I have written several stories in the past. I have written elementary school tales, complete with “Illustrations” (and I use the term loosely) on each page. I have written and drawn super hero comics. I have written fan fiction, both as a personal hobby and for English classes. I have written stories on topics randomly scribbled on a white board. All these stories have been influenced by my own stories, but I have never actually written any of those stories down to paper. If my life was a TV soap opera, or perhaps a sitcom of some sorts, then I guess you could consider the following to be “Season One: 2003.” Even though my life obviously started before 2003, so much happened between February and May of that year, and my sense of who I was changed so much, that in many ways I consider it to be the beginning of who I am today. During those few months I became a completely different person, especially to those who knew me well. It was as if my body went through puberty and defined itself when I was thirteen, but the process didn’t actually happen to my head until I was sixteen. My dad always told me that I was a late bloomer and that I’d develop after everyone else. Was he ever right.
The first major change in my life occurred at the end of February, but it all started during the exam break of January. School was out, and at the time I didn’t really have the friends I have now, they were more like acquaintances. My parents were busy working so I was home all day by myself with nothing to do. To top it all off, I was sick with a bad cold that was seriously limiting what I could do. It was a terrible time. I was moping around constantly because I couldn’t concentrate on the activities I used to love. I’d pick up a book then put it down fifteen minutes later. I’d load up a game I was playing but quit before I really made any progress. I’d join an online server and play multiplayer games over the Internet, but I’d always drop out after a few rounds. In my quest to find something to occupy my time, I began eating. I would go through five little cups of yogurt in one afternoon, I’d finish off all the bananas and most of the other fruit, I’d shred through a loaf of bread just because I couldn’t find anything else to do. When my mother came home and found out that half the food was missing, she started asking me what was wrong but I couldn’t say, I didn’t know. All I knew was that it was no fun at all, and the fact that I couldn’t seem to find any way around it only made the whole thing worse.
After a few days that just seemed to drag on endlessly, I began to think that maybe I was suffering from mild depression. It made sense at the time; many of the symptoms were there including loss of interest, loss of energy, restlessness, inability to concentrate, sudden diet change, and constant feelings of sadness and loneliness. Looking back, I really can’t say if it was depression or not. I’m no expert in the field, and while I have looked at a few essays on the subject, my condition never seemed to be as serious as all the cases I read about. However, I do know that at the time, I certainly felt depressed and the feeling didn’t go away until one Wednesday night when despite my cold, I forced myself to go to Cadets in the hopes that it would keep my mind occupied and keep me sane. I still haven’t been able to figure out whether or not I made the right choice, but I do know it worked, and that night I came back feeling much better than I had all week.
The next day unfortunately, it was back and I was moping around again. Everything was terrible and the only thought that kept me going was that soon I’d be back in school, and hopefully the distraction of education would return me to the way I was before: happy, interested in what I was doing and not constantly hungry. It was probably one of the few times in my adolescent years when I was actually looking forward to school. But something else happened that day, something I would never have expected, and it was much better than going back to school.
On that Thursday, I was idly searching around the Internet for something (I honestly cannot remember what for, as I do a lot of random searches on the net, looking up whatever is interesting me at the time). I found myself with a picture of a black anthropomorphic cat wearing a dark trench coat and a very arrogant look on his face. Intrigued, I followed various links and eventually found out it was a fan drawing of a character from a comic book series called Associated Student Bodies (or ASB as it’s more commonly known). The series was about a young lion named Daniel discovering that he was gay. It was an interesting story filled with what looked like interesting characters, all of which were anthropomorphic animals, something I had never seen before outside of children’s work like Disney.
As I quickly discovered, ASB was far from Disney work. Like many coming out stories, this one was adult themed and could only be bought by people over the magical age of eighteen. Which meant that however much I wanted to read the series, I couldn’t. I knew that there wasn’t even the slightest chance my parents would order a series of adult-only comic books. Heck, there probably wasn’t even the slightest chance my parents would order a series of comic books period, since they consider such an act a huge waste of money. So the series wasn’t really able to hold my attention for very long. However, it had opened up a whole new world to me by introducing one simple word: Furry.
