The birds, the bees, and every other woodland animal: Act I

Our journey into the heart of darkness began on a Monday morning. The afternoon had become a blur of Garfield cartoons and the Bill Murray Coen brothers Garfield from 2004, interchangeably. We would swap between the two every so often, the goal being to develop some sort of medical aversion to Mondays, lasagne and obese cats. If our work was successful then we would never have to work another Monday of our sad existence, and instead flick our collective beans to Gillian Anderson until our cliterous fell off. While we were in the middle of our DIY CIA brainwashing session, the phone rang out, bringing us back to this sad reality we lived in. I answered, and assuming it was my wife, whispered to the caller “If I ever see you in the street, I will not hesitate to shoot you in broad daylight” but to my embarrassment, it was our boss. A new assignment had popped up for us to handle, a convention of sorts. I clicked my fingers at Alister to start writing down details as I started speaking out loud “Pittsburgh, that’s in Transylvania, right? Pennsylvania! My mistake sorry” I gave a wink and a smirk toward Alister as I took a puff of the jenkem ciggie I had lit in preparation for a verbal beatdown session with my wife “So what’s this shit about? Some new Manson sex cult?” and as he gave me the answer to my question, the cigarette dropped from my mouth which had been left agape in shock. I slammed the phone down and ran to pack my bags, post haste. “Woah what’s the rush? Are we covering an AIDS convention?” Verlaine asked following me with confusion on her face. “FURRIES, THEY WANT US TO COVER THE FURRIES!” and with that, they too began to pack in pure hysteria.

It would be a long drive to Pittsburgh, 7 hours or so if we only stopped for gas and refrained from drinking any fluids as to not have to make any bathroom stops. We were in our first hour of the journey, and I had been eyeing my husband Evelyn, wrapped snug around my wrist the entire time, making sure we were moving at an acceptable pace. We had packed all our shit into Alis’s 2008 Chevy Aveo sedan and began flooring it in the general direction of Pittsburgh, but problems began to arise very quickly. “If I’m reading what Evelyn is telling me and your speedometer correctly, it could take us all fucking week to get to this shindig, now floor it!” Alis’s eye twitched “Bernie calm your tits, the thing can only go 109 mph” Verlaine joined in assuring my tits “if we end up swerving off the road into a picnic of children then I will solely place the blame on your shoulders.” I was beginning to think these two did not understand the gravity of this task we had been entrusted with. For years the furries had been an illusive crowd, like the freemasons, but they weren’t in any position of power, they only ruled over the sexual underworld, and I intended to blow the lid on their entire operation. Goat sacrifices, orgies in the triple digits, dildos that were not made for human anatomy, summoning rituals involving chanting and dancing around a CRT TV playing Disney’s Robin Hood, occasionally cumming on the screen. For years this was all speculation, but now we had the opportunity to prove to the world, what really goes on at these “innocent” gatherings. “If you two haven’t realized, this is a once in a lifetime experience, this level of responsibility has never been placed in the hands of such irresponsible people. I believe it is a sign from God herself, that this is the turning points in our careers, we’ll be famous, a household name! I’ll finally be able to explain what it is I do for a living to my mother…” I let out a long sigh and looked out into the far distant highway seeing my future riches in the sunset, but Alis and Verlaine gave me that look to say, what’s the real reason? “…and check in closes at 7 tomorrow so I can’t risk having to sleep on the streets of Pittsburgh, there could be homeless men high on Viagra roaming those streets, you just don’t know these days.” They rolled their eyes and Alis raised the speed slightly. Within 30 seconds of him doing so, his phone began to ring. In reaction, he turned on his indicator light, and I reacted accordingly myself, by taking the jenkem ciggie out of my mouth and holding it to Alis’s eye whispering “If you pull this car over, I will make sure you wear an eyepatch for the rest of your life.” And with that the car kept on it’s course. I reached into his pocket pulling out the phone, to only see that it was his grandmother. I knew exactly why she was calling, she had this entire car bugged so that when the speed went over 60, alarms would start going off around her house, and every time she’d call Alis to let him know he’s driving at dangerous speeds. “Just hang up the phone Bernie, we know how you get when you’re on the phone to someone,” Verlaine ordered, but her worries were unfounded, since I was cool as a cucumber when communicating through the technology of telecommunication. I answered the call and brought it to my ear, giving her a valid greeting “YES, HE’S SPEEDING, BUT IT’S FOR A VALID REASON, NOW DON’T CALL BACK YOU HONKY BITCH!” and with that, promptly threw the phone out the passenger side window, onto the highway to get run over like a raccoon. “You really need to stop doing that,” Alis relented. “And youuuu, really need to find out what fucking tracking device she’s put in this car.”

