First of all, I apologise for the quality of this photo. Believe it or not, I've actually used a camera before, but I was forced in this situation to use my cellphone's camera, a piece of equipment so notoriously crappy it's known in some circles (the inside of my skull) as the Notorious P.O.S.
Now then. What are we looking at here?
Last night I was invited to an art event in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is a place where cool is created in giant subterranean factory vats, and then shipped out to the rest of the country, who don't, in fact, want it, so it is shipped right back to Williamsburg, where it encounters itself going the opposite direction, which creates a rift in the fabric of space/time. This has multiple repercussions on the interstellar level, but the most immediate effect is that it makes everyone wear pants that make their asses look very weird and bulge-y.
But I digress.
The event in question was a group kinetic art show where people would be making real art in real time, while real people watched them and drank real beer and got real drunk. My friend Jay was one of the artists, and was working on a continuing project of his; painting portraits of Furries, or Fur Suiters.
I've been hearing about this subculture for years now, usually in the context of people who have sex while wearing fur suits, but I'd talked to Jay enough to find out that the sex Furries (who I believe are known as Plushies) are actually a smaller subset of the greater Furry culture, so I went, confident that I would not wind up being molested by a giant racoon. Although even if there had been Plushies there, I would have been safe, since I am a relatively unhairy man, except in the places where every man, except for those involved in the sex industry, is hairy.
There were quite a few of them there, maybe ten all in all, posing for two painters and some photographers and videographers. The room was small, and very hot, but the Furries were pros, and held their poses for quite some time, only occasionally disappearing behind a curtain to tear their own heads off and rehydrate, using their paws to open and drink bottled water, like any human being might.
I chatted with a guy in a fox suit, who told me he'd gotten into Furry culture while attending a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Convention, and happening upon a Furry event by accident, and was hoooked. He said he'd bought his Fox suit, which was pretty spectacular, but that lots of the Furries make their own, and go to great effort and expense to do so. He didn't seem particularly weird to me, but I'm a pretty easygoing fellow, so I might not be the best judge of weird.
I asked him his name at one point and he said- Which one? Apparently each Furry has three names. His human name, his furry name, and the name of his fursuit character. I chose the character, of course, which turned out to be Crash, which is an excellent name for a six foot cartoon fox, in my opinion.
I stuck around for a little while, pretty sure that this was the only time I'd be hanging out with this type of person, and as I walked home, weaving amiably down the street with beer steaming out of my pores, it occured tome that they were very much like Civil War re-enactors, except that their great battle had yet to occur, and their sacrifices had not yet been eulogized. I went to sleep thinking of how Ken Burns would immortalize them.
When I woke up, I apologized to the man on whose lawn I was sleeping, and headed home to write these brief thoughts to you, dear reader, in hopes that whatever costume you may be wearing--farmer, hipster, businessman, or furry blue dragon, that you remember to stop from time to time, remove your head, and cool off.
