Better Than Best Friends
Chapter 1
A Love Without Name
1 My name is Jonah Jahirah Alder Chipmunk, and I am, an unremitting, recalcitrant, god-forsaken pervert. It is said that the second circle of hell is reserved for those of whom can not control their lusts, to forever be blown by powerful winds this way and that. But such a punishment does not seem fitting in my case, for I have been nothing if not consistent in my object of desire, unnatural and inexplicable as it may be. And then there is the issue of volition in the matter. What if one could not chose not to desire something forbidden? Is desire even a choice? Does one chose to be hungry, or thirsty, or tired? How then can lust be a sin since it is a need just like any other and therefore not a choice? And can one chose whom they love and whom they loathe? If anything, in this moment I wish more than anything that I could just turn off this shameful need ... to hear his voice again, to see his face, to hold his paw in mine, to speak to him just one more time to tell him how sorry I am for what I have done. To have him hold me in his arms and tell me I am forgiven...
2 I'd gladly abandon my ungodly desires if only he would but forgive me. Living without his company and approval feels like living without oxygen to breathe, without joy to mitigate the sorrow of life, to be alive and dead all at once.
3 I have more or less ceased to engage with life at this point, and I'm uncertain I will have the will to continue living much longer. I have lost track of the days that have gone by. Day after day, hour after hour, painful minute after minute, I lie here, in my room, with the shades pulled down, unsure what to do with myself. I have cried out in pain so many times that I don't believe I have any tears left to cry. Emptied of all joy, and then painfully and slowly emptied of all sadness as well, I am left as nothing more than an empty unfeeling husk of my former self. There does not seem to be much of me left to even go on at this point.
4 Have I turned to God for forgiveness? Have I turned from my sin? Have I begged God for his mercy and grace? Absolutely! I have broken down many times, begging to have this sweet curse lifted from me, forsaking everything, even my most sacred love which I had vowed never to betray. I've prayed so hard and so many times for God to take these infernal feelings away from me that I have lost count. But nothing comes of it. Even Yah-Hasha remains dreadfully silent in my pain, and I am left feeling nothing but ashamed and foolish.
5 It's of no use. I have already crossed the point of no return it seems, and my God and even The Savior himself have abandoned me to my fate to slowly wither away until I am at last nothing at all. From dust to dust as they say, but does the dust contain the spirit? And whence comes the spirit that elevates the dust to a living and breathing soul? And whence goes the spirit when the body returns to the ground? As my spirit did not exist before I was born, perhaps my spirit is fated to be snuffed out just as it came into existence, just as it is so for the lower animals lacking speech and sentience. As for us higher animals, the children of the unholy union of Adam and his unsuitable helpers, it stands to reason that we too would return to nothing should Yah-Hasha ever truly abandon us. Perhaps this is what awaits me, not merely the death of the body, but the extinction of my soul as well, as befits the lowly and loathsome animal I have become.
6 I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can barely motivate myself to get out of bed to go to the bathroom. I find that even finding the motivation to continue breathing becomes increasingly difficult. All I can do it seems is lie here ... day after day,
7 and think about him ...
8 and all the moments we shared,
9 all the things we created,
10 the girls we teased,
11 the thrills we sought,
12 the birthdays we had,
13 the accomplishments we celebrated,
14 the brilliances we pulled off,
15 the snuggles we enjoyed,
16 and the pains we confessed,
17 ... in all these things we had found in each other a true companion, not merely a friend, not merely a love shared between two furs, but a sense that we were made for each other. More than that even, that our love was a special love, a love all our own:
18 A love like no other,
19 neither like friend nor brother nor lover,
20 a love without name,
21 a love above all loves,
22 a guileless love,
23 a love without aim
24 I believed God himself had specifically fashioned me for him and him for me, as something for the world to behold and be instructed from. That our souls had something in common, something difficult to put into words, a gentleness through which to see the world, an openness to ones heart. At the same time we were different, but not just any different, but in a complementary way, one informing the other, one leading into the other, in an endless cycle with no beginning and no end, like the ouroboros or the lemniscate.
25 Clearly I must have been mistaken, for God does not make mistakes. If he had truly made us to be an exemplar of his divine love in our love of each other than it would not have failed so spectacularly ...
