Not In Kansas Anymore

by Christine Wicker

  They are often dismissed as fan boys who live in their mothers’ basements. “Fan boys” is a term for people whose lives as Trekkies or whose love of stories from comic books or whose devotion to roles they play in computer fantasy games are more real to them than anything else. Junior high and high school were hell for many of them. You could tell that instantly, and they could give you details that would shrink your soul. Their status hadn’t changed much. Appearance, interests, manner, everything marked them. Look at them and you instantly thought of the kids who sat in the back of the room sleeping during class, sullen or worse, some of them openly terrified when called on, chosen last for team sports, uninvited to the popular kids’ parties. If they went to the prom, they went in ripped black or camouflage pants or in something flamboyantly inappropriate, like elf ears or vampire teeth. They were the freaks, the druggies, the kids bullies loved to target. If they’d been meaner, they might have had a chance, but mean was the last thing they were. Too sweet was more like it, too sensitive and too smart not to know all the dreadful nuance of their place.

  Since so many are computer geeks, they often express themselves in computer-ese. Some mention being science majors. When one girl lectured the group on new science, it was obvious that the group knew enough to argue. But they didn’t. Afterward, I heard her saying to another Otherkin, “I know that string theory isn’t proven, but….”

  They knew that thinking themselves elves or werewolves, dwarfs or dragons, left them open to being called crazy. They questioned themselves on that point quite a bit. Some had been diagnosed with various types of mental illness: depression, bipolar disorder, disassociation, multiple personalities, suicidal tendencies. They had reason to be wary of outsiders. Many had been attacked by Internet-savvy haters who flooded their chat rooms with so much threatening talk that they’d sometimes had to shut down and open new rooms. There were only about sixty of them in attendance, but three guys were assigned to be security, not so much to police their behavior as to protect them should some meanie try to crash their convention.

  Never once did they set me apart. Nobody tried to show me how cool he was by letting me know that I wasn’t. One afternoon a workshop given by a handsome werewolf featured everyone breaking a board karate-style, a lesson on how to use energy. I was afraid to try. The Wolf, who had well-cut, light-colored hair and looked more like the young businessman he was than a werewolf, invited me to try several times before I would.

  Everyone broke the board in one try, but not me. I whammed my hand twice against the board. Nothing happened to the wood, not even a splinter.

  “Try again,” he said softly, positioning my hand differently.

  “You can do it,” the crowd yelled each time I failed. “Try again.” When the board finally broke, I’d hit it so hard that my whole body followed through and I fell against the floor. Anybody might have laughed. They cheered. They knew the multiple ways in which people can be made to feel apart. They had forsworn them all. I’d never seen anything like it.

  The man called Dreaming Squirrel was there, and said he was elf and leprechaun. I’d heard that his three-year-old daughter had one pointed ear and one normal ear. When I asked, her mother pulled back the little girl’s brown curls. Sure enough, one ear was pointed and the other wasn’t. When the child was born, her mother told me, her ears were the first body parts she checked.

  Dreaming Squirrel jumped around a bit, talking excitedly about various topics and then exclaiming, “Excuse me. I had to say that.” The first night he was carrying a cudgel made of green cloth and foam shaped like broccoli. Twice I heard him tell the story of how he would go to gentlemen’s clubs, and when the dancers complained of pains or tension, he would reach out and touch them magically.

  “They would go, ‘Ooooh, how did you do that?’” he said, which demonstrated how amazed and grateful they were for his magical healing.

  “So I guess that makes you the Jesus of the Gentlemen’s Clubs,” said the Wolf, demonstrating his wolfish edge. Dreaming Squirrel blinked and said nothing, demonstrating a limit to his aspirations.

