Your Next-Door Neighbor Is a Dragon (12 page)

He paused and then leaned back dramatically in his chair.

I was sitting in his St. Louis apartment drinking a glass of grape-flavored Kool-Aid. Christian liked to loudly chew the freezer-burned ice cubes. We had just met about ten minutes before.

Christian insisted I refer to him in the book by his full middle name of Christian and not his first name of Joseph.

Shortening his name to “Chris,” something I did several times during our conversation, caused him to purse his lips and take a deep breath through his nostrils. Before he finished his irritated, whistling exhalation I corrected myself each time.

“Christian.”

“The funny thing is,” he said, “I am totally an atheist. I have been since, like, age ten.”

Christian was a young-looking nineteen. He lived alone in a shabby studio apartment in St. Louis. He made the rent each month by working part-time in a community college’s computer lab.

“I don’t go to school there, so it’s sort of an unusual arrangement,” Christian said. “I basically watch college kids browse the Internet and help them print stuff.”

He appreciated his job for the “unlimited free printing,” which allowed him to cover his living area in multipanel color images of dragons and anime characters in roughly equal measure. The dragons tended toward realistic depictions of “western” dragons, with a lot of artwork that seemed related to the film
Dragonheart
. The anime characters were almost uniformly buxom and underdressed.

“There have never been any serious incidents at work,” he said without prompting.

I asked him about nonserious incidents and his expression soured.

Christian’s teenage awkwardness manifested during our conversation as a restless anxiety. His unkempt hair hung in his face and his Adam’s apple poked out of his neck like the fist of a swallowed doll. He plucked self-consciously at his T-shirt and rarely met my gaze.

He had poor volume control and would become very excited when discussing his interests. As he spoke, the volume and pitch of his voice would fluctuate wildly from one sentence to the next. This was not a young man going through delayed puberty; this was a young man getting his ass kicked by delayed puberty.

I arranged to speak to Christian after trading several e-mails with him. It was an easy process. He seemed eager and excited to discuss his lifestyle at length.

I identified Christian as a potential interview subject by reading his posts on a relatively popular Internet forum for Otherkin. Christian counts himself among an enduring and growing subculture on the Internet for men and women who believe they are directly connected to the supernatural. They believe, in varying ways, that they are something
other
than human.

“It means I’m me,” Christian said, “but I’m also this other soul inside my body. An ancient soul.”

The ancient soul trapped in Christian’s body had a name. Christian pronounced it “Lower Barth” but he spelled it “Lauere Baartet” in the e-mails he sent me prior to my visit. I wondered if it was possible to mispronounce the name of the extra soul trapped inside his body. Christian took offense to the suggestion and pointed out that Lower Barth had a voice and communicated with him in English.

“He’s a dragon,” Christian asserted. “From Germany.”

Lauere Baartet, Christian’s eighteen-hundred-year-old alter-ego, possessed a sixty-foot wingspan and a neck Christian claimed was “as long as a whale.” His reptilian body was rusty-red with a yellow segmented underbelly and was covered in armored scales.

“They can withstand a spear or sword,” Christian explained.

Gunfire was also nothing to Lauere Baartet.

“The bullets would just bounce off,” said Christian. “He’s never been shot, but it would be harmless. Like rain.”

Lauere Baartet’s powers were nearly limitless. Christian ticked them off on his long fingers, but gave up counting after the first ten. Lauere Baartet could fly into space or travel into an unseen magical reality. He could breathe fire, cold, acid, and conceal himself in black smoke. Lauere Baartet could control minds and communicate with people while they were sleeping.

“His intelligence is off the charts,” Christian effused. “Like Einstein only…think about…really, really old.”

Lauere Baartet was a draconic guardian angel to Christian, both protector and avenger. I hoped my interview went well. I didn’t want to be set on fire, frozen, and covered in acid just for asking the wrong question.

For Christian, being an Otherkin meant being in direct contact with Lauere Baartet, the German dragon from AD 200, but there are few limits to what manner of supernatural entity might inhabit someone’s body. In the realm of Otherkin, elves, angels, demons, vampires, and more obscure creatures have all found their way into the bodies of various Internet users.

“It’s different for everybody,” Christian said. “Just because it’s one way for me doesn’t mean it has to be that way for everybody else. Together me and Lower Barth are a dragon. Some people just are dragons. Elves especially are bloodlines.”

I asked him what he meant by “bloodlines.”

“Like you’re just…,” he paused. “You’re an elf. You inherit it. There’s nothing else to it.”

Christian explained that it could be this way for dragons as well. Some Otherkin exist physically as the creatures they associate with. They pass as human or otherwise conceal their lineage by changing shapes. Others, like Christian, are in intimate contact with a powerful supernatural spirit.

“I’ve always known I’m special,” Christian proclaimed early in our conversation. “So don’t think this is just made up. This is real.”

Christian repeatedly stressed the authenticity of his claims throughout our conversation. He was very earnest, but also unapologetic about the strangeness of what he was telling me. I asked him when he first knew he was an Otherkin.

“Like I said, I always knew I was special. I always felt different. I think the first time when I started to know what I was, was when I was about eight. My dad brought home a video of the movie
Dragonheart
.”

Christian gestured to one of the images of the dragon from that movie taped to his wall.

“That was when I knew what I was, man. I just didn’t know what to call it. I knew I had a dragon inside me. I could feel that energy and the power of the dragon. The voices started around the same time. At first he sounded like Draco, from the movie, but I think that was just Lower Barth’s way of communicating with me without scaring me.”

