As a disclaimer. I am a very accepting person; I will tolerate whatever views you have regardless of how dumb they strike me. I'm a patient person, but I'm not Barney the dinosaur. This journal may be homophobic in parts? Don't worry about it. I fucked dudes. And am really good at it, too. I enjoy my niche. So, without further ado,

Holy shit do I love this place. And Southerners. And whiskey-fueled dreams. Yesterday was the antithesis of why I'm in the fandom, and just as I love exploring the fandom, masquerading with a fox mask over my face and a grin on my mouth, I also love getting down with the normal crowd.

Great fuckin' day yesterday. I substitute taught some keyboarding class and social studies classes yesterday for some junior high kids, and both teachers had set up for today to be a make up day for their students. So what do I get to do? Read my book, socialize with seventh and eighth graders who come up and talk to me. They're funny people, some of 'em, and already they're remembering me from the time I subbed P.E. Subby fox, har har. They kept writing on the board how awesome I was; hells bells.

And some of them got work done. It's their homework, so who am I to lash them to their desks?

The one problem I have with today's generation is that they--and I quote--"Don't like that rock stuff." Excuse me, what? How can you not like "Civil War" by GnR, and favor 50 Cent, club, techno, hip hop, rave music over that? I used to like Lady GaGa but now? Fuck her. She's just as poppy as that Britney Spears ho was back in the day. Infectiously catchy songs that just die after one too many listens. That just die.

And I hear this pretty funny joke about Barack Obama. Now, I don't have political views. Fuck the far right wingers and double-fuck the far left-wingers. You both annoy me. Go back to your witch burnings and your drum circles.

So do you know who Johnny Cash is? Do you know who Bob Hope is? Well, now that Obama's in office, we don't got no Cash and we don't got no Hope.

This coming from an eighth grader. Man these kids are crazy. This is the town I live in? Well shee-it.

So I get done with substitute teaching, and what's this? I go home and get my other two freelance jobs done in two hours tops? Holy shit, I'm on fire. It's only five p.m.; fuck it. Take a nap.

GET UP from that nap. PLAY some Halo: Reach. I play some zombie mode, and I'm the last man standing. KILL TWENTY FIVE DUDES with headshots before I die. Send those boys back to their mamas with their wieners tucked between their legs singing Glee songs.

Then the internet dies. TOO BAD. I beat a level on Reach on Legendary. I'm really good at this game. And then, I play some Bioshock on Hard. I'm right to the part with meeting Andrew Ryan, and I witness some of the best storytelling any video game has to offer. I got so many plasmids and so much money, then I take on a Big Daddy face to face with a grenade launcher, and live.

Then I go up to Bloomington. My friend  yoyowolf is stuck making bank at his pizza job, which doesn't give him any weekends off. That sucks, but at least he's making money. He needs himself a half-pint of vodka to spike his Fountain Dew with! Gotta make it through the shift somehow, right? Done. He even gives me a four-dollar tip.

I LOVE FRIENDS THAT DO THAT.

Then? Well, I guess I'll head home. It's something around midnight, and it's been a pretty good day! So I start driving, but I really would like a drink for tomorrow myself! I pull into the university's budget liquor store and look around. They have some amazing prices in there! I'm scanning the place wall to wall and I'm thinking, "I might have to buy something nice while I'm here." But I don't. I'm fiscally responsible, and I gotta get back on my feet something proper before I go and start making it rain. It still takes me ten minutes to decide this, though. They have Corzo Tequila for only thirty-eight dollars! That's sixteen dollars down from what it really is!! And it's fancy. It'll evaporate right off your tongue when you slosh it around. Fine, fine tequila.

I buy a can of Joose instead. 12% ABV, caffeine, taurine, ginseng, steroids, ecstacy, protein supplement? And for two-fifty for this fine malt beverage.

The guys at the register seem pretty cool. They keep trying to get me to buy the Corzo, because they know that I know that it's a great deal! But no, no, no, we must be careful in these financially uncertain times.

So I walk outside after having been in the liquor store for ten solid minutes. There are these three skinheads in ballcaps and urban outfitters clothing, and they're sitting on the picnic table right outside the liquor store drinking Crown Royal Black and chasing it with Coke right there in front of the store. "How very charming," I say to myself with a Princely giggle as I saunter past them and fish out the keys to my car.

"Hey! Hey you!" they say, and dear me if I didn't contemplate fleeing for my dear life. I'm a beautiful man, and as such they may think me as a French Tickler. Dear me.

"Hey you! Wanna shout of Crown?"

Are you fucking serious. Game on.