26 As I lay here, all my memories of him flash before my eyes, swirling around my ceiling faster and faster until the phantasmagoria of it all is no longer under my control, my mind taking on a life of its own.
27 My folks probably think I've lost my god-damned mind, and perhaps I have. But how does one choose not to be insane? If I could tear this feeling from my chest, would I even want to? Even now?
28 Most furs would just distract themselves, keep busy to avoid the pain. But I can't. I get completely fixated. My mind refuses to think of anything else until I've solved the problem. I can't help it, it's just the way I am.
29 I keep reviewing my memories of him, every time he ever smiled at me, laughed with me (and hopefully not at me), every time he's ever raised an eyebrow of confusion, or become frustrated with me, in fact any reaction at all. But nothing is clear to me. I keep returning to the look on his face just before the unspeakable moment. How could I have misread it so spectacularly! Yet there were so many signs that said that like me, he too felt different about me. The way he would put his paw on mine, or kiss my forehead, or hold me gently as we napped together. Surely that could not all be my imagining. And yet clearly I had missed something essential, I had missteped, miscalculated, over reached, assumed more than there was. That possibility, that all the deep feelings I had, had only truly ever lived in my heart alone, filled me with such an endless feeling of darkness that I felt it would manifest and swallow me whole.
30 In spite of this slight glimmer of self awareness, this painful knowledge that my feelings may not have ever truly been returned, still I can not help but dwell continuously and obsessively upon him and us.
31 Take this cassette player for example I'm currently listening to. I've been lying here listening to my favorite mix tape he ever gave me. On it are all the songs we ever both liked. A playlist representing a perfect synthesis of us. I've been listening to it on repeat for days. It has irrevocably become the soundtrack of our whole life together.
32 I loved sharing my favorite music with him. We didn't always see eye-to-eye musically, but we never told each other what we had to listen to, and there was always plenty of music that we could both get behind.
33 Take that signed poster of Ra55itCorpse in my room for example. That's a souvenir from the night we went to our first and only concert of his. We were very lucky to discover well in advance that Ra55itCorpse would be hosting a show in our town, our humble valley, that summer.
34 We were both super big fans. I liked his underground and experimental credentials (he started from the indie underground scene and made his way towards moderate mainstream success), while he loved the evocative melodies and themes and his virtuosity at constructing his music in real time.
35 We both begged our parents to buy tickets for us so we could go.
36 His father said that he wouldn't pay for the tickets because, in his words "The man celebrates death and decay, and we do not abide such in our house"
37 My mother wouldn't pay for the tickets because they were simply too expensive, and Martin was inclined to agree, even though it was not beyond his means. He merely felt it was frivolous.
38 Luckily for the both of us, my Aunt Sophie came through. It turned out she was a fan of Ra55itCorpse herself.
39 She agreed to help us out in exchange for clearing out her garage. Her and her boyfriend had just recently acquired a new home, a real fix-er-up-er case they had got cheap. Unfortunately the previous owner had left the garage completely filled to the ceiling with junk. We spent the next couple weeks of summer clearing out that garage. We found many weird and disgusting things inside. Rotten food, rusty bicycles with mummified animorphic cats stuck in them, and a desiccated skull of an animorphic raccoon (the non-sentient kind), which I showed to him because I thought it was cool. I used it to make fun of his father making the skull say "I'm dead now, so I must be in league with Satan". That got him to chuckle a little, which made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I was always happy any time I could amuse him or make him smile. He always had such a warm and gentle smile. Sigh...
40 In any case all went well. We cleared out the garage in time thanks to both of our hard work together. We were already close, but working so hard together for a common goal I think brought us even closer still. I have fond memories of those days even though the actual work was anything but fun.
41 In any case our reward was a night that exceeded both our expectations. Ra55itCorpse was spectacular. The music was great and the showmanship top notch, with industrial light and sound design that was mesmerizing to say the least. We had a great time and we soon gave up our inhibitions and grooved freely to the music. We saw other boys dancing together and so we did too. We were young and naive and thought nothing of it. I wish I could go back to those innocent times, before me and him had been corrupted by the encroachment of adolescence and impending adulthood.
