Dear Journal,

Well this is my first journal posting here on FA, I've decided to get a little more active here and active in the furry community.

First off, I need to say I'm not an artist. I can color, but I just can't draw for shit...least not furries or people. I can draw maps and flags and shit, but I just can't draw.

Anyway, I suppose for those of you that don't know me I should introduce myself. My real name is David C. Bennett, but my Furry alias is Damion St. James. I've gone by that nickname since I can remember, so It's a huge part of whom I am.

Back-history? Well I'll start with Furry-wise and with RL'wise.

Furrywise I experienced my awakening with furries with the cult classic Animalympics. It was the sexy high diving, laid back, virtually stoner otter that turned me on - and turned me on - to the world of furries. I had to have only been 8 years old when I first watched that long psychedelic diving sequence where the otter attempted to win the gold medal for the high-dive. To this day, he is such a facet in my back history I even have a character in White Wolf's Werewolf the Apocolypse that is based loosely off him. Only mine is a much more stoned, much more HIV Positive, and much more fiercely spiritual lycan.

After Animalympics, I moved on to the normal TV shows we all watched as kids during the 80's and early 90's: Tail-Spin, Duck Tails, Rescue Rangers, and even vintage Warner Brother/Tex Avery cartoons like Bugs. Yes, I actually got kind of aroused watching bugs Cross-Dress. Though it was actually the Bugs universe that raised a question with me. "Why do these guys walk around naked except for gloves, yet when they go swimming or step out of the shower do they bother to conceal their nudity with towels or swimsuits?" I also asked. "How come no one ever has junk?" Oh poor young me, I had no clue there was such thing as censorship and morals and decency.

But as I met more and more friends, and talked to more and more people online, and watched more and more movies and such from around the world I began to discover myself and what this world was all about.

I met my absolute first furry back in 1997. It was a woman named Sphynx, who played a yellow furred cheetah woman in a scant clad green leotard like garment. I found her so stunning and fascinating that I had to interact with her and learn all I could. As she taught me I started creating my own furries. Damion, my long time alternate ego and my main character for rp became the white panther most everyone knows, and his nephew Foxx St. James - The King of Cats - was a Kahn, a white furred tiger. I was thrilled!

As time went by, I created more. Foxes, Minks, Dragons, and so on. I thought it was maybe a phase until I saw Ms. Smith's painting on the wall of a dragon dueling a knight. Oh my gods, it was the sexiest thing I'd ever seen. It wasn't even erotic, however the muscle tone, the legs, the abs, and everything about this dragon was everything I craved in men. I can tell you that I spent many hours fapping to the mental image of that painting.

So after years of Rp and creation, I've pretty much learned and found myself. My personal fursona had changed from a white panther clone of Damion, into a pink fox, then into a brown/tan-tawny fox.

My Real life? Oh gods where to start?! Well I was born December 23'rd in 1982 in Los Angeles California. After a two day stay in the hospital I was adopted on Christmas day to Rosemary and Frank Domkus. After 5 years of life in L.A. my mother and father as many couples do decided a break-up was necessary. So, my parents uprooted and moved us to Portland, Oregon - so my dad could get a divorce that wouldn't ass-rape him and give my mom any kind of "retirement plan". Yeah, it's kind of underhanded, but you have to love divorce laws in California/Oregon in 1988.

So, growing up in Portland I lived in two houses, one with my mother and one with my dad. I went to two schools: Linwood Elementary which was a public school, and Our Lady of Sorrows which was a Catholic Elementary/Middle school.

From 1988 to July 1993, I lived the double lifestyle. I had two sets of friends, two schools, and two houses that I lived at. It tore me up every day of my childhood to see your friends on the playground and to know that when they went home the people they went home to were 9 times out of 10 their real parents and their parents loved one another and they only had one house to go to. I recall crying often on the swings when I thought no one was looking, wishing for my parents to go back together and I also recall feeling more lonely than I could ever convey. I told my mother that I wanted her to get back with my dad and I wanted a brother. I wanted a brother that I could talk and relate to. Being the middle child of two sisters and the only male I felt kind of gimped.

Well in July 1993, after taking us to Disneyland, Universal Studios, Knots Berry Farm, and to all kinds of places my father drove us back home, dropped us off at my mom's, and I never saw him alive again. My father committed suicide - shot himself (I believe) with a .357 revolver. Now, not only was I still lonely, my father had take away the only kind of male influence I had in my life. I was in my opinion, alone.

To this day, I still feel alone, no matter how big of a crowd I'm in or how close I am to my husband...I have always dealt with Abandonment issues and neglect issues.

Well, after dad died I was stuck in counseling for years. Doctors diagnosed me with PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - and while I attended Our Lady Of Sorrows I got mixed comments from faculty and staff. Many consoled me and patted me on the back, some teachers said "Rest easy his soul is now in hell writhing for eternity.", while some bullies saw me as a new target for their bully like powers. I was picked on for just about any reason under the sun, and I saw almost no reason do do anything anymore. I didn't care...and I just wanted to die.

...I was stuck in an invalidating environment, no one was listening, and no one really cared what I felt...I wanted to die.

