The Asexual Thing

I walk through the city and there’s always someone. The cute stranger, the bartender, someone entirely unremarkable who just hits. It’s this constant pull underneath, part of how I move. I figure everyone’s like this - same default wiring. Then there’s Michelle, who isn’t.

Michelle has a boyfriend. They’re together, it works. But she looks at the world and doesn’t feel what I feel - that ambient wanting that shapes how you see people and what you pay attention to. Never has. While everyone else was pairing off and figuring out how to fool around, Michelle was already different, already not interested. She’s asexual.

She doesn’t talk about it like it’s tragic or broken. It’s just how she’s built. No engine running underneath. So instead of that constant wanting, there’s room for other things - coffee, cake, talking about Star Wars until 3 AM. The things she actually cares about get her full attention. Nothing competing for the same space.

There’s a whole community of people like Michelle. Bigger than anyone acknowledges. It’s not a disorder. It’s just one way to be human, and in a world where sex is the default plot point - where everything’s trying to sell you on it, where desire gets treated like the base motivator - asexuality is the quiet refusal.

I can’t really imagine it. Not that pull, not that constant checking. Walking through the world and just seeing people instead of wanting them. Michelle does it every day. Everyone around her assumes something’s wrong or it’s a phase, but she’s just operating from a completely different set of wiring.