42 It seems he has already begun his journey, while I remain stuck in the past. Take that box over there. It contains everything I ever got from him. Well almost everything ... it doesn't contain that vile video tape he gave me that started this whole mess. I broke that disgusting tape and threw it in the garbage where it belongs.
43 Anyway, I started packing that box up when I caught him throwing a box of stuff I gave him out in the garbage. I should probably get rid of my box too. It's just too painful to hold onto all the memories attached with it, and yet ... I just can't make myself do it. It had been sitting there ever since the day I had angerly gathered up all the stuff to throw it all away. Throwing it all away would be like cutting the last fragile thread that connects us. After gathering all of it together I could not help but go through it item by item, reliving all the memories attached with it.
44 That day, a Friday I believe, I guess is when this all began. As I sat there remembering everything we had been through over the years, and how it had all suddenly come to a terrible end, well, I couldn't bring myself to go back to school anymore. I had tried everything I could think of to make amends, to apologize, profusely and repeatedly, and all it did was make the situation worse. I decided not to go to school anymore. All I wanted to do was indulge in my nostalgia day after day. The comic book we worked on together but never finished. The Rubrik's Cube we had worked on and I had finally solved in a moment of brilliance excited to show him I could solve it now. The green dragon hoody he used to like wearing all the time, that I had grown attached to. Finally I asked him if I could have it, and being the good friend he is he let me keep it and didn't even think it strange I should ask him for it. I remember hugging it, and sniffing it, because at first it still had a small amount of his rabbit scent on it. sigh...
45 Did I mention? I'm completely obsessed with all things rabbit on account of him. There is just something about the ears I can never get over. So slender, so delicate, so gentle, so warm. A big appeal of Ra55itCorpse is actually the fact that he wears a giant "zombie rabbit" helmet to every concert. In actual fact Ra55itCorpse is a mouse whose real name is Cole Copenhagen.
46 I remember in 3rd grade I got really interested in the biology of animorphic rabbits. I wrote a whole report about it and presented it to the class. He was there and was enthusiastic and supportive ... that is, until I started talking about rabbit reproduction and the fact that animorphic rabbits eat their own stool to fully get all the nutrients from their food. This seems to have caused him some embarrassment and teasing from the other kids in class. His family still didn't do that sort of thing, did they? I should probably explain the connection between animorphs, and the higher animals, the anthromorphs, who have languages, walk one twos instead of fours (generally), who wear clothes, live in houses of metal, stone, wood, and brick, and so on. Scientists say that the anthromorphs evolved from the animorphs through a process known as anthropomorphization. This would explain why some animorphic traits are retained in their anthromorphic analogues, such as my twitchy tail for example, or his twitchy little rabbit nose. I can climb trees just like animorphic chipmunks, and he can hop and dash just like an animorphic rabbit. He is also a bit skittish like an animorphic rabbit. I've been known to sneak up on him just because I find the way he gets startled kind of adorable, although I know I shouldn't.
47 Anyway, scientists haven't been able to explain why anthropomorphization happened in parallel across many but not all animorphic species which is why the religious explanation is still widely accepted. In this case the animalistic features can be thought of vestiges of our original animorphic progenitors with our anthropomorphic traits being a gift of Adam. We are a hybrid, both divine and beastly. That sums up the anthromorphic condition as these are sometimes at odds. It is true that we are taught from a young age to suppress some of our animalistic instincts. We are told not to rely on walking on fours even though its the gait most natural to toddlers. We are taught to walk upright until we learn. Sometimes in moments of desperation or when great speed is needed, this taboo is lifted and one may run on all fours, but generally its regarded as unseemly, beastly, and childish, and so most furs avoid it as much as possible.
48 I've never been one to try too hard to suppress my instincts. Maybe that's my problem. Whether I seem like an uncivilized animal, or I look childish, or even if I seem girly, it doesn't seem to really bother me until others keep making an issue of it. Truthfully I wish I could just be myself and not have to be made to feel ashamed, but then again, knowing how my heart has brought me to this lowly state, perhaps I am foolish after all, and the world wise.
