The Right Person
TW: aphobia, heterosexism, sex trauma
It starts with one simple statement:
“You just haven’t met the right person.”
I smile and nod, even with the knife twisting at my gut.
I love my partner very much. Just not in that way.
The thought of the touching, the intimacy, the penetration. I shiver.
“But I have met the right person,” I say meekly, even though I believe it.
The look on their face says it all.
“Right…” they say, eyebrows raised. “But how can you say you love someone if you don’t have sex with them? Sex…it’s the most intimate, connected, loving act of all.”
They start to talk about how they’ve been out of love with their husband. Since kids, they haven’t had time for lovemaking.
“The kids might walk in on us.”
“He struggles to get it up.”
“I look at him and miss what we had, the before brekky quickies.”
“He’s probably having an affair with his hot secretary because I don’t give out.”
“You’re missing out. This is what life is about.”
*
I’m fifteen, and the other girls are talking about their first times.
“I was fourteen, at a party. You remember, Jesse T? This was before he was expelled, obviously.”
“I want it to be right. I can’t wait, though. I think Luke is super hot. I just wish he was more mature.”
“That Luke?”
“No, not Luke H. I heard he gave Abbey an STD.”
“It’s called an STI now. You mean Luke Z?”
“Yeah, he’s really mature for his age. I’m picturing it like it’s with Dean Winchester. I’d totally jump Jensen Ackles’ bones if I met him…”
“I’m already doing it with my boyfriend. His family’s really conservative, so we have to keep it quiet.”
“You and Leo are already active? I wouldn’t have thought it!”
“Yeah, well, it was bound to happen, right? Couldn’t wait ‘til we were married.”
One of them turns to me. “What about you?”
What about me? I stare back, dumbstruck for a second.
I’d never ever thought about it. Sex. Not until this exact moment.
Maybe I’m just a late bloomer?
I feel like a deer in headlights; that same complete lack of comprehension and bewilderment.
“Just…just waiting for the right person,” I lie.
*
I’m seventeen, and my father is calling me frigid.
“You always flinch when I try to touch you. Your own father. What are you gonna do when it’s a man? You’ll never get a man.”
Cue the laughter from the rest of the family roundtable.
*
I’m twenty years old.
Lying in bed with my first boyfriend.
We’ve been putting this off for months, but now his parents are away for the night.
Perfect chance.
Young couple, raging hormones, all that jazz.
We watch a couple of horror movies, hang out with the cat, make some tacos.
Lock the cat out of the bedroom.
We play around, foreplay, and it’s kinda nice.
The sex happens, and it’s awkward, messy, sweaty.
We’ve felt connected before this, lying in bed, holding hands on the street, me falling asleep against his warm, heady shoulder.
But this…it’s just nothing.
*
Twenty-five. Now they’re asking questions.
“When are the kids coming?”
“When I was your age, you couldn’t keep us off each other.”
“Ruth and Donna are talking about their grandkids, and little Mabel is so adorable. When’s our chance?”
“Doesn’t hubby get on your nerves sometimes? I suppose you haven’t reached that stage yet, when you’re not bonking like rabbits.”
*
Twenty-eight. I’m at a friend’s hens’ night.
We’re on a cruise ship, dotted by sparkly, glittery fairy lights.
Inside, we’re treated to a male striptease. The shirtless men grind up against the brides, and my friend blushes through her heavy makeup.
I sip my sweet white, my phone says only ten minutes have passed.
The rest of the girls in my group whoop and cheer. One wolf-whistles. The second makes growling sounds.
“Don’t tell hubby…” one says. “If I end up sneaking off with Channing Tatum there.”
The man winks back at her.
It’s not that he’s unattractive. He’s got nice blue eyes, defined shoulders, aesthetically pleasing. I’d just as easily feel the same with a group of female dancers.
But…sex?
“Mmm…I’d definitely divorce Freddy for that,” my friend says.
The only single girl in the group turns to me with sad, puppy dog eyes. “You’re lucky. Tinder and Bumble are so hard to meet someone. If only I was like you…”
Like me.
I snort, nod, and take a large sip of the wine.
*
Thirty years old. Gynecologist’s office.
I sit there with my legs crossed.
“It’s no more painful than a pap smear,” she says.
