Discovering who you are isn’t always easy — especially when part of the answer is an orientation not often discussed
First created in 2010, the asexual flag features four stripes with different meanings. Black stands for asexuality, gray stands for gray-asexuals and demisexuals, white stands for non-asexual partners and allies and purple stands for community.
March 25, 2022 | Story by Hope Dean | Photos by Thandie Brown
Editor’s note: The names in this story have been changed.
I am 10, and I have just figured out what sex is.
It isn’t from either of my parents sitting me down on the couch for an awkward conversation. It isn’t from a traumatic image I stumbled upon on Google, either. It’s just a joking comment on iFunny, an old app where users posted bad memes, that alludes to what goes where.
I stare at the screen of my iPod touch with a frown. Oh, I think. So that’s how it works. Weird. I thought it was just about kissing and rolling around. I don’t understand what the big deal is, but I don’t worry about it yet. I’m only 10, after all.
I am 12, and everybody is whispering about one of my classmates.
We’re all packed in the tiny locker room before gym class, shucking out of our maroon plaid skirts and into baggy gym shorts that hang down to the knees. My three friends and I are tucked into the corner, quietly turned toward the wall. It’s a survival mechanism that’s served us well before. But we listen to everyone else — that’s the second part of the tactic. Knowing who to stay away from. And right now, we need to stay away from Christie.
“She’s with Harry now, right?” one girl mutters, dabbing Bath and Body Works perfume on the small of her wrists. Warm Vanilla Sugar.
“Totally,” another says with a giggle.
“No. No way!”
“Yes way.”
I’m standing two feet away in a training bra, a frown on my face. I know the term, of course — but I don’t get it. Why would Christie do that?
“She’s lucky, I’d say,” the perfume girl continues. “He’s got good hair.”
“Yeah, real good for pulling on.” I tie my shoelaces and stand up, weaving my way through the crowd into the gymnasium to start the mile run early. It’s a joke. They must be joking. Because what’s the point?
I am 13, and two dozen middle school girls and I are watching a film from 20 years ago in the dark. It’s full of colorful diagrams of the uterus and the kind of acting that incites second-hand embarrassment.
When it’s over, my Bible teacher turns on the lights with a sharp snick of the switch. Of course, it’s the Bible teacher in charge of sex education at this Christian school.
“Does anybody have questions?” she asks. She’s a woman in her 60s, dressed in a long white dress with dyed blonde hair bobbed sharply to her chin. Nobody says a word.
“I see. Well, there was something the video didn’t tell you,” she continues, strolling in front of the old box television on its wheeling cart. “They didn’t tell you how hard it would be to resist. But it’s imperative that you wait until marriage. God designed it that way for a reason, and it’s for your protection.”
Across the room, some of the girls nod. I just blink. Hard to resist, huh?
I chalk it up to an exaggeration. Bible class can be prone to them, after all.
I am 15, and half of my friends have boyfriends.
They’re happy, and I’m happy for them. They hold each other’s hands and wear each other’s hoodies and chat about who’s with who and how Jesus can’t possibly judge the entire school.
They ask about me, and I just shrug. I don’t think about it, I say. I’m not lying.
I’m scrolling through Twitter one day after school when I come across the word asexual.
The post is a simple thing, something about how bisexual and asexual people have a lot in common. But I haven’t heard the word before and I’m the Googling sort, so I copy and paste it into the search bar and give it a go.
What comes up is an FAQ page from a website called AVEN — the Asexual Visibility and Education Network. It reads:
“Asexual: Someone who does not experience sexual attraction or an intrinsic desire to have sexual relationships (or the adjective describing a person as such).”
I freeze. My chest feels cold. I get up from my chair and pace across the kitchen tiles barefoot, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
Oh no, I think. Oh no.
I am not asexual. I’m naive, I’m easily swayed, I’m immature, I’ll grow into it, I’ll meet the right person, I’ll try hard enough, I’ll force it, I’ll fake it, I am not asexual, I am not asexual.
For years, Hope wondered: “Was she ‘normal,’ or asexual?” She couldn’t tell.
I am 16, and I’m spending my summer volunteering at my local gymnastics center’s summer camp for kids.
One of the other volunteer coaches is a 17-year-old from Virginia, down in Florida visiting relatives for the summer. He has tan skin and warm brown eyes. He plays with the children with the ease of an older brother, scooping them up and swinging them around to a gaggle of giggles and shrieks.
He’s sweet and he’s kind and he’s a good conversationalist, and that’s all I think about him — until the second week of camp when another volunteer I’ve made friends with marches up to me during our lunch break.
