“What?! You’re a GUY?!”
So… let me tell you a little story about a lovely little bunny named Seth, and how he became so special to me that I couldn’t help but place a collar around his neck.
First of all, let’s just go through a little bit about me. My name is Milkie. I’m a mouse – a chocolate tan mouse in particular. That means I’m what science calls a “Tan Mouse,” and the whole “chocolate” bit refers to the colour of my fur. That is to say, I’m mostly chocolate brown, with a lighter underside. I’m the only tan mouse in my family – my Mom, my Dad, and most of my siblings are just “Standard Mice,” meaning they’re all one colour. Only my younger sister Cookie is a “Broken Marked Mouse.” I think when it comes down to it, me and my family are just your average House Mice in a variety of colours.
When I was little, I was small. Like, really small. I know mice are supposed to be small, but you need to understand… I still am small. Given that we’re talking about anthromorph mice, that means I’m human-like: I walk on two legs, have human-like feet and hands, and generally can do everything a person can do. With those fancy human genes, it’s allowed mice over the years to grow bigger than usual. My oldest sibling, Latte, is over six feet tall. I’m in my early twenties, and I’m barely five feet, three inches tall. That should put some things into perspective.
So as a kid, I was this three-foot-something, half-pint of a mouse. To make matters worse, I was stunted. While all the other kids were getting taller and taller, I was staying the same miniscule height I always had been. My body just wasn’t growing or developing very quickly. Now to make matters THEIR ABSOLUTE WORST… my ears were growing faster than the rest of me. Even now my ears are pretty big, but they were worse when I was a kid. That introduced its own unique brand of complication into lil’ Milkie’s life. I’m sure you can imagine…
I was pushed around so easy, called names like “Dumbo” and “Big-Ears,” and it didn’t do a whole hell of a lot for my self-confidence. Honestly, I think some kids beat me up for the sheer enjoyment of it. I didn’t have a lot of friends, because no one wanted to be seen with “the big-eared freak,” so… I was left with only one, two friends at a time at most.
Back then, Milkette didn’t exist. Vanilla, my younger brother, had barely been born, and my older brother Latte had as much fun picking on me as anyone, while my older sister Cocoa just didn’t have any time for me. So, I had maybe two friends and my Mom, since Dad left around the time I was born. That was my elementary school years.
When I got into high school, I was growing quickly. I was a late bloomer for sure, but I got all the way up to my present 5’3 before stopping dead in my tracks. Around that time, Cookie was born, and I had been stuck with the big, round glasses I wear now to help with my vision. By that time I’d fallen into the geek crowd – I spent most of my time playing video games and staying indoors than playing outside and getting into sports. It was just something that never changed. When you’re comfortable doing things on your own, you just can’t help it.
But we’re social creatures, right? And any shut-in worth their salt has at least tried to communicate with the outside world using the internet. I used to frequent online chat-rooms a lot, bouncing from one to the next, and created a character in which I could “role-play” a separate sort of existence. I was hardly the only person in the world who did it – there were tons of people to role-play with. However, even so, I hardly made any friends out of it… People came and went in one-shot meetings that would satisfy for an evening and little more.
Until I met Rosemary.
Rosemary was, as the character stated, a very shapely, voluptuous red-furred vixen. She was a foxy fox, very cuddly and affectionate, very sexual, and had a nice way with words. She was fun to talk to, and fun to spend time with, and she satisfied me in a number of ways I won’t pain you to hear about. She and I talked for ages. Days, weeks, months went by where I’d come home and hop online just to talk to her some more. Back then I didn’t much care for hermaphrodites, but Rosemary was one. Maybe it was her that eased me into the idea of the dual-gendered… she certainly was the first one I had experienced.
I grew closer to her than I should have. Just talking to her wasn’t good enough for me… I was gently prying for real-life information. I wanted to know her more personally, and apply a face to the name. I was only a teenager with raging hormones that needed some sort of connection to, well, anyone! I was naïve. Because when Rosemary finally caved in, we get back to the very first line of this spun tale.
