#asaw 19

To kick things off, have this meme I made!

But it’s Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, and now is as good as a time as any. So here it is.

The boy in my English class dislikes almonds in his chocolate.

He prefers dark chocolate to milk, doesn’t like M&Ms of any shape or form, uses pens he finds off the floor, and wants to study mechanical engineering like his older sister who is four years older than him.

I do not know why I know all this.

Or really, I do know. We sit at the same table in class, brushing elbows occasionally as we do group work, and argue about where pink goes in the rainbow. (“Before red,” I say, organizing the mechanical pencils, but before I place the pink one, he takes it and puts it after purple.) We discuss chemistry and precalculus, poring over mathematical problems that define our lives within these walls. We mention how the flutists are bad at marching, causing the other girl at our table to say not all flutists. We talk in the halls, walking past each other to get to class and sharing inside jokes that are just thinly veiled arguments.

Most days I find myself thinking about how this happened. We have nearly nothing in common, because he hates electrochemistry while I love it, and if we hadn’t arbitrarily sat next to each other at the beginning of the year, we wouldn’t have ever talked. We should be strangers, only meant to pass each other in halls, but now we’re something else.

Acquaintances. Friends, maybe. Something more, possibly.

My entire life, I have heard girls talk about boys. Because girls like boys. Because that boy is cute. Because that model is hot. Never have I understood this. I spent years staring at pictures and wondering if I’m missing something. What does hot and cute even mean?

If we were going to talk about attractiveness, why didn’t we talk about girls? Especially that one girl in my third period class with the prettiest hair and excellent taste in music?

We gossiped in P.E. once, sitting in a circle on the football field and whispering amongst ourselves so the others couldn’t hear. One of the girls, two years my senior, discussed her boyfriend and their sex life. Another nodded, agreeing with her on something or another. I sat, hands in my lap, not knowing how they could want to have sex with someone else. I tried to figure out how all of them, five girls in total, excluding me, had boyfriends. Girls are better than guys, was on my tongue. What’s the point of dating? I didn’t say.

Later I find out I am aromantic and grey asexual. Words heavy on my tongue, I tell no one.

One day I find there is more than one type of attraction. Platonic, romantic, and sexual are the most commonly talked about. There's more, like alterous — a type of attraction about wanting emotional closeness that is not entirely platonic or romantic. I think back to the boy in English class, who doesn’t eat French fries and likes grape Jolly Ranchers and plays Bloons Adventure Time TD, and what I feel for him. I don’t think he is cute, even though some people say he is okay-looking, whatever that means. I don’t want to kiss him, even though that’s what most people want to do with people they like. I don’t feel this burning desire to be called his girlfriend or take his last name, even though I think that is what girls think about.

I want to sit on a bench in the shade with him, listening to music together. I want to send him memes at two in the morning, laughing at jokes that shouldn’t be that funny. I want to lean against his shoulder, talking about the homework we have this weekend.

There are no dates, no romance, no flowers. A friend and her significant other who visited from Florida watch movies together while holding hands. My friends in a relationship with each other cuddle in class when nothing is happening and during lunch when they’re tired. My friend receives her favorite flowers from her boyfriend and presses them in books.

It doesn’t sit well in my stomach.

I do not want that. Holding hands in the dark while watching movies repulses me. Cuddling in public or for recreation terrifies me. Receiving flowers of any kind from someone bores me. I do not get those fluttering butterflies around the people I like, only lingering looks and awkward conversations. I do not get those pining thoughts about the people I like, only passing thoughts of oh that’d be nice irregularly.

My attraction is different from others. Even with the boy from English class, the only person I have ever liked this way, I do not get those landmarks. For the first time in my life, I find myself feeling something normal, but it is then ripped away when I realize that I like this boy —  a boy that I do not find cute, a boy that I do not want sex with.

He dated someone before, two years ago. A smart girl who loves doing chemistry labs that liked him — actually liked him, unlike what I feel for him — eventually broke up with him when he showed no interest in her. I know that if I ever confess, in a convoluted way that’s only possible with a vocabulary lesson, the same thing will happen to me. The boy I like agrees to date me because we are friends who go over quiz questions and complain about physics together, and eventually I learn he does not like me as much as I like him (or, worse, I cannot like him the way he wants me to), and we break up.

Our relationship will be uneventful. Boring. Mundane.

Then again, I am uneventful. Boring. Mundane. I do not like people, do not want to date anyone, do not want to have sex. I barely even like the person I do like, the first person I’ve ever been intensely attracted to.

Someday we will graduate high school. He will study mechanical engineering. I will forget about him, the boy who dislikes almonds in his chocolate, and my life will go back to being what it was before.

Maybe not my best drawing ever, but I wanted to finish something in time for Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week 2019. I also wanted to write a couple of words about Precure in an aromantic context.

This is Cure Yell from Hugtto! Precure, a super girly show about magical girls aimed at young kids. I decided to claim her for the aromantic community halfway through the season because a) I realized she didn’t have a canon love interest yet (i’m just gonna ignore the bad aspects of the finale), b) all her nervous crush energy around Homare disappeared once they befriended each other aka actually a squish, c) she wears a little green (though i’ve switched her amounts of green and pink here) and d) i love her

*cough* Riverdale *cough*

Have another meme

This meme series wouldn’t be complete without a joke about third wheeling.

Remember, if you’re aro or ace as well as heterosexual or heteroromantic, that doesn’t mean you’re straight. Don’t get bogged down by people trying to pick dumb fights with you on the internet. You don’t have to feel like you need to take the bait and respond to people who just want to hurt and exclude you.