“A little,” he admitted after a pregnant pause. “I, uh, noticed that you didn’t talk about Ace and Aro people. I don’t want to date, but I know a lot do. It just looks different for them, and it might be nice to give them some space to do it.”
I looked over at Kess, and my stomach bottomed out. Not only had I completely left out the aro-ace experience in today’s discussion—which was a pretty big miss on my part—I had a choice to make. I could address Jaxon’s concern as a neutral administrator, or I could open up about my own experience.
I knew which one was the right option.
Fuck.
Deep breaths, Rowdy. You can do this.
“You’re right, Jax. Thank you for bringing that up.” I looked down at my own hands, clasped on the desk in front of me. “I’m actually demisexual, and to be honest, it’s often easier to talk about allosexuality than it is to include all the shades of asexuality and aromanticism.”
Kess’s head shot up, and his hand went to his mouth. I glanced at him, taking in his widened eyes, then refocused on Jaxon, grateful that Kess had the good sense to keep his mouth shut.
“I get it, Rowd,” Jaxon said, leaving his bracelet to tap his fingertips on his desk. “It feels, like, negative? To talk about what somebody is not? And I prefer to focus on the things I like, but sometimes I need to say what I don’t want.”
“That’s a great point,” I responded, once again a little sad that such a young guy had to navigate scenarios that would be hard for even an older person to address. “I wonder...Would you feel comfortable talking about what this means to you? And how you feel at this age?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, revealing the thirteen-year-old underneath all of that brawn.
“You don’t have to,” I quickly tacked on. “But your identity is just as valid and important as everyone else’s. I get it on some level, but there’s a lot I don’t understand.”
“Like what?” Jaxon asked, his eyes luminous.
I raised a shoulder, stifling the urge to look at Kess. “I, uh…” I took a deep breath.You can do this.“I love the romantic stuff, but it’s been hard to find a partner who likes it as much as I do. And most of my friends have these crazy hook-up stories, but none of that sounds like a good time to me. So, I often feel like the odd man out.”
Jaxon fussed with the knot on his bracelet. “I feel like I’m the odd man out everywhere I go. I’m too tall, I’m too young, I’m not horny like I’m supposed to be. It’s just easier to lie, you know?”
Double fuck.
“I know all about that,” I admitted, rubbing my forehead so I could avoid Kess’s reaction. “It’s hard to know where the line is. First of all, you don’t owe anyone your sexuality. Second, it’s probably important that the people closest to you know the truth.”
Kess shifted in his seat. I ignored his stare, even as I felt it burning up my skin.
Jaxon nodded in agreement. “I don’t know how to tell people I don’t like the romantic stuff. Like, at all. And, like, the number of kids my age doing stuff feels wrong. But I can’t tell if it’s an age thing or a me-thing? It’s very confusing. Like, I told my friends that I panicked when that lady hit on me, and they thought I was crazy for not going with it.”
“Have you talked to your mom about any of this?”
He snorted. “Be for real, Rowdy. I’m not giving her something new to worry about.”
I laughed. “I can promise you she’d rather discuss your asexuality than get another call like the one she got,” I said, not wanting to talk about the shoplifting around a virtual stranger to him.
Jaxon scrunched his nose at me. “That was a onetime thing.”
“I know.” I hoped he understood I meant it. “But whether or not you choose to discuss your sexuality in the second half oftoday’s class, I would like you to hang back afterward and talk with Mrs. Ceballos. You and your mom have a lot of shit going on, and it’s easy to skip over subjects that don’t seem as urgent. Just because your sexuality is not on fire doesn’t mean it’s not important.”
Jaxon rubbed his hands together, seeming to disburse his nervous energy. “Okay.”
Unable to avoid it for a second longer, I snuck another peek in Kess’s direction. He was looking at me with a line between his brows and a baffled look in his eyes. He didn’t say anything, but I had a feeling that the ride home would be an interesting one. I didn’t exactly regret talking about my sexuality in front of him, but I didn’t know what was going to happen next, and that scared me.
Break time was over, so I turned the desk around and rejoined Mrs. Ceballos at the front of the classroom. We chatted briefly about adding asexuality to the curriculum, then called everyone to order. I couldn’t shake my nerves and refused to look at Kess as the wildlings took their time finding their seats. The students had somehow grown even noisier and hardly anyone had taken their seats—I probably should’ve brought Bandit to herd everyone.
Remembering one of my favorite teachers on social media, I sang the opening bars of the most recent, super viral song, and the classroom sang them back to me as they found their seats.
“Damn, I wasn’t sure that would work.”
The classroom laughed, and it settled some of my nerves.
“Over the break, it was brought to my attention that we’d omitted something pretty critical in our discussion about consent and safety. We’d hoped to talk about these things in a sexuality neutral way, but we left off the fact that not everyone enjoys sex, and not everyone enjoys romance. Asexuality andaromanticism, which scale like everything else, are legitimate orientations.”