Another two hours passed and the tension in the car began to rise. A combination of dehydration and overwhelming heat had turned this thing into a ticking time bomb for a homicide case, sole victim, Bernard. I didn’t know if it was the jenkem ciggies, or if these two were giving me murderous eyes. “Can we please, for the love of God put down a window?” Verlaine pleaded, “Are you fucking insane? The air drag will slow us down by at least %10, we will simply have to sit in scorching hot heat. If we burn to death then blame Alister’s grandmother for giving him a car with no air conditioner,” and as I finished my complaint, a sweat drenched Alis gave me eyes that stroke fear into my soul. “THAT IS WHY THERE ARE WINDOWS!” While his logic did make complete sense, it did not help my agenda at this very moment “Alright! If you two want to put down the window so bad, then we’ll have to get rid of dead weight in the car to counteract the air drag, is there anything we don’t need here?” And with that my fate was sealed. Alis stopped the car, looked at Verlaine, then they both looked in my direction. While I did put up a fight, Alister always did have that innate ability to be suddenly become a bouncer and drag my ass around like I was a sack of feathers. He chucked me on the side of the road and got back in the car “call yourself an Uber, have them put up with your shit” is the last thing they said to me before burning rubber and going at least %10 faster. On one hand I was happy that they would make good time, on the other I was gonna kick Alister’s ass when I saw him again.

After the longest Uber ride of my life and $200 of my own cash down the drain, I made it to the location of my waking nightmare. As I began to depart from my paid driver, I felt as though I was abandoning my father. We had developed such a powerful relationship in the 5 hours we spent together, he would say he was going to pull over for a bathroom break, and I told him if he did that then I’d cut his nuts off with a butter knife. I instead made the compromise of attaching a catheter to him as he drove, which was trickier than when I tried it on myself. The main issue was that we were on the bumpiest pot-hole filled road in the continental United States, the place looked like it was a mortar target practise area. There is well and truly no hope for this country if a man can not put a catheter in another man’s urethra without having a smooth journey on a country backroad in the middle of bum fuck nowhere, to avoid the eyes of the public from the deed. Ever since he pissed in front of me, I hadn’t seen him blink once the rest of the trip, eyes were just straight on the road, which I wasn’t complaining about, he had his eyes on the prize. I got out and grabbed my bag from the trunk giving him my farewell through the driver’s side window “Look, I just want you to know that I really feel as though we’ve connected on a personal level, here’s $50 extra for your trouble, and hey, if you’re in town, you can swing by my hotel room and maybe you can stick a ca…” is all I could say before he grabbed the $50 bill from my hand, still staring forward and driving away at high speeds, and just as he went out, Verlaine and Alis drove in slower than a legless snail.

They seemed cheery enough, all until I knocked on the driver’s side window with the face of a mother that had caught their son in the act of fornicating in the family car. They got out, now clad in some sort of attire that was in praise of the furry lifestyle. “I will get to the clothes in a minute, but what in Sam hell took you so long to get here?!? You could’ve missed our book in, and you can’t give me the excuse that you got robbed by a hitchhiker, cause I’ve taught you not to trust those carless bastards” They rolled their eyes and Alister recounted the past 5 hours on their end “Well Bernie, we stopped off for a little something called, FOOD. You know, the shit normal people eat on a regular basis. While we were ordering we met someone who was on their way to the convention aswell and they sold us these bitchin’ t-shirts.” The shirts had the image of a wolf with a full moon glowing in the background, it sent shivers down my spine just looking at the thing. The realization of their actions hit me, and my pupils contracted accompanied by a gasp and agape mouth with a jenkem cigarette hitting the pavement “You didn’t tell them anything about us, about ME, did you? I could wake up with my throat slit tomorrow if they find out why we’re here. We are incognito, they can’t suspect anything is of the unordinary.” My nerves were on edge and jenkem wasn’t going to do the trick for it this time, Verlaine attempted to calm my nerves none the less, “Look, there’s nothing to worry about, most of these people are just here cause they got extra money to spend and a lot of sexual partners that they wanna meet up with every so often, nothing malicious about it.” I opened my jenkem ciggie tin and lit another one, and combined with Verlaine’s words of wisdom, my worries began to dissipate slightly, but I contested “That’s what they want you think, just normal people with normal sex lives, but you’re gonna see the truth by the end of all of this. Oh you’ll see.” Alister grabbed my wrist to ask Evelyn the difficult question of what time it was and then to me to ask the much simpler question of what the plan was. “Well,” I began, taking a long huff of jenkem vapours “we have been provided with a hotel room, membership to walk around the convention at our leisure and two grand for any necessary supplies we might need throughout our stay. Boss has made all the arrangements and now all we have to do is observe the inner workings of this “Anthrocon” and report on any interesting happening we may stumble upon” I took another puff as they thought of how they might undertake the assignment in their own ways “Well I guess we should get checked in first then” Verlaine suggested, quite rightly.

