Give This Ace Some Space

by Ace of Spades

When my mother and I talk about sex, the conversation usually goes a little something like this:

“You do realize that once you become sexually active, your periods will become regular.”

“Hain…Aye haye.”

“Haan beta.”

“Mujhay farak nahi parta.”

“Kyun bhai?”

“Because I have a natural aversion to penises.”

“Oho, not this again.”

It hasn’t always been like this, though: my mother grew up in a world where talking about sex wasn’t the norm. When I was 11 she decided it was a great time to tell me what periods were, and after watching her awkwardly struggle for 2 minutes I took pity on her and told her I’d already read up about it. She was so relieved I actually found it hilarious. Prepubescent me was always going through my Dada’s biomedical books to educate myself on anything and everything, and Mama always dismissed it as childhood inquisitiveness.

It wasn’t until I found an old Cosmopolitan issue at the bottom of a drawer and skimmed through it that my world was thrown into this harsh, bright light. I think the politest way to describe the experience of reading ‘5 Great Ways to Have Sex’ was god-awful. Page after page after page of tanned, naked bodies of men and women in what I can only assume were seductive poses brought bile right up my throat. I’m sure I read the whole thing from cover to cover, but I made sure to shove it in the furthest corner of the bottom drawer, and hoped to never see it again.

Mama: “Waisey, Nano’s like that too.”

Me: “………”

Me: “You can’t be serious. Nahi. What the heck.”

Fast-forward to a few days later and the three of us are seated at the dining table, mine and Mama’s chai growing cold as Nano tells us about how abhorrent sex was for her.

Me: “Aik second. Then how did you have three kids?”

Nano: “Nah hee poochho.”

Three generations sat at the dinner table, and the youngest gained a sense of hope after realizing that a relationship could actually work without sex being a major driving factor. This idea had manifested itself into reality in the form of my grandparents’ wonderful marriage ⁠ — if they could make it work, I could hope to too.

To all the people on this wide, colorful spectrum of asexuality: there are more of us than you think there are. And you can hope to make it work too.