Well in the 6th grade, my teacher gave me a pep-talk that to this day angers me as much as it motivates me. THe anger fueled my urge to prove her wrong and the fact she thought I'd done wrong in my studies made me angry. She'd told me that even with my mental disabilities that other people she knew overcame them and didn't use them as crutches to coast through life.

Well for the most part her lecture worked, however academically I still suffered. Grade 5, and 7 sucked because both teachers I had never finished out their years and were piss poor at their jobs.

My education was failing and when I entered High School I was in remedial English and Math. Mind you, I to this day am ranked among the nations top 4% for my scientific knowledge, but lets be realistic in the fact that it just wasn't going to cut it. My next teacher, who's name escapes me, was teaching me in remedial English. She awoke the next fire in me, a fire that to this day is what's made me what I am. She was so desperate to find a way to get me to write, she stopped assigning me the textbook material and just told me to write what I was so vividly expressing day to day onto paper.

And to this day I still write and enjoy telling stories.

Well after four years in high school, I started a job working for Domino's pizza, and then went to work for Winco Foods -where I got fired for running over a woman with the cart-moving machine (before anyone reacts she stepped out in front of it and you can't stop an object that big moving that fast). Then I worked for like...a DAY at Kirby Vacuum Cleaners for these russian cats. Never again!

Then my friend Jessie Walls who happened to live across the street from me got me what I feel to this day was my first real job. I worked for PhoneTrax, a division of Diversiform. PhoneTrax was a group of telemarketers that take surveys - but it wasn't the bad kind where we try to sell you anything - it was mostly follow-up surveys for automotive companies. So say you got your Ford serviced at the dealership, my job was to call and make sure everything went groovy. It was at this job I wrote the book "My Human Kuni" with Kuni being named after Oregon's Kuni BMW.

Unfortunately the boss lady felt I couldn't really hack-it at this job and I was released. However I bounced back and found a job almost immediately at Live-Bridge. I was doing the evil kind of telemarketing now, sitting in a cubicle and making phone calls trying to sell people the First USA Bank Platinum Visa card! I even used the alias Damion St. James. I vividly recall several people asking me "Is that your real name?" and answering without skipping a beat "Absolutely."

Well I couldn't hack it there either. I've surfed through plenty more jobs since then. I worked as a House keeper for my mother's Nursing Home Milwaukee convalescent Center, then I attended the Job Corps for a while and studied business and writing where I earned my degrees. After that, is where my life takes another hard turn...

I moved to Georgia. I don't remember all too much. There's alot I do, and alot I don't. This part of my life is pretty traumatic and I don't like to talk about it. Long story short, I was in an invalidating environment again with a grip of people who didn't give a shit about me, I was 3,000 miles away from home, and I was alone in the world. I wanted to die....badly. So I tried to kill myself.

I failed obviously.

However my suicide attempt to this day has left part of my head soft and susceptible to impact. If I take a strong hit to the right side of my head on the top, I drop like a sack of bricks and go numb. Even when I got back into Pro Wrestling (Ill get to that in a sec), I had to be careful.

Well, I was so mental at the time I returned to Portland my mother had to commit me twice with one psychotic episode and another suicide attempt (this time pill swallowing). I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder which apparently is hereditary and coupled with my PTSD was causing me alot of shit.

But thanks to the therapy I went under I was able to get my first successful job, and I was able to move out on my own. I worked at McDonalds for 3 years and had some wonderful and meaningful relationships with people along the way. Cub Central/Yiffatar's Z-Jam-C and NachT were my mates at one point, and to this day NachT is always considered my lover IRL and in character.

Oh yeah the wrestling. I got into Pro Wrestling during high school which was ran out of a gym no more than 8 blocks away from my house. It was fucking awesome! I was getting to do what I always wanted to do as a kid and It was a blast. Well when 2006 came along, I was bored as fuck one day, and I was walking along the streets near my old high school. I can't even remember WHAT I was doing there, but I saw the poster for CPW and decided to try out as a wrestler/reff. I got the job as a Reff and became Fat Reff, Fat Benetar. Did I choose the name? Not entirely. It's a story that I adore.

Well IRL I've got a gut and I've always been bulky. When I was in grade/high school I was a skinny boy with muscles in speedos. 6 months after high school I became a real lard ass. Then as years went by the gut expanded and receded so on and so forth. Well I was getting tired of being called "David Bennett" every time I came to the ring. I wanted something with a bit of Zing - I didn't want a gimmick entirely, just something that made me stand out a little. I started making the announcer call me "Fat Reff." Well I was sitting there one day, talking with someone in our crew, but I cant recall whom. Anyway, out of no where he said "What's up Fat Benetar?" and I laughed and asked him where he came up with that and he said "Well your Dave Bennett and you're also fat Reff, there ya go Fat Benetar!" So I cherished this nickname and to this day I love being called Fat Benetar by wrestling fans.

Now? Now I live in Battle Ground, Washington after living with....(horrible shudder) Sibe. Yes, Evilsibe, Sibehusky or Ross Reddick. THE Sibe, the epitome of all that is evil, the lord of darkness and sultan of sin. I lived with him for about a month...Had to get out. So here I am in Battle Ground *waves*. I live here with my husband (legally) Randy "Randalfin, Bunny Fujin" Ford. We're a very happy couple living in our own house, and we're scraping by, but we're definitely making it.