Yael Baron Comes Out As Asexual
Yael had never been much for baking cakes, but today was special. She put the last touches of purple icing on and looked down proudly. Not bad really, not bad at all.
In fact, she thought, it was better than sex.
She carried it out to Lola, who looked at it in puzzlement. The cake was frosted in stripes, with the top stripe being black, then gray below it, then white, then purple. These weren't school colors, or the usual way to frost a cake. And frankly Yael had been sounding really weird ever since they (as a genderqueer person, Yael went by they/them pronouns) invited Lola over, while at the same time being really insistent about it.
"So…what's going on?", asked Lola cautiously.
"Well," said Yael, fidgeting nervously with their shirt, "I made this cake to look like the asexual flag because I wanted to tell you that I'm asexual. That is, I'm not sexually attracted to anyone.
I can see that someone is good-looking, but it doesn't make me want to sleep with them. Like if you're a straight woman, and you see a pretty woman, you can understand she's pretty, but you don't want to sleep with her. And it's not because you're afraid of women or you were abused or raped by a woman or something, it's just how you feel about women. Well, that's how I feel about women and men and everybody else."
"Oh. But what about you dating Hunter?"
"We're still working through what that means for us. He loves me and wants to stay with me, but he's not asexual, and I don't want to have sex just for him, so maybe we'll go polyamorous. We haven't figured it out completely yet. But the important thing is that he loves me and he accepts me, just like you accept me…right?"
"Duh!" Lola flicked her hair. "How could who you're not sexually attracted to – even if it is everyone – bother me? I hate to break it to you, but I haven't been secretly pining over you all this time." She smiled. "Seriously, it was really cool of you to tell me, and we're still friends." She took a bite of the cake.
"How is it?", Yael asked.
"Pretty good," said Lola. "Though I have to admit, I don't think it's better than sex. But I guess we can agree to disagree."