The "A" Word

Summers in Indiana passed like glaciers. As July began to bleed into the most brutal part of August, we would find ourselves desperate to find solace in any menial passing fantasy. The doldrums of boring brick suburbia left us with nothing else but those fantastical whimsies.

Some days we'd fancy ourselves filmmakers, running around with the cheap Panasonic camcorder I had gotten that Christmas. We'd create half a movie and get bored half as fast. On this day, we found ourselves sprawled across our front porch. My sister Mason and her best friend Lindsay spread out on the swinging bench just enough that I was forced to sit on the stoop. I was often the one making concessions in the name of civility.

I sat and listened as they prattled on about some boy they both knew from high school, trying desperately not to feel left out and reminded that I would always be two years behind them. I was still stuck in the mental prison ward of middle school and to me, high school seemed as far away as adulthood.

In the scorching mid nineties heat, our lemonade--which we pretentiously put in mason jars to feel more "etsy" as my sister would say-- sweat in our hands, making us all sticky and slightly uncomfortable. I was thinking about how unbearably gross my hands had become when I noticed Mason and Lindsay's focus being pulled across the street.

The Hendersons were having work done on their house. I'd sometimes hear my parents joke that every time Mr. Henderson stepped out on his wife, she'd get a brand new renovation.

Their house was always under construction, if that tells you anything about Mr. Henderson's faithfulness.

At the present moment there were several construction workers collected in the front yard, building out the already obnoxiously large porch. Many of them had removed various articles of clothing in the arduous heat. One in particular, a youngish man who had long abandoned his shirt, seemed to be the main topic of the girls on the swinging bench.

"Damn." Lindsay swooned, clearly lost for words.

"I know right? Like excuse me sir, there's something you can fix over here." my sister concurred, trying her best to ooze as much Samantha from Sex and the City out of her sixteen year old self.

The two giggle conspiratorially, and I found myself examining the construction worker. I see the way sweat drips from his thick hair onto the rim of his hard hat. I see the angry red color of the skin on his shoulders, and I feel a strange amount of pity for the man.

"He's so hot." I hear Lindsay say behind me, and I think that she's noticed it too.

"I know. If he doesn't put SPF on those shoulders, he's gonna have a nasty sunburn." I say, as if that were the most obvious takeaway of the moment.

Lindsay and Mason look at me then, as if I had grown two heads, but in a fleeting moment they had shaken off my weirdness and returned to their boy crazed confessional. Eventually I went back inside to wash sticky lemonade off of my hands, leaving them to their ogling.

It's an innocuous moment, barely worthy of recollection. I'm sure if I asked Mason or Lindsay now, they'd laugh and swear they don't remember this day at all. But I do. I remember every inane detail because it was the first day when I realized that there was something different about me.

I suppose I had always known, deep down. But when you're younger, you don't know another way to be. You just assume everybody else is like you.

But hearing them carry on, pouring themselves over every inch of the man's body, practically creaming their pants as they sat there--I'd never felt more alone in my entire life.

Because it had never occurred to me that the man was physically attractive. I noticed that he was well-exercised. I noticed the way the sun was damaging his naturally earned tan. But to me, these were observations, merely an acknowledgement of what my own eyes had seen.

It's a difficult thing to explain to people who have never experienced it. People don't believe you when you tell them that you're incapable of feeling sexually attracted to anyone.

At first, they tell you that you must be a lesbian. "You don't notice guys because you like girls." my sister told me when I tried to explain it.

And then they just deny it. As if you've just told them that the world is really full of lizard people who came from a moon made of cheese. "You've had to at least have looked at someone like Brad Pitt and thought he was hot."

Except I don't. No offense to Brad Pitt, I'm sure he's incredibly attractive, but my brain doesn't see that. I felt so depressed and broken throughout the majority of high school. Because if everyone's the same and you're the one on the outside, then the problem is you, right?

I won't say life is a bed of roses now that I'm an adult. I still haven't quite found people who truly understand me. When you tell people you're an ace, they look at you like you're a unicorn lost in a sex dungeon. Part of me is still lost and looking, but in adulthood I finally realized that being asexual didn't mean I could never love anyone. In fact, so long as the person was engaging and fun to be around, in a strange and freeing way, I found I could love ANYONE. Because sex and gender and traditional beauty all meant nothing to me.

I wish the me of today could go back and give a pep talk to that fourteen year old crying in the bathroom. But I guess in a way, I'm glad that I can't. Because I wouldn't be me without her.