49 Take this rabbit plushie for example. A child's toy, and something I should have abandoned a long time ago, but of all the things he gave me this is perhaps one of my most treasured possessions. He gave it to me as the first true sign of our friendship. He gave it to me with the promise to return and retrieve it. He was only loaning it to me so I would not forget him. Oh, but how could I forget him? How I did love that rabbit toy though. I would snuggle with it every night, wondering where he was at that moment, what he was doing? Whether he thought about me? I would drift off to sleep wondering if he felt the same way about me that I felt about him, even all the way back then when I didn't yet know him too well. In my mind it was him. If I snuggled with it, I felt that somehow he was connected to it and felt my love for him.
50 To this day I snuggle with it whenever I think of him. Childish right? Shameless right? I'm almost fourteen for Yah-Hasha's sake! No self respecting teenage boy should be snuggling with a toy, let alone holding it as his most treasured possession simply because he gave it to me. If it had been a girl, a girl who I hoped to one day be my mate that would be one thing. But to pine over him like this, well frankly it's embarrassing even to me ... I can only imagine how it makes him feel. But I can't help it. I snuggle with it more than ever and imagine it's him. It's both a form of comfort and of self-torment. Sometimes I bury it under my pillow unable to bare it any longer. Yet it is never far from me.
51 And then there is perhaps my most important belonging of all. It sits on my bedside table, always there, taunting me, tormenting me, and yet I can't help but look upon it for hours, wanting to get hopelessly lost in it. It's a picture frame of him and me standing side-by-side, our arms wrapped around each other. It was taken shortly after our 9th birthdays. In the lower corner is written a date, August 1985. We were so close then. It was before we began to grow apart and problems started to begin. The apex of our childhood innocence. A time when we were truly inseparable and his love of me seemed as boundless as mine for him. Only two prints of it exist, and he used to have an identical picture frame on his bedside table as well, though he may have thrown it away by now. Did he also go to sleep staring at it, wondering if his friend loved him as much as he them? I don't know. Even for the bestest of best friends, there are some things you never talk about but just feel, or say with a glance or a loving smile. How I wish I could know the inner workings of his heart. I used to think we were psychically linked, but in light of what has transpired over the last month it seems I was fatally mistaken. I have never felt so cut off from his thoughts and feelings. I don't know what he's thinking or feeling anymore, I don't know what I mean to him any more. Perhaps I am nothing to him ... perhaps I always was nothing to him. Just someone to pass the time with, to fill a space while waiting to meet his true beloved, his future mate.
52 What is a friendship anyway? What could we ever do to make our relationship all our own? Couples declare themselves exclusive. What could we ever do that would be exclusive to only us? Surely, we were both allowed to make other friends! Yet I wanted to believe that we were special in some way. That we were more than merely best friends, even more than the bestest of best friends, by which he used to mean that we were the best best friends that had ever lived. That we were closer than any other two best friends had ever been. But even the bestest of best friends ... have other friends. Friendship could never make us belong to each other and only each other. It would always be open to others dethroning our privileged placed with each other. My heart would never stray from him but I always feared that one day that even as his best friend, that one day I might be replaced by an even better best friend. That's why I believed, perhaps irrationally, that we were more than friends, more than best friends, we were better than best friends. A category of friendship beyond friendship. He told me it didn't make sense ... that being "best friends" was already the ne plus ultra of friendship, by definition you couldn't be "better than best" friends. Perhaps he's right. Even now I struggle to elucidate the elusive concept. In any case, in my mind, being "better than best friends" or BTBF as I sometimes liked to call it, was more than a difference of degree in friendship, but a difference in kind. After all, a "best friend" is nothing more than a friend that you happen to like best. But no mere friend could replace a BTBF. It meant something more, it was a friendship beyond all friendship, as the Alephs lie beyond all that is finite, so too the BTBF lies beyond all friends even the bestest of best friends. And unlike a friend, one could not have more than one BTBF. The BTBF was the graduation point of friendship, in the same way that marriage is the graduation point of romantic love. It was a declaration of exclusivity, and a commitment to a privileged place amongst one's relationships, just as lovers and couples do, but without the need to imply more than the bond itself. A pure and guileless love. Not driven by lustful desire or selfish need, but pure admiration, a love of the other as above oneself. How I wish I could have explained it in a way that would make sense to him. Then again I'm not sure I'm even making sense myself ... sigh ...
