Chapter Twenty-Four

Loncey

I open my eyes slowly. It takes me a few seconds to realize where I am, and I get my answer when my eyes land on Maeve who is sitting on her bed, hunched over her laptop with a deep frown on her face.

I am about to say something to announce my return to consciousness, but then I realize that would mean she stops pouting at the screen in this adorable way. It would mean she would sit up a little straighter and smooth out the wrinkles gathered around her narrowed eyes. It would mean she gives me one of her hair tosses rather than letting her hair just lie where it is, gathered around her face like a proud mane.

No, I'm going to lie here and watch her for as long as I possibly can. I'm going to stay quiet and…

"Jesus fucking Christ of Bethlehem!" she exclaims as she looks up at me. "You scared the living shit out of me!"

"What? By lying still in bed?" I ask incredulously.

"No, by staring at me like a big fecking creep."

"I was just waking up!" I grab hold of the pillow she threw at me earlier and I chuck it back her way.

She blocks it deftly with a raised arm. "But you didn't have to stare at me like that!"

"Jesus, give me a break. You looked cute."

"Cute?" she asks and it sounds very much like an accusation.

I sit up in bed. "Maeve, you know you're a showstopping smokeshow."

"Smokeshow?" She picks up her phone and puts it to her ear. "Hello? Is that the 1950s? Yeah, I think you left someone behind."

I laugh at her. "I'm fast learning it's impossible to give you a compliment."

"Oh, that's what you were trying to do? I thought you were just showing your age."

I grit my teeth in a seething smile. If Maeve was somebody else, somebody whose boundaries and limits I knew, whose buttons I'd learned more about, I would take her to task for talking to me like that. I would call her a brat.

Am I disappointed that Maeve is not like that? Possibly, a little. But truly, I'm much more intrigued by figuring out what is going on in that head of hers, of understanding more about what makes Maeve Maeve, and honestly, it's a revelation to embark on doing so without the use of my stern voice or the flat palm of my hand.

"What?" she asks, accusatorily again.

"What do you mean, what?"

"You have this strange look on your face." She points at me.

"Just considering my next move," I say and I pull the wrap off my head and fold it on my lap.

"Your next move? I didn't realize we were playing a game of chess." She cocks her head at me.

"We're not playing any kind of game," I admit. "I'm simply thinking before I speak. I find people don't do enough of that."

"But what is it you actually want to say? Because I find people don't do enough speaking their mind, their truths."

I rub my face with my hands. "Maeve, I just woke up from what was possibly the best nap of my life, I'm not about to get out a soapbox and stand on it…" I hold my hand out when I see her mouth fall open, "…and speaking of soapboxes, how's the keynote going?"

She groans, loudly. "Disastrous. It's a fucking poxy shitshow."

I glance at my phone on the nightstand, ignoring the notifications on the front screen, for now. I've been asleep for little over two hours. "Want to talk about it? Maybe I can help."

Maeve studies me for a long moment, her lips pulling to one side. "May as well. You can't make it any worse than it already is."

I sit up a little straighter. "Okay, hit me with it. Pretend I'm a room of five hundred attendees."

"Five hundred? Jesus fuck! You're not exactly helping."

"Okay, a couple hundred. I guess some will skip it, being hungover or still asleep."

"Still, that's a couple of hundred too many." She groans again, but shifts her weight and tosses her hair over her shoulder before turning toward me and setting the laptop to the side of her on the bed. "But here goes fecking nothing…"

She coughs and looks up at me. I give her what I hope is a reassuring nod.

"Hi, I'm Mae and like many of you, I'm queer. Unlike most of you, however, I do not work in the adult content creating industry. Sure, I'm an adult and content creation is my job, but I'm not an adult content creator like many of you are. So why am I standing here and talking to you? That's a good question, and I'm not sure I have the answer to it, but I do believe the organizers wanted to bring a fresh voice to your ears. To bring a different perspective on queer identities, on sexuality, and specifically, on what being asexual can teach us all about the good and less-than-perfect things in our world." She steals many glances at the laptop as she talks but in general her eyes stay on me. Her very blank, very empty eyes. "I was in my teens when I started to think there was something wrong with me…"

"Wait!" I hold my hand up. "Just… wait."

"What is it? I've not even got to the main part of the speech."

