For the @aaronminyardnet June/Pride month challenge, a tiny thing about Aaron and Sexuality. Pride month is a time of celebration and remembrance, but it can also be confusing for a lot of people. Self discovery takes time, and sometimes it takes forgiveness. Anyway!
Theoretically, Aaron had a lot of time to think about his sexuality during high school. While he stayed on the bus as long as possible to avoid being at home, while in the library, hidden deep in the psychology section. In classes he had already done the work for, in the showers after practice.
Looking back on them now, though, those times seem to have passed in a blanket of apathy, of subdued fight-or-flight which became freeze instead.
So, it starts in college, when Nicky takes a gender and sexuality class to fill out his fourth year, just for fun. Suddenly he’s flinging around words like “pansexuality,” “polyamory,” “toxic masculinity,” and “social expectations.”
Mostly, Aaron tunes him out.
But then there’s the books and websites Nicky leaves open as well. Aaron has always had an intense, dangerous love for the written word. Something about its permanence leaves him content. So he reads. Turns pages. Clicks links. He finds his stomach aching and eyes stinging as long unanswered questions are finally acknowledged and satisfied.
He doesn’t tell anyone what he’s found. Not even Katelyn, who he knows looks at other girls sometimes, who he knows would take it well, with gentle smiles and steely support. Not his brother, who, if he did react, would probably react with scorn and dismissal. Certainly not Nicky, who Aaron knows he’s hurt with the echoes of the voices in his head. There’s too much guilt in his throat, constricting the muscles when he tries to say the words.
Asexual. Bi-romantic. Queer.
Guilt and shame are funny emotions. At their heart is pride, and pain, and in the end he wonders what it matters anyway. He’s still him, still an asshole who hurts his family, still someone who wants to heal, wants to forget, wants to be told it’s ok to remember. To want.
He takes the words like the precious gems he imagines them to be, sharp-edged and tainted with greed, and buries them deep in the soil of his soul, leaving them in the dark where he does not have to look at their faces.
*
The thing about words is, they’re not gems. They’re seeds.
