Upside Down by N.R. Walker
Chapter One
Jordan O’Neill
Asexuality is defined by the absence of something.
* * *
I read the line again, and another time for good measure, then I mumbled it to myself out loud. “Asexuality is defined by the absence of something.”
I squinted at the screen. “Oh, you can fuck right off,” I muttered and looked up, directly into the horrified face of a customer. She had those lines above her top lip, like she’d spent a good portion of her sixty-something years scowling. It made her mouth look like a cat’s butthole. Her coral-coloured lipstick bled into the lines around her mouth, and I had to make myself not stare. And now not think of cats and their puckered, coral-coloured buttholes. So gross. “Oh, not you, obviously. I wasn’t saying that to you. I happen to like cats. Not their buttholes, necessarily, I was just…”
“He was just taking these for me. Hello, Mrs Peterson, how are you today?” Merry said as she slid a pile of books from the counter into my arms. She shoved me out from behind the counter and smiled at the now-glaring woman. I was going to suggest Mrs Peterson stop scowling, or at least buy a half-decent lip filler, but thought better of it. I reshuffled the pile of books in my arms, which Merry hadn’t even alphabetised yet, and disappeared into the stacks. It gave me time to bang my head on the top row of books and die of frustrated embarrassment.
Working at the Surry Hills library certainly had its perks. Hiding in the stacks from irate customers with feline buttholitis of the mouth being my all-time favourite perk. Books, a close second. Working with Merry a well-placed third. Okay, so well, maybe working with Merry could be better than books… especially when she understood my awkwardness and social ineptitude and bailed me out of situations like she did just now with Mrs Peterson. It also didn’t hurt that she reminded me of the Hobbit she was nicknamed after: short, funny, loyal, though thankfully she was absent the huge, hairy feet. Her real name was Meredith, but Merry suited her perfectly.
But in all seriousness, I loved my job. Loved it. There was routine, order, everything was catalogued, numbered, and shelved accordingly. It was organised, neat, and usually quiet most of the time. Except on Tuesdays when they held Library Time for preschoolers and there were book readings and sometimes a finger puppet show. Or on Wednesdays when they held their community computer courses for aged folks. Not that they were loud the way thirty preschoolers running through the stacks was loud, but when there were fifteen elderly people all speaking up so they could hear themselves talk, it was kind of noisy. Thursdays, on the other hand, were usually quiet. The only community group that met that day was the local mime actors club, so they didn’t make any noise, really. Except for that first time, not long after I’d started, when I was walking past as they were finishing up and the room erupted in applause, causing me to almost drop my armful of books. It startled me so much I’d done an Oscar-worthy rendition of Samuel L Jackson being TASERed and let out a “Motherfucker” to end all motherfuckers. The biggest sacrilege of the whole performance was that a 1952 dust jacket edition of Hemingway’s Men Without Women hit the floor. It was completely unscathed. My ego, however, not so much.
Fridays were typically busy. English Language Workshops during the day, then Book Club on Friday nights. Because this was Surry Hills, hipster central, it was where all the nerds and geeks could come to be awkward introverts together. I quite often spent my Friday nights in a room full of like-minded people, avoiding eye contact and dying inside every time someone tried to make small talk.
That’s the thing about me.
I’m an awkward, introvert book nerd, sci-fi geeky twenty-six-year-old librarian, with brownish-ginger hair. Oh, and I’m a gay man. I’m also an expert in Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Wordsworth… or just all French Revolutionary poets in general, really. I also have to wear some item of clothing that is perfectly colour-coordinated with my shoes, and I have an inclination to say motherfucker an awful lot. Oh, and there is also a very good chance I’m asexual.
The jury was still out on that. Actually, that wasn’t true; the jury had been in for some time, I’d just been resisting their verdict. I didn’t need another label. I had enough of them. I had enough hang-ups, quirks, traits, and societal boxes to tick and squeeze myself into.
I didn’t need one more.
But I couldn’t decide if having one more label was causing my anxiety to spike or if not having the label confirmed was what gave me anxiety. Maybe I needed the label. Maybe everyone could fuck the fuck off and let me live in my anxiety bubble of non-asexualness. Maybe whoever wrote that article online and said “asexuality is defined by the absence of something” can fuck off too.
And that’s where I was up to when Merry found me, with my forehead pressed up against The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck in the How Ironic section, mumbling to myself. “You doing okay, Jordan?” she asked.
“To define asexuality by the absence of anything infers that something is missing and therefore incomplete or insufficient.” I looked at her. “I am not any of those things, and I resent the implication—”
She put her hand up and spoke over me. Gently, but firmly, like she knew how to deal with me, or something. “The article goes on to explain that by definition, the absence of sexual attraction makes it difficult to label and the resulting struggle to identify with something that is, by definition, the lack of something.”