53 As I lay here in my bed, I have many times held the frame near my face. I just want to get lost in his soft and delicate form. I trace his ears and face with my finger and my eyes fill with tears. I do not fight the emotional pain. I let it well up inside me until my whole being is nothing but longing and I can no longer think or feel anything but him.
54 That's the trouble with me, I'm am so completely hopelessly totally consumed by my obsession of him. Even simple words like: he, his, him, we, us, our, ... take on a special connotation for me when said in relation to him and us that rings in my mind when I say them.
55 It's like my mind is a giant network and he is the nexus of all my thoughts and feelings.
56 To say I'm in love with him would be an understatement. I'm more "in-love" with him than most boys are in love with girls. I'm completely hopelessly totally embarrassingly obsessed with him, so much so that he is my whole world and everything in it. Without him I'm like a planet without a star, and with nothing to orbit I drift off into the black empty void of absolute nothingness ... sigh ...
57 So who is he? Have you guessed by now? He's Jonathan Joseph Jebediah Jackrabbit, of course, the handsomest sweetest kindest gentlest most awesomest boy that ever lived. He is the alpha and omega of all boyhood dreams, and the physical manifestation of all my deepest hopes and desires.
58 He was beloved by all who crossed his path, both boys and girls alike, and those who were lucky enough to call him friend considered themselves infinitely rich in this life. And I was his most beloved, his most cherished, his dearest and best friend. Like Jonah and the whale I was completely consumed by my love for him. Like David and Jonathan our love was greater than the love of women. Our friendship was the envy of all boys. Many were drawn to us because of it, many sought to destroy us for it.
59 But like the devil himself my fall from grace was as great as our love was high. So sudden and so total was my destruction that I have become like a leper amongst my peers. No one wants anything to do with me ...
60 But even that ... is not the worst of it ...
61 He will probably never want anything to do with me ever again. When I think of that possibility ... I'm filled with a deep and profound sadness that chokes all other feelings into oblivion and feels like even an eternity could not wash it away.
62 He probably can't bare to think of me as anything but the vilest most disgusting repulsive reprobate, fit for the severest of damnations.
63 The idea that God has shunned me for my sins does not bother me too greatly however. We were never that close, though I will always be grateful to his son Yah-Hasha for bringing Jonathan into my life.
64 But to be shunned by Jonathan himself feels like my soul being sent to the tenth circle of hell. Perhaps Cocytus, the frozen lake, continues down forever, and if so I'm not simply completely submerged and frozen inside, but I am so far down that Satan himself can not see me through the perfectly transparent ice.
65 I have completely lost all sense of time and meaning ever since the day I decided never to return to school.
66 At first I had just wanted to drown in my sorrows, to remember all the good times that we ever had. If our friendship was truly over than these memories would have to last a life time. But I couldn't help but go over the events of the last few weeks in my mind.
67 I kept going over my mistakes over and over. What could I have said differently, done differently. How did I miscalculate, misread, misunderstand, so badly?!
68 What clue in a glance, a glimmer, a smile, or just the position of an ear, might I still yet decipher from my memory?
69 What could I still yet do to fix this, to make things go back to the way they were ...
70 In my mind I continue to have conversations with Jonathan. Arguments really. It's as if he is right here in the room with me. It's as if I know exactly what he would say to anything I was thinking. I argue and argue for hours on end. But no matter what I come up with Jonathan parry's my thoughts. How could one ever win against one's own reflection? The doppelganger of one's being?
71 I try to cling onto some hope that it's at least theoretically possible. That if I could just work out the formula, the precise description of words and actions that might convince Jonathan to give me a second chance ... but in my heart of hearts I know that what's done can not be undone. I have already crossed the moral event horizon and there is simply no going back. There is no excusing and explaining away what I have done. There is no explaining other than, that I must be a faggot! A hopeless god-damned faggot which should never again see the light of day! And I haven't. For about three weeks now I haven't. With the shades pulled down and me almost never leaving my room it feels as if it is all night all the time.