“What did he say to you?” I asked.

“He told me everything would be cool,” Christian said. “He talked a lot about my destiny. There are like ten prophecies about me.”

When pressed on the content of the prophecies, Christian claimed they were written in an “ancient German dialect” that a friend of his was translating. The manuscripts were in a “monk order” and had not been completely “scanned in” by the monks.

“They’re powerful,” he said. “That’s all I know right now. My friend found them and they’re powerful. Dragon prophecies are always powerful.”

Christian learned the term for his unusual circumstance years after first learning of Lauere Baartet. He was searching the Internet at the age of thirteen and came across a group of people who referred to themselves as Dragonkin.

“It is amazing to realize that you’re not alone,” Christian said. “You spend all these years thinking you’re the only dragon left and then one day you just find out there are hundreds of them…I don’t know. It’s like finding out about the Matrix or something.”

Playing Games

I was entering my fifth hour at Christian’s apartment and he was showing me a collection of Gundam Wing robot models he assembled and painted over the years. There was something garish and unwholesome about his little robots. The pinks and purples and yellows of their color schemes twisted the right angles of robots into a doughy abstract.

Each model he showed me was more poorly painted than the previous model. They were Christian’s version of Louis Wain’s degenerating cat artwork. I mentally slapped myself when I realized how much I was looking down on the kid for his Gundam robots. I may not watch Gundam, but I could probably name every single Transformers or GI Joe toy.

“I never really watched Gundam,” I confessed.

He snort-sighed his disappointment, but continued on.

Christian handed me a robot painted bright green. It had a yellow head and a big purple shield on one arm. My fingers wrapped around its fragile waist and Super Glue crackled. Its left arm and fist, holding a broadsword painted lumpy silver, dropped to the carpet.

“Oh, shit,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You might as well throw the whole thing on the carpet,” he said, and then sighed. “It’s ruined.”

I could not tell if he was joking. I looked him in the eye and tossed the model onto the carpet. Its other arm came free from its torso, a white ring of Super Glue visible on the bright green paint of its armpit.

Christian snort-sighed again and crouched down to pick up his fractured Gundam.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said. “God.”

Christian seemed to calm down after eating some sort of Pizza Hut concoction with a cheeselike paste adhering to the bottom of the pizza. I paid, unaware that the next day I would be dumping money into Roger’s hot wing habit.

It was as Christian was telling a joke about Senator John McCain that I realized he was like an infant. He was crabby with me over the Gundam because he was hungry. Once he shoveled some greasy triangles of Pizza Hut’s Frankenstein creation into his maw he became friendly again.

We resumed the interview, but with many interruptions and digressions. One tidbit gleaned from these sidetracks was that Christian loved White Wolf role-playing games. I knew from reading Otherkin forums that many Otherkin gravitate to White Wolf’s games, but I had not known that prior to our meeting Christian enjoyed these games.

White Wolf games are similar to games like Dungeons & Dragons, but with a greater emphasis on story, character, and uncomfortable romantic interludes in a room full of ostensibly heterosexual dudes. White Wolf games include Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, and a game entitled Changeling about postmodern fairies that is particularly popular among Otherkin.

One shared trait of almost all White Wolf games is the idea that the players and their characters are part of a secret magical world. The vampires or werewolves or changelings are the only creatures aware of this magical dual reality to which the rest of humanity is ignorant.

“I like Changeling the best,” Christian enthused. “I have a vampire campaign I’ve been playing for a while too…”

He delved into excruciating detail on the subject, relating events in his role-playing sessions in much the same way the most boring person you have ever met might describe a recent dream. As he babbled on about vampire gypsies using some magical power called “chur-mer-stry,” I wondered about the cause and effect of White Wolf games. Was it just a coincidence that so many Otherkin play White Wolf games? Were some of them using the role-playing system as a guidebook for their own “awakenings”?

I asked Christian directly.

“No way,” he said. “None of the people in my group even know I’m Dragonkin. I knew about myself way before I played any of those games. Even D&D.”

“You said your awakening was six years ago. You didn’t play any of those games before the age of thirteen?”

“I played Vampire maybe, but it’s totally different,” Christian said. “Maybe some people, some sheep, follow along with what those books say. Some people might follow along with
Lord of the Rings
or other people following along with the Bible say they’re an angel. But those are fakers. Those are the people who want to be Otherkin but they’re not really. They’re just posers.”

Christian’s lips were purple from drinking grape Kool Aid.

“You can make up whatever story you want on the Internet,” he said. “You can’t make up a story to yourself.”

The Power in Everything

It’s probably not a good sign for a professional journalist to become bored with the person they’re interviewing. Fortunately, I am not a professional journalist. I have no ethical or moral responsibility to the truth or to good conduct or to integrity. None of that nonsense.

Christian was boring me senseless and it was my prerogative to behave like a child. I wanted to forsake my nerd ancestors and shove this tool into a locker.

My head lolled over the back of the chair and I stared up at the ceiling as he talked. I was one story about White Wolf games away from starting to whistle while he explained vicissitude. He pronounced it “viska-tood” and in the context of his stories about
Vampire: The Masquerade
it seemed to be the ability to make your character turn into a giant meat monster.

My attention drifted to more personal and immediate fantasies while Christian detailed his meat monster rampage. I was fantasizing about creative ways to kill myself by heading to the drugstore I saw on the way over and offing myself with something in there.