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I can't begin to tell you the number of people who tried to talk me out of marrying him. He's more than twice your age, they said. He's unstable, they said. He's a hack trying to play in the big leagues, one of them said (and it felt so good to tell him to get stuffed, years later). You can do so much better than him, they said. You're a good-looking coyote male, giving up your life for nothing, they said. He can't even fuck you, a few of them said (you can guess which ones they were, I'm sure). He'll drive you to the poor house, they said. He's not even respectable, they said.

For a while, I tried to respond to them, tried to defend him, tried to defend myself. Then I gave up. There was no point trying to explain it. To some few, I said, "You had to be there." To a few others, I referred them to the book_The Professor and the Madman,_ as if they actually would read it. Most of the people I know don't read, or at least they don't read anything but porn, and even then, they prefer that it have lots and lots of accompanying pictures, so that they don't have to read too much to figure out what's going on. That, by itself, is one of the reasons that I chose him to love, honor, cherish, all the rest. That and, as Harriet Vane said of Lord Peter Wimsey, "the pleasure of hearing him talk piffle." Maybe you'll understand. I'll just have to hope that someone will.

I was born old. That's how most people tried to describe me, when they bothered to describe me at all. I had little to no interest in passing fads and fancies. Part of it was a native intelligence that no one really acknowledged, and that my parents tried to beat out of me. I gloss over that part; it's not relevant now, other than to explain why I was on my own so young, why I did some of the more questionable things that I did, and why I didn't much care for kits and pups my own age. My folks loved it when the neighborhood yowens tried to "din some sense into me," to "keep me from isolating myself in books," to "help me learn people skills." The actual words were "bullying" (when they were yelling insults at me), "theft" (when they stole my books and threw them into mud puddles, trash bins, or fires), and "assault and battery" (when they managed to get me culled from enough of the herd to kick my tail for me). When both my parents actively joined in with all three, the "protection agencies" stepped in, and there followed what I called The Interesting Years, starting about age 12.

You want to know a strange truth of this brave new world? Nobody likes a smart ass. Or a smart canine, or a smart feline, or a smart anything. This means "nobody," especially my parents, and even the few foster parents I stayed with for a while. In those cases, it was "well-meaning" that took the place of intelligence, and I suppose I could show some gratitude for that. The point is, though, that "Stupid" has become its own protected class in this society, so much so that psychometric tests are being adjusted downward. Fifty years ago, someone who made an "average" score of 100 on an IQ test would, these days, score about 110 or higher. They've "dumbed down" the tests to meet the current crop of "dumfuks," as the non-existent term would have it. This means that the vast majority of points on the bell curve has taken a shift closer toward "idiot." Hell, most folks wouldn't even know what that last sentence meant, and they'd comfort themselves that, obviously, it doesn't mean anything "important." To use the form of a contemporary meme, 92 is the new 100.

Is it any wonder that I lost myself in books? By the time I was 14, I'd read over 350 books. (Yes, I kept a list. I was never really "OCD" in any clinical sense, but I certainly was, and am, a list-maker.) Some of them were simplistic works, but I read them. I avoided modern trash, went right for the good stuff, from Williams and Abrashkin's_Danny Dunn_books to the "juvenile" books by Heinlein and Asimov. I discovered so much as I got older, reaching further and further into the vast library of great works, but even as a pup, I could smell a good story from a kilometer away. It was how I looked at the world, how I was able to see what the world was all about, and how I learned to look inside myself for who I really wanted to be. I couldn't always act on it because, as I've said, no one likes a smart 'yote, but at least I knew who I was.

For instance, I knew from an early age that I was attracted to other males. It was never an issue for me, other than the need to know when to be "out and proud" and when to be just plain quiet. Lying, pretending, deflecting, all of the "learned skills" that any self-evolving adolescent develops in order to survive his elders. As I outgrew the foster system (in a variety of ways), I developed another learned skill to figure out who the marks were, when it came time to need more money than was afforded me from minimum wage and temporary office jobs. I was a frugal young pup, in comparison to most, but no one can live on the piddling pay from hourly wages. Everyone knew what it meant when a young, slim, reasonably well-proportioned male sought "generous males" to visit. I turned "legal age" about four years early (foster parents none the wiser), and no one ever questioned it; after I actually caught up to "legal age," I sometimes lied in the other direction, just a little, because it gave the "generous males" the gauze of even further moral turpitude, with an accompanying increase in their generosity. I'd no intention of making it a full-time profession. I kept it to a minimum, tried not to be greedy, maintained my caution, my health, my gym membership (itself paid for several times over by other members, in various situations, sometimes right there in the steam room), and tried to remember the line from the song that said, "Don't regret what you did to live."

