“I got hit on by a guy today,” I told my partner. “I was reading The Dhammapada, waiting for the tram by the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He was amiable and polite. He said I was pretty and that he’d like to get to know me better, but I said I had a boyfriend.”
“Did you feel tempted to give him your number?” he asked.
“I instinctively declined because I had you on the forefront of my mind,” I replied. “But in truth, had I not been dating you, I would have entertained this stranger. He was polite and respectful, and looked like someone I would not be embarrassed to hard-launch. However, then I remembered that before I met you, I was a very different person. I used to be afraid and distrusting of men before I knew you. If you hadn’t changed my life for the better, I would have found this stranger creepy, or annoying at best.”
“I wonder why you are loyal to me, then, given that the other day you said that you do not have romantic feelings towards me — at least, not to the extent that I feel towards you.”
“I might be aromantic, but it doesn’t mean I am incapable of love. I never had crushes growing up, nor have I understood why my female classmates became obsessed over guys who they found cute. While I understand that someone might be physically attractive, I don’t react emotionally to that at all. I might not understand what people mean by the butterflies in their stomach or the anxious anticipation of being in proximity to their crush, but I feel deeply comfortable in your presence.”
“Mhmm…” he paused. “It hurts me that the other day, you said that our relationship was more like a queerplatonic partnership than a romantic one. Platonic. That word scares me. It makes me wonder whether I am replaceable, because I really want to be your one special person.”
“You are a special person to me.”
“I don’t want to just be ‘a’ special person. I want to be ‘the’ special person for you.”
“Alright,” I amended. “You are my special person, because out of all the people in the world, you are the person I choose to share my mind, body, and soul with. But in the same vein, I also share my mind and soul with my girl best friend, whom I grew up with since we were toddlers. I am also deeply intimate with my other friends in many ways, which perhaps dudes who only talk to their bros when they are golfing would not understand. There is just something irreplaceable about a friendship with someone who knew how you were before puberty.”
“But at least you won’t have sex with your friends, right?”
“I won’t when I am in an exclusive relationship with you, because I don’t like breaking promises. But prior to our arrangement, I casually had sex with my friends as long as there was sexual attraction from both parties. I don’t associate sex with romance. I perceive sex as a casual mutual activity, but in this case, it is masturbation instead of golf.”
“What do you feel when you lust after someone, then, if you are not in love with them?”
“Some people I have sex with not because I lust for them, but because they are convenient. I have guy friends who proposition me, and I indulge them, because I perceive it as any regular activity, like watching movies. But often they confess that they love me as more than a friend, which then becomes an inconvenience. I have difficulty expressing how I feel on the rare occasion that I do feel genuine lust for someone, so I will borrow Sappho’s words: ‘That impossible predator, / Eros the Limb-Loosener, / Bitter-sweetly and afresh / Savages my flesh.’ I suppose, I want the subject of my desire to savage my flesh — to materially actualise my abstract sentiment.”
“You know,” he confessed. “I stopped watching porn ever since I became serious about you. Nothing else turns me on anymore. I’d get hard just hearing you talk; I find it hot when you lecture me about something you are knowledgeable in.”
“Yeah. I knew I had found ‘my freak’ when you masturbated to me talking about Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian forces and Dante’s nine circles of Hell, on an unrelated tangent. You definitely are a freak.”
“Says the person who masturbates to losing a debate.”
“Touché.”
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Matt W Newman on Unsplash
