hooks

I have known I was different since I was young. 
The neighbor kid introduced me to erotica and porn 
Said “this is hot - don’t you think?”
And I said yes - I was a child trying to be friends with someone much cooler than I, so what else was there to say?

But I didn’t think
I didn’t understand 

Flash forward six years
I’m on a date with a girl older and more attractive than me 
We find a secluded spot, she leans in, presses her lips to mine 
I feel myself shrinking, hiding from view
I step back 
Not because it’s my first kiss ever.
But because this moment that I had been told again and again and again would be the greatest feeling in the world was instead an abyss, a black hole whose event horizon I was falling towards.

Needless to say, that relationship didn’t last much longer. 

Flash forward two more years

I’m out of town on my last trip before college
In a hotel room with a girl I know, with a girl I like. 
I open my mouth, utter a secret I’ve held for years. 

She laughs. 

I don’t. 
She moves closer. 

I don’t slide away. 
But I want to. 

Her hair smelled like milk the day after it’s gone bad but you've already poured yourself a glass. 
Her hips felt like a million tiny needles poking me over and over again until my skin was raw. 
Her eyes grew tendrils that tore my chest open and squeezed my heart until it burst, flooding my veins with acid and death.

She said I was broken, but not to worry
She could fix me
She could fix me
She could fix me

But I didn’t need fixing

bell hooks writes that “it is not easy to name our pain, to make it a location for theorizing,” but somehow speaking this out loud is the easiest and hardest thing I have ever done 

To share my hurt virtually keeps it detached, prevents the judgement that comes when I tell people who I am and what I’ve lived through 

hooks says “imagine possible futures,” places where “life can be lived differently”

Where my lack of desire doesn’t make me broken
Doesn’t make me asexual
Doesn’t make me anything 

Where I can be accepted for everything I am
Where I can be who I want to be
Where I can be me without falling into a wretched and wicked cycle of self-destructive hatred and loathing 
Where I can be free
Where I can have hope
Where I can be happy

A place where I, and people like me, and people unlike me, can find sanctuary and peace. 

A place where we 

Can be free.

Where we can be free