Even in those Interesting Days, I kept hoping to find that mysterious, elusive "him" that I had only dreamed of. It was rare that any male in my immediate vicinity attracted my attention. The good-looking ones were usually stupid, and the geeky ones lacked enough self-confidence to give even a one-off-quickie a try, much less any sort of relationship. It wasn't easy to find the right combination of attractiveness, intelligence, creativity, self-confidence, and a tolerance for (or even appreciation of) a pup's wordplay. You see, although I parlayed my youth and modest use of the weight room into a financial supplement, I never really thought of myself as good-looking. I was a nerd, and in my early-teen days, I was comparatively scrawny even for a 'yote. Look at me now. You want to know where this came from? At first, it was an attempt to keep from being pushed around; later, it was to benefit my sideline activities. Ultimately, though, it was because I wanted to be strong for him, to be there for him, and to please him besides. It was never "about me," and yet it was never about anything else. You can only give what you have. It's called "enlightened self-interest." He taught me that.

I met him in what was slowly becoming known as "the Internet." It amazed me, at the time, to discover that I could talk to people anywhere in the world. Well, as long as they knew English; I might be bright in some ways, but learning another language was not my long suit. People invariably thought I was older than I was, because I spoke in complete sentences and could converse intelligently on many topics. This, by itself, turned off a great many would-be conversations (yet another penalty for being intelligent). Some found out my age and thought I was lying; some discovered it and turned the conversation to pornographic role play. Both types were eschewed from my lists quickly. What little "porn play" I had in my real life was enough; there was never a desire for mere sex when, honestly, it served no purpose.

The other fascinating thing about this technological playtoy was the evolution of what most people would now simply call a website. Devout reader that I was, I became bemused (and, occasionally, amused - especially since I knew the difference between those words) by the daily-growing opportunities to read new works by new authors. I'd nearly doubled my reading list by this time, so I was more than a little finicky. For a long time, I was reminded of the old logical theorem of the infinite number of monkeys at keyboards, eventually reproducing the works of Shakespeare. Most of what I read told me that the idea was no longer valid. Sometimes, though, I found some works worth reading, things that made me think, made me laugh, made me cry, made me want to contact the author to discover if he were this way in real life. I had read T. S. Eliot, so I'd been cautioned about the difference between "the mind which creates and the creator who suffers." According to Eliot, the greater the artistic work, the greater the difference between these two aspects of the artist; in a Dorian Gray sort of twist, the more beautiful the art, the uglier or meaner the artist. From what I had read of this badger's work, if Eliot were right, he'd have to have been a pluperfect asshole and a horror to behold.

He wasn't, of course. I took the chance of leaving comments on his works, and he responded to each one with kindness and appreciation. I found a way to leave private messages for him, and I became more effusive in my praise and my prose. He was no less kind, apologizing if his responses had taken too long, appreciating my interest. Our conversation grew slowly over time, and I began to realize that Eliot wasn't entirely wrong. The badger was suffering, acutely, but he put whatever veneer he could over his troubles and put on the brave face for the majority of the world. He even apologized to me for sometimes showing his weaknesses. It was when I quoted Eliot to him directly that things changed.

I wasn't trying to seduce him; it wasn't some sort of come-on, and it wasn't pandering either. That, in part, is what I was talking about, you see. Most people don't even know who T. S. Eliot was, or maybe they know the musical_Cats,_ maybe even glanced over "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" if it had been inflicted upon their uncaring minds in high school, but few had ever heard of Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent." You can blame my inability to stop reading for my familiarity with the piece. How do you think I'd been able to amass such a reading list? I had books in my backpack, in my living room, next to my bed, near the crapper - anywhere I might pause for a few minutes to turn a few pages. In another lifetime, I'd have finished my schooling proper and gone to uni by then, but that wasn't in the cards I was dealt. What I did instead was to turn my having fallen in love with literature into falling in love with a certain literary badger.

