc.
• Writing that may have multiple panels on writing in different genres, how to overcome writer’s block, and similar topics,
• Gaming where you actually play card or board games (the furry fandom has a number of its own games based on non-furry games, such as Furoticon), or video games,
• Science/Tech, education, and health, which cover the topics you’d expect, and
• General furry panels, such as “this is my first ‘con; what do I do?”

In addition to panels, there will probably be:

• Dances and concerts,
• Competitions (dance, acting, comedy, singing),
• Meets-and-Greets (frequently with different groups, such as “tech people”, “parents”, “first-timers”, etc.), and
• A fursuit parade and/or photo shoot.

The last one is pretty much a given; as I mentioned previously, fursuits are the iconic depictions of the Fandom, and people tend to want to show them off and see them.  Some of the events described above are geared towards fursuiters (e.g., the comedy and dance competitions may be intended for furs in suit), not not all are.

Besides all of those activities, there are a few other things going on.

The headless lounge is where fursuiters go to take their (fursuit) heads off so they can cool off.  Those things can be like ovens, and the headless lounge is a place where they can “ruin the magic” without non-suiters seeing them.  These are generally pretty open places with lots of fans and blowers to dry out the insides of suits and cool off their wearers.

The dealers’ den and artist alley are where people sell things.  Rules and names may vary con-to-con, but generally the artist alley is less expensive to register for and is reserved for artists making their own products, whereas the dealer’s den generally costs more to reserve a space, and the products sold need not necessarily be made by the person selling.  If you want to commission a drawing, the artist alley artists are often less expensive than the dealer’s den artists, but not always.  My former roommate and I sold a little gadget we made in the artist alley a couple of years in a row.

When it comes to buying stuff, many artists are now accepting credit cards or PayPal, but some still only accept cash.  Hotels generally have an ATM on premises, so if you have a debit card you’ll be okay either way, but those without debit cards should probably plan to take some spending cash with them.

Badges I’ve seen typically ran in the $5 to $50 range, and larger commissions can vary widely in price, from maybe around $10 for a black-and-white drawing up to several hundred dollars for a full-color, detailed commission from a well-known artist, although in that case, you’ll probably be getting in the queue for them to work on your piece and you’ll work out payment remotely.  I can’t remember what I paid for my tails.  I want to say probably around $20 for the fluffy one and maybe $35 for the yarn one.  I commissioned that one, though, and the fluffy one was off-the-shelf.

For badges, many artists are good at turning them out overnight (or faster), so if you attend a 3-day con and commission something on Friday, you might be able to wear it Saturday and Sunday.  But check with the artist; they work at different paces, have different amounts of time to dedicate to their art, and have different backlog lengths.  Off-the-shelf items you can generally just buy and take with you.  Many artists also have business cards or equivalent so that you can get in touch with them later if, say, you want to commission them but don’t have the money right now.

A lot of artists are also on FurAffinity or DeviantArt, so you can frequently find them there.  As a shameless plug, here’s my FA page, and here’s the FA page for my company (complete with the Shinies my former roommate and I made).

There may be a silent auction for art, where you can go look at and bid on art pieces.  Bidding prices generally start in around the $5 range, if I remember right, but for well-known artists, they may start higher and will likely go higher as people bid on them.

Aside from all that, there’s socializing, wandering the convention (it’s great exercise, especially for us nerdy types who don’t get much exercise otherwise).

In short, there’s a lot to do at a convention.  I will say, though, that after the first few years, things do get pretty predictable, and that’s okay.  I tend to spend more time socializing nowadays and less time attending panels.  It’s all good, and it’s still worth the trip, I think.

Furry Etiquette

I think I’m going to wrap this thing up with just a tidbit of information on furry etiquette.  Unlike some conventions, furries tend to be a particularly friendly bunch, but that friendliness can cause people to forget some things.

1. Ask before you touch.  This applies to hugging, scritching, or any other kind of contact with someone.  Many furs love to be hugged and scritched; some hate it.
2. No means no.  Of course, nobody should have to be reminded of this, but…
3. Don’t be a creep.  It’s one thing to admire someone’s suit in passing, but don’t just gawk.  Many furries will let you take a picture if you ask nicely, so do that instead of following them around the ‘con and making them feel weird (spoken from personal experience…weird!)
4. Don’t call furries pedophiles, horse-fuckers, or anything along those veins.  Most are just as appalled by that as you are!
5. Give space to fursuiters.  Having been in a fursuit, I can tell you, visibility is awful, and hearing is not good.  On top of that, depending on your suit, you might be struggling to keep your balance, have no idea where your feet are in relation to others, and have absolutely no idea who or what is beside or behind you.  It’s kinda precarious in a fursuit, so give suiters space so they can get where they’re going without hurting themselves.
6. Don’t pull on tails or other fursuit accessories.  While it may be tempting to pull on a furry’s tail teasingly, some of those tails can be expensive, and like real tails, they’re not meant to be pulled on.  Wearing out a $100 tail prematurely by pulling on it isn’t a nice way to say “hi” to a fursuiter.

