4.
The attendance contrast in comparison was vast and varied. To Max’s left, a large obnoxious group of women, preferably bridesmaids fresh from a wedding ceremony rehearsal or a group of college juniors our for a girl’s night out, had all been binging and partying and bellowing the night away with a style similar to a Glide Memorial Church service. Rowdy, outspoken, intense… and right up Max’s alley; these were the kind of girls he could easily see himself entertaining well after-hours, behind closed doors, adorned in a skimpy corset, fresh out of condoms and brimming with sexual candor. 
They had come from the one and only building neighboring the lumber storage warehouse, conveniently located on its own lot just a couple miles nearby. That building was a church to boot; to the weary outsider this site was known as the Golden Sun Church of Latter-Day Saints. The only difference between there and here? The holy bread eaten - ecstasy pills or LSD blotters and the holy wine sipped - liquid mescaline or hard single-malt scotch, maybe even a mugful of shitty-ass beer. Max suddenly envisioned a minister rising from the countertop wearing beer goggles, leather chaps and a spike-studded leather jacket, laughing and coughing loudly while smoking a tightly-rolled joint packed solid with the finest Panama Red affordable, reciting a sermon before the lively crowd in attendance with ribbons of ganja smoke swirling around his sullen aged face. Sinners! Let us praise unto Him above high, that we shall all be saved! Let Him deliver the derelicts and filthy swine in attendance unto a higher purpose! May God bless the heretics and heathens of this divine evening! Let all the anthropomorphics in population be deemed suitable for God’s eternal salvation! He will save you, after you’ve made amends to Him and His eternal presence! Blessed is His word unto you! Go now, inhale the smoke of His holy beloved herb and seek the light of His salvation! Rejoice, my beasts of burden! Rejoice! Rejoice!! God lives among you, thy solemn, fastidious ravers! He lives among you and through you, amen! Through your souls, so He does! Your souls!
Had the mix of alcohol and the influence of the drug-tinted interior atmosphere rendered Max’s perception into a physical form? How was he able to so easily envision all these messed-up hallucinations, one after another, without even breaking a sweat (metaphorically speaking) or seriously questioning his own sanity? Or had he really been thrust into waiting so long that his frail mind had finally begun to cave in and utilize his imagination to its fullest extent to keep from going completely crazy with anxiousness and worry? More than anxiousness, Max felt an intangible sense of fearful unknowing and nervousness creep into his heart, causing his skin to crawl underneath all his thickened matted fur. Max’s knees tingled with a gelatinous sensation of entropy that stroke victims would have gladly welcomed as a process of healing and recuperation. His tail felt electric as bristles of fur stood high on end, channeling an energized current that would ultimately kill and revive him three times over. Was this how brides felt when they got cold feet just moments before their final ceremonial wedding vows? If this had been Max’s way of keeping a firm grasp on an overall frighteningly dangerous situation, he felt confident enough to keep up the good fight, but just for a little longer. At least until the anvil of bad conscience and absolute panic came barreling down upon his poor raccoon-shep’s noggin.
“When I was your age, young ‘coon boy, we didn’t try very hard at all to get laid!” The elder anthro yelled at him with glee over the music. “You see boy, that was always the easy part! It was getting to know the broad better BEFORE the sex could ever happen; now THAT was the difficult part of the on-goings to each night spent well with paying company!!” The stranger laughed profusely at his own wise-crack. He hiccuped aloud and his throat wheezed, ending the guffawing humorous outburst with a hoarse, crackling cough. Smiling at Max, he exposed what little bit of teeth he still had left which was nothing more than a few plaque-coated stubs, chipped and crooked, bent askew inside a mouth festering at the gums with gingivitis. Max could only imagine what kind of unspeakable diseases swarmed in there, how no mouthwash in existence could ever hope to rescue the bum’s oral cavity.
The scraggly anthro bum with distinguishing raccoon-like features was making an attempt to befriend Max by discussing the prospects of fine women; very procyonid in nature, Max thought to himself, grinning with heartfelt admiration and a torrential rush of pity deep inside. He wondered if this old fool had at once been a pimp in his heyday before turning to hard drink and even harder rejection from a commonplace human-favoring society.
“Listen to me for your own good, young man.” The elder anthro bum said.
“What’s up?” Max asked. He listened but refused to look at the elder; Max felt reviled for fear that he’d catch another fresh glance down the old chap’s rotting maw and upchuck warm, wheaty beer all over the gentlefur’s face.