That took time, too. It wasn't instantaneous... well, looking back on it, maybe it was, in one way or another. It got so he would listen to me, actually read what I'd written about comparing his works others, make comments on it as if they were papers for a lit-crit class. He would test me, in various ways, just as I would tease him in various ways. Not with anything sexual; that would have been too easy for me, and as I realized later, it would have been cruel besides. He wasn't too well versed in the emerging technology that became known as "social media." He once said that it was because he wasn't very social, much less technological. Regular users of the new electronic frontier were already beginning to use and to create unpronounceable acronyms for almost anything presumed to be a common phrase. In one bit our correspondence, I used YDFC, which I explained was for "Young, Dumb, Fulla Cum," bemoaning that it was about all I'd ever found in my searches for a lover or mate. I wanted more, I said, and I was willing to wait to find that elusive "him," whoever he was.

It was the first time that the subject of age came up. We had been corresponding for the better part of three full seasons. We'd met in the spring (a good omen, no doubt, had I thought to notice), and it was January by then. Some personal information had been shared between us, as we became more friendly, but when I broached the idea of my difficulties in attracting a "true match" (as I'd begun to call it), there seemed to be a slight change in the tone of our private writing. It wasn't a bad change, or a painful change, just a sense of something being - for lack of a word - more specific than before. He'd asked my age, for the first time, and I told him the truth: At the end of February, I would turn 24. When he responded, he said only "55." That was the whole message. I wrote back only, "What month?" He sent back, "October will be 56." So I said, "Sounds like a better thing to celebrate than Hallowe'en."

Summer had barely begun before we spoke seriously about meeting one another. He'd never been secretive about where he lived, nor had I; the idea simply hadn't come up. It was about a three hour drive from my town to his, and I asked if I could stay overnight with him. His response might strike you as odd: He insisted on paying for a motel room for me. I'd told him that I expected nothing, that a sofa would be just fine with me. He seemed insistent, and in a way it bothered me. Was it my past? I'd held nothing back, once the ice was broken between us. He knew about everything. I'd even shared some of my diaries. At one point, he'd said that I should consider writing my own story. Perhaps that's what this is, why I'm telling you. He said that he would explain when he saw me. That, I realized, would have to do. Truth told, it diminished nothing of my anticipation of the meeting, but rather increased it.

I took it as a pleasant Saturday drive in the country, on what William Least Heat Moon had called the "blue highways." The whole time that I drove, I found myself experiencing a kind of excitement I'd not known for years. I'd seen a photograph of him on his web page, but what did he look like really? Some furs take poor photos because their bodies, their faces, are too animated for a still photo to capture what they really look like. More than that, even though I knew the colors of his fur, I didn't know what it felt like. What would his voice sound like? What would he smell like? (Canines have a keen sense of smell, and it's not something that we can just turn off; there are some furs who, to me, just don't smell right.) There were emotional factors - what would it feel like to be in his presence, actually near him? Would he offer me a paw to shake? What would that feel like? I wasn't just meeting him; we'd more or less done that over the past year. I was going to_experience_ him, and the anticipation was amazing.

I found the motel easily enough - right off the old highway - and after I'd checked in, I called the number that he'd given me to tell him I'd arrived. He answered quickly enough and asked if I wanted to wait for dinner. I told him the truth: I didn't want to wait. He agreed to come collect me at the motel, and we'd go out for coffee or something. I stopped myself from suggesting that we didn't have to go out. It was something I sensed, and for once in my foolish life, I listened to intuition. I simply agreed and told him the room number. It was one of the old-style motels, only 20 units, where each room's door opened onto the parking lot, so he could pull into a space next to my own car. About ten minutes, he said, unless I needed more time. I tried not to sound too eager when I told him that would be fine.

His timing was punctual. The knock at the door was firm, yet soft. I didn't spoil my first glimpse of him by looking through the fish-eye peep-hole. I opened the door and saw him - really saw him - for the first time. I was right: His photograph could not do him justice. He stood a little shorter than myself, stocky, perhaps even a little flabby, but his clothing and fur were well-tended. He showed his years a bit, but not through any fault other than that of nature. The black stripes of his face were touched faintly with gray, and the white of his muzzle had begun to show some slight dinginess of wear, but his eyes - in real life - those sparkling, alert, jet black eyes told me so much at once that I could barely understand any of it.

