Story time.
Tonight I watched a movie from 2009 called The Big Gay Musical. I saw a small portion of it, a decade ago; someone was playing it in the communal room of a hostel I was staying in, as I was backpacking on a shoestring budget through Europe. I sat and watched a bit of it, with people I had befriended over the course of the past week.
The scene that stuck with me, that I never forgot after ten years, that made me finally go seek this movie out to see it in full, was of one of the main characters hiring a sex worker. To be brief, the twist of it is that he just wants to cuddle. He just wants someone to be there with him. Nothing else. They just hold each other.
I found it so profound, and so touching, and in a way, so, so relateable.
And more than any other time in my life, ten years ago, I felt like I must have something wrong with me.
Because, you see, everyone else, the whole room, maybe a dozen people, from different countries and genders and backgrounds, everyone else watching the movie was so confused. Why weren't they fucking? What's the point of paying someone to cuddle?
I even tried to explain. He's lonely. He wants a feeling of connection, even if it's fleeting. He's hit such an emotional low point that he'll pay someone to hold him.
In the end they all shrugged and said, sounds like they should be fucking then, and we moved on.
It stuck with me. Just, the oddness that I felt this way about a scene, felt a connection with this scene, that seemed so alien to everyone else in the room.
I could tell you about other experiences in my life, before and after. Of feelings that ranged, at different points in my life, from repulsion to ambivalence at the idea of sex. Of wondering if I had internalized some prudish attitude from my upbringing. Of performative horniness around friends as a teenager: am I getting this right, am I saying the thing that someone would say, am I expressing sexual desire the right way, say he's hot, say she's hot, I heard someone say this once, oh good it worked, I can't let them know I don't mean it, I can't let them know, I can't let them see me, I can't let them see the real me.
Of dating someone, for months, and feeling something, and thinking, finally, I'm normal, I'm fixed, I'm not broken, I'm like everyone else.
Only to have it be gone again, down the line, when they left.
It wasn't until a few years ago that a friend introduced me to the concept of demisexuality. And I went and read about it. And I read some more.
And I finally didn't feel broken.
And I could finally stop performing.
The movie isn't even about ace or demisexual people. Not explicitly anyway. Someone better qualified than me can write up a cinematic analysis on whether some of the characters fit the bill, if they want to.
I don't think it's important, at the end of the day, whether the character in that scene is demisexual. Things can resonate with us and tell us things about ourselves even when they aren't written with us in mind.
And this one scene in this one movie helped me to understand that I'm demisexual.
I'm demisexual, panromantic, nonbinary, and proud.
And to all my fellow demisexuals, ace-umbrella siblings, and colorful alphabet soupers of all stripes in this wonderful pride parade of life, please know how happy and grateful I am that you're here and that you exist. I love you all so much.
Happy Pride.
