THAT DAY

A challenging email: Gordon B, a dream-contributor to the World Dream Bank who I respect for his intelligent, transcendent dreams, finds my furry orientation perverse, even obsessive; he thinks living in San Francisco may have numbed me to immorality. I'd put it just the other way round--people needing to lay out universal sexual codes are the obsessives! I have a hardwired sensory difference--I read the bodylanguage of most creatures as well as that of humans (often better); my world is full of two-leg, four-leg and winged people. This doesn't mean I want to hump your chihuahua.

And cities are wicked? San Francisco (can't speak for Glasgow or Karachi) teaches tolerance for your own weirdness, yes. But the result is, you zoom through growth-stages. The opposite of numb! If you stop, it's only because you've found you.

The trouble is, I haven't found anyone else. So as I fall asleep I ask my dreams "Never mind sexual politics--I'm still alone. What about love?"

THAT NIGHT

I love Snapdragon. But what a shifty affair! Snap changes when the moon grows full enough. In crescent, Snap's a man, and with a buff boyfriend; but he and I have learned to share Snap's lunar phases--we're Californian. No, our isosceles woe runs stranger than

mere envy. First, Snap finds his manhood-loss traumatic. Though a moon-turn to a sleek wingéd silver dragon is no prob! He retains his mind and memory. Snap's shame ain't species dysphoria; glad to be draconic. Sweet in cool night-air to soar...

But he becomes she, and that he cannot stand! Makes her gruff. An arsonist of snorts. It's why we dubbed her Snap. Grump fangs! Oh, you may have thought Snapdragon was a flowertrue moniker. Nah. Guys (skin or scale) can't bear lilynames well! Butch she sulfuriously admits that three or flor melon-belly-mooned

nights each month, 'Snapdragon' sorely fits. In past, as the moon climbed, Snap settled down. But tonight the mood waxes; Snap snaps aloud "I hate my pussy." This can't be good! Snap's dragonphase is always my hot date, since I like girls; but after that "I hate" we figure both of us should stick around.

Oh, wait--did I forget to say I'm a werewolf? "Here, were, and not going away!" I'm a girl (no, not bitch) in both my forms.

Always have felt centered, more at home as girl (of any feather) than a guy. So how can I tease Snap? I'm just as bi-

assed. What lesson lurks in all of this? Well, it proves love fuels our tangle, not just lust; skin fur or scale, my ideal is a fulltime girl. Yet here I am, awash in makeshiftery, with all these guys. Ugh! It must be love; it isn't wise.

We coax Snap onto bed, in her velvet room and pounce on her together--never gone equilateral before, but drastic measures seem kneaded. She struggles, laughs, relents anon, pulls us onto her, and as we slide and cream we know she'll be all right...

...at least tonight. This moon.

NOTES

• Monthly snappishness now chronic: Me. For years I had attacks of shivers, sweats and shakes. But now they're chronic, restricting work and play and love. I'm bored and snappish.
• Awkward triangle:
  1. My ex-girlfriends Em and Sarah, with whom I stumbled into an awkward triangle--a sort of equilateral marriage. It blew up of course. It's why we're exes. But one reason we risked the experiment was that they, like me, were furs, shifters, barely human.
  2. Or are these three internal? Am I an inner trinity? Or, since there are six of us during the cycle, am I... hexed?
• Were-creatures: Gordon B's letter surprised me--calling furries fetishistic, obsessive, cityfolk blind to their immorality. I think the dream's saying sex isn't a fetish game for me but how I express love. And what I love is sensitivity and grace. Qualities mocked here in America as weak--as femme. The dream makes me wonder, though, if I'm tougher and more butch than I realize. If these are sides of me, I'm balanced: 3 male + 3 female. Though only 3 manifest at once...
• Our lunar selves: I often change sex and species in dreams. Don't you?
  1. The narrator is likely my "conscious"--I identify more as female than male, both dreaming and awake.
  2. Snapdragon is female in dreams, but resents it! Whoever Snap is, he has a strictly male self-image. Does he scorn femme as weak? Part of me, my ambitions maybe? Or is this Gordon, my correspondent uncomfortable with gender-bending.
  3. The nameless, steady male: my body? Enduring our silly dramas patiently out of love.
• Female dragon in dreams: a recurring dream-character of mine, nicknamed Puff--not for the hippie song but for its source, a legendary sea-serpent off the island of Kauai, near Hanalei (the real "land called Hanna-Lee"). She's a tough, wise character who now and then slips me knowledge of the future and of past lives. Hardly someone to be ashamed of!
• ACTION: Be patient with Gordon B. In my answer, emphasize that furriness isn't a choice--or a fetish. Do only bald skin, round-pupiled eyes with whites, and little round monkey ears turn you on? Now that's a fetish! Furs like me are wired to read a broader range, that's all.
• ACTION: Be patient with me, too; I don't handle illness well.
• ACTION: Indulge my ambitious side more. Act more butch and see what happens!
• ACTION: Know your preferences! In the dream, I go beyond appearances or conventions. But don't compromise on the spirit. Femme or butch, I seem to need tolerant sharing, frankness, trust... and magic.

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