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okay, so, like, we’re going to the opera in New York. dad, mom, and me. i’m miserable, because dad insisted that i wear a dress, and “it’s not my style” is not working on him. (i haven’t told them about all the gender musings that you guys have had to put up with, especially since i haven’t come to a clear conclusion. “trans boy” is something they would at least understand, even if they didn’t like it. a long drawn out “ehhhh” and a wiggly motion? “i am not a girl and otherwise confused?” i don’t see that working.) anyhow I didn’t decide to do this, but it is a Special Occasion and you have to dress up for Special Occasions so i am wearing this blue dress and painful shoes and feeling miserable. and besides i don’t actually like La traviata. supposed to be this amazing new soprano singing for it, but no.
crowd outside the met is intense. and all fancy. i look like the poor country cousin even with the dress and earrings that dad badgered me into. i just don’t have the style.
all of a sudden, i spot—listen, first i figured she was a woman (trans) but the more things happened the more i thought she was probably a “fuck you, i do what i want.” would have been six feet tall in flats. she was wearing heels that must have taken supernatural powers to walk on (i am not entirely kidding). she had on a black dress with a slit up one side, and a necklace that looked like a snake, and sort of androgynous hair (dark reddish). and sunglasses.
i sort of stare at her. because i LONG for that kind of energy, right? i mean, this ocean of cis folks, and here she is not giving a shit.
the guy she’s with is shorter than she is, and he doesn’t give a shit either. he’s holding onto her arm like he knows he’s with the most gorgeous woman at this performance, and i remember thinking, you go, dude, you know what you’ve got.
they’re sort of on the edge of the crowd, and this one guy bumps into her, and before i know it, i see another guy reach up and grab the snake necklace, which i should probably describe before i get any further. so i wasn’t close enough to get a really good look, but it looked like it was silver and had like gemstones peppered over it, like, maybe topaz or something. (i know shit about gems, i just know that topaz is yellow-orange because fucking twilight, don’t @ me i was young and didn’t know right from wrong.) the point is, this necklace is clearly made of metal and jewels.
or it was. because as soon as it comes off in the pickpocket’s hand, he yells “JESUS FUCK SNAKE” and HURLS it into the air, where i can see it WRIGGLING for a moment in the light of the streetlight before i realize: oh. it’s going to come down on my head.
it comes down on my head.
bites me on the ear.
because dude was right. it’s a snake. specifically, it’s a corn snake. specifically specifically, it’s a magnificent palmetto corn snake, white with little dots. absolutely gorgeous animal. i have wanted a snake like this for years but it’s too expensive and you have to go through a breeder and stuff.
mom and dad are yelling and dad says something about “get it off her” and i clutch the snake to myself and i’m like “don’t you DARE hurt her.”
(the snake is a her. i have no way of knowing but i have already decided this.)
mom is all, “it bit you,” and like, okay, follow along with me here, a snake is a NON-AERIAL animal, right, and then this one was suddenly a VERY AERIAL animal, and you would bite too.
it takes me a while to convince them that she’s not poisonous.
the MUCH BIGGER thing i have to convince them is that this snake is coming home with me.
like, it’s not just that the snake is beautiful, and will probably be pretty sweet once i stop trying to stuff her in my purse (because, right, i’m going to walk into the metropolitan opera with a live snake in my hands). but i’m pretty sure this snake doesn’t have a home. because i know what i saw. right? i may have been the only person who saw it, but i know what i saw. seconds ago, this snake wasn’t a snake. it was a piece of jewelry.
we go into the met. my purse is very angry at me. my parents are moderately angry with me. i lose track of the woman who had the snake necklace. IF she was a woman, because i suddenly have a couple of other ideas, all of them wild as hell.
la traviata happens. music music music, blah blah. intermission. there’s a certain skill to intermission, where you BOLT the moment the lights go up and make it to the women’s restroom and make it while the line is still only a few miles long so that you can pee before the opera starts again. presumably someone has to be first in line to the women’s restroom but i can only assume it involves throwing hands.
anyhow i am good at intermission, even if i REALLY wish i could just use the men’s restroom, and i am just getting ready to go back in and meet my parents when suddenly the man who was with the person with the jewelry—remember him? because i almost didn’t—he’s right between me and the door.
i say hi, very very politely. i ask him if his friend is all right.
“he probably enjoyed that more than the opera,” the guy admits. he’s british, sort of very STEREOTYPICALLY british, if that makes sense, you can imagine him doing tea and crumpets (whatever crumpets are) but you can’t imagine him saying fuck. white hair but not, like, a really old guy. “are you all right?”
i say, “i’m good. i’m good. please don’t take the snake back.”
i have a number of other things i was going to say, most of which would give away that i KNOW. i want to say that wherever she came from, she’s a living being NOW, and turning living beings into non-living beings is, well, it’s killing however you do it so DON’T MAKE HER A NECKLACE AGAIN but i don’t get to say any of that because he sighs in relief and says, “oh, i was HOPING you would say that. you’re going to take care of her, then?”
(told you it was a her)
and yes, of course i’m going to take care of her, and i say that i’ll bring my parents around if it kills me and he says that extreme measures like that shouldn’t be necessary.
this guy is nice to talk to. he talks like he has a lot of emotions, you know how some guys go out of their way to hide that they have feelings? this guy does not. they’re all over his face. which makes it sort of surreal that he’s hiding the biggest secret in new york. i wonder if he knows.
“i was thinking of naming her alakazam,” i say, “because she came at me out of an orange-colored sky. i mean, the sky IS sort of orange with the streetlights . . .”
he does not get the reference
i can see he does not get the reference
and then i do something which is at least a little bit stupid, but i have to find out how on-point my suspicions are, so i say, “or maybe Jörmungandr.”
he smiles, this little delighted smile like i’ve told a secret joke, and he says, “i like Jörmungandr.” and then the lights dip and he makes his way back towards the boxes and i go back to my mom and dad.
and i think, holy shit, i guessed right. incredibly genderqueer redhead plays magical trick on annoying pickpocket, creates fucking LIFE as byproduct, we are pretty much in trickster god territory. like, i mean, you can posit wizards, but you know as well as i do that the power levels in harry potter make no fucking sense and even they had to use wands.
still haven’t figured out who the english guy was but i have the weirdest feeling he was the one who made Jörmungandr land on the right person. he is not Thor. no words in the tongues of mortals can encompass the degree to which this guy is not, in fact, Thor.
so we finish the opera and we go home and i can keep Jörmungandr if i take all responsibility for cleaning feeding blah blah blah, like i haven’t had a bearded dragon since i was twelve. and i have the hardest time describing the haircut i want to my hairdresser, since i only saw it once, but it says what i want it to say, and what it says is “fuck you, gender, i do what i want.”
and that’s how i got my new haircut and and my snek.
tl;dr i am reasonably sure that i got my new pet from FUCKING LOKI, who is just as genderweird as i am, and yes, i am serious