With my curiosity kicked into overdrive, I madly started seeking out as much furry work as I could find. For the most part, I liked what I saw. Many of the artists I stumbled across were very good and the whole concept of using animals instead of humans in more mature settings really appealed to me. There was just one tiny little problem: most of it was porn. Furry erotic artwork, or yiffy artwork as most furs call it. Pictures of anthropomorphic animals engaging in the latest craze of our generation. Being the odd person that I am, I wasn’t scared away by all the yiffy pictures but I was rather disappointed by it. I had found this great new style of art that really appealed to me, but it all seemed to be pornographic. Which meant, I had to keep it to myself. My parents would freak out and possibly ban me from the Internet for the rest of my time under their roof, and if anyone at school found out about it my life would basically be over.
Then I started searching through a furry comic store website I had found that sold issues of ASB (Well, the first issue; the rest have all sold out completely). I discovered that while a large amount of furry work is indeed adult themed, not all of it is. This lead me to eventually find a great website known simply as Yerf, which is a gallery of furry art for all ages. It was like heaven, and I spent hours just wandering around looking at pictures like I was in a museum or something. After a few hours, I decided to myself, “I want in.”
So I started drawing my own furry art, which consisted mainly of fan art for ASB. It was terrible. Yes I know, there’s no such thing as terrible art (Having been to the Tate Modern in London, I can confirm this statement) but looking back at the few sketches I was able to find, it’s safe to say that no one is else is ever going to see them. Of course, that didn’t matter to me then. I thought my art was amazing and spent practically all my time between that afternoon and the following Sunday drawing up quick sketches. It was an obsession, I simply had to draw, and the best part was that it was something I was actually interested in, something I was able to focus on for hours not just minutes, and when I was drawing I was no longer feeling depressed and down spirited. I was lifted up to a new level of happiness, almost like an emotional high.
However, despite the thrill I got from drawing, I had a sense that my true calling was still as an author and I began thinking about trying something else: furry fiction. I had seen a few furry stories on websites I’d visited, and even read a few of them. So I figured, “Why not?” and began coming up with ideas for characters, settings and plot. Two weeks later, I had an idea stuck in my head and hastily threw together the first chapter of a story. At the time, I thought it was golden. Looking back over it, I’m extremely disappointed with the whole thing. The characters are more or less fine, and have great potential for development, but the plot is seriously unoriginal, much too overused and in dire need of revision. Being blind to these faults at the time though, I started looking for a place to post it. I eventually decided on Fiction Press.net, a website that had developed from Fan Fiction.net, where I used to post some of my Star Trek stories. But before I posted my amazing story, I wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t be the only furry themed piece of fiction there. A quick search revealed that there were actually several furry stories already posted, many of them very well written. That quick search also revealed something else.
Sitting amongst the lists of submissions containing the word “furry” in the synopsis was as an essay that would not let my attention go. Written by someone called Loganberry, the title was “Rabbiting On” and the synopsis read, “A (flawed) attempt to explain about being a fur.” To be honest, I thought it had something to do with furry literature or art. As I quickly found out, it was much deeper then that. It introduced me to another previously unheard of term: the furry lifestyle. Sadly, the furry lifestyle is not something that can be defined. It means something completely different to each fur (the name given to those who live this lifestyle) out there. Loganberry does a fairly good job, and to put it extremely basically, a furry lifestyler is someone who for one reason or another has a deep connection of some kind with a particular animal(s), so much so that it can begin to show in how they live their life. (Of course this is an extremely crude and basic definition. It’s like saying Christians are people who believe in Jesus. Yes, that’s true but there is so much more to it than that.)
As I read the two thousand words plus essay, thoroughly enjoying Loganberry’s often-humorous writing style, my fascination grew. Unlike many other people who would read it and say, “This is crazy” or something to that effect, I was attracted by it all. Suddenly a question began to arise in the back of my mind: what about me? Could I be a fur? The more I thought about it, the more I began to think that yes, yes I could. Loganberry described his furriness as having a deeply intense connection to rabbits, and I began to realize that the same could be said about me, only with cats instead of rabbits.
I have always loved cats, and always considered them to be superior to most other species of animal, especially canines. I admired their laid back, confident and “I’m in total control of everything” attitude to life; their independence; and the way they can make you start to ask yourself, “Who really owns who here?” I have also always been intrigued at the number of cat-like traits I possess, such as an insatiable curiosity, a desire to be in control of everything going on around me, and a fierce independence. I had even adopted several feline actions into my regular lifestyle, especially the piercing glare. Now, on that night, I finally had a name for it all. I figured, why turn away from it? Why not embrace it?
