Escaramelo Salgado

It's Pride Month, so if you'll forgive me I'm taking a two minute break from the One Piece, League of Legends, Marvel Rivals, Final Fantasy and Pokémon shorts to tell you… Sylveon is trans, Taliyah is trans, everyone on the Straw Hats is queer, there are no words to describe how queer superheroes are as a concept let alone how queer they all are individually, and here's a fun fact for you: Cloud Strife's story gets ten times better when you understand it as an allegory for a trans coming out experience.

As for me, well, I'm not trans, but I do occupy my own little space in the rainbow flags which looks like this. I am aromantic.

We are generally not as visible as many of our queer siblings, probably at least partly because it's kind of a difficult identity to even discover in yourself, you basically have to prove a negative.

But what is this thing, "aromantic"? Well… okay, let's say you're a straight guy, right. You know the way you feel romantically about other men? I feel exactly the same way, and then I also feel that way about women, and then also the same way about all of the other genders.

Now, aromantic often goes along with asexual, there's a lot of co-occurrence of the two, but not always, and that is my situation. Yes to sex, no to romance, which being a man, yes, I know, that just makes me the same as 90% of the men you match on Hinge. "Ha ha ha didn't realize "fuccboi" was an orientation now," I know. I get it. I understand. I have had all the same thoughts myself, especially when I was questioning.

Which is the difficulty with being aromantic, because in order to figure out that that's what you are, you have to prove a negative. I have never been in love, and I have no reason to think I ever will be… but what if someday I meet The One??? What if there's a special divinely designated perfect soulmate out there, just waiting for me, and one day our eyes will meet across the room and it will be love at first sight forever?

And like. I can't prove that won't happen, anymore than I can prove that there isn't a flowery pink teapot currently hiding somewhere in the orbit of Saturn. And frankly, if it did happen, I wouldn't be mad. Why would I be? I would have a soulmate! That's a pretty big W, I think.

But… I've had over thirty years to encounter someone—anyone—who can spark my romantic interest, and thus far, every challenger of every gender has failed. So either I am aromantic, or else you people have a skill issue.