"I gathered, but I think I know what's coming."

"You do?"

"Sure. You're about to tell everyone the story about how before you knew you were queer, you thought you were broken. You're about to share the long and winding route you took to discovering your asexuality. You're about to use it to hopefully connect with the audience, to unite us all in our queerness."

"Well, yeah. Duh."

"And that's great. That's cool to connect with people in that way. But I think there's more to your story, Maeve."

"You don't know my story." She crosses her arms. "You're literally not letting me tell it."

"Are you about to share anything that you've not already talked about in a TikTok video?"

"No, but not everyone there will have seen all my videos."

"That's true, but I can guarantee nearly all of the people in the room will have heard a story like yours, or indeed even have their own very similar version."

"Which is why I'm sharing it. Jesus, keep up, Einstein."

"But what about sharing something they don't expect?"

Maeve blinks at me. "Like… like what?"

I turn to face her, crossing my legs under the comforter. "What's the one thing you wish people knew about being asexual?"

She literally chews on that, a curve emerging in her cheek as I imagine it squashed beneath her teeth. "That… no, I can't say that," she shakes her head and squeezes her eyes shut, "because it's different for everyone, right? One asexual person is not a monolith. And asexuality is a sliding scale, right? There are asexuals who like having sex, there are asexuals who hate having sex and there's everything in between. There are asexuals who are aromantic too, and there are asexuals who… aren't. There are asexuals who have sexual and romantic relationships. There are asexuals who have platonic relationships. There are asexuals who choose not to have any kind of relationship outside of friendships and even those may be a struggle. And then there are demisexuals and graysexuals, but even within their classifications there's still a spectrum of different experiences. So even if I'm trying to tell people one thing about being asexual that they may not know, that thing likely wouldn't apply to everyone."

Her shoulders lift with a heavy breath at the end of her monologue.

"Then just tell me, Maeve. What is it you wish people knew about you as an asexual?"

She keeps her eyes on me, blinking a lot and I notice that her jaw works as she swallows.

"I wish… I wish people wouldn't make up their mind about me once they hear the word asexual, but at the same time I don't want them to interrogate me about what I do or don't like. And I hate how that makes me sound difficult, pedantic, demanding, but still I can't explain it better than that. Ultimately, I just wish people didn't react at all. Like, the way we're finally there when people say they're gay or bi or a lesbian, it doesn't get such a big reaction anymore, at least not in some circles. But I just feel so far away from that. Because at the very heart of the way people react to my being asexual, and the way they want to know whether I like kissing, or hugging, or I don't know, bumping uglies, is just this undeniable proof that we live in a sex-obsessed world. And I hate that." She looks down for a few moments and I let her words fill the room and take up the space they deserve. When her eyes are up again and on me, she continues in a softer voice, "Now, how on earth am I going to share that with a room full of people who are probably very proud to call themselves sex-obsessed?"

Her cocked eyebrow emphasizes the challenge in her question and like the Aries moon I am, I rise to it.

"I think they're exactly the people who need to hear it," I tell her.

"Ha! So I can get heckled out of the room," she scoffs and crosses her arms in defiance.

I lean forward, elbows resting on my knees on top of the covers. "What makes you think that sex workers would do that? Do you have some preconceived bias against sex workers? Do you really believe they are, as you say, truly sex-obsessed or how much of that is for show, for their content channels? Are you telling me you've never hammed up who you are or are perceived to be for likes and comments or a little extra revenue?" I give her one of my own cocked eyebrows. "What makes you think that sex workers can't be open-minded or receptive to somebody who sees the world differently to them?"

Her eyebrow lowers but a small pout puckers her lips as her eyes narrow on me. I wait for her retort and I'm almost disappointed when that scowl slips off her face and she unravels her arms, her shoulders sinking.

"What the fuck am I doing?" she asks, her hands palm-up on the bed either side of her body. "I'm a fecking idiot for thinking I could do this keynote."

I shift forward and throw my legs off the side of the bed, the bedsheets slipping off my body.

"Let's play a game."

"Jesus Christ, Loncey, I don't have time for I-Bloody-Spy. I need to write and memorize a speech and I have," she glances at her laptop, "less than twenty hours to do so."

"The game is called, Honest Answers Only." I nod. "You have to answer my questions and give me only honest answers."