72 Despite me knowing there is no excuse for this ... still I can't help but plead my innocence, even though no one would ever believe me, no one would ever truly understand ... that my love for Jonathan Joseph Jebediah Jackrabbit is pure. More pure and more innocent than even the love of a boy for a girl. Why? Because the boy is driven by his desire to mate, to copulate, and to procreate. If this is so, how can he ever truly know that he loves her? That it is not motivated, not by a love of her, but by his needs being fulfilled within her? Although God himself will not heed my plea and the world shall think me a fool, still I plead, that my love was not perverse, was not an evil and vile thing. It was a beautiful and good thing, a gift from Yah-Hasha himself that my twisted heart corrupted, though no one would believe such a blasphemy. I truly loved Jonathan for Jonathan. Not for anything he could do for me, but because I loved who he was, what he was. He was and always will be infinitely wonderous to me, as mysterious as existence itself. If I wanted anything from him it was only this ... that he might return my feelings ... that I might mean as much to him as he does to me. This is all. It needn't even require any act, whether sacred or profane, or ritual or rite to make it so. I just wanted to know that Jonathan cared. And I wanted him to tell me so, because I am not very good at reading between the lines as other boys are. It's not enough for me for it to just be "understood". I wanted it to be said. Even if it didn't mean anything should change between us. But now I see that my love is something even more than that, because even if he should be indifferent to me, nay, even if he should despise me (and perhaps rightfully so in the eyes of nature, furkind, and God), still I proclaim "I love him, I love him, I love Jonathan Joseph Jebediah Jackrabbit for all time". Such is the folly of my heart. Undoubtedly it will be my undoing. Yet still, Like Job I can not bring myself to forsake him even to save my own life.
73 ARGH! Why am I like this?! It makes no sense! I know I'm being silly and childish. Like a four year old trapped in a thirteen year old's body! Why should a mere friendship with a boy matter THIS much to me, far more than if I had my heart broken by ten thousand sweethearts!
74 It's simply inappropriate for such feelings to exist between any two except a fur and his mate! Aside of this, the purpose of life and it's perpetuation, friendship must fall to the wayside, no matter how important it may seem. It is inevitable, like a force of nature or the will of God. I KNOW THIS! And yet ...
75 I can't help myself. It's simply too late! This feeling has become too strong, too powerful for me to control ...
76 So what recourse am I left with? I want him but I can never have him. Since I can not have him I wish to stop wanting him but I can't stop wanting him either! I beg for divine intervention and I'm denied any assistance ... and so I am left with no other recourse than to lie here, alive but already dead, resigned to my fate to burn with a passion that can never be quenched. I turn instead to a question: how did I arrive at this dreadful state? Trying to trace the origin of this feeling, trying to understand myself and how I became this way. I've asked God to reveal it to me, but I must be forsaken for no clear answer emerges. With no one to help me, no one to understand or believe me, no one to not ridicule me a fool when revealing this most deeply held secret of my heart ... I am left with no choice but to solve this riddle for myself!
77 To review my life, forwards, backwards, inside out if necessary, traveling along each and every edge connecting the points on the graph of my life. To approach it analytically, scientifically, philosophically, until I've solved the riddle of my birth and his. If for no other reason than to end this pain, to help me understand and accept what has happened.
78 I've been doing this for so long it feels like this is all my life has ever been ... a disembodied mind reviewing everything from outside spacetime, the events of our lives being but different intervals of space and time apart depending on ones frame of reference. I don't know how many attempts I've made to make sense of this, but at this point it doesn't matter. I will not stop until I've figured this out.
79 Where should I begin this time? Hmm ... maybe I should do something I haven't tried before ... begin from the beginning ... tell the tale as it has unfolded.
80 Go back to a time ... though I'm loathe to recall it ... before Jonathan. I've known Jonathan for so long and so many of my memories involve him either directly or tangentially. For this reason it's hard even for me to believe that there was ever a time as my life before Jonathan.
81 I don't have many memories from this time period, but it may hold the secret of my obsession. The key to the enduring mystery of my attraction ... and perhaps ... to the mystery of attraction itself ...
82 So let us begin at the beginning ... my earliest memories ...
...to be continued...