  Of course, being an Otherkin doesn’t solve all one’s problems. Spark, a young woman with shining red hair that fell softly about her shoulders, creamy glowing skin, and a silver nose ring, told me she was a vampire. She wore fashionable black-rimmed glasses, a pentacle pendant, and long flowing skirts. She had a handsome boyfriend, with a fringe of a beard outlining his chin, who sat silently beside her. She described herself as having been a shy, depressed, easily frightened, low-energy child who cried easily. She had grown up to be a woman with many health problems that caused her to feel frequent pain and lassitude. I asked if discovering her magical self had helped with the ailments. She said they had actually gotten worse. At the Come as You Really Are Ball, she sat in the back, far from the dance floor.

  “I’d like to dance,” she said, “but I’m afraid to. I’m that kind of person who wants to but doesn’t.”

  A guy named Gleef told me that he was some kind of prehistoric lizard. Another guy called himself Kibble. When I asked why, he said that he serves the Wolf god. “I’m kibble for him,” he said. Another woman calls herself The Crisses because she harbors so many different personalities inside her—dozens already and adding all the time. Many are magical beings, some are not, she said.

  Otherkin call each type of magical being a race, and you often hear them ask, “What race are you?” Discovery of one’s race is called the “awakening.” Awakening is often a terrifying process, they told me, during which the person doubts his or her sanity. Each race has personality traits. Angels are among the most popular otherworldly creatures to be, but I didn’t meet any at the convention. They aren’t universally appreciated among the Otherkin. They tend toward rigid, anal-retentive personalities, I was told. Their posture reflects their personalities so often that Otherkin like to say, “We know where they keep their flaming swords.”

  Appearance doesn’t necessarily correspond with identity. One elf whose lean body, high forehead, blond coloring, and sharp features would have made him central casting’s first choice, said some Otherkin have the ability to change how they look to conform to their true selves. He didn’t look elven at all when he first discovered his race, he said, but over time he has been able to magically change his body to look more like his true self.

  Sexual preference, even sexual identity, is variable in Otherkin circles. Roger, who was pointed out to me as an East Asian dragon, is a he with long blue and black hair and noticeable breasts. The dragons at this convention were of the Eastern kind, which was fortunate, because Western dragons are often portrayed as stupid, rash, and greedy, like the one in Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Eastern dragons are much wiser and powerful in better ways.

  These dragons were all women of average to below-average height and impressive width. I’d watched them make their way through gatherings carefully maneuvering in space set up for humans of less girth. They were light on their feet and careful it seemed to make sure others weren’t pushed around by their physical presence. If considered human, the dragon family might be thought of as humans suffering from bad genes or poor eating habits or laziness or gluttony or any of the other insults that are thrown at people whose weight is above average. But as dragons, their shape is not a drawback or even an oddity. A dragon ought to have some heft. It is their size, in fact, that helps make them so magnificent.

  That evening during the Come as You Really Are Ball the Wolf spotted me sitting on the sidelines. I’d arrived late. My costume was a pen and notebook, jeans and a sweater, just me being my exciting self. He’d come as a party boy with handcuffs hanging from his belt. I saw him on the dance floor, gyrating wildly, shirtless. Shirtless suited him. When he saw me, he came over, took my hand, pulled me from my chair, and said, “I’ve been watching for you. Come upstairs where there’s a real party.”

  If my husband had been there, he might have pointed out that when a half-naked man with handcuffs on his belt inv
ites you to the real party, the right response is “No thank you, please.” But my husband wasn’t there.

  As we walked down the long hall toward his room I asked, “Are you from around here?” He laughed and said, “That’s the oldest pickup line in the world. Can’t you do better?”

  Before he poured me a triple shot of tequila, he jangled the handcuffs hanging off his belt and said, “I’d like to get a pair of these on you.” Typical Otherkin, so considerate, always trying to make a person feel part of the group.

  We went into his bedroom, where people were sitting on the bed and against the wall. I was quiet as I sat on the edge of the bed, taking small sips of the tequila.

  Along with enough liquor to fill a refrigerator, the Wolf had brought a whip to the gathering. He invited a long-haired woman to scourge him, which she did with an admirable amount of flourish. Obviously here was a woman with some experience in handling a whip.