All of this is common sense, but sometimes a reminder doesn’t hurt!

Good grief, has it been 7200 words already?  I didn’t plan to write a dissertation!  We’ve covered a lot in this article.  We’ve described that a furry is nothing more than someone interested in anthropomorphic animals, and we’ve seen that animals come in many different levels of anthropomorphism.  We’ve defined terms and explored concepts such as fursonas and role-playing, discussed different types of furries, and detailed the types of things to expect at a furry convention.  Finally, we covered a bit of furry etiquette to use when interacting with furries.  Hopefully this has been informative and maybe a little entertaining along the way.  Whew!  With that, it’s definitely time for bed!

…And now I reveal just how graphic my language can be.  Did you know I preemptively marked my blog mature so that there wouldn’t be any chance of offending people?  Anyway…

These pests are positively the things I hate most in the world.  Why?  Because they are vicious and terrible to innocent creatures.  My poor animals stand there swishing their tails to swat at them all summer long, and yet despite my efforts of putting up fly strips, spraying the herd with three or four different kinds of repellant, painting them with fly– and mosquito-repellant paste, buying an electric fly swatter, sprinkling out fly predators all over the pasture,  installing fans in the barn to literally blow mosquitoes away, and even spraying concentrated garlic oil over the entire pasture, I have not found anything that works.  I hate something that would harm my animals when they’ve done nothing wrong, and I hate being unable to do anything about it.  So I do what any good person would do: resort to name-calling.  I have a most excellent moniker for mosquitoes.  Want to read it?  It’s graphic.  You sure?  Okay…

Cunt-fairies.

Mosquitoes do not bite things to drink their blood for sustenance; rather, we make proteins that mosquitoes cannot produce themselves but that they require for reproduction.  So, if you want to think about it graphically (which, as an erotic writer, of course I do!), if you’ve ever been bitten by a mosquito (and who hasn’t?), you’ve been part of a really fucked-up sex game involving blood sports.  You’re welcome for the mental image.

As a result of the reason for mosquitoes biting, only the females bite.  The males drink plant nectar.  I’m no sexist, but let’s face it: only women have vaginas (as far as I know), and “cunt” is a particularly vulgar synonym for one.  So, “cunt” works because only females bite.

Now, regarding fairies, well, mosquitoes and fairies both fly, and both are surprisingly hard to kill.  Mosquitoes seem so lazy when they drift by, yet trying to swat one can sometimes be frustratingly challenging.  Then again, I have amazingly terrible hand-eye coordination, so maybe it’s just me.  But I don’t think so.

Personally, I like my moniker.  Vulgar as it is, it’s the only thing that I can think of that really conveys the utter contempt I have for the nasty things.  I don’t use that word often, but when I do, you’d better believe it’s laced with as much venom and malice as I can muster.

Oh, let’s not forget disease.  Malaria, West Nile, Zika, Eastern Equine Encephalitis, and one that’s particularly near and dear to my heart (in the “I want to eviscerate it in the most horrible manner possible” kind of way), Equine Infectious Anemia are all transmitted by mosquitoes and flies.  What’s Equine Infectious Anemia?  Think of a combination of sickle-cell anemia and AIDS but transmitted by horseflies.  It’s so terrible that (as far as I know), it’s illegal to transport a horse across state lines without a negative test result for it.  It’s so terrible that if your horse contracts it, it’s either a death sentence or an invitation for your horse to live in solitude for the rest of its miserable life.  Anything that would be a carrier of such a wretched disease and that does nothing but torment others deserves to die in the most horrible way possible.  Entomologists have said that if we were to eradicate all mosquitoes in the world, Nature would adapt; there’d be few if any negative repercussions.  Unfortunately, going back to my moniker; they are surprisingly hard to kill, yet they are particularly effective at killing us (see the graphic a few paragraphs down the page).  Personally, I’d be extremely happy if we wiped every last mother-fucking cunt-fairy off the face of the planet, but…I don’t think that’s gonna happen.  So I’ll stick to name-calling and looking for better repellants.