Illustration by Aditi Singh

I was a kid who yelled “ew!” when their parents kissed. It’s a gross thing, putting your mouth on another mouth to express affection. 

Humans kiss because of nerve endings and the chemicals that get released into our brains. That’s why we do most things involving affection. It makes us happy. That’s why we have such close relationships; that’s why we have sex. These things feel good.

Do you remember in elementary school, everyone wanted to know who you had a crush on? Because you had to have a crush on someone, everyone did. 

Except you. 

But you didn’t want anyone else to know that, so you picked a person of the opposite gender who seemed nice. That was the right thing to do, right? The thing to say to make everyone like you?

Whatever, it was like third grade. No one actually had a crush on anyone; we were in elementary school! It was just fun to ask and then act like it was a big deal. 

When sixth grade rolled around, people had, like, for-real crushes. My friends were talking about boys they wanted to kiss and girls they thought were hot. 

I still thought kissing was gross. When did everyone change their minds?

So I picked a guy. To fit in. I wasn’t friends with him. I didn’t really know anything about him, but he was cute and sweet and included me in conversations on field trips. It felt plausible. 

It was a flawless plan. If anyone asked who I had a crush on, I had an answer. 

But why didn’t I have a crush on anyone? Was I not trying hard enough? Was I broken?

I became fixated on my “crush.” When I passed him in the halls, I’d try to make myself feel what I thought I was supposed to feel.

Eventually, I pavloved myself into actually having an actual crush on him. To this day if I saw him, I think I’d give myself an anxiety attack just by proximity. In the nine years I’ve known him, we’ve exchanged maybe ten words.

The other thing that happened in sixth grade was the “talk.” Why were people so nonchalant about something so horrible and disgusting and gross as sex? I couldn’t understand it, I didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t want anything to do with it.

Yet at the same time, I wanted a partner. Not a best friend! I wanted the flirting. I wanted the romance. 

I wanted it desperately. I wanted the connection, to have a person who had my back, and to whom I could tell everything. I wanted a partner I could trust, who loved every part of me, broken bits and all.

But not sex. Sex was still scary and gross.

My first kiss was on the Fourth of July after my sophomore year of high school. For all intents and purposes, it was picture perfect. I had found a new guy; he said I was cute and I was flattered, so when he asked me out I said yes. We were in his truck, post-fireworks. He knew I was weird about physical romance. At 16, I had figured out how to get that into words, even if I couldn’t fully articulate what was going on with me. 

Every time we were about to depart after hanging out, we’d linger in one of our cars. There was that tension I dreamed about having. There was that flirting. I loved it. This particular night, I dropped a boundary.

“I don’t think I would mind kissing, you know,” I said.

“Oh?” he said, “I didn’t know that.”

We sat in silence, staring at the smoke in the sky and at each other before he leaned over and kissed me. 

It was wet. And squishy. I tried to enjoy it.

We kissed a couple more times before I got out of his car, climbed into mine, and drove home. I was reeling. I couldn’t stop feeling his mouth on mine. I hated it. 

The kiss was an inciting incident. Why did it feel terrible? Why was it so gross? Was it just kissing? Or was all of intimacy like this? Over the years I fooled myself into thinking that my disgust at sex was a trivial pre-teen reaction. I’d grow into it. If I ever actually had sex, some magical switch would flip in my brain, and I’d enjoy it. Intimacy only seemed gross and scary.

I don’t remember enjoying most of my adolescent intimacy. I was confused and sad about why I felt the way I did. 

There was some intimacy I enjoyed with First-Kiss guy. Cuddles and forehead kisses. In between making out, we’d just lie together. Sometimes I would almost fall asleep on his chest. I remember thinking, “This is it. This is all I need. I could stay here forever.”

After I broke up with First-Kiss Guy, I stopped dating for a while. I stumbled upon this thing called “asexuality,” a sexual identity where an individual doesn’t feel sexual attraction towards other people. 

I was incredulous. That was a thing? It couldn’t be real. 

Then I downloaded Tumblr. I found a community of memes and text posts, jokes about asexual garlic bread and cake and dragons. It was very much real. I think it was December of junior year when I actually read the words for the first time: “You don’t have to have sex.”