She rolls her eyes in a way that is as infuriating as it is adorable. "Fine."

"Okay. Question one. Why did you agree to give the keynote at tomorrow's conference?"

Her chest lifts with her deep exhale. She's taking too much time.

"Honest answers only," I remind her.

"Okay. Jesus. Hold your horses. I agreed to give the speech because I wanted to challenge myself and the people I would be talking to."

"Sounds like you're definitely going to achieve that. And how did you imagine challenging the audience?"

"By making them aware of compulsory sexuality, and how not everyone fits into a world where that is the norm."

"Sounds like something we all need to know more about. Good. And why is the speech going to challenge you?"

"Errr, for all the reasons we've just mentioned. You know, I'll get laughed at or shouted at or asked to leave or I'll have rotten vegetables thrown at me."

I shake my head with a smile. "We only work with very ripe vegetables, so no danger of that." I watch a frown of astonished bemusement cross Maeve's face but I ignore it and point my finger at her. "And I also don't think that was an honest answer."

"Fine, I guess it will just challenge me because I'll be in a very large room full of people who have absolutely no problem having sex so I'll feel completely out of my depth and like the only asexual in the village."

"I can assure you, you will not be the only asexual in the village," I say, although I have no idea what she's talking about. What village?

"Really?"

"Even off the top of my head I know a handful of creators who are on the ace spectrum and they openly talk about it too on their channels. And as for people who have issues having sex? Well, don't you know most of us have our limits, our boundaries, our absolute hard nos. We're not all doing anything and everything with our bodies and we all have to, or at least should, check in with ourselves regularly so we don't violate our own boundaries or have it happen in a scene, something that happens all too regularly, sadly. So, yeah, we may even understand better than most what you're talking about when you talk about having hard limits about what you do and don't want as physical intimacy."

Maeve chews on the corner of her lip as she listens. "I hadn't… I didn't think about it like that."

"Did you also know that some asexual people are heavily into kink?"

Her eyes grow as wide as saucers. "Kink?"

"Yeah," I say. "I know of this ace creator, Madame Magik is her name. She's a Dominatrix, a FemDom, and she loves nothing more than making people come completely undone but she doesn't get off on it sexually. It's a power and trust exercise for her, and that makes her feel good. Kink isn't always sexual. It can be healing too. It can be a safe and consensual place to explore fantasies that have nothing to do with genitals, orgasms or penetration."

Her eyes narrow again. "How the fuck do you know all this?"

I stand up and move to the end of the bed to retrieve my jeans. "I told you, I read books, Maeve. Also, I'm really interested in kink, and why and how it works for some people."

"I don't… I know next to nothing about kink."

"I can send you some articles," I say pulling my jeans up. "And I know this really cool woman you could talk to who's graysexual, I believe, and she's this truly awesome rigger."

"Rigger?"

"She likes tying people up."

Maeve shakes her head suddenly and it makes her hair fly out around her. "This is all… kind of interesting, I guess, but I can't speak about it tomorrow. I haven't got time to read articles or learn all the things about something I barely understand."

I reach for my top. "Which is why you should speak about what you do know. Just spare us the part where you talk about being broken, because as valid as that is, that's not a message I think you should share. I think it's important you stick to the original topic you wanted to challenge the audience with. How compulsory sexuality rules our world, and how that makes you feel."

When my head pops out the opening of my T-shirt, Maeve's moved to sit up on her knees. "Where are you going?"

"You need some peace to work on your speech," I say and look around for my shoes. "And I need to find somewhere I can have a shower and treat my locs before tomorrow. I need to oil them today."

She sits up a little higher and I hate myself for thinking, no, feeling, how fucking sexy she looks on her knees with spread legs like that.

"Could you not?" she asks in the quietest voice.

"Could I not oil my locs? Does the messy look do it for you?" I toss a handful of my hair over one shoulder.

"No, I mean, could you not leave? Could you stay? And help me with my speech… if you don't mind."

I feel my shoulders sink down. "You really want me to stay?"

She nods and I keep my gaze on her eyes. Not on the shape of her denim-covered thighs spread open like that. Not on the way she's wringing her hands with what I fear is real and true worry. Not on the way her chest lifts and falls with shallow breaths, making her breasts move. I keep my eyes on her eyes as I answer.

"Sure, I'll stay."