Story Slam Singapore #28 - Sex, (No) Drugs, Rock & Roll

So tonight I attended my second Story Slam, and was so proud to present my first-ever story submitted for the night's theme. The audience was really cool and everything, but I was so nervous about the length of the story and what I was trying to say that I guess I couldn't really put across the points I wanted to make in my story.

What I'm putting up here is the story itself, only cleaned up and rewritten for clarity and to help it flow better. I hope it reads well!

Dear you,

You don’t know it, but it started from primary school, when you thought boys were gross, and continued all the way into secondary school, when you started to think that hey, maybe boys were pretty alright after all. It continued into the crushes you had, whether on the boy in your class or the senior who would never look at you that way. You’d never really thought about it, but all your silly schoolgirl daydreams about being with someone only ever consisted of holding their hands or maybe, just maybe eventually kissing them.

When the school conducted sex-ed talks, you were more interested in listening to the counsellors talk about the STDs that could be contracted through irresponsible sex (because holy crap they were gross) than the ~feelings of lust~ that your young growing bodies would eventually experience due to the eventual raging hormones.

It continues into when you enter the world of tertiary education, and bam it hits you – sex. You hear about it whispered in conversation over meals as gossip about whoever hooking up with whoever else, or laughed over in conversation as someone regales an attentive crowd about some sexual experience.

Sex. You try to give yourself time, but no matter how you approach it the end result is the same – you’re just so indifferent towards it. You read about it, so much that you end up shocking some around you with how much you know, and then the laughter occasionally turns towards you because of how experienced you sound, how much you know. No matter how much you read, though, you just don’t get it.

What the fuck is all the hype about sex about, you think. Sure, it was interesting, just not that interesting. Whenever someone spills the beans about hook-ups, you listen because ooh scandalous, but that was about it. You never understood the whole reasoning behind someone feeling conflicted about wanting to have sex with someone while wanting to stay committed to someone else because to you the answer was always simple.

Just don’t have sex??? It’s really not that complicated???

What was all the excitement about? You just don’t get it, why a whole culture’s built around it, why it’s such a good conversation topic, why it’s supposedly so simple that sex sells.

It’s not until you’re nineteen that you discover the wonders of tumblr.com and eventually stumble across this word: ASEXUAL. At the time, you honestly won’t know what that is, but you can’t explain how it feels somewhat right as well. It truly begins when you click on the links provided, when you do research of your own (you’ve honestly never put in this much effort for any other graded assignment you’ve done before) that you understand what the term means, what the sexuality means in terms of its definition.

And then you finally understand. You’re asexual.

After that comes a long period of conflicted happiness – you’ll go all-out in your search for a black ring (because the websites and chat rooms all say the same thing about asexual identification, that it’s a black ring on your right middle finger) and feel so proud when you find one, only to then wonder if you should be so open about it. You’ll feel less alone when you read the contents of chat rooms because you’ll realise that there are other aces out there, but then get so disheartened when you realise that they’re all overseas and there isn’t any way of knowing if there are other aces around in Singapore.

You’ll start to wonder if you’ll never end up finding someone to love you for being asexual, especially as you get older and the conversations start turning towards romance and sex more often, often linking the two or equating one for the other. You’ll start to wonder if there’s even a difference at all.

You’ll still feel proud, though – you finally have a name for who you are, finally have a reason for why you just never understood sex. For all the conflict you’re going through, you’ll be proud to know who or what you are.

You’ll feel even better when you meet him – he’s older, and likes you, and thinks you’re funny and pretty and amazing, and it’ll feel so surreal that he wants to date you even though you’ve made it clear that you might not want to kiss him or have sex with him.

Trust me when I say that it’ll feel amazing, and you’ll feel so whole, so happy, so loved. You’ll feel like you’re proving a point of sorts to yourself, that you can indeed be loved by someone who doesn’t necessarily need to have sex to have a happy relationship. You’ll feel like you can be yourself, every flirty inch of you, and you’ll feel so lucky for it.

It’ll all come crashing down on you about five months later, just before your twenty-first birthday, when he says goodbye. His words will be quiet, thoughtful, almost regretful, when he says that it’s… Difficult, not being able to kiss you. It will be painful when he says that he does want to settle down one day, and the unspoken – that you might not be the one who can give him that – will hang in the air. You’ll feel like throwing up when you ask him, heart in mouth, if it’s felt like you were leading him on the whole time, and he says yes. It’ll feel like a punch to the gut, and a crack will appear somewhere deep inside you, right beside the pride you’ve been wearing alongside the ring on your finger.

You’ll call Russ that night and cry, confused and scared and alone, into the phone as he makes comforting noises and tries to assure you that he’s there for you even though he’s so far away and you both know that there’s really nothing he can do. You’ll understand why mascara runs, that night, as you hail a cab home, and by the time you get home you’ll start to wonder if the whole night has been nothing but a joke, if it’s all been nothing but a bad dream. It’s painful, but you’ll feel as though the word asexual – that you wear so proudly – has been rewritten as broken instead.

The next morning will feel even more surreal, and you’ll look back one day and wonder how you even made it through that period of time – to say it was painful is a bit of an understatement, but you’re stronger than you think. You’ll find yourself unable to wear the black ring on your finger for a while, though – it will feel like a betrayal of sorts, to wear a symbol of pride when you are anything but. You’ll blame yourself over and over again, wondering if things might be different if only you’d kissed him better, pretended to enjoy it, held his hand more often, been more affectionate.

The story will seem to have ended here, but trust me when I say it hasn’t – you don’t know it yet, but you’ll meet someone. It’ll take you approximately eight months to trust him, but he’ll be determined and eventually gain your trust despite how scared you are. You’ll tell him straight-out that you might not want to kiss or have sex, and he’ll say he’s completely fine with it and mean it.

You’ll eventually start dating, and he’ll be so affectionate that you’ll wonder at times if you’re even right for each other. You’ll ask him again and again in your moments of weakness if he’s really alright with you not feeling sexually attracted to him, if he’s alright with you potentially never really wanting sex. He’ll be so patient, though, and he’ll make sure to reassure you again and again and again. Trust me – it’s the trust and communication you’ll find with him that makes it all worth it.

Honestly though, this story has no end yet – from where I’m writing it’s an ongoing story, and I’m excited to see how it develops. What I can promise you, though, is that whatever you go through will be worth all everything, all the pain and the tears.

Love, you.