12. Lobster

The present-day Orion watches himself be fascinated by the charm of a coffee shop two blocks away from his and May’s college campus. The shop is smaller than what Madeleine is today but caters to the same set of aesthetics that all coffee shops do: a tiny nook of books with bent corners at the top, a line of chairs, stools, and oversized bean bags arranged in a narrow passageway separating the barista’s corner from the front door, a series of loose lights drenching the walls in a glittering, yellow shade. Orion sat on a bean bag near the entrance, a flowerpot to his right and May, on a low stool, reading a thick book to his left. The soft chatter of raindrops drowned out the beats of a song playing from the ceiling speakers, and the smell of petrichor blended with the scent of their fresh coffees. When Orion finished his coffee, and the rain slowed to a soft drizzle, May marked her page with a bookmark and, eyes wide, held her finger toward the exit.

Orion cleared the table and thanked the barista. May’s thumb pressed into the lines of Orion’s left palm as they took an uphill trail past a gallery of other shops, crossed University Drive, passed the bronze front gate of the University, trudged begrudgingly across the muddy outdoor Glade flanking the Memorial pool, and began walking on a downhill trail showered with withering petals and unwithering grass. When they were away from the crowd of busy voices, May nervously said what Orion had been expecting, or, to be more precise, fearing for a while now. “I want to be touched more often,” she said, her voice so gentle and soft that the first time she said it, only the ants on the borders of the gravel footstones below could hear her.

The present-day Orion curls back the creeping tendrils of a loud yowl as the repercussions of what he is about to say slam back into his memories. He feels the same terror as a lobster that has learned what it mistook for a pond is actually a boiling pot of water. “I think there is something you should know about me and I should have brought this up a while ago, but I was nervous and I didn’t know how you’d react,” Orion said. “I think I am asexual.” Several things happen together at once.

First, the Orion in this memory started to shiver, as if he had been flung onto the North-est corner of the world in swimming shorts, because when one is asexual, it is almost ritualistic to await coming out to one’s partner with dreary exhaustion, unsure whether the news will be taken as a fact or with the urgency of an explosive placed between them. No matter how eloquent his arguments might sound in rehearsed conversations with trembling mirror reflections, the reality, at least in Orion’s case, has always steered toward partners walking away disappointed. And no matter how hard Orion might have tried to falsely convince himself that his asexuality was only temporary or didn’t really matter because at the end of the day, he did enjoy sex, the fact was and is that Orion remains asexual, whether he likes it or not.

The second thing that occurs at the same time is that the present-day Orion continues to burn in the same boiling pot of war as the lobster, feeling a recalcitrant anger so crippling that the entire world of memories around him glitches and shatters into crystal-shaped blocks, floating away from each other; the buildings totter and tumble, the ground cracks, the sky turns purple. He splits away from the body of his past self, screeching in the fragments of a memory deaf to his calls. The Department had stolen this from him. An entire lifetime spent figuring himself out had so easily been Erased away; his identity had been replaced because, until this particular memory, Orion did not remember being asexual. Now that his past self has reminded him, everything slips back together like the final bit of sand ticking down an hourglass.

A deep breath, inspired little by curiosity and more by defeated resignation, shackles the fragments of the world back together.

“I…I don’t know what that means.” May gulped. Orion sensed her tension.

“I don’t feel sexually attracted to people,” Orion explained, his voice tender.

“So, you are not sexually attracted to me?” May said, staring at the ground in front of her.

“I’m sorry.” Orion shook his head.

“So, you do not want to touch me. Is that what you are saying?” May pulled her hand away from Orion, and he felt a pinch of disappointment because if he’d expected anyone to understand, it was May.

“No! I want to touch you,” Orion argued. “I’ll touch you any way you want me to touch you.”

“But you just said you are not attracted to me,” May spat.

“I’m not attracted to anyone,” Orion explained, his hands moving cluelessly in circles, afraid that if they reached for May, she would recoil like a spring stretched too far. “I do think I’ll enjoy touching you. It’s like hiking.”