We made our way to the front desk with great gusto. As much as fear was gripping my soul, I could not turn back now. It was as though I was one of the soldiers landing on Normandy, facing down my demise, and just like those soldiers, they would have a Bernard day soon in the future, to remember all my greatest achievements throughout my life. They would nominate me for Noble Peace Prizes, in my selfless acts of courage and bravery. My optimism dissipated in an instant, as I shat my pants at the first sight of a fursuit. The thing was covered in unnatural colours that no animal should have been born with. For all it’s cuteness, I could only see the darkness that lay underneath that adorable façade. We made it to the front desk with our pants still intact, so I considered this to be far better than my original predictions. I began to speak, but what came out was the frightened shrieks of a schoolgirl. Alister took over, asking for the room key and inquiring about breakfast. My eyes moved around the room at similar speed to tweeker in a pigsty. Verlaine spoke to me with her own eyes, squinting and moving those eyebrows of hers in a disapproving manner. I leaned in to warn her of the danger surrounding us “Don’t look at them, they might get the wrong idea, give you their hotel key or something.” I could tell my cautions were cast to the wayside from the unmoving position of her lips, not contorted into smile nor frown. “You know, the more you piss yourself thinking about all the kinky sex these people will have with you, the more you will energetically bring it on to yourself.” While she may have been trying to chastise me in my hour of worry, it only served to make me sweat like a nun in a brothel, it got so bad I had to undo my top button, which would’ve only given these deviants surrounding me more reason to assume that I was giving them sex signals, oh god they’re looking at me I know it, the sweat’s building on my neck, they’ll think I’m just like them, I’ll never be able to sit down, fuck am I shaking? I shouldn’t have smoked that much jenkem before being around all these fur clad men and women eyeing me up like a fine medium rare steak, Jesus, they wouldn’t eat me would they? I can see their salivating mouths, I can’t underestimate what they can do, that will be my downfall. Must keep my guard up, if they go for Verlaine or Alis save yourself, don’t hesitate, they’d do the same if it was me getting eaten alive from the stomach up. They’ll descend on us like a pack of rabid zombie dogs, wanting our brains, oh god, I could picture it now, was I sweating a lot? Fuck I’m drenched, my face has more fluid on it than a teen girl’s breaches at an Elvis concert. This isn’t very fucking incognito Bernie, you’ve shown up in a suit and tie and are now sweating all fluids out of your body. I need a more jenkem, why did these pregnant women have to complain about indoor smoking, do they not understand the labour pain I’m going through right now? Could it be? My salvation, the receptionist reached down to grab the key, as soon as I saw that key card in her hand, I grabbed it seeing it as the cure to my withdrawals, shouting, “Thank the lord, it’s a boy!” before turning and breaking Usain Bolt’s 100 metre record to that hotel room. When I was nestled nicely inside my new safe haven from these furries, I took a defensive position in a corner of the room and prepared myself for the worst, pointing a butter knife in the direction of the door.

