00:00When I was a junior in high school, it was apparent that I wasn't interested in people
00:05in the same way as everybody else was.
00:10Two of my friends actually suggested to me that perhaps I was asexual, and I told them
00:16I'm not a plant, go away, leave me alone.
00:20I went and I looked it up and I found asexuality.org, and I read, asexuality is when you don't
00:26experience
00:27sexual attraction, and I thought, that can't be me because I have crushes on people, but
00:31I went to the frequently asked questions page, and I realized, oh my goodness, like this fits
00:37me perfectly.
00:39Oh dear.
00:40It was an overwhelming sense of dread.
00:43It wasn't something I wanted.
00:44It was isolating, because at the time I didn't want to be this sexual orientation that I knew
00:49nothing about, and I didn't know anybody else who was like that, and I felt like it meant
00:54that I wouldn't be able to make strong or intimate connections with other people, and
00:59I felt like that for a really long time.
01:03When I realized that I was really asexual and there was no way I wasn't, I knew I needed
01:07a community, and I didn't have one at all.
01:10I moved to New York originally thinking that the biggest city in the country would be the
01:14most likely to have an ace group.
01:15Aces is a shorthand for asexual, but it also inherently means the asexual spectrum, which
01:21includes anybody who finds asexual to be helpful, but not quite right.
01:26And there wasn't one in New York where I had been for six years, and by that point I
01:30said, if nobody else is doing it, I'm going to do it.
01:32And over the course of two and a half to three years, now all my friends that I see on
01:37a weekly
01:37basis are also asexual, and from all the work that I've done.
01:44I have a partner, Levi.
01:46I met Levi when I was brought in to help the NYU students start an Aces and Arrows group
01:52at their LGBTQ center.
01:54Probably the most typical relationship that I have.
01:58We live together.
01:59Our hardest question is consistently what should we have for dinner.
02:02We snuggle.
02:03I kiss them hello and goodbye, things like that.
02:09It sort of blew my mind in the sense that this was something that was actually possible.
02:15I don't feel like I'm alone anymore.
02:18The idea that asexual just means that you don't want to have sex misses the whole point
02:23of who I am because you wouldn't know that I like to stay up until 4am talking to my friends
02:29or all in one bed watching a movie together making comments or how I feel vulnerable and
02:35share different parts of myself.
02:37That is a much more accurate representation of who I am and my life instead of just saying,
02:41oh, you're a person who doesn't want to have sex.
02:42Oh, you're a person who doesn't want to have sex.
