First, I’ll summarize my experience at the barbecue. Then I’ll provide a little reflection, as well as explain what in the world my title means.

Just this week I heard about the FurBQ down in Irvine and, with my plans to attend Califur derailed by new events, I decided I’d try out the barbecue, at least. Besides, it was located halfway between me and the only person whom I knew for sure would be there - shadowfox014. Meeting him was my primary objective, and we’d come up with a very hastily constructed plan to interview people with incredibly silly questions, thinking of editing the interview snippets together to make a little movie.

Various things contributed to frustrating these designs. One of them was just a discomfort at interviewing people in a crowd; the main one, however, was my timidity. Now, I can be relatively gregarious in circumstances where I know the other person or at least have a topic of conversation; I get a little awkward when I’m not sure what to talk about; and when I’m in a crowd of people whom I don’t know at all, my first reaction is to bolt. When I arrived at Irvine Regional Park, I drove by a group with tails and ears… and promptly parked elsewhere. And sat there, stewing, for about 30 minutes.

This was only exacerbated by my overimaginative mind’s prediction that if I went out into public with my toucan mask, pictures of me would go viral online, some random person on the internet would trace it back to my DA gallery (or FA or Transfur), through some evil hackery discover my identity, and ruin my life forever. It didn’t help that the park was a lot more public than I expected it would be: there were people everywhere. Set freak-out meter to as high as it can go without reaching “run away screaming” level. Well, not screaming. I’d more like drive off and hope that Shadowfox would forgive me for ditching. Probably would’ve, too, if I didn’t have the commitment to meet him.

Eventually, I was able to get a hold of Shadowfox and we finally met. I then promptly sequestered myself in a dark bathroom stall with my phone as a “mirror” in order to slather my face with white, black, and orange in proper toucan patterning. I knew no one would recognize me, but I was still terrified enough to delay my public avian debut about ten minutes after I finished my preparations.

After a bit of conversation, Shadowfox and I decided that our previous idea –interviews – was probably untenable. There were only a handful of fursuiters (who were going to be our subjects in our original conception) and everyone seemed too engaged in their pockets of socialization which we were both loath to break.

My real social breakthrough was finding someone new with whom I had something to discuss: raptonx. I’m afraid I came off as a tad overexcited, since I literally greeted him by pointing excitedly in his direction and declaring, “Hey! I know your art!” My outburst was conditioned both by my appreciation of his art (which was some of my favorite stuff during my first years being a fandom lurker online) and my expectation that I wouldn’t run into anyone whose name I would know. Anyway it’s spun, however, I think we had a fun conversation. Just the fact that I would have a conversation with someone I’d met for the first time –well, sort of – was a triumph in my mind, and I thank RaptonX for putting up with my enthusiasm.

As I hung out, a couple more people complimented my beak, including at least one name I recognized: Chris Sawyer, most of whose art resides behind my FA filters but who nonetheless does marvelous equines I’ve admired for a while.

I didn’t quite overcome my bafflement at how to interact with people in fursuits, and my plans to play my toucan character evaporated. Maybe it was the fact that my eyes and body were still exposed, and I had designed my suit to be one in which I’d talk; I was still identifiably human, bodily and speech-wise, so it was harder to act unlike myself.

All in all, though, my experience was highly positive. None of my worst nightmares came true, and many of my anxieties were allayed. One of the strangest moments for me was when I was sketching a horse transformation for RaptonX (my head turned to one side, in appropriate avian fashion); someone asked me what I was drawing, and I could answer with little hesitation. The subject matter was par for the course; in fact, the asker complimented my drawing ability. There was no need to justify my drawing it, no neuroticism about hiding it lest someone catch a glimpse, no surreptitious scanning when no one’s paying attention. And it wasn’t in a Livestream or openCanvas session. I was drawing in person, face-to-face, and the only discomfort was in the anticipation of disapproval that never came.

Nor were there divisions, endless esoteric debates around who’s a “furry” or an “anthro” or an artist-but-not-community-member or TF fan or lurker or whatnot; we were all mushed together into amorphous anthropomorphism. Labels vanished, judgment suspended. The internet had not prepared me for this. In the world of words and pictures online, it’s hard to imagine other people as people. Relationships are merely based on words, images; there are few faces, and it’s relatively easy to be disconnected. In person, however, the feeling is almost wholly distinct. Even though I did feel a little marginal, I felt no more marginal than normal. That sort of thing just comes when you’re an introvert.

And here’s where the FurBQ was like my experience with my church. I have extensive experience studying my faith, both in the classroom and in conversations online. Online, communities are fractured; you get partisans of one theological concept staking their claims against opponents whose disagreements are incomprehensible to the vast majority of my coreligionists. I write papers and discuss concepts with similarly-minded people in scholarly communities.

However, I’m also still very active in my congregation. There, we’re grouped by geography, not ideology; we don’t self-select our community. In church on Sundays, I interact with Tea Partiers; with recent converts; with students in other programs; with a veteran who survived a shot to the head overseas. We’re a motley bunch. But it’s part of my duty as a professed member of the community to contribute to the wellbeing of my fellow church members and fill my role there. And despite our huge differences and disagreements, I still feel a degree of love there that I don’t over the internet and which in the classroom is always open to doubt: do we like each other, or do we just agree? If you never attend, you'll only have a skeletal idea of what the community means. The flesh and blood is hard to access.

Now, it’s not a stark difference. I’ve had wonderful online friendships with people in the furry/anthro/TF community, ones that have been deeply significant to me in various ways, just like I’ve had deeply spiritually meaningful conversations in my history courses. But there’s something about being able to belong to a group, not just a friendly or scholarly dyad, that’s special.

Maybe I’m romanticizing things. I know I only saw a tiny sliver of the community, and there are lots of things in other parts that I won’t sample. But that’s okay. If “community” meant “absolute similarity,” we’d all be terribly lonely and would miss out on a lot of life.

Long story short? I’m pretty sure I’ll be going to more events. :)