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I wasn't always a total fuck-up like this, I swear.

I was the runt - got two brothers and two sisters older than me, so there was always a lot of life at home. It was a townhouse dad inherited, it'd been a nicer neighborhood in the past, but when furs moved to the suburbs, it had become a bit more run down, I suppose. I don't claim we lived in a ghetto, exactly, but we did have bars on our window. There were a few hustlers and streetwalkers too, I think, but when you were a kid, you didn't think about that. It was where you lived, you didn't really know for anything else. Don't know if I should call it "not knowing better", but...yes. Being a kid there was what it was. It was alright.

Dad worked in construction, long hours, which was the norm, of course. Mom worked as a secretary, to make the ends meet, and all that. She did pay much more than you'd think, even with that terrible pay she did receive, working for a smalltime business, doing odd jobs there. Dad was...and I guess he still is what sometimes is called a functioning alcoholic. He'd get drunk every weekend with his buddies and gamble, which often resulted in mom having to cover the bills while he'd managed to get an entire week's wages wasted. Sundays were awkward, with mom taking us cubs to church while dad would down at home with a cold cloth over his muzzle. Once when I was 12 or so, we came home and found him sleeping on the doorway to the bathroom, pants around his ankles, and he'd soiled himself, just like that.

Maybe that sums up a lot of stuff there. Dad wasn't a violent dad, not physically at least, but he was a rather distant figure, not really knowing what to do, perhaps, and struggling with his own problems, too.

That's how it was, growing up. I finished school and then it was time for high school. We happened to live on the edge of a school precinct, which meant that we'd always gone to high school on a school that was located to the next neighborhood, definitely nicer than the one where kids from our area usually went to. Call it good luck or not, but it was maybe good for the soul to go to a school that didn't have bars on the windows, and the like.

I was an awkward kid. I'd take the occasional tumble, and dad would call me a pansy for that. It was just a dirty word he liked using, instead of a wimp or the like. He didn't want a wimpy son. I tried my best not to be that, but I...I wasn't always the best example. Coming to high school, the PE teacher told me that if I was willing to put some work to it, I could do some good things with my body, he told me. Foxes could do a lot of thing, and not just running track, like the teachers before had always insisted I should do, much to my displeasure. I just didn't really...feel like it.

It was him who suggested I could do football. I was a bit hesitant at first, but after hitting the gym a bit, buffing up a little, I was soon tackling and running like anyone else, and that made me feel good. I was never much for the books, so getting to do something with my body and doing it good was really good for me. I even started making friends in the new school, which was good as well. Going in the middle of all these strange furs, some of them coming from different cultures and certainly different social and economical backgrounds...opened my eyes a lot.

But more about...that, later, I think.

Football meant that I also met Jacob Holden.

He was a tall, oversized, clumsy kid, obviously smart as hell, physical, too, loved the whole business of running and tackling and doing whatever you did on football fields. It was natural to him, so very natural. He was always the loudest, dirtiest, goofiest, craziest boy in the locker room, and all that. He just lived and breathed it, he didn't act, he simply was like that, a real screwball. He had a brother, too, a bit more bookish, just a little more reserved, but he could give a run for his brother's money, too, given the opportunity. That was Victor...Victor Holden...he did ice hockey, liked it better, Jacob said.

Cobb.

I started to notice...things...when I was quite young. Other boys at school told crazy tales about sneaking looks at their big brothers' porn magazines and the like, or spying on them making out with their girlfriends and the like...it was a lot of talk about boobs and pussies about boys who probably didn't even know what a pussy looked like. I listened, of course, and made up a few stories of my own, and didn't let it bother me too much.

Given enough hormones, it was starting to get a bit more serious...my paws quickly figured out what to do, and my mind...it didn't have much trouble, either. Vague images, locker room glimpses, peeks at magazines, clothes catalogues...there was something fascinating about male bodies, something I couldn't talk about with my friends.

We're talking about early 90's, now. There was this thing called AIDS that faggots got, and even our school had told about the danger of AIDS and of course, sex as a general, promoting abstinence and all that. But they also told about this thing called homosexuality, and it was the first time I heard that word, instead of a faggot, pansy, queer, and whatever other words there were, the usual schoolyard taunts for anyone who was a wimp.