"You must be Raymond," he said softly, extending his forepaw to me.

"I'd be a fool to deny it," I said. I took the proffered paw gently, and he gave it a squeeze. "And you, I presume, are Neville." I tasted the name on my tongue for the first time and found it more sweet than even I had hoped.

"No presumption at all," he said, "and what I am is lucky to meet you."

He asked if the room was satisfactory (the motel owner was a friend of his), and I assured him that it was quite cozy. I closed the door behind me, and he moved with me to the passenger side of a comfortable minivan of reasonable vintage, where he opened the door for me. I mention this because it's how he was with guests, and at this point, that was who I was. I was an honored guest, and yes, we were friends by this time, but I still was his guest. That was what had started forming in my mind as the late afternoon found us at a small independent coffee shop where he was, apparently, a regular. In a quiet corner, in the most comfortable of chairs, we spent our first hours of conversation in blissful ignorance of anything or anyone around us. We retired for dinner only when both of us realized that we had moved from peckish to ravenous. Dinner was only a short drive away at another independent establishment, this one offering genuine_comida Mexicana_ (as opposed to Tex-Mex or fast-food Mex), and he was welcomed as a regular at this establishment as well. We shared yet more hours of conversation, closing down the restaurant.

He drove back to the motel, and both of us were reluctant to end the evening just yet. I invited him in, but he suggested that we sit outside in the mild summer evening and talk under the stars. A picnic table with attached benches, all remarkably clean, had been placed far enough away from the motel rooms that quiet voices shouldn't reach. We talked until I realized that it was well past midnight. I asked him to stay with me, just to sleep, and he smiled. "You're making the assumption that I could resist you, Raymond."

"Why are you?" I smiled back.

"Two reasons," he said, his black eyes reflecting a hint of starlight. "I want to be sure we meet again. I want you to come visit me, as often as possible, in fact. I've rarely enjoyed this much conversation, and certainly not from a pup of your tender years. So I want something more to look forward to."

"I think I want that too," I said softly. "Which, in a way, is very strange, considering that I have the libido of a fox in heat, generally."

He chuckled quietly in the deep night. "That would indeed be something to look forward to."

"What's the second reason?"

Standing slowly, he took my forepaw in his, and began walking me back to my room. "That," he said, with a certain solemnity, "is for yet another time."

At my door, he kissed the back of my paw in truly continental style - no one had ever done that for me before, and it made me shiver slightly - and he said that he would come by to take me to breakfast before I was to head back to my home. He said a soft goodnight, climbed into his van, and drove away. I turned inside, closing the door behind me, not bothering with the room lights. The dark was comforting to me, and I just sat on the bed for a little while, feeling the entire day with my heart and my head, to emboss it upon my memory. The creator who suffers had surely had his share of suffering, but he was no less beautiful than the mind that creates. Eventually, I stripped to the fur and crawled between the sheets of the comfortable if empty bed. I experienced something then that surprised me more than I could say: I felt immensely desirous, but not the least bit horny. Had he been there with me, I would have hoped to be sexual with him, but it wasn't about sex. I felt hungry, but not at all for food. I had a craving that I would understand only later. You've already figured it out, but I was still young enough that I couldn't make the connection. I was plenty bright enough, but I lacked the experience, or perhaps I should say that I was finally having the experience and didn't know what to do with it. I fell asleep, curious, wondering, yet comforted.

He called at a perfectly respectable time for a Sunday, treated me to a lavish breakfast (and yet more conversation), then took me back to the motel. I'd already packed up (only an overnight bag, after all) and checked out. I asked him for some more time, and we went to sit at another picnic table, this one under a great spreading chestnut tree (where, no doubt, Longfellow's village smithy would stand, were he still in existence). We talked still more - we never came to what Burroughs had called "the end of words, the end of what could be done with words." With great reluctance, we both realized that I'd be wise to get back on the road, and although it may sound strange, I was glad that we were both unhappy at the parting.

"Raymond," he said as we stood next to our cars, "I've never spent a better weekend. The only reason that I won't kiss you goodbye is because I want to savor that anticipation a little longer. Or am I presuming that you want to be kissed?"