She folded her arms and raised her eyebrows. “I’m a hike?”

“No! I mean...I like hiking. I’m not sexually attracted to people who hike,” Orion explained.

“So, do you like sex?”

“Sometimes.”

“You’ve not enjoyed having sex with me?”

“I have!”

“So how do you know you are asexual?” May demanded.

“I just…I know,” Orion said with surety.

“I want to know how.” May pressed as if Orion had some bill or receipt addressing his asexuality tucked into the top corner of his jacket.

Orion squinted his eyes and puffed. “Why is it not enough that I am asexual? It’s not really that big of a deal,” he said defensively. May should have understood, his mind screamed. She should have understood that his being asexual had nothing to do with her; just because he didn’t feel a certain way about her sexually did not mean he wasn’t ready to name stars after her. 

“It’s kind of a big deal for me,” May said.

“Why?”

“You just implied that you don’t like me.”

“I did not imply anything. I like you. I think you’re beautiful,” he said.

“You don’t want to touch me!”

“I do want to touch you!”

“Then why are you telling me that you are asexual?”

“Because that is who I am!” Orion screamed. A series of forgotten memories resurfaced – the time when he came out to his best friend of seven years, who assumed he was celibate and committing to Christianity for three years, not willing to comprehend the details of asexuality because Orion had not cared enough to explain them; the time when his college crush, who he’d kissed multiple times, assumed he had never actually been interested in her, because despite his incessant denials, his asexuality equated to being closeted; the time when he came out to his friend who did not think being asexual alone made him queer enough. Years of surprise painted over the faces of his colleagues, years of people he hardly knew suddenly deeming it acceptable to question him about masturbation and sex – for some reason, coming out as asexual was a sure way to poke other people’s brains into a bizarre land, where boundaries were optional. It made people believe that they had the right to decide who Orion must be, because being asexual was too complicated. But Orion Fields was and is queer. It can and is as simple as that.

“Maybe I am not the right person,” May said.

“You are the right person. I love you!”

“What if-” she started saying, but bit her lip shut instead.

“What?” Orion rolled his eyes.

“Never mind.”

“No, say it.”

“I know you’ve had experiences with men. You told me about that boy from high school, right? So maybe, have you considered…that?” She raised her eyebrows.

“I like women, and I like men. You have known that about me since day one. To me, there is a difference between romantic and sexual attraction,” Orion said, wincing as years of rehearsed words from the timeless script of coming out, possessed his speech. “I have spent a really long time not knowing this part of myself that I know now and that I am sharing with you.” Orion muffled a cry.

“This kind of changes everything.”

“It doesn’t have to. I enjoy being intimate with you. I’m just trying to explain that if it looks like I’m not initiating sex enough, and that I’m not touching you in the ways you want to be touched, it’s because I don’t think like that, and I’m sorry. I’ll try – that I can promise! Because I do enjoy it with you. It’s like how I enjoy cooking with you,” Orion said, as if analogies could help at this point.

“But they are not the same thing,” May said, breathing deeply and searching for the right words. “I don’t want to be the only one who’s interested in having sex. Right now, I feel like I’ve wronged you every time we have been intimate. Guilty! That is how I feel! And okay, maybe it is irrational of me to think this way, but I don’t want to feel selfish just because someone holds me the way I want to. I want these things to mean the same to you as they mean to me. I want you to touch me the way I want to touch you. Why is it my responsibility to initiate it?”

“It’s not your responsibility!” Orion screamed, frustrated.

“Stop screaming at me, please,” May said, moving away from Orion.

“I’m not! I can initiate sex if you want me to. There are different kinds of asexuals,” Orion said, smacking the tip of his right index finger into his left palm.

“You can’t be angry at me just because I don’t know anything about asexuality,” May said, thumping his chest with the back of her hand.

“Why am I being held responsible for explaining all of asexuality to you then?”

“I am just asking questions!”