Rosemary was a guy.
This was somehow shocking to me. Even though the internet was a place where anyone could lie and pretend to be whatever they wanted to be, the person on my screen wasn’t who I was expecting. It was some over-weight bunny boy who completely derailed me. It shook me to my core, and… I freaked out. I excused myself from the webcam conversation we were having as quickly as I possibly could, activated the ‘invisible’ mode on my messenger, and blocked “Rosemary” and removed her completely. I had been blindsided by my own expectations.
He had been so honest though at the time. He said his name was Seth, and that he was sorry he had lead me to believe that he was anything different than he really was. He looked so worried, scared even that I’d never talk to him again… I can only imagine how my sudden disappearance right after the event made him feel. But I wasn’t thinking like that at the time – I was more focused on myself, and how shaken I was. I just wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Of course, you have to see it from the view of a mouse that was perhaps sixteen years old at the time… I’d had cyber sex with a boy.
It didn’t help that what little friends I knew were aware of Seth. When I told one of them that I had mistakenly thought someone I met on the internet was a gender opposite of what I had expected, they had some fun at my expense over it. I ignored it as best I could, and in doing so, Seth soon faded from relevance. I forgot about him, but at the same time I learned a valuable lesson: everyone, I figure, is a man on the internet. Unless definitively proven otherwise, with no margin of doubt, everyone was just a guy like me… pretending to be someone else.
I could go into a big thing about how anonymity on the internet works, but everyone pretty much knows the gist of it. I’d rather keep going with my story, if that’s alright with you.
Well, I grew up. I graduated school shortly after Milkette had been split from my body, and she and I had to make lives for ourselves. It was all odd jobs at that point, just to get money. I planned on going to college; Milkette had no idea what to do for herself, but that is an entirely different issue. I worked for a year before getting a student loan and heading off to a school, living in a place rented out to students and being on my own for the first time. It was fun for a while. I went in for Journalism thinking that my interest in writing would carry me through it…
… Little did I know, I didn’t give a flying fuck about news writing.
I learned pretty late that the kind of expression I enjoyed using the written word was nothing like the calculation and world-awareness that writing for something like a newspaper required. How was I supposed to give a crap about the world around me when I’d spent most of my life figuring it didn’t give a crap about me? Well, it was like hitting a brick wall. All the drive I had going into school stopped at that exact moment I realized half-way through my course that I didn’t want to be a Journalist. Like any time where reality smacks you and makes you its bitch, I got pretty confused and worried. I had no idea what to do with myself.
That’s when I met Nori.
I happened across this raccoon that caught me at my most vulnerable. When the whole situation was tearing me apart from the inside out, it was he who decided to set time aside to sit down with me and talk it out. He was really good at it, too… He let me say anything I wanted about how I felt – about school, about myself – but he also presented counter-arguments to every point. He got me thinking about what I wanted, more than what I was worried about. Disappointing my Mom? It was possible, but was ruining my academic career first going to make it any better? I wasn’t going to do the work – I hated it so much at that point that I couldn’t imagine lifting a finger for it. It was best to get out while I could, leave on a good note.
It took one evening for me to take to Nori. Maybe it was a dependency more than anything, but he helped. So I spent more time with him, and shockingly enough, he just heard me out. I did most of the talking; he did almost all the listening. But once I’d get whatever I felt I needed to off my chest, I began to delve into getting to know him better.
Looking back on it, it was no different than what I had done before. With Seth, I had gotten so comfortable with Nori that I began to admire him. He began to brighten my days, and make me happy. But also like with Seth… and this was the strange part, considering how the beginning of the story was going… I grew to be attracted to him. Now, in my defense, Nori is possibly one of the most feminine males on the planet. If anyone is going to make a straight guy begin to question his sexual preference, it’s going to be that raccoon. I had already grown to accept hermaphrodites a being a viable choice for companionship – male parts and all! That’s what I used as a logical spring-board to the way Nori made me feel.
