I didn’t realize I had encountered a dragon until I was twenty-three. At that point, it had happened about thirteen years prior, but I had never noticed that it was a dragon specifically. Sure, I knew what it was. Sure, I glimpsed it from time-to-time. But it was only ever in passing, and it was such a little thing that did it really matter? A baby of a thing, really. Tiny wings, huffing and puffing to try and breathe fire, only succeeding in blowing a little smoke out of its flared nostrils. It posed no real threat to me. 

*

Dragons are one of the few creatures that exist across cultures. Ancient Mesopotamian mushkhushshu serving the god of creation and justice. Andean amaru traversing the mortal and spirit worlds. Chinese emperors claiming power as incarnations of the divine dragon. St. George slaying a dragon to save a princess sacrificed by her own village. 

What’s striking isn’t just how widespread dragons are, but how independently they seem to have arisen. Humans separated by time and geography looked up at the sky or down into deep water and imagined something serpentine, scaled, and terrifying. Some people have proposed that this convergence isn’t a coincidence. Rather, the dragon is an instinctive composite of the predators our ancestors most feared: the sinuous body of a snake, the talons of a bird of prey, the crushing power of a crocodile. If that theory holds, the dragon isn’t invented so much as remembered, assembled from the oldest danger signals wired into the human nervous system. 

*

I was ten when I faced down the dragon. A baby of a thing, really, but I was a crocus among chrysanthemums. This is a nicer way of saying that I had the honor of going through puberty before all my friends. One of them told me it was because I wasn’t white and that white girls stayed girls the longest. I had never heard this, but it sounded plausible to me. Either way, I knew with every fiber of my being that I was ugly. My teeth were crooked. I had started getting my first whiteheads. I had gotten glasses the year before. Oval-shaped, with tiny flowers on the arms. I only wore them when I had to look at the blackboard and otherwise, kept them in a pink case in my assigned desk like shame. My friends were ruddy-cheeked blondes and brunettes who shopped at Limited Too and Justice. All of my clothes were hand-me-downs from my sister.  

My chest was starting to swell which everyone noticed, but my mom said nothing about it. Boys and girls alike stared at my chest with naked curiosity. I didn’t like being different. It was just another thing to feel ashamed about. In the fall and winter, I wore bulky cable-knit sweaters and in the spring and summer, I kept my arms crossed over my chest whenever I could, giving me a perpetually sullen look. 

My formal education on dragons started a few years later. In middle school, I transferred to a prissy private school for princesses. I was still ugly, but I liked being surrounded by beauty. (It would take me another seven years to formally come out as queer.) 

We were taught that dragons were everywhere in the real world. We took mandatory self-defense classes in sixth grade where a creepy guy named Ernest pretended to be a dragon. He had a costume — lots of padding and a helmet so that we could kick and punch him. We learned that the best way to vanquish a dragon was a knee to the groin in combination with pinched fingers to the eyeballs. We practiced on Ernest who had started the lesson off not in his gear to convince us he was a good, normal human before he put on his dragon suit. 

In high school, we watched a documentary in health class about dragons on college campuses. For homework, we were assigned a buzzy magazine article about dragons at an elite college where at least a few girls matriculated every year. We were about to leave the safety of the palace for the first time. The well-meaning adults wanted us to know that there were dragons out there. Never take a drink from a dragon. Never let your friend go home alone with a dragon. Dragons will try to trick you. Never let them trick you. 

Interestingly, they never taught us how to identify a dragon. I think that’s why I didn’t realize I already had my own tale. 

*

I know, I know. I also want something else to write about. There are enough stories about dragons from the whole of human history. The world doesn’t need one more. 

I know, I know. But I don’t know what else to do with this. So once upon a time, I was ten. A baby of a thing, really. I faced a dragon. I got out unscathed. 

Once upon a different time, I was twenty-three and watching the news headlines about the latest high profile celebrity to be cancelled because of someone else’s story. And I was reading the news articles and the social media posts and wondering whether I too, I too. But it was unthinkable, because I had gotten out unscathed. Wasn’t I so lucky? 

And once upon a very different time, I was nearly thirty, recounting something that had happened a lifetime ago. If I looked at it, if I acknowledged it, it would grow. It would grow and grow and grow, and if I let myself, I could probably look at it forever which meant it could have grown infinitely until one or both of us died.  

*

He was my age. A baby of a thing, really. He posed no threat to me. I was friends with his sister. To this day, I still say hi to his parents when I see them. They are kind people. They have big golden retrievers and help organize the neighborhood block party. I don’t think they know that they have a dragon. 

My dragon has a really common name. Let’s call him Jack. Ironically, I’ve dated two other extremely kind and gentle men who were also named Jack although both of them have, at various points and at my request, had their claws wrapped around my throat so I couldn’t breathe. Perhaps a dragon-like resemblance should be disqualifying, but I earnestly and genuinely loved them both, even when I felt afraid. Perhaps this says much more about me than them. 

*

I’ve only told a few people about the dragon. Two therapists, because I figured it was relevant to why I was bad. One of the Jacks after several whiskeys. My wife after she made a throwaway comment that a skirt I had made me look like a slutty child. I couldn’t stop screaming and crying that “I didn’t deserve that”, as she looked on in confusion at my clearly outsized reaction. I felt like a hideous, disgusting monster, but I couldn’t stop raging. The clock ticked closer and closer to our dinner reservation.  

We missed it entirely, curled around each other in bed as she gently kissed the corners of my eyes. “I had no idea,” she said. “I had no idea.” 

*

It was over as soon as it began. Which is another way of saying that I remember nothing except a searing, insistent pressure. Let me in. Let me in. There was a burning, like a breath of fire. And then it was over. And then there was laughing. I think I was laughing. But also I don’t know what to think anymore.  

Why me? Was it a sense of curiosity about my rapidly developing body? Is it because he knew I wouldn’t tell on him? Is it because he knew my parents? Did he plan it out beforehand? Was I the only one or did he hurt other girls like this? Does he even remember this happened? 

The truth is that I’ve tried being sad about it, and I’ve tried being angry about it, and I’ve tried being gentle about it, and I’ve tried being violent about it, and I’ve tried being patient about it, and I’ve tried talking about it, and I’ve tried being quiet about it, and I’m trying to write about it but here’s the thing — it is never, ever going away. I faced down a dragon. I did not get away unscathed. This fact will follow me until the day I die, because there is no way to kill that part of me without razing myself to my bones. 

*

I don’t think he knew he was a dragon. I don’t think either of us even knew what a dragon was at that age. 

I saw him once a few years ago while I was walking down the street my parents still live on. He was pulling his Mom’s minivan into their driveway. The baby fat had disappeared from his cheeks, but he still had the same impish grin. He looked more like a dragon than when I knew him. I doubt he knows he is a dragon to me. We waved hello, but didn’t speak. I went home and lay on the floor of my childhood bedroom. I held my breath, pretended I was invisible, pretended that it was a magic spell that would make it and me and everything just go away. All I had to do was hold my breath. 

My mother called me down for dinner. I exhaled, breaking the spell. I rose from the floor, straightened my dress, and floated down the stairs with all the grace of a real princess. 

*

What persists across culture and time is the sense that dragons are not simply big animals. They are forces. They carry within their bodies something that exceeds them — weather, fate, divine will, the capacity to end the world or to hold it together. You can ride a dragon, harness their power, but you are never completely safe from it.  

My dragon is an instinctive composite of the predators I most fear: the sinuous body of doubt, the talons of remembering, the crushing feeling of talking about it out loud. I am simultaneously remembering and inventing the dragon, so that I might face it again. This time, I will scream.