So I posted a quick comment of praise for the essay, but then I did something completely unexpected. I wrote Loganberry an e-mail. While that may not seem like much, it was a massive, massive milestone for me because up until that time I had never made contact, either through e-mail or instant messaging, with someone over the Internet that I hadn’t already met in real life. That’s primarily because I’m a very shy person, with very low self-confidence levels. The idea of introducing myself to new people at the time seriously scared me, and even now I still get nervous although I’ve improved greatly since then. For some reason that I’m still trying to figure out, I always assumed people would think the worst of me when they would first meet me, and I would be let down, rejected or worse, humiliated. This fear translated over onto the Internet, which is of course illogical because even if Loganberry did humiliate me (not that he would, he’s much too nice for that) I could just hit the delete button and that would be it. But my mind refused to think that way, and even though it hasn’t happened to me yet, I do believe that if I was insulted personally over the Internet by some fool I haven’t even met on the other end of the continent, it would still affect me the same way it would if he stood right in front of me and did the same thing. Because of this fear, I debated with myself for literally hours before finally sending the letter.
The e-mail itself wasn’t very glamorous… in fact it was a bit embarrassing. What I basically said is that I was planning on writing a very anti yiffy essay, and I wanted permission to quote his writing. Yes, my first e-mail to another fur and all I could think of was how annoyed I was that when I first got into furry, all I could find was porn and that was all the media focused on whenever they talked about furs and furry in general (just watch CSI’s last Halloween episode). To my surprise, about half an hour later I got a reply from him. I was surprised for two reasons, one being that because of my irrational fears I didn’t expect him to actually reply. That was of course an uncalled for expectation, but that’s just the way I was. The second reason I was surprised was that he lived in England, so the reply came back to me at about half past two in the morning his time, and I didn’t realize anyone actually stayed up that late.
In his reply, he explained to me that he didn’t share my opinions on yiffy work, but he was glad to let me quote his essay as long as I gave him proper credit and everything. To say that I was ecstatic would have been an understatement. The feeling only lasted a few minutes however; as I suddenly came to my senses and realized that writing such an essay would just be plain stupid. I didn’t actually hate yiffy work, and would in the end it would just be something I’d regret later. Still, he hadn’t ridiculed me or slammed me down, which was great. I began to think that maybe these furs were a group I could get into after all. But just to make sure, I began looking up the Usenet group he had mentioned in his essay: alt.lifestyle.furry (ALF). I paid special detail to the furvey posts, which is how new furs introduce themselves. Basically, a furvey is a series of questions relating to the furry lifestyle (fur plus survey) and all a new fur has to do to become a member of the community was grab a blank copy from the Internet, fill it in and post it. I thought it was a great way to orient newbies and that it would be especially easy for me. But my first post to ALF wasn’t a furvey. When I finally decided that the replies to the other furveys seemed quite welcoming and comforting and that maybe I really should join this group for real, I didn’t have time to fill out a fifty plus questionnaire, especially one that required as much thought and reflection as a furvey. So instead I posted a simple introductory post, explaining who I was and that a furvey would be on its way soon.
As I typed up my little intro post, I was suddenly hit with two major questions: A) what was I going to call myself? And B) what exactly was I? I mean the whole point of being a fur is that connection to that one animal. Well, what was my one animal? What was my phenotype (as they call it in the lifestyle)? The first question was easy to answer. For about five years I had used the username “Cybernet3000” for everything from e-mail to music sites. Why bother changing it now? The second question also didn’t take me very long. Right away I knew I was a domestic cat, the question was which type of cat? After a few minutes, I decided to become a black and white British shorthair like our family cat, Midnight. It was a snap decision, and one that I’ve become quite attached to and would never change, even if I could. So on February 28, 2003, I entered a whole new world as Cybernet3000, the black and white British shorthaired kitty.
The response was amazing, with about ten other furs replying to the post to welcome me. Yes, I know ten doesn’t seem like that many people but to me it was like the whole world had stopped and said hello. It was an incredible feeling, like I finally belonged somewhere. Not only that, I also got a very encouraging e-mail from Loganberry welcoming me to the lifestyle personally. With my head in the clouds, I began working on my Furvey. I was so into it, I managed to finish it all in one night and posted it the next day, which got even more responses than my introductory post, with replies streaming in even a week after I had posted it (said furvey has since been updated three times, and is now located on my website). It was official; I was in and for the next couple of weeks I participated in various discussions on various topics, some of them furry related and some of them not. And while I had to deal with numerous losers who seemed to have nothing better to do with their time than insult people, I generally had a good time of it.
