squiggly

“Almost ready?” I asked, leaning over while still standing, trying to tie my shoe in the most inefficient way possible.

“Let me get a drink first,” Veronica said, grabbing a glass and heading to the bathroom sink.  Veronica told me she liked bathroom water more than kitchen water on our fourth date.  It was a little weird, but I didn’t judge her.  Maybe she knew something I didn’t.

She paused to smile at the mirror before turning on the tap.  I remember what she told me about that, too.  She said she did it every time she came across a mirror to remind herself that she was a beautiful person.  She was beautiful, that was certainly true.  I couldn’t knock her runner’s figure or her shielded eyes or her Mediterranean brown hair.  She also dressed well.

When I was in elementary school, I remember we had this assembly in which some guy came in and the basic message of it was was that we should protect the rainforests.  I have a vague recollection that there were songs involved, but I can’t really remember the full details of something that happened almost fifteen years ago.  What I’m stuck with now is the question: why did the school permit someone to tell 7 year olds to protect the environment?  What could I, a 7 year old kid, possibly have done to stop the mean companies from bulldozing trees to make paper out of?  I disliked paper just as much as the next kid; you had my full support already.  Did they pay that guy or did he pay the school?  And which would be worse?

“Ready now?” I asked as she finished her second glass.  "We should get out there before sunset.“

“Yeah,” she yielded, tossing me the glass glass.  

“That’s glass,” I scolded, carefully setting it inside the dishwasher.  

Does this qualify as a skill: I’m really good at measuring someone’s attractiveness.  I can look at any woman and immediately scale her outward beauty compared to other women.  If you put 100 women in a room I could place them in order of my attractiveness to them without any struggle at all. What does that mean?  What does that say about me?  Do other people have this same skill?  I’m afraid to ask.  I haven’t ever mentioned this to anyone.  I realize it’s a very rude thing to even talk about doing.  Plus, where would I find the 100 women?

We disembarked from my second floor apartment, careful on the icy outdoor steps to the parking lot.  After four sentences of discussion, which I will spare you, we decided to head west, so we could face the setting sun as we ran.  I had forgotten my sunglasses, but Veronica had remembered hers.  She also remembered her water bottle and her ipod.  It was one of those mid 2000s ones, definitely pre-iPhone, but I couldn’t remember what it was called. Anyway, she also had one of those straps runners have that lets you attach it to your arm as you run.  Man, technology has really advanced.

When I first started driving I used to be really nervous about making left turns. Something about them startled me.  Maybe it was the improvisation and finesse required to judge the distance needed to successful turn without getting destroyed by the opposite side of traffic, maybe it was because I probably only did ten of them before going for my license test.  I think I’ve mastered it now, but I still really prefer right turns.  They’re a lot easier to pull off and there’s less of a chance your car will be hit if you make an honest American mistake.

wanting and not wanting at the same time

in fact i think a lot of aro-ace people really hate that part of themselves, hide it, and struggle for a long time to ‘accept’ who they are and feel any sense of ‘pride’. that’s the feeling i wanted to capture here. the disappointment, the loneliness, upon realising that you can’t feel what is such a wonderful thing. the embarrassment of not being ‘normal’, of being some random sexuality that nobody irl has heard of, and letting down those around you because you can’t be who they want you to be. how desperately you want to change, how desperately you want to feel. but you just can’t.

i know not all aro-ace people feel like this. i know lots of aro and/or ace people feel able to be in relationships, to feel closeness and have partners in other ways. but i think it’s important to be aware that some aro-ace people do feel like this.

the comments on this comic have mostly been great but a few have been very frustrating. a comment it got a lot was along the lines of ‘aw!! you don’t need to have sex to be in a relationship!’. you completely missed the point, hah. this is not a comic about sex. it’s about a lack of feeling, the lack of something beautiful other people seem to have. another comment that popped up a few times was ‘maybe she’s a lesbian’. well maybe lesbians and aro/ace girls have more in common than people think - maybe they both often struggle to accept that they feel no attraction to men, even though society has conditioned them to do so, sometimes spending years trying to force themselves to like men in that way, when they just can’t.

this comic is called ‘wanting and not wanting at the same time’ because she wants to love. but when it comes down to the reality, she can’t fulfil the requirements of that. she wants to love someone forever, to get married and have children and grow old with her soulmate, but she doesn’t want it with this person. or that person. or anyone she meets or will ever meet. a sort of catch 22, i guess.

[Audio Description: A scene from the podcast Dungeons and Daddies.

Anthony: You hear the thump of footsteps behind you of two very familiar, very fast-paced footsteps. And you hear, da, da, da, da, da, and they go— 

Lark & Sparrow: Father! We have come here to save you! From the— from the crab! Aha!

Henry: What the fricking, ding, dang, gosh darn, dilly willy, heckin’ shark tooth, banana, chicanery— hooting, tooting, raspberry fricking fuck are you two doing here?!

[laughter]

Matt: Wow.

Lark & Sparrow: Oh, he used the fuck word.

Beth: I bark, friendly.

I have a terrible habit of getting really into fan art and then totally forgetting to post SO here’s some of my early DnDads doodles. Nice to get rough shapes down without trying to dial in designs right away. Didn’t figure out Darryl on this pass but I got it later.

(Dungeons and Daddies a really fun, absurd show in which four dads from our world are sucked into the forgotten realms and must rescue their sons.)

What die are you?