"My respect for your wishes is all that's stopping me from kissing you right now." I smiled softly. "It would be very easy for me to fall in love with you, Neville."

"You've already won me, if truth be told." He chuckled softly, affectionately, at the expression I must have shown him. "I want to see you again, and soon. I told you that there was a second reason why I was resisting you. It takes time to explain, and I want it to be when we are together, so I must apologize for keeping up too much suspense. Will you trust me just a bit longer?"

"Without hesitation," I blurted, barely believing that he'd said that he wanted me. I took a chance and reached out to cup his cheek gently. He put his forepaw over mine and held it there, then turned his muzzle to kiss my palm, and I felt myself shiver. He kissed the back of my paw again, then opened his arms for a hug. I tried my very best to keep from crushing his body close to mine. It was the first time that I'd actually held him, and I knew that in that moment that I would never stop craving that touch. It took a long moment for us to separate, and I had to stop myself from kissing him. It wasn't time for that yet.Yet. That was the word that I clung to.

"Raymond," he whispered. "I don't want to go either. Dare I ask if you're able to come see me next weekend?"

"Only if you'll let me drive here on Friday night. Neville, I promise that I'll stay on the couch, I won't try anything. We've talked about your tough times, financially, and I don't want to cost you money for a motel. Please."

He hesitated only a moment. "I will write to you tonight. I'll give you my answer then. But whatever way, I will see you Friday night."

I took his forepaws in mine, and I don't care if you believe me or not - I damn near cried. It was all I could do to separate from him, and if my feelings were correct, the same was true of him. I watched him drive off, and I got myself on the road using some kind of automatic pilot. Being summer, it was still light out, and since it wasn't one of the various holiday weekends, traffic wasn't a great concern. Most of my mind was still burning the memory of our time together into my warmest thoughts. I was as giddy as a yowen mooning over his first crush, and quite frankly, it scared me silly. All those questions I had during the trip up to see him had a dozen answers each, and a hundred more questions behind. I'd not had a chance to touch much of his fur, but it looked so soft. I caught the slightest scent of him - no perfumes, no artificial scents, just the clean of basic soap and perhaps the faint hint of nervousness. His voice, oh that voice, such a range of emotions and sounds and accents when he spoke in a different language, pronouncing phrases in French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Yiddish, some I knew, some I didn't, but it was all so... so...

You're smiling at me. I'm laughing too, don't worry. It was a crush, a huge one, no question about it. I didn't know how to describe it to myself at the time. I was running ahead of the car that I was driving! I beat myself to my own home, threw my stuff down in the living room, and ran to my computer. That was stupid, of course; it was still early evening, and Neville wouldn't have written back to me that quickly.

In my email in-box, I saw a message from him with a time stamp barely half an hour after I had left him at the hotel. It said simply this:Raymond - for a writer, I seem to be at a loss for words to describe how much I enjoyed your company this weekend. Perhaps it will be enough if I tell you that I very much hope that you will be my guest at my home this next weekend. Please forgive an old fur his indiscretion, but I so very much hope that you are who I perceive you to be. This, my sweet young coyote, will be explained when I tell you that second reason that I resisted you, despite all my desires. I apologize for the suspense, as I must tell you when you are with me. Just know that I will tell you, and if you are who I think you are, you will understand all. Please, my lovely Raymond, please know that you will be my most honored guest, regardless. Know also, little prince, that you may have tamed a badger for yourself. Most fondly yours, Neville.

What? Oh, of_course_ I memorized it. I began to commit it to memory just as soon as I stopped weeping long enough to read the words on my screen clearly. I reread it as many times every day as I could. I made some arrangements during the week, with him and with my work, and I was able to make that Friday a half-day, and I was back in Neville's town by mid-afternoon. I had contacted him before I left, as well as from a rest stop that I made along the way. I took my time, making sure that I didn't succumb to highway hypnosis or anything. I was eager, not stupid. I arrived, whole and undamaged, at his address. I almost didn't knock on his door. No, I know exactly why. When you anticipate something that you want so much, and it's finally there... it's scary. But as you've probably guessed, I knocked. And Neville answered.

And my life changed.

...to be continued