Furry Herm

“Hi.”

“What’s up?”

And so it began, a conversation of angst that ultimately progressed towards a promise to see each other that night.

I’m getting ahead of myself – I should explain the buildup behind this little encounter. I’d known him since high school, and there’d been a—spark between us, something built on our shared love of death metal and perusal of darker religions. I fell in love with his eyes first – a piercing ice-blue, they took my breath away and seemed to raze my soul each time I looked into them. Sounds childish, sounds crushy, but it was true. His hands were large, the fingers long and lovely. He was freakishly tall – or was I merely short? – and my forehead barely reached his collarbones when I hugged him after class. I began writing about him in my diary, in such lovingly explicit tones that it sometimes shocked me. I didn’t love him, but the physical attraction was there and it was tangible. I suppose I was young and stupid then, definitely too stupid to have hidden my secret writings in a better place.

My mother found my diary. That night, I was forced to read it aloud to my parents at the dinner table, while they took turns dissecting the writing and shouting at me about what was wrong with it, why I shouldn’t have written it, and what the repercussions of my diary would bring. I remember seeing my sisters cowering in the bedroom, my mother’s tearful face, my father’s disgusted tone, as he all but disowned me, his anger based on the awkward, hormonal rants of a teenage diary. It ruined me, and broke my friendship with my beloved wolf – for a year and a half I did not speak with him. And I stopped writing.

And then came the day. I heard his voice on t Continue reading →