He was clever, he was funny, he was pretty, he shared my interests, and he had a great ass. Imagine my surprise when the prospect of tipping a questionably straight mouse over the edge to plunge into the depths of same-sex encounters was a very, very interesting and appealing idea to him. He had no problem… helping me. And in the midst of all that I began to realize just how much of a fool I’d been most of my life.
Gender didn’t matter. Sure, there had to be a base attraction somewhere for the sparks to start flying, but when it came down to it, a person was a person, regardless of gender. I didn’t have to be a girl or a boy for Nori to have taken me by the hand and helping me out of my rut… it was a non-issue. And developing feelings for someone, no matter how unobtainable they may have been, didn’t have to be barred as to whether or not they had a penis. Love, in all its forms, ought to be universal. Sure, I didn’t devote myself entirely to Nori, but I can say with certainly that I loved the guy on a level that’s hard to explain.
So then my foray into the male-gender began. Now, even today, I’m pretty selective about which guy I give much attention to… I just went by who… stirred me. It was, and is, a very hit-and-miss ordeal, but to my surprise I was eager to explore it. I wanted to get out there and see just if a male could incite in me the same feelings as a female. I started in familiar territory just keeping my eyes out around town. I had dropped out of school, but it didn’t stop me from being able to go to the student-run bar and grill that was on-campus until I was fit to move back home. I hit on guys, bought them drinks, and of course didn’t ignore the girls either. But I found with enough booze in me, I could be comfortable with just about everyone.
Needless to say, it was a good way to make friends.
What does all that have to do with Seth? Well, let me bring the whole thing back around.
I dunno what you believe in… I sure don’t believe in fate or any of that garbage. But I don’t know how else to explain what happened, and I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now.
It had to have been years since I even thought about talking to Seth. I managed to get dragged out to the bar – and I hate going to bars – where I indulged in a couple of drinks and generally stayed quiet. Then I see this bunny boy… or, well, I should say I thought he was a girl at first. He was sitting there at the bar, tail a-wigglin’, having a good time, and nursing on his own drink… But he had on this little skirt. You could kinda see his cute underwear if you looked, and his butt was… juicy. He had big, huge ears kinda like me, I thought, and was dolled up almost a like Catholic schoolgirl in a way. Well, most people seemed to pass him off as a tramp, but me? I’d had enough vodka and orange juice to walk right on up and say hello.
Now, by then I’d grown into myself. I was still 5’3, still am too… But I wasn’t just some twig. My new, more promiscuous lifestyle had me working out enough that I… I guess I’m actually pretty good looking! I must’ve been, because when that bunny’s green eyes set upon me when I sat next to him, they looked so… interested. I bought him a drink, and we talked. We did more than talk, really… I got on the path of showering him in compliments and praise, and boldly stroked his thigh when we talked. Gods, the way he squirmed and the way he shivered was so utterly adorable, how I was the first to get at him was beyond me.
We kissed. Well, to be more accurate, we did something like kissing. It was more like I was trying to drill his throat for oil using only my tongue. Normally I wouldn’t even have gone that far with it, but the bunny was just appealing enough… Still, by the time I thought it was best to leave, we hadn’t gotten too far. So, I remember asking if we could keep in touch… with phone, e-mail, whatever. What he did was hand me a messenger e-mail that I took and read right away… and I recognized it.
It was Seth.
The look on my face must have been priceless. The feelings I had were mixed between drunken excitement, and my heart trying to fall into my gut. All those memories of Seth came flooding back immediately, as if they’d never really left, but instead stayed stuck in the back of my head. But I wasn’t scared, not like the first time… I was ashamed. I felt guilty for what I did to him. Looking up at him, he must have seen the look on my face… He looked worried. It was actually the same sort of expression he had on his face the day I’d cut ties with him so suddenly.
I hadn’t even recognized him. He’d gone through some sort of transformation… he looked more feminine, slimmer even. I’d forgotten what he even looked like the day he revealed himself to me! And I just stared at him like I saw a ghost.
“Is… Is something wrong?” His voice… was even a little different. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Seth… I…” I’m not sure what I said at that exact moment, but, “… It’s me, Milkie,” seems like a good guess.