The same ones I'd found myself speaking so easily, laughing together in a crowd, prancing through the school corridors, yelling these "funny" words left and right. I did it even if I thought that maybe...maybe the fact that I liked thinking about...that sort of things would mean...something that I didn't want to think.

It was weird to me. Everything on the media either said that they were wimps who dressed up like girls, or some crazy leather-clad gym guys, or that they only wanted to molest kids, and that they'd go to hell. I didn't do any of that...and my church, while it was certainly what you'd call...old-fashioned or even fundamentalist...well, they were old-fashioned enough that the old pastor never even mentioned...faggots. Maybe it'd make him feel dirty. It was easier to talk about other things, I think.

I was growing up, and so were...these things inside me, the ones I didn't want to explain to me. I tried dating a girl or two, really easy ones I picked simply because I'd heard from other football guys that the girls were a sure thing. Me being a footballer, too, I'd grown more muscular, tall, and...some might say, attractive, even, so it wasn't really that difficult to pick them up. Movies, dinners at Wendy's, a fumble...you can guess that my mind simply wasn't at it.

But then there was Cobb...good God, there was Cobb Holden, and he was doing things to me half of the cheerleading team was unable to. I couldn't share showers with him anymore, it was too much of a temptation to peek, and Cobb...he wasn't shy about his body, he'd parade around in the buff and you'd definitely see what Dobermans were made of...muscles even at that young age, and...he was handsome. And goofy, and we weren't the best of friends, by any means, but he never treated me badly, and I was invited over to do the regular stuff the football team always did. We even burned down Cobb's backyard once when trying to hold a barbeque there...everyone was so grounded after that one.

Jacob Holden...was there ever a more desperate first crush for a boy who was struggling with things inside him he knew he couldn't change, even if he'd tried everything, from prayer to cold showers to refraining from jerking off, in case those temptations would go away with...lack of use?

What a fool I was. Of course it didn't go away. Being more pent up than ever didn't help with trying to hide things such as boners in the locker rooms. After a week or so, I just gave up and let all the images go through my head like they always did.

I never told him. I never dared to do anything so wretched as to destroy my life for good. I didn't want my idol to think that I was a pansy, a queer, someone with AIDS...you knew what kind of ideas were going around at the time, when we'd talk crap about those gay furs.

High school went, and I was...pretty much on my own. My siblings had gone on their way, dad was...he didn't really work anymore, it was all up to mom and me now, the others didn't really want to come home anymore, knowing that they'd find my bitter, debilitated father sitting at the kitchen table either clutching a bottle or a hangover coffee. Mom was sad...the only way I could make it a bit easier was to work...but things weren't easy. I only had a high school diploma, not even a very good one, and college or other schools were out of question.

It was during those years that I started doing...things, too. There were places in a city as big as Cleveland, and this being early 2000's now, it wasn't impossible to find company. There were bars. Places. Alleys. There were places where you could find men, and do things with them. It was raw and rough, and often...much to my shame now, drunk, too. I wasn't sure what I was looking for...whether just to take the loneliness away, or to just get off...those beds offered little comfort against the things I felt inside me. It was even passion, when everything was stripped down to the bare essential of a few drinks, a hurried kiss, if you were lucky, and pants being dropped.

After a brief stint helping out at a car repair shop ran dry, and...well...a one-night fumble with a guy who put on some fatigues after we were done...I finally did what I'd been thinking about for a few years by that point. I enlisted. It seemed like a good idea...you'd get a job, a pay, and they'd pay you tuition, if you served well. It seemed like a great deal. Yes, I knew we were a country at war, but things had cooled down by then, with Afghanistan and Iraq...we were back to being a simple occupying force, and...if I was going to be sent overseas, it wouldn't be so bad. There were other places, too...maybe I'd be sent to Germany, or...Guam? South Korea didn't sound so bad, either.

I did pretty well. Discipline by shouting wasn't a new thing to me, and as long as I didn't fuck up, I did fine. Met some good furs, and learned a lot of new stuff. I was soon fixing all sorts of support equipment, communications, the like. It's a bit hush hush still, so let's leave it to there, but I knew my way with a soldering iron and a screwdriver, soon, and I had a nifty loupe.

Then it was Iraq...operation Iraqi Fucking Freedom. Being the Michaels of Arabia soon got old...endless patrols, tents, lockdowns in bases, the odd rush for our rifles when someone was driving a truck filled with homemade explosives charging towards us...and I would sit in my little room and fix radios, and that was fine. I didn't feel guilty that I wasn't out there, chasing fighters out of buildings, or the like...I was doing my bit. I was doing what I should.