“Okay, fine! Some asexuals don’t like sex at all, and then some asexuals like sex. I am sex-positive. I enjoy sex, but I don’t really care much about it. I am attracted to you romantically, but I don’t find you or anyone else sexually attractive.”

“What’s the difference between romantic and sexual attraction?”

“There are different types of attraction. There’s sensual attraction, which is hugging and kissing. There’s the romantic one, where I want to be close to you. There’s aesthetic, where I think you’re gorgeous. And then there’s sexual attraction, which I don’t really know how to describe to you, because it’s like asking a blind man to describe walking.”

“What about porn?”

“Don’t do that,” Orion said, with exasperation, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Every time I’ve come out to people…I don’t understand why I am held accountable for these questions.”

“I am not other people. I am your girlfriend.”

“Why is what I am not enough for you?” Orion pleaded again. His script had failed, gone off course, dug a grave under rail tracks, paved a way into Earth’s core, and showered in its magma.

“I think you’re being really defensive right now,” May said.

“Yes! I am defending myself! And you are being very hurtful right now! I’m tired of answering questions about whether I jerk off or how fucking different romantic attraction is from sexual attraction. To you and everyone else! I know I’m repeating myself again and again, but why am I responsible, suddenly, for answering everything about asexuality?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“How about ‘I love being close to you, and I do want to understand what intimacy looks like for you, but I need time.’ That would be good, no?”

“Yes, that’s right,” May nodded.

“What’s right?”

“I need time, Orion. I’m sorry. I need time.”

Like all memories, there’s music this time, too – a violent amalgam of mashed chords, tunes and static hisses echoing from each inch of his memory, fueling a rage that feels like it has spent a millennia brewing. A rage so strong that when Orion’s eyes flicker open at the end of his Reinstatement, his world is daubed in a strong shade of red. He grabs the wires extending from the helmet and pulls them apart with the unmatched vigor of someone left at the altar, hurling the helmet away from him right into the whirring Archive machines. Sparks fly, and alarms begin to blare once again. Orion storms towards the door, bellowing and foolishly trying to punch a hole into the metal door, only to find blood curling around his fists.

“Open!” he screams, as a click warns him that the door is opening. “Sorry,” he grumbles when he sees June on the other side. She gapes at him with a piteous, worried look, horrified, as if she’s walked in front of a bull in all red. She says something, but Orion’s years are ringing with agony and betrayal, heedless of anything anyone might try to say. June carefully glances at the camera, then back at Orion, and unexpectedly rushes into a hug. “Fourth floor,” she whispers, slipping her keycard into his hands.

Orion gulps. He is too livid to thank her. He walks past her, gradually picking up pace as he uses her badge to enter the elevator, reddening the button for the fourth floor, blood continuing to drip down from his fists, marking his white T-shirt in globular spots that Orion promises never to wash off. When the door opens, and the only thing separating him from the Director’s office is a hallway with blue walls falling prey to the flashing shades of the alarm lights, he gallops toward the Director’s office with unbridled fury.

The door to the Director’s office opens. For a brief second, he catches a glimpse of the smug bastard sitting behind his desk, his fingers intertwined into a webbed lock, wearing a blue suit and a yellow tie in a ridiculous, farcically corrupt image of a bowel in the disguise of a man. A thin mustache spoils his face. His hollow eyes are fixed on Orion, a grin masked by superfluous layers of cosmetic skin. “How dare you!” Orion screams, his body flailing and jittering uncontrollably.

He picks up the pace, only to be confronted by two tall, burly guards who step out from inside the Director’s office with their arms crossed and lifeless eyes hidden behind black sunglasses. They stop Orion with ease, pick him up like a toy, and slam him to the ground like a rag doll. The elevator dings behind him as two Erasers – an old man and June – walk out. The last thing Orion sees before the guards sedate him is a worried June mouthing sorry. He wants to tell her that between the two of them, they ought to have apologized enough for one lifetime by now.