After a few moments of me in the corner I must’ve passed out from dehydration, cause when I came to, I had a basin of water being thrown in my face and proceeded to get my cheek slapped like it was a breast of untenderized chicken. I shot up to action and got my began to get my bearings on reality again. Verlaine was holding the basin and Alis was unpacking our bags on the bed. “You know,” he began “I advise you as your confidante to take a cold shower and get the rest of that jenkem out of your system before you go postal on this hotel. We had to explain to that receptionist that you were our mentally challenged son so they didn’t think you were on meth our something.” I sprawled myself out on a bed huffing the sweet smell of cleaning chemicals still on the sheets “aww Alis you shouldn’t have, lets just hope I don’t run into anyone on that shift again.” I began to derobe, taking Alister’s advice and preparing myself for a cold shower, only to hear Verlaine say “Jesus, you’re sweating like a pig, are you sure that Uber driver didn’t slip you DMT?” I caught my breath, chuckling at the remark “are you calling me a narc?” We all had a laugh together before I took refuge in the bathroom to wash my body of all the jenkem shit sweat staining it.

While the water was cold, I had become accustomed to the feeling, often having to detox myself after a jenkem bender. If water wasn’t so wet, I would smoke in the shower. I had thought briefly of getting myself one of those E-cigs, but I was always afraid of it being like a toaster in a bathtub if I did get the urge to use it in the shower. I never liked having to do this, taking cold showers that is, I heard Beethoven possibly went deaf due to dousing his face in cold water every morning. I always considered myself a fan of Beethoven, I’d much prefer his work over someone like Mozart. People like to point to the perfection of Mozart’s music, but when has life ever been about perfection? The world is a messy thing, full of twists and turns, sudden jolts and high voltage shocks to the system. Ludwig would always put power into his music, there was a spectacle to it, but a reserved aspect like in most of his Sonatas. I always have fond memories of listening to the opening of his third symphony and hearing that fanfair of the horns section before easing into the melody and then rising it again, that constant up and down between beautiful flutes and butch strings, it’s fast, slow, majestic, bold and yet so perfect with so many imperfections. It may be hard to create something that does one thing the best possible way that it can be, but I’ve always seen it as more complicated than that, if you’re able to successfully mould two separate emotions together, it’s much more of a testament to your abilities as an artist. While other composers after Beethoven’s time may have written pieces of a higher standard, there is very few that strike a chord to my soul and elicit emotions out of me like Beethoven can. The one that has always stuck with me more than the rest will always be Frédéric Chopin. What Beethoven did with an orchestra, Chopin achieves with a piano alone. It will never have the same scale as a symphony, but to fully harness every last bit of emotion from those black and white keys, is a testament to the man’s ability. Sometimes I’m asked by people if I had a time machine, what would I do with it? And I’ve always given the same answer to them throughout the years, I want to be there to watch Chopin in the process of writing. It’s said that he would have horrific writers block, weeks of time dedicated to finding single notes to move the melody along nicely, and just to be a fly on the wall, when he finds that perfect combination, for me it would be like watching the final strokes on The Starry Night. Whether it was soft or bombastic, Chopin found a way to make it sound effortless. So many of his etudes were beautiful messes that each had their own unique identities. I was once told by a music scholar that he never intended his etudes to be played the same way twice, he wanted people to add their own flair to it, to improve on his foundation, and what a lovely thought it is, eternal art, living on for generations, the only other example I can think of is The Bible, and now that I say that, it’s all of a sudden not such a lovely thought. Most of these pieces of music are less than two minutes but it’s the classic case of quality over quantity, it’s one musical idea used to it’s fullest potential in each of them. God, I need to stop having philosophical conversations with my shower head, that was always strangely voiced by Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy. “How very logical Bernard,” he spoke to me “I too am a fan of logical music, and may I say, I would logically love to suck your cock right now if I was not a showerhead.” I was rudely interrupted by Alister banging on the door shouting “SOME OF US HAVEN’T PISSED IN 5 HOURS, SO CAN YOU DETOXT FASTER.” It’s not often I reach a pure state of hallucinogenics, so I was gonna savour every last second of my time with Leonard Skynard. “Piss off,” I shouted back “I’m trying to get a blowjob from Mr Spock, do you fucking mind?” As much as I expected Alis to be the one kicking the door off it’s hinges, it was Verlaine who breached and cleared that bathroom, in a desperate attempt to board Spock’s enterprise. Disappointment and shame filled the room, when they realized I was still in the process of ridding myself of hallucinogenic shit, that didn’t stop them from taking their well needed piss, while folding their arms and shaking their heads at me the whole time. This was gonna be a long fucking assignment.