“So,” she says, plopping down on the edge of the blue eight-inch mat. “He’s hot, right?”
I’m used to this phrase by now. I pluck some popcorn from the bag that she waves under my nose and agree that, yes, he is aesthetically pleasing.
“Too bad he’s taken,” she says. “And too bad I’m taken. Otherwise, I’d totally go for him.” She tosses a piece of popcorn high in the air and catches it on her tongue. Then she looks at me with a wry, sideways smile. “Wouldn’t you?”
I stare down at the pale blue carpeted floor. “Um,” I say.
She stares at me. “What, you wouldn’t?”
I pause. But she’s still looking at me, so I say something: “Oh, yeah. No, I totally would.”
“Oh, good!” She laughs, tucking her glossy black hair behind her shoulder. “I was starting to worry there was something wrong with you.”
I am 17, and my dad is driving me back home after prom.
I’m sitting in the passenger seat, sweating in my silky blue dress and short black heels. He’s asking me why I don’t have a date, and I don’t know what to say.
“Nobody really brings a date to prom anymore,” I say.
“Well, Nora did!” he says.
I don’t quite know how to answer that.
“What, is there nobody you like?” he asks.
We’re stopped at a red light. I watch the turning signal tick, tick, tick.
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
“You can tell me, you know. You don’t have to be embarrassed.”
I could lie, make something up, but suddenly I don’t want to. Suddenly I’m angry.
“Dad. I’m just not into people like that.”
He frowns in the dark, eyes jumping from the cars in front of him to me. “What do you mean? Of course, you are.”
“No, I’m not! Are you inside my head? How can you know how I feel?” I snap. The car falls silent.
“Don’t tell mom,” I finally whisper.
“Okay,” my dad says. The light turns green.
We don’t talk for the rest of the ride.
I am 19, and I’m sitting on the dirty carpet of my dorm room floor, clutching my cell phone.
It came up again, because of course it did. My dad, miles away as a tiny voice in my ear, asks what’s going on with my friends. I tell him my roommate has a boyfriend, and he asks why I don’t have one.
“I told you,” I say. “I’m not really into people like that.” It’s not exactly true — by that point, I’d experienced the occasional romantic feeling — but I was so worried about the implications that I’d never brought them up to anyone. Because when you say romance, everyone assumes sex.
“What, so are you asexual?”
Out of everything he could have said, I was not expecting that. My eyes widen. I start to shake, just a little.
My roommate stares at me from across the room, curled up on the couch with her laptop carefully balanced on her legs. She looks concerned, but I don’t have the energy to explain everything right now.
“Yes,” I say, heart beat-beat-beating in my chest. I’d never really admitted it to myself before. “How do you know what that is?”
“I looked it up. I was wondering what was going on with you.”
Beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-beat. “And? Do you care?”
“What? No, I don’t care. That’s perfectly fine with me.”
I cover my eyes with one hand and start to sob.
“Why were you so worried?” he asks.
“I-I don’t know.”
We exchange a few more words about it. I’m feeling relief in a way I’ve never felt before. And then —
“But you know you’re going to have to let go of that if you want to get married, right?”
This time I’m crying for an entirely different reason.
I am 20, and all my friends know that I am asexual.
It came up in different ways for different people. Sometimes it was in my room on my bed, told over stumbled words and tears and stress. Sometimes it was through a joke, something about mitosis or liking cake more than sex. Sometimes I didn’t even tell them and they just figured it out.
But all of them know, and none of them care.
Or, they do care — but they care just right. They reference it in the funniest of ways, drawing a laugh out of us all. It’s casual conversation, dinnertime fare. It’s normal in a way I thought just wasn’t possible.
Sometimes I look at them and I just want to cry. But not in a bad way.
I am 21, and I’m still coming to terms with being asexual.
Ask me on a Monday, and I’ll tell you I’m out and proud. I’ll tell you that I’d never want to be any other way. Ask me on a Tuesday, and I’ll tell you that I wish I could be anything but asexual. I’ll say that I’ll ignore it, that I’ll push it down like paper folded in on itself, creased again and again until it’s so small it disappears.
But there aren’t enough creases in the world to send anything to oblivion. I know that now, and that’s why I can tell people who I am without shaking. I can look at myself and know how I feel and know that there are other people like me.
Just months away from 22, I can finally be OK — even if it’s just for a moment.
Hope is grateful for the term ‘asexual.’ It brings a sense of safety and belonging.
Hope Dean is Atrium's co-Editor in Chief and Web Editor. She has written for several news outlets, including Fresh Take Florida and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In her free time she enjoys reading, running and making too many Spotify playlists.