I was flying under the radar in a lot of ways, of course. DADT was as ruthless as ever, but soon I found out that "out here", no-man's land could be an all-man's land. There were proposals...whispers...excuses about being really drunk, or just really missing their girlfriends...how many of those guys were straight, or just...in a some state of denial, like me, I'm not sure. I just know that a lot of cottaging took place in the base, and a lot of desert camo pants were dropped, in the backs of scolding hot storage rooms, little alleyways between barracks, the vehicle depot...

We were scared, and some furs took the fear out by chasing tail. Some of them didn't seem to mind to find a few balls under that tail, too. You weren't supposed to touch the local women, at least. Not a problem to me, obviously, but...

It all ended on a hot day. It was often hot, of course, but maybe my memory serves me in this respect, and tells that it was a particularly hot day. Stuck in a Humvee to deliver some equipment I was, fully geared up, sitting on the passenger's seat and supposedly on the lookout for anything suspicious.

That much I remember. I'm not sure how much of it has been fabricated by my mind, but I think that's how it started. I've no memories before I woke up in a tent somewhere, if only briefly. Not sure how long it had been...they didn't tell me yet. I was pumped up with drugs, and it still hurt, and I didn't know where I was.

"I've got his bowels coming out, someone care to get the SURGEON HERE STAT!"

The next time I remember anything persistent, I was in Germany, strapped up to tubes in bed with nurses clattering in German and not telling me what was going on. The number of bags hanging off the sides of the bed told me it was pretty bad, though. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would.

So what was my contribution, my sacrifice for the war effort? The IED that blew up the Humvee killed the driver and injured the four others onboard, me included. My right leg was gangrenous and needed to be chopped off below the knee, and a piece of shrapnel went through my body armor and deep enough to ensure that Technical Sergeant Tate Nathaniel Michaels was going to be shitting into a bag for months to come. Two liters of blood and about a foot of colon joined my leg in the biohazard waste...and that was the end of my war.

I came back to States soon enough, to this place called Walter Reed. Things were still a bit disjointed...morphine's a strange thing like that, I think...but soon, instead of warmongering, me and these others, these burnt, battered, sewn back together furs were doing things such as role playing visiting a supermarket or a bank...we were guys ranging from 18 to 30 years old, and we were treated like kindergarteners.

We even had play money, and juice boxes. And as much as I wanted to, it didn't feel ridiculous. It felt so strange, yes, but...looking at those faces, missing fur, teeth, bone, eyes, even...some of us missing limbs and trying to get used to our new prosthetics...trying to get used to the fact that we were ruined, that we were nothing anymore...we weren't fighting machines anymore, we were just chugging along and trying our best not to fall.

I fell a lot of times. I cried. I cursed myself, I threw my crutches to the wall, I kicked wheelchairs, I threw bedpans.

The furs at Walter Reed had seen it all. They told me to take my time.

They told me that I could get into a re-education program, once I felt alright. Whatever that meant...soon I was shipped off to Kirk City, given a laptop, a JavaScript manual and a lot of food stamps. Guess one had to eat, too...

Got a roomie, too, Marker. A scared kid with half of his face burnt away. A kind man, I learned, as soon as he dared to say more than a quick hello to me. I tried my best. It wasn't something I was used to doing, but if I was going to live with him, I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to mess things up by being an asshole.

New routines were easy to set in...work, home, work, going to the hospital for rehab, some more work, school. It was alright to me. It started to grow on me. The computer language started to make sense. I started to make friends. I started to do things, even going out a bit. Marker liked quiet evenings at home, too, so that was nice. He was a nice kid. I never had a little brother...getting a wolf as one was interesting to say the least.

And then there was Facebook, and there was...there was that night when I decided looking up all the furs I used to know back in Cleveland, furs I'd fallen out of touch with...and there was...there was Cobb Holden again.

In pink, with his brother Victor, declaring that he was gay and proud of it.

It almost made me believe that fate existed. Almost. It almost made me lose my lunch.

It made me do things.

It made me send the mail to his brother, whom I learned was living here. I knew it wasn't going to be a cheerful message...knowing that I'd been a bit mean to him when we were kids.

I didn't even expect him to answer.