When I was on the gay dating apps, Scruff was my app of choice. One afternoon, bored at work, I opened the app, and there was a message waiting for me.
Blank profile. No picture. This never ends well.
hey you lookin this afternoon?
He’s sent a picture: fit white guy, probably in his thirties, shirtless. He’s showing his face (an act of digital courage for what I assume is a “discreet” fellow) and flexing his abs. Stone cold face. One arm curled up to show off “the guns.”
Flexy Abs Guy is not my usual demographic. I test really well among the dadbod bears and young guys with daddy complexes. I can be hit and miss with “guys who look like your try-hard history professor”, but Flexy Abs Guy serving butch face is unfamiliar territory.
not really looking today. you’re good looking tho.
thx bud. He sends me a picture of his dick. Unlock?
Why not? I unlocked. My private album has a few of my favorite thirst traps in it. Showing off the belly. Showing off the tattoos. Getting the light just right to really spotlight my baby blues. I don’t have any intention of actually meeting Flexy Abs Guy, but if I get a little positive male attention out of it… There are worse things.
Nothing for a few moments.
thx. don’t usually like fat guys but i’m real horny today. i’ll let a fat guy suck me off. you down?
I was not, in fact, down. I’m a sex-neutral asexual. The chances of me being “down” aren’t good on the best days under ideal circumstances. Flexy Abs Guy hitting me hard with the fatphobia, then having the gumption to act like he’d be doing me a favor by letting me have sex with him ensures that I am so very, very not down.
did you even read my profile? I’m asexual. dude if i’m having sex today or any day it’s gonna be with someone who digs my body.
so you’re fat and asexual? kidding me. why are you even here?
When Flexy Abs Guy asks why are you even here?, I knew he just means the apps. But for me — fat, queer, asexual me — that question is an existential pit.
Why am I even here?
I inhabit a body society tells me I should hate. I inhabit a body society tells others to reject, to ridicule, to dismiss, to erase. I inhabit a body that’s not supposed to be here. As a queer person, my body wants the wrong kind of body to touch. As a fat person, my body carries too much, curves too much, takes up too much space. As an asexual person, my body doesn’t want enough, or thinks too much of itself by withholding it from others who want it, is too haughty, too uppity.
Fat, queer and asexual people (separately or as a package deal) are told every day to be ashamed of their bodies. We are told, in no uncertain terms, that our bodies occupy space that shouldn’t belong to us. Our uncooperative bodies render everything about us invalid, and if our bodies can’t play by the rules, nothing about us is allowed to exist. It’s why Flexy Abs Guy saw my presence on the apps as an act of hubris. What could I want in my fat, asexual body? Furthermore, what could I offer in this fat, asexual body?
The world says we should see fat bodies, queer bodies, asexual bodies as the end of possibility. As someone who inhabits all three, I see them as the start of possibility. There are expansive routes to pleasure across a fat, queer, asexual body, and the courage it takes to inhabit this body – to want what it wants, to assume the space it assumes – becomes the courage required to journey those routes. To question whether connection requires sex. To believe that fat can be the object of desire. To crave the body we shouldn’t crave. To imagine all the reasons why bodies like mine are even here.
I Am Ace: Advice on Living Your Best Asexual Life by Cody Daigle-Orians (Jessica Kingsley Publishers) is available from Amazon and Bookshop.
Read an excerpt from I Am Ace here.