The Fool
For everyone in the ace community, as it is for everyone in the queer community, all journeys to understanding one’s sexual or gender identity has to start somewhere. It’s just like talking, or riding a bike, or driving a car; one doesn’t just start with the maturity of an experienced orator, or start biking with the stamina of a Tour de France veteran, or start driving with the skill of an F1 veteran.
But of course, that didn’t stop me. With my childhood self’s nasty perfectionist bent and my deluded youthful ambition, I believed that yes, I absolutely had to have perfect speech, and immaculate driving skills, right out of the gate. And when I began identifying as aspec, I naturally had to have all of it figured out on day one. Because if I wasn’t a perfect speaker, a perfect cyclist, a perfect driver, or someone who with an encyclopedic knowledge of ace/aro/queer issues and a perfect knowledge of myself, I was a failure. Everyone else seemed to do it so easily, and so expertly. Why couldn’t I do the same?
Of course, as luck would have it for me, like talking, or riding a bike, or driving a car, arriving at my own sexual identity in the ace community was something that of course didn’t come easily to me at all.
The development of my speaking ability came through years of suffering through my stutter-wracked throat: My vocal cords were paralyzed from hyperstimulation, yet my brain and body, in an exceptionally rare case of cooperation forced the words out of my mouth through sheer force of will. It wasn’t until I was forced through years of speech therapy at a young age that I was actually able to wrangle my speech patterns into anything close to coherent verbal communication.
My first foray into bike riding wasn’t at all like the way you often see it on TV or in movies. There was no house with a white picket fence behind me, nor a smiling and supportive parent waiting on the other end of the driveway, arms and eyes wide open, bright and beaming. It was just me, the emptiness of High Park on an early weekend morning, and at the bottom of the sharp hill at the foot of Spring Road — a hill that almost looked like a cliff to my eight year old eyes — and my father, stern, impatient, and always on his perpetual hair trigger that always seemed to set him on a knife’s edge. One small push — a ketchup bottle cap improperly closed, or a light left on — was all it took to send him tumbling into a screaming rage.
The first time I fully remember actually driving a car on my own, I remember the freedom and exhilaration of having a car — a several tonned, wheeled mass of gasoline-fuelled machine — at my full command. And yet, I remember being seized with panic at the thought of crashing, or being hit by another car, or, God forbid, hitting someone else. And following the rules. Was I following the rules properly? Was I signalling, not straddling lanes, or checking my blindspots?
After a disastrous and embarrassing foray through a bridge saddled with heavy construction, narrowly averting an awkward fender-bender, I quickly found a gravel side road I could discreetly drive into, and pulled to the side. Engaging any and every brake I could see, and pulling out the keys, I felt myself hyperventilating as I collapsed my head on the steering column. I could only think of the faces of the people I could see on the cars stuck behind me when I awkwardly stalled out on the bridge. I must have spent an hour sitting there, mortified to the point of tears at the thought of being so thoroughly embarrassed and humiliated as a driver.
The Fool isn’t about experiencing or embodying perfection on the journey — it’s about starting the journey. It’s about making your first move, even though you know you might end up losing the game. It’s about accepting that you will fail and make mistakes, regardless of your skillset, experience, or intentions…and yet, still trusting it will all somehow work out in the end.
It’s about opening your mouth to make those first words, trusting that your throat and brain will work the way they’re supposed to. It’s about letting your feet leave the ground to let gravity take over, to trust that your dad won’t scream at you when he stands over your bloodied body. It’s about engaging the stick shift in your new rental car, trusting that everything will go according to plan on your first day out driving by yourself, and you won’t stick out like a sore thumb to everyone and their mother who passes you by.
And even though all of those things didn’t go the way I’d hoped they would, they all represented first steps that I had to make. They all marked a beginning that I had to fight through, against my fear of people laughing at me, my fear of getting yelled at, and my fear of getting into an expensive accident. If I wanted to make any progress at all with my speech, with riding a bike, or with driving a car, I had to find a starting point: To just go, and let go of everything else.
My asexual journey, like those experiences, had to have a beginning. And often, beginning is the hard part. Sure, it will involve humiliation, or embarrassment, or the hostility of people close to you. It will involve trying to attach words and language to things that are almost impossible to describe with verbal language.
But despite my stutter, I kept on talking, and refused to stop even when my embarrassment almost seemed overwhelming. Despite my fall and my father’s bitter screaming, I got back on the bike — not to escape his criticism, but to prove to myself that it was something I could master. And despite an almost paralyzing bout of anxiety, I put the keys back into ignition, put myself back out onto the highway, and drove myself home with no incident.
I was bursting with inner doubts. I was worried I would never be enough for that multicoloured flag. I was fearful that I didn’t belong in that cool new ace group I’d seen on Facebook. But through it all, starting my journey into asexuality felt like starting something that was really, and truly mine.
The Fool goes beyond more than starting a necessary or difficult journey. It’s more than “doing the work” on yourself that inevitably comes with questioning your sexual or gender identity. Going deeper, it’s about a starting a journey that truly belongs to you. After so much time spent in a world where others try so hard to direct or write your story, it’s about finally picking up that pen and writing your story for yourself.
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