literature

The Traction Factor

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Literature Text

Ash knows what it's like
to pretend, to fake something
because that's easier
than trying to explain the truth
to every idiot passing through her life.

There was one summer in her teens that
she spent with her Lakota cousins-by-marriage
during which she met a neighbor
who at the time was pretending to be a boy
in accordance with the body's shape.

Ash, at the time, was frustrated by how
all the other teenagers were pairing up,
and how it made her feel left out
because she didn't want to
do that with anyone.

So Ash and Skan pretended
to be boyfriend and girlfriend.
The other teenagers accepted them then
on the trail rides and fishing trips
and visits to the ice cream stand.
It was nice to be accepted.

Still, something itched  about it,
something out of place,
something as uncomfortable
as a wrinkle in a saddle blanket,
unseen but always felt just the same.

So they parted company at the end of summer,
parted as friends and went their separate ways.

Ash explored her feelings
and discovered that she was asexual,
not desiring the clutch of anyone's body;
and aromantic as well,
not inclined to fall in love with anyone.

This did not mean, Ash also discovered,
that she felt no love for other people.
It did not mean that she felt no desire
for permanent, even intimate relationships --
merely that she wanted those
to be based on something other than
sex and romance.
She was still tractive,
and the urge to connect was strong.

So when Ash met Alex --
who had a brilliant mind
and a tendency to collect people --
it was a source of mutual delight.
Here was someone Ash could wrap her life around
like a bean vine climbing a cornstalk,
and there was Bailey spreading himself about them both
like a squash plant covering the hill with cool shade.

Ash and Alex spent long hours together,
poring over computer programs.
Their heads bent close over the keyboard,
Ash's long dark braid against Alex's golden curls.
Often as not, Bailey crouched at their feet,
adding or removing or repairing some piece of hardware.
These people were comfortable with things
that had nothing to do with sex, Ash realized.
It was curiously liberating.

Others, too, came later,
twining themselves into Ash's life,
coworkers who became friends who became family.
There was no need to be alone
unless she wished to be by herself for a little while.

It was not the same culture Ash had grown up with
but it was, also, not identical to the mainstream
for each of them contributed bits of what they loved best
and together they became something
very like a little tribe.

Ash knows what it's like to pretend,
and to choose not  to pretend anymore,
so when Quinn seems a bit lonely for people
who are neither male nor female, both male and female,
she coaxes him to come with her to the Waxahachie powwow.

Skan is there too, living as a woman now,
with her tall handsome husband
and a badge for the fancy shawl dance.
She looks askance at Quinn, for a moment,
until Ash explains that he's part of her family
and longing for the company of other two-spirits.

Then Skan grins, and tells them about
the Oglala brave-woman who has just taken a wife
and the Hopi katsina dancer who is asexual, and oh,
some medicine person from north of the Canadian border
whom Skan has not met yet but is surely some sort of two-spirit.

It's nice to have a place
where you can just be yourself
and let the tribe-song swirl around you
like the water of a deep clear river.

Ash is not surprised when
Quinn comes home with a souvenir,
a man's choker necklace made of horn pipe-beads
with a silver concho in front from which dangle two bone feathers,
one tipped in turquoise and the other tipped in coral,
a silent, subtle hint of a hidden iteration.

Ash would not trade her family
for all the mainstream acceptance in the world.
Ash describes part of her journey to discovering her orientation as aromantic asexual, and the family she finds along the way.
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