Box Turtle Arts Journal

Warning: Some Vulgarity

My sister got married when I was sixteen years old. It was actually less than a month after I turned sixteen. Everyone else in my family was overjoyed about the marriage, but I couldn’t understand. They had only been dating for a couple months before the marriage and because my sister is religious, that was long enough for her. That wasn’t long enough for me though. I had only met her now husband a few times. We played board games the couple times he had come over but I had never really connected with him. He was a stranger to me, so I couldn’t see what my sister saw in him. How was I supposed to ask her? Was I supposed to just try to have her explain her sexual attraction to him? She was my sister, of course not, but god was I curious. I still continue to be, and I continue not to ask, even when friends and family members continue to have new partners, experiences I can never truly understand. It sometimes feels as if I’m staring through a window into a world that’s been locked away from me. I’m desperately curious, but it’s not my world. It’s the allo’s¹.

The words “aromantic²” and “asexual³” are both defined by absence; both are described by a lack of attraction, whether it’s sexual or romantic. But do those definitions actually reflect the aroace⁴ experience? Is it all about that “lack” of feeling, that “lack” of something that everyone else seems to have? It can certainly feel that way, especially early on into understanding your identity. After all, coming to terms with an a-spec⁵ identity is about understanding that there are certain experiences that you will just never have. For me, coming to terms with being aromantic meant that I will never “fall in love.” That’s not something that every aromantic person will experience, but it is certainly true for me. Once you know that you so clearly fall outside of what society has deemed as “normal human behavior,” describing your experience becomes infinitely more challenging. How can you describe something there aren’t really words for? Umbrella terms of identities will never be enough to neatly describe the messy experience of being human. The simplicity of being allo can be alluring; I’ve definitely been jealous sometimes. What does it mean to be able to use terms so easily agreed upon by society? What does it mean to know what you’re experiencing because the world has told you all your life that it’s a normal human experience? What does it mean to live a life that is deeply alien to many aroace people?

Aroace identity is often tied to an alien-like experience. If romance and sex make us human, then what’s up with these fuckers who don’t seem to see it like the rest of us? How can they still be human? In reality, anything you can’t experience is alien. Being gay is alien to a straight dude. Being jewish is alien to a christian. Being allo (romantic, sexual, etc.) is alien to an aroace person. It is that inability to fully understand an allo existence that is deeply alluring. We have many questions on the tips of our tongues about why people fall in love, why people have sex, why people are the way they are, but none of them ever leave our lips. That intense curiosity can often be at the front of our minds, but what would it mean to actually ask those questions? How will one be perceived if they ask what can easily be seen as invasive? So no matter how much one wants to know it’s not worth it. It’s not worth trying to get answers to questions people don’t want to be asked that often, they don’t even have answers to. If we lack an ability to be a part of allo society is it even worth trying to push ourselves into it?

The a-spec experience is often defined by a “lack,” but that’s not actually what it is. It’s about a refusal to experience relationships within the societally agreed upon hierarchy. It’s about a refusal of amatonormativity⁶ and of prioritizing sex and romance. It’s not about what isn’t, but rather what is. “What is,” is my deep love of storytelling. What I do is write. It’s not that I don’t date or don’t have any desire to have any kind of exclusive relationship with someone. It’s that I love prioritizing art and friendship in my life. I will never be able to understand what it means to be allo and I will always be deeply curious. As a storyteller, I have to ask questions so that I can write these lives I will never live into my stories. But, at the end of the day, I will always feel like someone behind a window, looking into a world that will never be “mine.” Because my world is the aroace world. My world is one with non-hierarchical relationships. My world and emotions will never be “easy” or “simple” to articulate to others, especially those so different from me. I am not allo, that’s for sure. So I’ll always have to be no more than an observer on the alien allo world.

1. Allo- is an prefix that can be put onto any attraction suffix such as allosexual or alloromantic. Allo is the opposite of the A- prefix, therefore meaning to have attraction. When shortened in this form, it is an umbrella term that can be any kind of attraction.

2. Aromantic is having little to no romantic attraction.

3. Asexual is having little to no sexual attraction.

4. Aroace is a shortening of the terms “aromantic” and “asexual”, “aro” and “ace” respectively, put together into one identity. Therefore, it is having little to no romantic or sexual attraction.

5. A-Spec is an umbrella term used to mean any identity on the attraction spectrums that can fall under the umbrellas of terms that start with the A- prefix such as “aromantic” or “asexual”.

6. Amatonormativity the assumptions that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types as defined by Elizabeth Brake.