“…are you single?” she asks me like a timid field mouse wanting a favor from a house cat.
“Happily and have been for three years,” I return, smiling and sure to put enough emphasis in the right places.
“Would you want to go out sometime?” she responds.
“Dammit,” I think, “I’m going to have to be honest.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m not a fucker,” I say. “I’m ACE.”
I see her face turn red in embarrassment. Ugh. I’m crushing this poor girl’s hope, aren’t I? She’s probably thinking I’m lying to get out of a date. And this is my problem. I’m ACE, which is to say I’m aromantic and asexual. I don’t do sex. I don’t do the romance part of relationships. At least, that’s what it means to me. The term itself rose in popularity in the early 2010s, though its ultimate origins are debatable. What isn’t is its use as a means to describe someone who lands someplace on the asexuality spectrum. I’m aromantic. I’m asexual. And this is honestly weird to type out, because I’ve spent the better half of a decade fucking for money.
Shelby Criswell
I feel like my identity should be incongruent. Like, once you’ve gotten naked on film you’re forever relegated to the world of the slut. Yet here I am, not wanting to be touched or touching someone. I know perceptions are changing and people are starting to accept there is a life after porn, but to be asexual coming out of porn must be an ancient curse bestowed upon me from some long dead god.
That’s how I feel this confession should logically go. Like, I’ll say I’m ACE and y’all will be scandalized by my lacking sex drive.
“She must be damaged beneath!” you might cry.
You’ll clutch your pearls and state the obvious truth everyone but me can see: I’m kidding myself; everybody fucks; if they say they don’t, they’re a liar. Nobody is truly asexual. Right? Relegate me to a den of sexual oddities society, for I must be judged.
Thankfully none of this has happened, not internally at least. Externally, I’ve had to explain my fucker statement a few times, but that’s to be expected. If I’m being real, I’m not even upset at this turn of events. It’s a relief. I spent the last year in porno hell, struggling with a million different reasons why I wasn’t performing, why I wasn’t enjoying the sexual feast from which my friends in porn gleefully partake. It explains why I couldn’t maintain my interest during filming. It also explains why I couldn’t connect with any sexual partner, romantic or erotic. And before you blame porn, let’s just lay that to rest: I don’t blame porn any more than I would blame age, therapy or new medication. Well, maybe I blame those things a tiny bit, but not in the way you might expect.
It’s more like—when you’ve done it for long enough with the prettiest people in the world, what else is left to experience? When you’ve been in therapy for long enough, it becomes easier to recognize where you’ve used physical connection to mask deeper issues. When the drugs work, you don’t need to seek relief from emotional distress, so you enjoy spending time with yourself. When you don’t need to hide behind a constructed instinct that you’re supposed to have (not one you truly possess) you can learn a lot about yourself.
You can learn that being asexual is kind of lonely. According to the UC Santa Barbara Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, a whopping 1% of the population identifies as some flavor of ACE, which, like, is cool and punk rock and all, but also holy shit, there’s just not a lot of us. It’s not as though my desire to make meaningful connections doesn’t exist, just not romantically. Not sexually.
Again, I hear you cry: “You’re describing friendship!”
Well, not exactly. I want everything a romantic relationship has, like the deep care for another person, a sense of mutual us-against-the-world feeling and shared bonding memories and experiences. The folks at the Asexuality Education And Visibility Network call it a “queerplatonic relationship.” I want one of those, maybe.
And look, all these things are fluid. Maybe this is just a phase. Maybe in six months I might snap out of it and find some new kink that reignites my passion for the sexual. It could happen! I wouldn’t be mad about it. But I would be surprised. The past six months being openly ACE have been freeing. Being single isn’t the curse it used to be, and not getting laid isn’t the end of my world. In fact, I’m glad to be away from it and I’m glad I don’t have to pretend to care about orgasms and/or the stress of the mating ritual. I just hope I can figure out a good way to word my lack of interest before I get asked out again. I mean, “Sorry, I’m not a fucker,” can’t be the way I address this from here on out, right?
Kenzi Hale is a musician and former camgirl. Even though she might say otherwise, she really loves her cat.