  “Is that the best you can do?” he taunted her, and she applied herself with even more vigor. I hardly looked around. Bondage games are big in some magical circles, but they don’t interest me. Performance sex of any kind makes me feel that the polite thing to do is look away. I know that’s not what they’re hoping for, but it’s the best I can do.

  After a while the Wolf lounged on the bed. I stayed on the edge while he and Michelle Belanger, the vampire leader of the House of Kheperu, explained to me about sex and energy.

  Otherkin don’t merely have sex, they exchange energy, Michelle said. It’s the energy that makes sex with them more exciting than it would normally be. They touch the hidden energetic body of their partners, which is something everyone longs for. It’s intimate and intense in a way that mundanes don’t understand, Michelle said. As a result, they often believe themselves to be in love with vampires and Otherkin after having had nothing more than sexual energy exchange.

  I wondered whether whipping and handcuffing played any part in touching the energetic body and whether I knew anybody who would think that meant love. One group of magical people, called Beasties, is known for dressing up like animals to have sex. Another group is involved in what they call sacred prostitution, modeled on ancient ideas of goddess worship, I suppose. Compared to them, the Otherkin might be considered fairly tame.

  “That beautiful creature gave me one of the most exciting times of my life using just her fingernails,” said the Wolf, referring to Michelle.

  Telling me to push up the sleeve of my sweater, she demonstrated the exchange of energy by having me hold out my arm with my palm flat, facing the floor. Then she put her hands on either side of my hand about two inches from it.

  “Feel the energy,” she said. She began to stroke my arm with her fingernails, which were translucent white and filed to sharp points. Like animal claws or vampire fingers, which is what they were, I guess.

  This time I didn’t feel anything. She told me to relax and sense.

  “I feel some heat,” I said, which was a lie. I didn’t feel a thing, but I’m sensitive to peer pressure, even when people aren’t my peers. When I was little, my mother never taunted me by asking, “If everyone else was jumping off a cliff, would you?” She knew I would.

  I left the party at 3:00 A.M. It went until seven. By the time I saw the Otherkin at eleven, they were looking quite human in a bilious way. Hungover and sleep-deprived, many sported newly created hickies on their necks and who can say where else.

  “Looks like you exchanged a little energy last night,” I said to the Wolf.

  “I gave as good as I got,” he said, straight-faced. Fighting words. As though he had been in a battle. Perhaps he had.

  Later, when I went to Michelle’s website, I saw that she was selling note cards with photographs of herself clad in black leather, glowering into the camera as she punished a bound young woman referred to as Kitty. It looked so stagy that I wondered, What is she telling us in this piece of playacting? That she is powerful and dangerous and always in control?

  Well. Okay. That I understood.

  But is binding and whipping people magical, and if it isn’t, why pair it with sex? I’d learned enough now to understand why sex and magic so often go together. It’s not merely that sexual energy is powerful enough to derange even the steadiest among us, although it is. And it’s not just that orgasm is such an overwhelming experience that the French are right on when they call it the little death, although they are. And it isn’t even that what turns us on and what turns us off is so mysterious and wondrous, or even that good sex makes us feel more alive than any other thing. What makes sex magical isn’t merely orgasm. It’s the selfsame thing that makes magic magical—the connection with something beyond ourselves. If it’s the right kind of sex, it makes us more than we were before, happier, healthier, more powerful. Connecting with someone else in a real and intimate way is not the only way to have sex, as most of us know quite well, but it might be the only magical way.

  Granted, being bound and whipped is a lot less scary than intimacy with another human, especially one who’s lying nose-to-nose naked with you, and some people say that sadomasochism helps overcome that scarier fear. Maybe it does. Or maybe it’s just another wrong turn in the road to real magic.