Discovering the furry lifestyle was a really beneficial experience for me, in more ways than one. What was probably the most beneficial was the sudden boost in self-confidence it gave me. I’m not sure exactly why that happened, but I think it may have something to do with the feeling that I finally belonged somewhere, and that no matter what happened I always had a group of friends who were just like me and who knew what I was going through to fall back on, even if they were all on the Internet. This in turn helped me become braver and more confident in myself in the real world, as I started making friends offline as well as on. It also led to what has got to be my biggest display of self-confidence yet.
Since about half way through grade nine, I knew that there was something different about me, besides the fact that I was more into my studies than most and was more into computers than most. I’m sure you know where this is going. Yes, by the time I was finished Junior High I knew I was gay. Not suspected. By the summer of 2002, I knew I was gay I just refused to admit it to anyone, including myself. I would try and force myself to believe that it was just a stage I was going through. I was fifteen at the time... hormones raging everywhere, testosterone flowing freely, new developments going on inside, and I (like every other guy my age, no matter how much they may refuse to admit it) was aroused by everything. I would tell myself this, saying to myself that it isn’t serious; it’s more like a phase. Then I would go racy read stories on the Internet about gay couples and fall asleep thinking about guys. Needless to say, I wasn’t making much progress with the “This is just a phase” strategy. This continued through the entire first half of grade ten, and all the while I would refuse to admit to myself that I could really be gay. It was ridiculous, with all the thoughts and fantasies I was coming up with it was like eating a steak but telling myself that it was pork in the hopes that eventually it would be pork. In the end, I always managed to make myself believe I was straight, but it was a lot of hard work.
That first began to change when I joined the furry community. Although the first fur I talked to, Loganberry, was straight many of the other furs were bisexual. That started to snag at my interest, as before then I hadn’t really interacted with anyone who wasn’t more or less completely heterosexual, and also the Internet had given me this false impression of bisexuals. Before that time, the word “bisexual” conjured up images of porn stars that would sleep with anyone because that was how he or she earned his or her money. It was a very crude stereotype born out of ignorance, and I’m very glad to say that the furry community abolished the idea within a day or two and I learned that bisexuals are just like everyone else in many regards. With that in mind, I began to wonder if maybe I was bisexual and I started checking it out, searching through some very helpful links from some of my furiends (a term often used to describe a friend who is a fur) suggested. After a day or two of searching, I started coming to this conclusion that I was a bisexual who slightly preferred males. For some reason that is still not entirely known to me, that description seemed better than saying I was completely homosexual. Which really doesn’t make much sense, because I figured if I came out as anything other then straight, the school wouldn’t care if it was bisexual or homosexual. But it worked for me at the time, a time when I very much felt that I had to have some sort of justification or excuse for my orientation, so I could say, “I still like women…”
After doing some more searching, particularly for resources for teenage bisexuals, I came across this one site called “Queertopia” (QT). QT was mainly a posting board for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered teens to post about everything going on in their life. It contained many different sections, with places for discussions on coming out and problems related to that, problems with families, problems with school, problems with relationships as well as places to natter on about some of life’s most important topics like music, movies and sex. After spending some time wandering around and reading the various posts, I decided that it seemed like a very friendly and encouraging place and that maybe I should try joining them. Having already joined the furry community really helped with that decision, as I now had some positive experience with online communities under my belt, and for the second time that year I posted an entry introducing myself to a group of people I didn’t know. Again, the response was very positive, and if anyone there felt weirded out by my furriness, they didn’t say anything. In fact, some even displayed a small amount of interest in it, and asked me to try and explain it further. I tried, but in the end I pointed them all the direction of Loganberry’s essay.