I take a good pull, turn down the chaser because I "Want to let [the taste] ring." I smile and thank them, and then they start asking me questions. Where I from, What do I do, Why I up here, What I'm up to. I answer with a smile and continue to banter. They're very lively people, and suddenly I'm part of their clique. I pop a squat on the picnic table with one Arkansas/Floridian, two central Illinoisians and we just talk, muse about life, find out about each other. The guy from AR/FL? Doesn't have a college degree; just a G.E.D. and works commission with Dish and makes three times what he would have made as a computer science major does.

Now I think that's just spectacular, honestly, and it's not about the money. It's about the fact that this guy found a way to succeed that wasn't all caught up in the "Go to college, get a job!" rush to the slaughterhouse that our middle-class is sprinting towards. People get caught up in the herd, work a job they hate, and sure. They have money. That's great, congrats. But was this really the only way?

He briefly mentions that he's not sure he should have spent that money on the whiskey, and I disagree. Honestly, and I told them this too, that whatever religion you have. You got one Earth life here. Who knows what Heaven will be like? Might not be nearly as cool as what we got right here, and I say that with sincerity. If you die with money, someone else gets your money.

And we just keep conversation going like that; it's philosophical without that "Why are we REALLY here? What does life REALLY mean? What is this rock, and does it taste like spongiform encephalitis?" overthinking stuff they teach you in college.

We're also offering swigs out to passers-by, and if they stay for a cigarette and a chat, all the better.

Some of them are cool, take a swig, thank us, and go on their way. One's a Jimmy Johns driver, but he refuses and makes his delivery. Some of them turn it down with a gracious no thanks. Some of them speed up and walk faster into the liquor store, clutching their purses and not answering. Some of them linger after the fact, making light conversation.

This one eighteen year-old stops by, takes a good swig, and makes some pretty good conversation with us. He's pretty funny, and only eighteen? Not too shabby. A lull in conversation happens, and he then out of nowhere asks, "What's the whistle do?" And things just stop. This had better be really funny, because it's four guys having a really good time and this kid's trying to derail the conversation into something completely random. Hey look at me! I want to talk about the things I'm interested in! Won't you guys join the interesting party over here?

And see, that's the problem with a lot of younger kids. They will tune out of the conversation that's going on at the time, not even trying to empathize or find some way to positively contribute, and then when there's a lull in conversation they'll leap into your seat and try to grab the wheel away from you.

Fuck you, I'm driving. Shit, kid, don't you have clarinet lessons in the morning?

Alright, what's the punch line.

He says, "The whistle goes," and then puts his flat hand perpendicular on his upper lip like some makeshift balcony, and says "Woo-Woo!" and... Well, we love this kid. He took a shot of Crown, made us laugh, but that... I'm sure he learned that at one of his freshman parties and thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

It's not.

But we excuse it--I mean, why not? But we make it clear that whatever the hell just happened? Hold on here, no. No, man. That's bull.

So he goes on his way and it's about one-twenty, the party's starting to wind down (but only starting to), police keep passing in front of the liquor store (but they never stop), and this group of three guys, one girl (and that's never a good ratio around these parts; she's getting escorted by her "chivalrous" (scared and virgin) friends to a frat to get laid by someone else) pass by us, though on the other side of the street. We ask them, for the hell of it, "What's the whistle do? Woo Woo!" and before we can offer them some Crown, this pudgy kid in a tan sport coat and jeans shouts, "Oh, you guys are real cool! Partyin' in front of a liquor store! Yeah! Keep the party going!"

It's a desperate cry for help. One of my new friends hasn't heard this, and so he calls back, "What'd you say? I didn't hear you! Come over here and say this!" and the response, of course, is a hackneyed "You heard me!" Awesome retort, kid. They used that line in Home Alone. Urban Dictionary defines that retort as, "I'm a pussy who won't repeat what I just said because I know if I do I'll get punched in the face."

Sounds about right. He thinks that we're thugs, when we're just chilling out on a picnic table and laughing at people who've already prejudged us. "No, seriously, we didn't hear you," I say, and I mean it, speaking for my friend. They reiterate the same hack retort, meaning "No, seriously. I'm REALLY a pussy who won't repeat what I just said because I know if I do I'll get punched in the face."

But, to his credit, he tries something else on top of that. "TEACH ME HOW TO SURF!!!"

Pause. He thinks we're surfers? I may almost kind of look like a surfer, but everyone else is skinheads and maybe, maybe skateboarders. But even if he said "skate" instead of "surf," that still would have been another nineties reference and still we would have hearkened back to a time that's... 'bout eleven to twenty years old there, buddy. We all got over Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Matchbox 20, all those indiscernible grunty, whiny singers a long time ago.

But it came to pass, he passes.

