San Antonio is host to yet another furry convention. There was one a couple of years ago. Bess and I drove past the hotel playing host to the event a couple of times just for the sake of watching adults dressed as bright orange cartoon rodents wander back and forth in broad daylight. Despite some initial sneering, it was difficult to really settle on what we thought of these people, even whether we really thought anything at all.
For those of you who have been avoiding both the internet and popular culture for the best part of the last couple of decades, furries are persons - adults from all walks of life - who spend time dressed in anthropomorphic animal costumes. They communicate online or in person at dedicated conventions in the persona - or fursona, as they seem to prefer - of their chosen animal. I see it as essentially the same deal as dressing up as Batman and attending a comic book event, although many furries would probably insist that their calling is something which runs much deeper.
I have no horse in this particular race, although I know at least one furry, and he's a nice guy so I'm reluctant to pour scorn on something which he clearly enjoys. Bess and I watched Fursonas, a 2016 documentary examining the community dynamic, directed by Dominic Rodriguez, so most of what I know comes from that.
The documentary proposes, amongst other things, a community of people who identify with animal personas in some notionally spiritual sense, because naturally it has to be something deep. It can't be anything so simple as that you just like dressing up as a bright blue raccoon, because that would be weird. I don't buy the spirit animal angle, or that identifying as a googly-eyed panda is in any way comparable to having been born with a sexual orientation other than one of those sanctioned by fundamentalist religious fanatics. One reason for my inability to buy it is that the fursuits - for which furries pay one hell of a lot of money - aren't really meant to represent animals; they're cartoon animals or mascots, cutesy anthropomorphic descendants of Saturday morning children's television, Bugs Bunny, Top Cat, Sonic the Hedgehog and the rest. They're a child's eye view of the animal kingdom representing, as with much popular culture, a retreat into the secure, simplified realm of childhood - a tropism which is probably not in itself difficult to understand.
Is it harming anyone?
I'm not sure it's even a meaningful question given that nothing is entirely without the potential for harm under certain circumstances. The character I found most alarming whilst watching Fursonas was Boomer the Dog, an IT technician who strives to live his life as a dog, specifically as a Berger des Pyrénées dog. He has a fursuit he made himself from shredded newspaper, and wears twin ponytails on top of his head which he describes as his puppy ears. He comes across, at least to me, as someone who has retreated into a sedated Disney-inspired child state as a means of skating around a nervous breakdown of Biblical proportions. He's so far gone as to have repulsed others in the furry community, who have accordingly denounced him as just some nutcase whilst themselves dressed as bright pink chipmunks and prairie dogs. Personally, I found him creepy and slightly disturbing as I do almost anything with even the faintest whiff of Disney or its infantile aesthetic, and I really wonder if Boomer's private obsession is doing him any good; but on the other hand, he claims that it makes him happy, and he certainly seems happy, and he doesn't appear to give two shits what the rest of us may think. Additionally, I'm not sure Boomer's private obsession is necessarily any worse than those of your average truck-driving Coors-chugging shithead. When it comes to persons with whom I'd least like to find myself trapped in an elevator stuck between floors, I'm not sure Boomer even makes the list.
Bess and I turn up at the hotel. It's Saturday afternoon and we're going to hang out at the bar and watch convention attendees come and go. Hanging out at the bar is free.
There are a few of them in the lobby - some sort of reindeer, what is probably supposed to be a fox, a few people in regular clothes but wearing a tail or cat ears. We came out of curiosity, roughly expecting it to be sort of funny, but it isn't really anything. They seem idiotic, slightly pitiful, and just enough so as to suck the fun out of our nurturing such uncharitable thoughts; and then our guy turns up, the one we both know in real life. Today he's working security so he hasn't come as his fursona. He's glad to see us, but probably feels a little awkward. At least it seems so. I hope not because, after all, Bess and myself are the intruders in this situation.
A giant child arrives in the lobby - someone dressed in a suit resembling a little Japanese girl with purple hair tied in pigtails, not even an animal. It seems like a step too far in the wrong direction, and it definitely tips over into creepy.
'Is that Uncle Kage?' Bess asks me.
We gaze across the lobby to a middle-aged man in a white coat, like that of a pharmacist.
'I can't tell,' I say. 'It could be.'
Having watched Fursonas, Uncle Kage seems to us like the closest thing the furry world has to a celebrity, so naturally we're sceptical; but then again, why wouldn't it be Uncle Kage?
Pronounced ˈkɑːɡeɪ, the name is a contraction of his fursona, Kagemushi Goro. He seems to be the emperor of the furries, although opinion is divided. On the one hand he seems both eloquent and passionately vocal in defense of his chosen community and their right to exist without the rest of us pointing and laughing. On the other, some see him as a dictator, as someone who has overstepped certain boundaries; and his apparent public loathing of Boomer the Dog as someone giving the rest of us a bad name seems to reflect better on Boomer than it does on Uncle Kage.
I finish my drink and we take the escalator up to the next floor where stalls of traders line the concourse to the main entrance of the convention. We're not going in, but we want to have a look around. The stalls specialise in merchandise relating to cartoon animals with big dopey eyes. There's nothing we would want to buy, which is about what we expected. Some of it is truly horrible.
Going back down the escalator we pass the man in the white coat. He's stood chatting to a couple of attendees in fursuits, and it's definitely him. It's Uncle Kage in person. For reasons I don't fully understand, I am momentarily star struck.
We leave, having taken as much as we could from the experience. I still don't know what I think. Excepting adults dressed as little Japanese girls, it's difficult to feel anything strong about what these people are doing, because it's really their business. In certain respects it strikes me as idiotic, but then plenty of things strike me as idiotic to the point of being dangerous, which this probably isn't.
The only thought I can form is that I now have a sneaky sort of admiration for Boomer the Dog, because that guy really doesn't give a shit what the rest of us think.
But again, maybe what I think doesn't matter.
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