Spending time in QT was I think about as beneficial as spending time in ALF. Ever since I started becoming interested in bisexuality, I knew I wasn’t alone. QT reassured me of that fact, and also allowed me to associate names, personalities, and in some cases even faces with those other people out there who were going through the same thing I was. I also learned by observing various other posts that I really don’t need to justify everything I did, especially not my orientation, and after a while I dropped the idea that I was bisexual, finally admitting to myself that I was just gay. Most of my online friends didn’t think much of it, but it was another huge milestone for me. Unfortunately, all my offline friends still thought I was straight. It made life very difficult, not so much because I had to be extra careful about what I said or did to make sure I didn’t let something slip but because I didn’t like lying to everyone. It made me feel extremely guilty, especially since many of my friends trusted me with their secrets, and I felt like I owed them the same in return. After a while, it started getting too much for me. I began letting things slip, and I would say things like, “Oh yeah, he’s cute.” But I never actually admitted to being gay. I would come up with stupid excuses like, “I can appreciate the beauty of a man, but I’m not attracted to them.” I think I began driving my friends crazy. Finally one night, I decided that enough was enough and told the first offline person (even though I did it through the Internet), who for privacy reasons shall be referred to by gaming her name, Ice (not the most original but whatever). She was cool with it (no pun intended), and offered me any support she could in dealing with it.
But then she immediately asked if she could tell the others. My heart has only really stopped beating a few times in my life. And that was one of those times. I began to freak out, wondering what people would say. My overactive imagination and insecurity kicked into overdrive and I began to see the worse of worst-case scenarios. Being completely and totally ostracized. Being beaten up. Being forced to wear a pink triangle on my shoulder for the rest of my life. A bit extreme, but then fear is often like that. But a small voice in the back of my head kept telling me, “You’ve come this far...” I think I must have kept Ice waiting forever for my answer. In the end I decided that even if everyone turned against me, I’d still have her as well as my online friends to turn to and that I’d manage to pull though somehow. So I quickly typed, “sure” and hit enter before I had a chance to think about it and take it back.
That was on Friday night, and I spent the rest of the weekend fretting about what would happen on Monday, and driving all my online friends crazy with my worries. When Monday came, I arrived at school expecting some sort of Armageddon. Wow, as I ever surprised. First of all, the news hadn’t spread across the grapevine as quickly as I’d anticipated, so only my close friends knew. Second, out of those who did know most were perfectly cool with it, like Ice. Yes, there were a couple who were a bit freaked, and that took a while to deal with (I’m still dealing with it now, but to a much lesser extent). But I wasn’t quarantined, no one started throwing me into lockers and beating the insides out of me, and Nazis didn’t show up to take away my citizenship and replace it with a pink triangle. Everything was cool. I had never felt so relieved in my life. Finally, I was free of my chains. I could say what I liked, do what I liked, think what I liked and it didn’t matter.
As long as my parents didn’t find out. Yes, there was just that one tiny, little problem. I knew I’d have to tell them at one point or another, as they were bound to find out sooner or later. I figured it was better they heard it from me. I decided that the best thing to do would be to start with my mom. I was certain that with her liberal outlook on life, she’d be fine with it. To be honest, her reaction shocked me the most. No, she didn’t go crazy on me. She simply told me, “I know” then went back to her work like nothing had happened. I swear, that was the farthest my jaw had ever dropped in my life. I was completely caught of guard, totally surprised, and a little disappointed. Her response meant that I was predictable, not something I really wanted to be. But my mom told me that with all the hints I was dropping with my friends, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. But she was fine with it and that’s what really mattered. I could tackle being as readable as a book later (I haven’t yet).
The rest of the family basically handled it in their own way. My dad wasn’t exactly thrilled, but to his credit he didn’t blow up and forbid me from acting on my orientation, or kick me out of his house. Even so, it lead to some very difficult times later on, as well as some very annoying and awkward “talks” between us. As for my brothers, well I don’t really know how exactly they dealt with it. I think they just ignored it, but I can’t be sure. They’ve both bought into the local belief that two males shouldn’t talk about subjects like that, and whenever I bring it up they either change topics or start acting silly so I never have been able to find out exactly what their responses were. But that didn’t completely turn against me, so I took that as a good sign.
By the time I told my brothers and had taken the final step out of the closet, May was coming to an end and Season One of my new life was coming to its finale. In just four short months, my life had completely spun around at least twice. I had gone from being a loner with practically nobody to being an out and proud gay fur with several friends from all over the place. In that short time span, I had finally taken the first steps in creating my (very) unique identity, and while it definitely didn’t turn out the way I expected it to back in 2002, looking back now I can honestly say that I wouldn’t change a thing. If I hadn’t found furry, who knows where I’d end up? I have no idea, but I have a hard time believing it could be better then the way things are now.
Of course the story doesn’t end here. 2003 held for me many, many more
firsts that contributed to this little soap known as my life, but none of
them were as major or life changing as those two outlined here.