  When we ran into each other at the elevator, the Wolf talked me into going for breakfast. I’d already had breakfast, but he suggested I have coffee while he ate. I was about to invite some others to go with us when he moved between the other Otherkin and me. His back was to them, but he slid between us like a wolf cutting off the rest of the pack. They took the message and turned away wordlessly. When we got to the diner, he said, “I don’t like to eat alone,” and ordered us both chocolate milk shakes and then plates of eggs with potatoes. He avoids meat. First I met a vegetarian vampire, then a meat-avoiding werewolf. Wonders never cease.

  He told me he had been a sickly child who became aware of his true nature while studying with native people in the north woods of Canada. He did not claim to grow fur or fangs, but he did hint that a wolf’s capacities for enduring pain and fighting fiercely were in his genes. His father had a wolfish element in him, he said. As a child, he admired it, sometimes feared it, and now believed he had inherited it in a way that was more than human. He often called upon his wolf nature when boxing, he said. As he felt himself losing a bout, he would summon the wolf and fight so tenaciously that he felt no pain and he usually won.

  When I asked for a magical story, he told me that he had once come upon a bear in the forest. As they stood facing one another, the Wolf had called on his animal nature, hoping to intimidate the bear. After looking at him for a few seconds, the bear turned and walked away.

  I asked for another magical story, and the Wolf talked of a business decision he once had to make. He was unsure which way to go. So he sat in meditation invoking the Goddess.

  “Why the Goddess?” I asked.

  “I’m a big tough guy,” he said. “I don’t need a male god who can protect me. I do need comfort and warmth, the kind that I wanted as a child and didn’t get.” For that, only a goddess will do. We were silent a minute.

  “It’s not as though I think there’s a big vagina in the sky,” he said.

  “Good,” I murmured. “That could be distracting.”

  During his call upon the Goddess and his meditation, he believed himself able to see paths before him. He could see how each one would turn out. None took him where he wanted to go. And then he received a message. He was to go to a man whom he knew only slightly. This man would know how to move forward. The Wolf did what the vision told him, and that man is now his business partner.

  This was the last day of the workshop, and after the closing ritual I was busy interviewing people. The Wolf kept coming to me as I talked. He would stand at my side, and without a word he would smooth my hair back, stroke the curve of my ear, and then move his fingers down my neck. I would continue talking. No one mentioned what he was doing, and I didn’t have a clue. Without a word, he would leave.


  He returned several times, and then finally he found the touch he was looking for. What had been merely contact was now a caress. It was exactly the same motion and yet nothing like what he’d done before. I stood quite still like a dog being scratched under the chin.

  “I believe that’s it,” I said when he stopped. “I think you’ve found it.” He backed away again, without a word.

  Later, as I stood alone finishing some notes, he came close to me. I kept my head down, and his low voice was in my ear. “You didn’t feel the energy when Michelle did it. I wanted you to feel it before you left.”

  “How did you do it?” I asked in the same low tone, my head down, my eyes on the notebook.

  “I put emotion into it,” he said. His words were so soft I could hardly hear them.

  Then he was gone. If I had known what he was about, I could have told him what he needed the first time he touched me. Magical people had been teaching me that for more than a year. You must connect. Call it emotion, call it commitment, call it surrender. Whatever you call it, you can’t have magic without it.

  15.

  Voodoo Takes the

  Big Banana Down

  Perhaps the werewolf’s touch was a turning point that the energies of the universe responded to, maybe the gods looked down and were pleased, or maybe it didn’t make one bit of difference. I had one more visit to make in my magical research. My Jesus dream and its connection to voodoo made me determined to experience at least one voodoo ceremony. I particularly liked New Orleans’ Sallie Ann Glassman, a voodoo priestess, or manbo, whom I’d talked to a number of times. I liked her for exactly the reason that some other voodoo practitioners didn’t like her. Among her followers, animal sacrifice is not done. Instead, they generate the energy that spirits want by meditation that brings up prana, or life force, energies.