But pap smears are painful, I try to say, but the words are lost in my thoughts.
“You should buy some sex toys. They sell some good Rabbits for cheap on eBay. If you use a dilator, it’ll loosen you up a little, make it easier.”
“But…I’m asexual.”
Again, the words come out quiet, short. If I say it quickly enough, she can pretend it was just a brush of wind in the humid air.
“Everybody has sex,” she says. “You want kids, mmm? You come back after you’ve tried a bit. I’ll give you a blood test, so we can rule anything out.”
*
I’m depression-scrolling Twitter, or whatever they’re calling it now.
In a funk, because it’s been three months since the gynecologist.
I bought the toys. They sit in the bedside table, unused.
An author I liked in childhood is telling me I just need a good shag.
I throw the phone across the bed. As if I haven’t already tried that.
Time and time again.
A good shag. Like that would solve what’s wrong with me. The glitch in my brain.
I pull out the dilator. Try to think of something alluring, appealing.
Michael C. Hall’s smirk, the twitch of his lips. In and out.
The chef from The Menu—the woman, with her dark, pixie cut and curvy hips. In and out.
Again. Nothing.
I chuck the dilator across the room, break down in tears.
*
A month passes.
I’ve finished a book for my book club. It’s about a teenage girl and her steamy affair with a married man in 1940’s New York.
Perfectly decent, perfectly…average. Everything I’m not.
I’m scrolling Libby, looking for a distraction, not social media.
No more shagging.
But all the books there are about steam.
They call it “romance”, but there’s no romance, just sex.
Just sex.
I can deal with the romance, but then there’s the sweaty bedsheets, the raging everything.
“They’re just prudes,” someone replies to the author that need not be named.
Just sex.
That’s all it is, isn’t it?
Then why is this so hard?
A book pops up, purple cover.
Loveless.
Now that piques my interest.
I skim the blurb, borrow it out, listen to it on 1.25x speed.
She’s not like me, this protagonist. She makes me want to throw my phone across the room.
I’m not aromantic asexual like her. Do I even count? I doubt myself.
Loveless.
“They just want to be part of the Oppression Olympics,” some TERF with half a million followers cackles.
I’m not loveless.
“Patriarchy just makes them think sex is bad, when they’re just P.R.U.D.E.S.”
Are they mutating intersectionality, or am I just bad?
Loveless. Less than human.
“Sex makes us human beings. These alphabet soups are just showing their true colours: that they’re soulless sociopaths.”
Humanless.
*
I’ve discovered the truth about my father and it’s changed everything.
A conversation, raised voices, denial, tears.
“He never meant it like that.”
“All in the past.”
Not the past—now.
Affecting now.
The here and now.
A glass of whisky, thrust into a thirteen-year-old’s trembly hand.
“Boys only want one thing.”
His voice husky, his eyes leering over my prepubescent frame.
A slap on the ass, the cackling laughter.
“My own daughter, won’t even let me touch her.”
Not that, more than that.
A slave, a servant for boys, but not boys…
The man. A man.
Him.
Did he make me who I am?
In the distance, my humanless soul sparks to life, like a generator.
*
He’s a state away, another country, another planet.
Too close, but not anymore.
No contact.
His laughter, his touch, his smug, sarcastic voice, recedes into the distance.
Was it ever there at all?
My sexuality, it’s not his to steal.
I’m not loveless, I don’t have to flinch.
The therapist nods her approval: “Looking forward.”
*
Moving forward.
A referral. A step ahead.
I tell the specialist the story. My story. I find my voice, once lost amid the sea of his laughing, his cackling, his cruel, unwelcome snarls.
No-one will love you if you can’t even let me touch—
Silence. Voiceless. He’s voiceless.
Screaming in the distance, a lifetime away, throwing picture frames down off the wall, an incoherent toddler tantrum.
“I always thought he was the parent, and I was the child.
That I’m asexual. I’m the problem.”
I hesitate, finding the right words.
“But I’m not the problem. Being asexual isn’t a problem.
He’s always been the child. And I’m ready to move on.”
*
I’m chatting with my partner about the future. Someone who understands.
The future.
We’re excited about the possibilities.
It’s not a straight line, it’s flexible, pliable, open.
“The right person?” they ask, shaking their head almost sheepishly. “That’s you.”
###
