One of the most enriching experiences of this year has been getting to know other asexuals. Most of that has been online but some of it has been through my local meetup group. Arranged and organized on line though it is, it is a real world activity. Now, I've never been much of a joiner in to begin with. I hated the competition of athletic teams, the rigid structure of youth organizations, the ideologies of political and religious groups and the gendered/sexual undertones of most socializing. So needless to say I was wary of any new group. Over the years I had allowed my rejection of social norms to fester and morph into awkwardness and anxiety. I had coped in the past by drinking myself numb but had sobered up over the last few years and found myself looking to meet new folks. I hadn't been comfortable going to any of my old stomping grounds and was pleased to note that the meetup group got together in a cafe. I had no reasons not to go and had promised online friends and acquaintances that I would show up. Once I make a promise I keep it.
So, nervous though I was I felt too that meeting other aces was an opportunity I simply couldn't miss. It was a warm mid-September day and I took the short two something mile walk from my house to the cafe at a leisurely pace. I was excited but sweating it. I'll be honest, as good as accepting myself had been and as certain of myself as I was I still feared rejection. There was that tiny part of me that feared being told that I did not belong. The cafe was one I had been to in the past, I used to attend a poetry reading there a decade ago and I found it calming that not everything about that day was going to be new. My anxiety wasn't quelled but it wasn't so overbearing that I wouldn't be able to move forward. I got to my destination right on time but I needed to calm myself down so I paced back and forth on the sidewalk and fretted. Eventually I convinced myself that there was nothing to fear and no reason to run away. I stepped inside the cafe and looked around for any sign of the group. After pestering the staff I was directed down the back stairs. I walked down to a lounge type area and saw a U shaped bench with a few friendly folks sitting around chatting, many of whom were sporting purple shirts. Purple is the AVEN (Asexual Visibility and Education Network) color. AVEN had been my primary source of asexual interaction up to that point, it was where I had made my promises to attend this meetup. I crept over and asked gingerly if they were the New England Aces and before I could finish asking I was given a "yes" and a "hello". I sat down, perching on the end of the bench. After a bit of milling and waiting for others to show everyone went around the circle and introduced themselves. A bit later more folks arrived bringing us to almost twenty strong. I was a bit overwhelmed but elated. We did the introduction thing again. I was glad to note that although most everyone was in their twenties not everyone was still attending school. There were also a few folks in their thirties and at least one beyond.
The conversation was a tad awkward at first but so is any chat amongst a dozen plus strangers. I certainly wasn't adding anything of real value, I mostly listened. I'm never quick to speak in new situations, I need a bit of familiarity. The other factor was my near ecstatic joy at being surrounded by folks like me for the first time in my life. I could barely put the experience into words in my own head so joining in was nearly impossible. I also just didn't want to miss a thing. I was soaking it all in. This was the first time in my life that I didn't feel uncomfortable in other people's eyes. I felt safe. I felt secure in that I could know that no one there was judging me in a sexual way. No one was mentally undressing me or fantasizing about me. I also didn't have to worry that someone might be misinterpreting my own gaze. It was great! Save for the occasional intrusions of our waitress, it was perhaps the most joyful early afternoon of my life. When everything started to wind down I was a tad shocked that it had been several hours. Just as with other great moments time had simply flown by. My walk home was giddy and the feeling of peace that had overtaken and subsumed me at the start of 2013 when I had first come out welled up again and held me.
My life is a bit hectic and unsteady at the moment so I only made it to one more meetup with the New England Aces that fall. That next one felt so much more casual and the lead up to it was that much less tense. And that is sort of what this year has been like for me. Over the course of 2013 I have fully accepted who I am and even more importantly, I have learned to celebrate it. I have done a lot of creating and writing to share what it has meant. I have made internet videos, joined this site, penned and self published my memoir, made T-shirts and generally talked more fully and openly about my own thoughts and feelings with the world around me. I have also returned to one of my earliest creative passions in an attempt to capture what this year has meant, poetry. If I may I would like to share one here with you now...
Minus Green
Negativity floats far behind me
Like dried shreds of autumn's leaves
Whisked away by a fast moving wind
The compelling truth of my difference
Is that what makes me whole
Is the absence of what is
Of so much importance
To so many others
But my absence is shared
And that makes me real
It brings the truth of my existence
Forward in my own mind
To the world sex is the color pink
A rich hue that infuses their lives
To me it is minus green
And it describes an invisible spectrum
That I can't help
But fail to understand
There is a beauty to coming out as asexual
Not because it makes me special
But because it makes me the same
I will never be a lustrous pink
But I rest easy knowing
That I am minus green
The reference is one from the world of physics, the notion that what we all see as the color pink is actually the place in the spectrum where all the light the human eye can't see is. So what we see as pink is in reality the absence of green. That's how I had always felt before, like an absence, like someone from outside the world I was born into. It had been so hard for me to feel whole, valid and functional in the past that I had hoped for my life to end. The asexual visibility movement has snatched me back from the precipice of oblivion. I have been blessed with a moment that so few on this earth of ours get to experience. I feel genuinely lucky to have been born ace. I'd like to share another poem if I may...
Take Me To the Air
Take me to the air
At dawn or the witching hour or midday
Take me to the air
So that I might breathe free again
Feel the sunlight on me
Or the cool florescence of grey clouds
Wisp down and around me
The wind whipping
Or rustling slow
Let the rain pour in slapping sheets
I'll get wet with it
And love the closed chill of it
Take me out when the snows
Are shin deep and still plumping down
In big, fat and moist flakes
Or two days later with the melt ice
Slicking the ground and tripping me up
A brittle wind needling my face
Take me out in the damp heat
Of late summer under a sky heaving
With stand alone thick cumulus clouds
And I'll soak with it and bake gladly in it
Let all my familiar places
Ring from day to day with all of it
And take me to the air
That I might witness it
And be with it
Take me to the air
That I might breathe of it
And see with it
Take me to the air
Take me to the air
Take me to the air
So that I may live a bit
I know that 2013 has been a hard year for some, for many it has been full of tragedy. I myself have spent much of the year without a home and I began it with the deaths of both of my Grandfathers. But, if life has taught me anything it's that all things must be and all things must pass. There is hurt in this world and it can be a good thing, so long as we don't let it fester or wound us for too long and so long as we learn from it. I have learned to love life even more and I am looking forward to my future more than ever. I am looking forward to the future of this world of ours too. To a time when queer folks of every stripe are just another mundane fact of life. A time when husbands can love husbands and wives can love wives. A time when folks who aren't who the world assumed they would be can freely say so and make the changes they need to feel free without fear or shame to taint their transition. I want every person of every sort of mind to know the joy, peace and blessing that I have come to know in my own life. 2013 was a heck of a year and I can't wait for the next and the next...
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