July Newsletter: In the Wake of Pride

I have a complicated relationship with pride. Growing up, the cultural message of “be yourself” always left me blank and alienated. Wasn’t the command itself a drawing away from the self? It demanded a clearly-defined, parceled-off identity, ready for showing off like a new car. Ambiguity and mystery, conditions I’ve always felt were essential for my own existence, were the enemies of pride. As I entered into queer communities as a teenager, I never desired any sort of “coming out” for myself; I just wanted to find spaces that made sense to me.

But spaces don’t just exist - they’re created and maintained by humans. To put yourself on display - to say “I like this, I’m like this” - sometimes at risk of life and safety, always at the risk of discomfort - is to hold up a light around which other people can gather. And once enough people have gathered, then quietness can come; then ambiguity and mystery can begin to open up on the outskirts of the crowd. I didn’t understand, growing up, how lucky I was to have spaces where those things could exist, where I could exist, on the outskirts but not lost.

So, after 30 years existing, what am I like? Am I gay? Intellectually, I know the many dimensions of that label, that it’s a wide and welcoming umbrella that holds an incredibly diverse community. I’m happy to be considered a part of that community, yet in my inner dialogues, something within me still resists the label, maybe that younger self who can only ever see it as “that means you like boy instead of girl”. Am I a furry? Yes, I’m seeing more inner thumbs going up at that one, especially from that young self who would frantically rush downstairs to watch cartoons in complete solitude, whose tormented bond with the plots and characters of those shows was perplexing both to his family and to himself.  Real people, whether male or female, were beyond me. My reality, my space of truth, was in that communion with TV, where eyes were little black dots in big yellow circles, where emotions were simple and space and time were flexible.

That truth has not diminished in me. Thanks to the furry community, I can take that space with me through the real world, having it hover in parallel and at times manifest miraculously in my life. Real pride is not coming out to a homogenized, Super-Bowl universe; it’s planting your little and belittled reality and finding out that the universe itself is as weird, multitudinous and inexplicable as the one you had trapped in your hands. Five hundred years ago, people would come alive on festival days, dressing up like prophets, making giant effigies of patron saints, parading them around and singing and shouting with enough exuberance to make local authorities ban the festivities as often as not. I see the same people now, the same infectious joy spreading through cities at the appointed day and hour, the same waiting in its wake for the next chance to come alive.

So what am I like? What’s the universe of a 30-year-old gayish furry? Some days, I wake up and feel the breath of the saints flowing through me, and my apartment becomes a monastery. Some days it’s my grandmother, watching over me and enjoying those small moments of quiet leisure, reading books and watching shows, that she enjoyed in her own life. Some days, I’m drawn to the songs of my ancestors - those Welsh and Scottish and English folk ballads, those endlessly vibrating Latin rhythms and dances - to meld my life with those who sang them before me. Some days, I just want to watch fursuit ASMR meditation videos, or browse through Regular Show fanzines in a reverie. Some days I am just a set of bowels, exposed and vulnerable, unable to emerge into the rational world, observing everything like I’m six feet underwater. As each strand of self waxes into view, the others welcome it with pride, a new and equally real way to exist. Each day comes not with a label, but with a parade.

Cheers from me and the band - Will