“So!” Another hiccup. “When a kinky broad is hot-headed and ready for a fight, there ain’t but no way on God’s green earth she’d be interested in anything more or less than just that – a good whuppin’ back n’ forth. Take it from me–” He slurred between another scurvy bum’s hiccup. “-Sonny! Don’t be ignoring and… uh, bashing bitches for too long! It’s bad for your libido, young raccoon… uh, shepherd boy! Whatever you are, shit.” He murmured beneath his breath, trailing off toward the end of his desultory monologue of good dating advice gone feverishly stale. The bum chuckled heartily beneath his raspy grizzled voice, shaking his head nonchalantly, cocking his wrist towards Max and throwing back a hard swig of Dry Gin as he glanced sourly back at the coon-dog, eyes twinkling like glass marbles; the telltale signs of a drunkard’s glossy oculars. Making an acknowledging response, Max shook his head back and forth horizontally while issuing a nonchalant shrugging gesture, then turned away from the scraggly bum to bring his focus back to the group of female friends laughing and screaming in their own collective group. They were all short, fairly chubby women with wide noses and thick, nappy hair bunched up into elegant headdresses that were tailored to match their fancy hand-crafted Mayan outfits. They had all been drinking hard top-shelf tequila, margaritas, mojitos, even an occasional Dos Equis every now and then, serving as a chaser to the harder booze. No dainty Planter’s Punches within a meter of proximity near these rowdy babes. They carried on with rapid inebriated strides, voices rolling excessively over the low beating thump of the bass from the radically overpriced high-wattage sound system, which continued to rupture and growl like a beast ensnared in a grimy abandoned cave teeming with pristine acoustics.
One of the girls, a young teenager with blondish-green highlights in her long wavy hair and stylish Ray-Ban corrective lenses with a neon-green frame (boy howdy, didn’t somebody ever dream in deep jaded shades of emerald), glanced toward Max coyly and raised her hand, wrist curved and pointing upward, then bent her index finger back and forth towards her own direction, sliding her tongue across her open-mouthed lips and teeth in a sultry teasing manner, while her other hand slid beneath the crease of her sweatpants. She began to fondle aimlessly at her crotch while inviting him over to snort a good quality line of fresh imported cocaine, straight from Columbia, urging him to come closer. She was reeling Max in, beckoning him, calling out to him, sending forth an offer unto him which he couldn’t refuse… or else he’d have trouble doing so. Acting upon a threshold of honesty normally reserved for a happily married father of three, Max grinned as politely as possible and held his hand up, nodding and smirking. She shrugged and grinned back, pulling a glass vial from her bra (not without letting an intentional nipple-slip perk Max’s focused concentration). It was a small tube, packed tight with a powdery white substance that could easily dilute to blue if sprinkled upon the sweaty brows of any human dancers on the floor below. As she continued to finger herself, she pulled off the cap and tapped the opposing end of the vial, lightly dumping a small clump of blow on her wrist. She then snorted it back with blinding speed. Her masturbatory hand jerked outward and bulged her wrist against her sweatpants, making an incriminating bear’s head shape protrude outward from her crotch area. She had her inhaling technique chiseled down to a bare-boned science. Max could practically see her pupils shrink then expand wider than a dime. Or maybe that had been the squirting orgasm she forced herself into having while she stood facing him, demanding that he bring his slender sexy furry ass closer to her so she could eat him up – or visce-versa. She sprinkled a small bit of the powder across one of her now-exposed breasts (nipple and all) then glanced back toward him, issuing a pouty last-chance face. 
What you’re attempting to do, woo me over to snort and drink and kiss and fuck and impregnate and regret and forget me entirely… it ain’t gonna happen tonight, sister. Let’s just leave it at that and let bygones be bygones. Besides, shouldn’t you ladies be attending a bachelorette’s party or bridal shower somewhere? Why in fuck’s name are you here, of all places? Perhaps you fine young femme fatales can point me to the direction of my goddam motherfucking prick of a dealer so we can get this ball rolling once and for all, finally??
Max chuckled a bit and nodded more assertively than ever to her. She only shook her head with disappointment and grabbed a random male dancer out of thin air nearby, a cheetah or jaguar insofar as Max could see. She clutched the big cat-anthro’s head with both her hands and pulled his face down, burying his stubby muzzle between her breasts. The cat fondled her buttocks and snorted the blow rather sloppily from her chest. Mister Big Kitty shivered a little, pulled back his massively oversized feline head to reveal a wide black nose powdered with whitish-blue substance (there was even dope on his whiskers) and leaned in to give the girl a sloppy wet French kiss. She held her tainted fluid-drenched hand up and he grabbed it, sniffed at it and cringed with delight, licking at her fingertips like a dog attracted a spoonful of peanut butter. This had been more entertaining to watch than ever imaginable. At least for a small while, Max had temporarily forgotten the impending anxiety he’d felt for many minutes beforehand.
Unfortunately her advances didn’t help rekindle Max’s nearly-dissipated patience.