A note: I originally wrote this shortly before moving to Canada, in hopes that I would keep up some level of blogging/journaling. It sounds weird to me going back and reading it today; not how I feel like I would've written something other people would have read. But at the time, I wasn't sure that I would ever put it online for other people to read anyways. So it'll be mostly a little anomaly here (although I have edited out some portions from the original).

They're weirdly warm

So, I just recently got my first tail commissioned. I'm not here to praise or critique the make of it because honestly I don't know, I just know that the instant I laid eyes on it something broke in me and I have an irrational desire to be in contact with that thing at all times. And like, on the subject of wearing a tail, I'd heard the term "buttscarf" to refer to tails before and just thought "ha ha funny joke because it's like a scarf for your butt". My butt is noticeably warmer when I wear the tail. Like, I guess it makes sense since it really is an additional adornment for one's rear like a scarf is for the neck but it never occurred to me that that could be literal rather than just another weird furry-ism.

Funny feelings

(Ed. note: this was written a few days after the previous section)

Today I wore my tail outside my house for the first time. I can't get over... how right it felt. I don't know what this means.

So like, for a long time I've insisted that my interest in furry was mostly over porn or for academic reasons. Porn is self-explanatory, but the other reasons... a Kyell Gold book taught me I was gay. I developed (and then subsequently lost all the physical notes for, woof) a backstory for my fursona that was a self-reflection on how I would incorporate my gayness and my things-that-are-traditionally-not-gay parts of myself together, along with my personal struggle with feeling like I was always acting for anybody I met and never could let myself be real. Furry was a lens I could use to see myself more clearly and free from distractions, I told myself. And that's why it had so much personal significance.

I've owned tails before too, and they didn't do a whole lot for me. Of course, they were cheap and not at all based off of my fursona, but still wearing a tail didn't really mean anything to me. Same for hats with ears -- I liked them, but more as a relatively tame expression of furryness just to say "Hey, this is something I'm interested in!" But this tail... well, in the other part I said I have this irrational desire to be wearing it all the time. Wearing it out of the house, with other people, I just... found myself wagging it, mindlessly, over and over when something mildly nice happened to my mood. It being there just kinda, felt like it had been missing all this time and I never realized until now. It felt like it belonged, almost instantly. And sure it helps that the friends I was with are just pretty cool with the whole furry thing anyways, and don't really make a big deal out of it. I did feel bad that like, whenever I was sitting on this couch it would have to kinda poke out to the side and potentially be kinda awkward to sit around or be touched by for other folks, though mostly I just got comments that it was really soft, so I think that was good. But even the awkwardness of sitting on the couch and trying not to sit on it... felt right. Like that's the way I should be sitting, like that's a thing that I might have to put up with but it's really not that bad because holy crap I have a tail back there at all finally!

I have this... I don't know if I would call it dark humour or not even, just this weird thought that I don't know what to do with. Is this feeling like the way my trans friends feel when they wear gender-affirming clothing? I have no idea what to do with that, regardless of the answer, but maybe you can see the implication of it.

On a kinda-tangent-but-really-not, it has been my personal opinion for a long time that like, otherkin was very strongly something I was not. Like, I know I'm a human, I know there's literally no justification for me to say I'm actually a coyote or something else. I had fantasies about being a werewolf when I was younger but like, I don't think that's especially uncommon among young furries. I've read that early Gerbasi paper that proposes "Species Identity Disorder" as some kind of parallel for trans folk among otherkin, and like... I get that it's a thing but it's just so weird to think about people that divorced from reality, that could think like that they're not human or something. And yet, here we are. Suddenly I get why I would want a suit -- just to be in it, just to be able to sit somewhere, and feel... more of whatever this is. Like I know people kinda dunk on the idea of folks that would just get suits to wear them in their apartments and never go out and do anything with them but holy crap, honestly that could do something for me. For the first time in a long time, I'm grappling with the fact that like, I honestly really want to have a fursuit, not for anybody else's desires, not to go out and do something in it, not for any reason other than "I think I would very much like the way I would feel to be in that" (minus all the logistical problems like heat and so on which I have so studiously warned myself about time and time again as reasons to be wary of wanting a suit).

And what does that say about me, you know? Like, I can understand the concept of trans folk, of nonbinaried folk in general, agender and so on. I feel like, I don't feel that way, but I could understand very well what might lead another person to feel that way. But I don't feel like I can forward any logical reason I would feel the way that I do right now, that I could ever put this into terms that I feel like me from even a few weeks ago would be able to understand. And maybe I don't have to but like, still. What fucking crossed wires makes me desire so viscerally that I could be an anthropomorphic canine of some sort? Like, the more I lean into thinking about this, the more I remember things from before I even found furry. How I felt reading werewolf stuff, the way it hit me in the chest of that there was something profound in that for me, that I couldn't explain. That straight up goes back to middle school, that's a thread I can follow back longer than I can any sort of gay cognizance. That I saw then what I now realize were fursuits and like, even then it struck something in me that I wanted that, that there was something about that that felt like it should be how things are for me. That for the longest time, the main reason I'd even let myself look at gay furry porn was because I rationalized it as "I'm attracted to the idea that I could look like that too". That once I became more aware of furry as a thing, I had felt like I should say I didn't want a fursuit because I couldn't think of any obvious utility for it, because I was afraid of looking like I just wanted to be popular because I would have a nice suit, because I knew all the reasons a person shouldn't want to suit and couldn't form any logical counterpart for why I should. And here we are. Here we are, and I'm admitting again how much I want a suit, regardless of if I have a good reason for it.

I just had a memory of talking to people at the LGBT resource center at my undergrad and trying not to be impolite or laugh at them when they asked me if one of the things I was concerned about for the members of my furry club was "whether they'd be able to go to class in a fursuit". Like, don't misinterpret me, I'm rolling my eyes still, obviously I'm not that bad (however I think I would feel in that situation, the logistics of that would be unbearable -- risk of heat stroke in an academic environment, limited eyesight when trying to read chalkboards/slides/anything else -- not to mention how incredibly distracting it would be for anybody else in the class! Just imagine trying to see over someone's enormous coyote ears in the front row. Good lord.). Just like... I guess it seems a little less preposterous now that I'm having this moment. Like maybe I wouldn't just immediately start laughing, although I'd still try to explain to them that I'm pretty confident nobody in the club has that as a concern now or in the foreseeable future.

And it feels concerningly similar to the moment I had when I realized I was gay four years ago, another summer I didn't have anything specific to do, another revelation I had through furry stuff. So... yeah. Just, here we are I guess.