It was groundbreaking. So many problems in my life were suddenly solved. I didn’t have to have sex. No one was forcing me to. Maybe I could even meet another asexual person. We could be romantic together. No sexual anything. It felt too good to be true.

Then romance struck again. At midnight in a car in a Holiday Gas Station parking lot, my friend Torii told me he loved me. We started dating the same night and have been dating long-distance for almost a year now since we left for college.

At first, I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea. We walked around in the dark for the better part of an hour while I deliberated. 

What made this different from my last relationship? I didn’t want to be in a relationship going into college, so why would I start dating Torii? But who was I closer with than Torii? Who was more supportive and caring for me than Torii? Why shouldn’t we at least try it for a while, even if college ruins it? 

So I said yes, I’ll be your partner.

Torii is smarter than I am, and funnier. He’s always been so good at making me laugh. I value the time Torii spends with me. He reciprocates and values my opinions and thoughts.

That summer we explored intimacy our way. We got Taco Bell and saw movies, we cried in parking lots. Of course we cuddled. I was comfortable with cuddling, it was the type of intimacy I knew I wanted out of a partner. 

Then we kissed. Not on the mouth, not at first, just little pecks on cheeks and foreheads. (I still prefer forehead kisses to all kisses. They’re so pure in affection.) 

We were about a month into the relationship before we really kissed. I knew he wanted to, and I wanted to make him happy. I wanted to know if it was as bad as I remembered. I wanted to know if I was really … broken.

It took a ridiculous amount of courage. In the end, I stared at his face for a full 30 seconds before leaning in. It was still wet, but it wasn’t unpleasant. I kind of wanted to do it again.

And there went all my boundaries. 

It was quite slow-going at first, but as I started to enjoy more things, we tried more things. We had sex for the first time a couple months ago. 

But wait a minute, reader, I hear you saying, what was all that you were writing about hating sex and thinking it was gross and not wanting anything to do with it? What happened to all those feelings?

Dear reader, I could not tell you. All I can say is that I met someone. I love him with everything I have, and I shall continue to do so. He makes me happy, and we have fun. 

I’m still not sexually attracted to him. That’s what asexual means, by the way — lack of sexual attraction. Not lack of sex. Or lack of intimacy. 

Some asexuals don’t have sex. They don’t want to, or they’re repulsed by it like I was. That’s okay.

Some asexuals, like me, do have sex. They do it for their partners and because they don’t mind it, or they do it because they enjoy it. Having sex is not the same as sexual attraction. You can have sex with someone you aren’t sexually attracted to. You can be asexual and still have sex.

I’m not sexually attracted to Torii. I think he’s the most gorgeous person I’ve ever seen, and I’m ridiculously romantically attracted to him. But not sexually. 

Even though I identify as asexual, I think sex is fun. It’s about pleasure, and it’s about intimacy. Torii once told me that he thinks of sex more as a form of affection, not an act. It’s about more than just getting off, it’s about human interaction and the connection people form when they have sex. 

I’m still not a big fan of French kissing, and sometimes my germaphobe tendencies get in the way of intimacy. I’ve had several breakdowns about not being a “real asexual,” and feeling like I’m a clown masquerading around with the label. But that’s all it is, a label. It’s a label for me to identify with and to use as I choose. It’s not there to limit me. 

Asexuality is intentionally an umbrella term — there are dozens of kinds of asexuals. Sublabels like gray asexual (one who experiences sexual attraction, but in an abnormal way), demisexual (one who does not experience sexual attraction unless there is a previous strong emotional bond), apothisexual (one who does not experience sexual attraction and is replused by sexual acts), and more, were created to denote the specific way individuals experience sexual attraction. There is no wrong way to go about being asexual. 

When I was first figuring out how I felt in relation to sex and sexual attraction, the label was helpful because it gave a name to what I was feeling. It described how I felt different from other people, and it led me to a supportive community of people that felt the same.

The people in that community made me feel validated during a period of uncertainty. They made sure that I knew I wasn’t broken — just different. Just asexual. Later, when I questioned my use of the label, those same people stood behind me.

I am an asexual who fucks. It doesn’t make me any less valid, or any less part of the community. It doesn’t define what I can or can’t do with my partner. It’s just a label. One that guided me through my struggles with sexual attraction when I felt broken and confused, and one that I still identify with now, even if I don’t “fit” the conventional criteria.