Then one of the store managers comes out for a smoke break. It's this Indian guy, mid-twenties, maybe early thirties. We ask him if we can still be doing this, and assure him that we can clear out if he needs us out of here. "In ten minutes," he says, and then lights up. Business goes on as usual, and after he's done, we ask him how long it's been. About five, six minutes, right?

"Two minutes."

Oh, we see what he did there. This guy's all right.

I went inside and bought that tequila, forty-two dollars with tax. If you die with money, someone else gets your money. If you die having had all the fun in the world, that stays with you.

Then, we got the "Yankee bitches," these six fairly to awesomely-attractive women in short black skirts, high heels, and hair done up as if they were going to prom. The "Yankee bitches." Given, three out of the four of us are technically Yankees. Born n' raised in Illinois. But the AR/FL guy named them, and we're cool with him, so we're Southerners by proxy. Deputies. I'm all over the place, because after this is all over, I'm probably going to go home and look at furry porn with guys in skirts and females with furry tits.

These six girls come up to the front of the store; they're "Looking for a ride so they can go to Sigma Chi." We offer them some whisky and/or tequila. Want a shot? And three, maybe four of them--the slender, tallest, most attractive three or four of them, recoil with this look of disgust on their faces as if we had asked them to suck the sweaty lint from between our toes. It was that bad, and we were offering high-class liquor.

"Eew, not from you," was the response we got for both the liquor offer and the ride offer. Not from us, not from our kind. And here we were just having a good time and making fun of people who were prejudging us. Now, these uptight, prudish, bitchy women were taking offense to our compliments. If someone offers you booze, at least down South, it's a small act of generosity. It's sharing the love. Up here? Everyone's so afraid of being mugged and raped that you can't do that kind of thing.

Given, that's because it happens. And that sucks.

But still. The way that they treated us after we sent them compliments and offers for booze and even a ride, it was like they were offended we were hitting on them.

Listen, girls, boys. If you wear sexy clothing, you deserve to be hit on, and you will be hit on by all sorts of people. Turning us down with anything meaner than a "No, not interested," is a premature judgment of out character and you make yourself out to be a bigot because you "Really know what's going on and really know our intentions." Yes, there are going to be a lot of creepers out there and I know it's a scary world. Just don't stereotype.

Some of us just want to have fun. Even if you don't want anything to do with us, take it as a compliment that we're going out of our way to reach out to you, instead of just remaining in the same clique of friends that served us plenty well before you trotted through on high heels. Calm the fuck down.

But it came to pass, they passed. We went to Domino's and continued our socializing rampage, and the same wide array of people were in the Domino's parking lot, whether passing through or waiting for their pizza, as there were at the liquor store. I pass the tequila around, I make quick friends who I'll never see again, and even this one black guy, Johnny G (I'm Johnny B), has me put some in his Simply Orange orange juice and profusely thanks me. He joins the group for a solid ten minutes, and his brother comes in for five of those, and the group soon surges to about eight for a good ten minutes, then disperses like the fall of the tide.

It's about two a.m., so I call it quits. I give the AR/FL guy my number--and we're going to be hanging out again this week--and then I go on my way back to my car and drive on home.

I'm listening to Meat Loaf; the epic guitar riffs, the sizzling piano, and the bombastic vocals sear through me like the alcohol that's come and gone. This is real music, this is what gets me off. I have the biggest smile on my face, and when I get home I trudge out of my car and lay down with that grin still leaving lines.

In my dream, just as a stinger, a bonus track, my brain confuses Mormonism with the overly racist, fetishistically homophobic Westboro Baptist Church, and I'm in Salt Lake City with this monolith of a church leering over the town; it's three buildings wide and two tall. I spend most of my dream in there with a friend, walking through its long catacomb hallways, large open portals in the inside mahogany walls yawning out to a great cathedral washed in yellow, purple, and red stained glass light and there's one section of the building that effortlessly transfers into a parallel dimension--now I'm on the fifth floor in a furry convention with suiters in the hall, and two of them hit on me as I saunter to my room--apparently I have a room at this fur con. I stare one down--his suit is blue with a white belly, and he withers at my gaze. I got game.

I return to the monolithic Westboro Mormon Megachurch, and there I spend an hour avoiding their murderous gazes, integrating myself into their hateful congregation and socializing them while, all the while, I eye their massive, jagged flag on the wall. I will steal that flag. There is one time that the sanctuary is empty, their banner is just hanging there on the wall and the rest of them are in the basement, walking around and thinking murder.

I tear it off the wall and stuff it into my shirt, and then flee through the hallway, through the parallel dimension and back into the furcon, where I wear it as a cape and saunter through the hallways, smiling at all the pretty girls and boys out there.

I wake up, and I smile.