Being Black and Ace, a personal essay

Autobiography, Essays, Nonfiction, Personal Essays

Being Black and Ace, a personal essay by Jean M. Hodges

    When I was fourteen, my father and I had “The Talk” over the phone. I was living with an aunt at the time, and we just sort of transitioned into the conversation naturally. Now, I’d gotten my period around 10/11 years old, and what I was anticipating was more of the same song and dance of tampons and menstruation. My family was made up of primarily women and girls, with my own father being the father of four daughters (including me); so I expected more of my army medical professional father to go into the various glorious changes that a woman’s body goes through at a certain age, complete with a chart and pictures of women with flowers. But what I got was this statement from my Dad  going over the birds and the bees with me with his usual militant precision, and after I asked him some small specific question about sex, he asked me,

“Oh, have you gotten any urges?”

And I answered him honestly,

“No.” And that answer hasn’t changed six years on.

  It’s always been a little hard for me to talk about my own sexuality, mostly because most people don’t tend to believe that asexuality (or being ace) even exists as a real sexuality. I’ve always had crushes and/or have been exclusively romantically, mentally and emotionally attracted to men, so I end up thinking, “Hey, wait. This means that I’m straight, right?” I have never felt lust, been “horny”, or felt any sexual attraction to any other human being in my entire life. But then there come times when someone else has expressed a sexual interest in me, and I know that deep down, no matter how strong the emotional connection I had with this person, I could never truly return those sexual feelings, despite my best efforts.

 Women in society tend to be sexually objectified from childhood. Black women, specifically, are sexually objectified such a way that their assumed hyper-sexuality is an inherent part of their nature and little girls learn early that what they do with their bodies will impact other people’s perception of them, for better or for worse. “Fix your skirt so boys don’t look at your underwear”, “Your bra strap will distract the boys during class, so try not to show it”, and, “Of course, he was looking at you, look at what you are wearing!” have been spoken and/or told to me and other women I have met in my entire life with no sign of stopping anytime soon. I’ve heard a lot about the Madonna/Whore dichotomy in literature; however, for me especially, the Mammy/Jezebel idea comes to mind. You’re either a sexy vixen or sexless mother-figure and the fact that I am inherently neither put younger me ill at ease.

   I remember a specific incident in high school where two older girls were discussing their sex lives, and one of the girls remarked that she had such a need for sex that she was going to continue to see a particular boy she didn’t even really like. When fifteen-year-old me asked the question, “What if you just…didn’t…have sex? Or want to have sex with him at all?” both of the two older girls looked at me like I had just suggested stabbing someone instead of presenting the idea of celibacy.

    As a young adult in college, being asexual has gotten easier for me to talk about, especially after meeting and interacting with a more and more diverse range of people with varying sexualities who are a lot more accepting of mine—and I can say that I am grateful for this. At the same time, I’ll never forget the look of disbelief when an on-campus clinic nurse asked me if I’d ever had any kind of sex after I had already checked the entire column in ‘no’ boxes on my sexual activity roster, confessing to her off-record I was either waiting for love or marriage to do any kind of sexual deed. I am a black person, I am a woman and I identify as asexual; I wish that more people could understand that I can be all of these things at once.

THE END

Edit as of March 2023 — Jean no identifies as a bi(romantic) asexual nonbinary lady person.

Original publish year: 2017

(c) Jean M. Hodges

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Open Ocean, a poem

Poems

Open Ocean, a poem by Jean M. Hodges

When you live in the ocean, it’s hard to notice all the salt floating in the water

When you’re shipped on the ocean, it’s hard to remember when your human when they’re too busy putting us in boxes to notice

But then we got louder, and showed off our colors and had the audacity to be so bright and pretty on a white canvas that we bothered people for with our fluorescence

And now some of us are considering washing out the paint, because it’s making it to put bullseyes on our backs

“Are you ok?” I ask. And my best friend’s text buzzes as soon as we all get the announcement , as if this is the last letter he can send me before they send him off to a concentration camp with a pink triangle branded on his body

“I’m gonna burn a flag today”, he said cheerfully, as if discussing morning coffee

“Fuck, ok, man. “ I say. “Well, good luck making bail. If I’m sold out before that, you’re staying there.”

We laugh cuz we’re drowning. We met up cuz school is still there. We hug cuz we keep each other up.

“What the hell do we do now?” My buddy asks, just trying to fill our space with air, just trying to keep his smile bright and his head above water. And I shrug.

“Brownies?” and he laughs becuz we’re both on this island we made together, hoping against hope this pile of dirt will stay afloat

THE END

Original publish year: 2016

(c) Jean M. Hodges

____________________________________________________________________________

SUPPORT MY WORK!

Like my work? Buy me a drink! 

Want me to drop me a tip and a kind hello? Donate to my Paypal!

And if you want to support my work long-term, consider donating to my Patreon !

It keeps me & my work going! Thank you. Spread the magic!