It was my turn to shock him. He hadn’t recognized me either, and hearing my name, you’d swear he was ready to jump from his seat and dart out of the bar like it was on fire. For the longest time, neither of us said anything… I’d opted to forget him, and he had sworn he’d never see me again, and yet there we were facing one another down years later… in person!
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out, “I’m so sorry.”
He cried. I realized that my words were being confused, like he thought I was going to get up and walk out again. I didn’t know what to do other than reach out and grab him. I held him close as I could and just waited until I could swallow enough nerve to carry on. I told him how bad I felt just walking away from him and leaving him high and dry like that. We really liked each other, even if it was just over the internet. But I told him I’d grown up now… that I liked him and thought he was cute. The time we’d spent together that night alone was enough to tell me… things just weren’t the same as they used to be.
I wanted to try again, so I left that night with his instant messenger address in hand, and a bundle of excitement welling up within me.
Seth was a frequent visitor to my house pretty much every single day after that, and we got to know each other more and more each day. It didn’t take us long to find a passion for each other either… I had a hard time keeping my hands off him when I finally gave myself the chance. Seth was too eager to please to say no… I made sure he had no reason to say it. But ultimately, he would come over to my apartment each and every day to unwind from the day’s events. Sometimes he needed an ear to listen to him, sometimes he needed a hug and a kiss… and I found over time that I was more than happy to give him these things if he needed them.
We kept on that way for… hell, had to be over a year. It felt just like it used to – every day I would get home to see Seth, and I’d be happy to see him. Who wouldn’t? An adorable bunny who was full of cuddles and could probably have sucked a golf ball through a garden hose if he wanted was the perfect thing to come home to no matter what happened that day. I learned that he wasn’t without his own problems… Seth was almost too caring and considerate, and he went out of his way for everyone. Often times he came to me to tell me how unappreciated he felt… I did my best to make him feel better. By then, our years-old mishap was all but forgotten.
It was around the time a particular person made him feel so awful he couldn’t stand it that I thought I had to do something. He left my house after a particularly long night of making him feel better, and I spent the next day free of work to mull over it.
Seth had been a constant in my early years. He adored me almost unconditionally. In that later time, he adored me again… I could always rely on him to be my friend and be with me… pretty much no matter what. That seemed to be what he needed in my opinion… a constant presence to relish in. When I thought he needed someone to love him unconditionally, I’d passed by a pet store – one of those ones that sold feral puppies and cats and the like to be cared for, and it sparked me with an idea. The beagle in the window was what did it. I knew what I had to present Seth with.
I walked out of that store with a collar.
I’d heard of those master-pet relationships… I had a pretty crummy, preconceived notion built about them based on the porn I’d seen/read on the internet. It had always seemed to be that the master was… mean, almost. And the pet? They were all too content to have no backbone and just do what they were told. All the way home, I tried to justify it in my mind… Some people needed that, and Seth seemed like the kind of bunny who really needed that grounding presence. I was going to make him my pet – but it wasn’t going to be like that.
My idea of a pet was tending to the pet: keeping it fed, loved, and happy. Keeping one’s pet happy was, by far, the most important thing to me… and I’d approach it the same way with Seth.
I waited for the right moment. The bunny was still down when he got back to talk with me, and I cheered him up by presenting him with that collar, and swearing that I’d make him happy for as long as I could. His tail went a mile a minute! He was the happiest I had ever seen him, not even factoring the kinky aspect that had him all hot and bothered.
So that’s how it happened. A wild coincidence, huh? I’m not sure what to tell you to walk away from this other than… just entertain a thought: You don’t have to be in love with someone, to love someone. I love Seth, and I’ll never purposefully let him down again. And I sure as hell ain’t scared of that now. <3 Sometimes it just takes a little growing up, y’know?
So, you might know someone close to you. Why not let them know? And the people you’ve left behind? They change. Maybe they’re not so bad anymore… Right, Sethy-buns? <3
