Alphabet Soup.

"A" is for "acronym."

Exhibit A. 

For Anakin Skywalker, meeting Padme Amidala was love at first sight. Of course, because he was nine and she was fourteen, Padme didn’t think much of that day on account of the fact that she was the queen of her home planet of Naboo which was currently being invaded. After Naboo was saved from foreign occupation with the help of many adults, Anakin and Padme parted ways. 

For ten years he was trained as a Jedi. For ten years he thought about her every single day. For ten years the Jedi mishandled his questionable personality traits because above everything else, Anakin Skywalker was the “Chosen One” meant to “bring balance to the Force.” Then, upon being assigned as Padme’s (now a senator in the Galactic Republic) personal security after a failed assassination attempt, Anakin used every single chance to blow past all her boundaries until they professed their love for each other and secretly got married as war broke out across the galaxy. 

Three years later, to save her from a vision he had of the future where she died in childbirth, he betrayed the Jedi Order by participating in the mass genocide of Jedi men, women, and children. Consumed by the dark side, he choked out Padme for disagreeing with his new allegiances and she later died of a medically verified broken heart. Authoritarianism consumed the democracy she once served to begin a reign of terror that would span almost a quarter of a century further ending the lives of billions. 

Exhibit B. 

Because of a standardized test taken in school, when I was ten or eleven I was shipped off to a summer camp for “the gifted” where I was meant to study logic and philosophy. I remember being impressed by the beauty of the college campus. There was a particular secluded bench under a tree where I put in extra time to memorize a list of fallacies and their definitions. There was also a packet of textbook pages I was given about stoicism that I scribbled many notes upon. Though what I remember the most is how comfortable the chairs were in the lecture hall as I was gently talked into a light doze with the words of Plato. 

I made a friend there. Amanda. During the end of camp dance, I discovered that Amanda had her eyes on a boy from the very first day and she was very excited when he agreed to dance with her. I stood off to the side, confused by what was happening. She may as well have been dancing with the Grim Reaper. In fact, that’s exactly what my gifted gut told me was happening. So after one song turned into two songs turned into three songs, I walked up to the pair emboldened by a sense of justice, stuck my arm between them, and smiled. 

The boy laughed at first. Then looked at Amanda, confused. Then she spoke to me.

“Stop it,” she said. They separated. “I’m serious. What are you doing?”

“I’m making room for Jesus,” I said, quoting a phrase that always struck me as funny. She got angry and I didn’t understand why. “You don’t have to dance with him,” I explained. 

“I want to dance with him, Anna. What’s wrong with you?!” 

Exhibit C. 

The wedding of Noah and Amy is a simple one. It’s a beautiful day in Los Angeles, the kind where you don’t notice the smog. I pile a comical amount of cheese, crackers, and strawberries onto a paper plate. The dinner area is being prepped and is still a good thirty minutes away from being ready but no one minds because the bar is open and everyone is busy chatting and taking enough pictures to last a lifetime in the dainty courtyard. 

Amy never had a boyfriend before Noah, our friend Jenny informs me. It made sense. Amy had always come off as a very practical and level-headed individual. To be single until her late twenties then efficiently tying the knot at thirty on the first try felt on brand. 

The blossoming of their romance also felt true to the Hollywood romcom formula. He was a cafe owner and she was his employee. He liked her from the start. She didn’t think much of him at all. In a very routine outing to a nearby pizza place that, mysteriously, ended up being just the two of them one afternoon instead of them plus others who were on the closing shift that day, Noah deploys his pickup line: “If you Venmo me for the pizza, we ate today as friends. If you don’t, it was a date.” On their wedding website, it read like something straight out of an HR internal investigation. 

But in a way, their present demeanor reminded me a lot of my own parents. One of apparent mutual respect between teammates that would last so long as they both played their roles well. Half the people at their wedding were from their church congregation. They were married by Noah’s former youth pastor. There was nothing sensual or rowdy about the wedding. It was very ceremonial and lighthearted. Their fathers spoke on the mic and shook hands like they were closing a business deal while their mothers dabbed away tears.

“He treats her so well,” someone beside me fawned. It’s what I’d become accustomed to as one of the most common things to say about a man in these situations right up there with commenting on his sense of humor. It struck me as a pretty low bar to meet to warrant all of this celebration coupled with a legally binding agreement. Of Amy, many were commenting on her beauty, something I thought was a bit symbolically obscured by a full face of heavy makeup that made her skin much lighter than what would be expected for your typical Korean person. 

Every other couple at the wedding notably had hearts in their eyes, particularly the ones who were still in the dating phase. What better way to make your wedding fantasy burst into full color than by attending someone else’s? 

Exhibit D. 

“Love Wins” was the headline of the day. Same sex marriage had been legal in the state of New York for a little while, but the city sure lit up anew when it was legalized nationwide. Glitter and rainbows everywhere. It’s a brand of activism that I hadn’t followed closely at all, one where the demands seemed pretty simple. The arguments against it framed marriage as a contract with the various gods of men rather than a contract filed at a courthouse. Something in the fine print differentiated “marriage” from “domestic partnership” though I couldn’t tell you what. Hospital visitation rights and asset inheritence defaults came up from time to time. Internal “LGBT community” opposition to fighting for marriage equality, I’ve heard, was present at some point but seemed gone in the streets of the city that day. 

“Good for them,” I thought to myself. I’m all about consistency, after all. And marriage equality was an example of consistency in law. While in my view, romantic love, institutional marriage, and observable patterns of sexual desire were three separate topics, I could see why from a cultural perspective they were all quite linked. I also reminded myself that in many countries, deviation in any one of those categories were also quite linked and punishable by death or imprisonment. I wasn’t here to rain on anyone’s literal parade with questions about the technicality of slogans and the reality of the associated legislation.

“Love wins” indeed. 

Exhibit E.

“If there can be sex without love, why can’t there be love without sex?” someone writes in a group for asexuals. Below it are many other posts dissecting the concept of “attraction” more thoroughly than a mad scientist getting their hands on an alien life form. A girl comments that she’s been dating her boyfriend for two months but doesn’t want to have sex with him yet. She wants a diagnosis from the mad scientist hive mind for what’s wrong with her. 

“To understand one’s sexuality is to understand oneself” is the sentiment of the new cultural landscape. A girl who says she is eleven wants to know if it’s too early for her to know her true label. She is planning on coming out to her friends and family as demisexual panromantic but is worried they won’t take her seriously. “Look, when I was your age…” I began to type but thought better of it. Engaging with a child on ideas about sexuality seemed like something best left to her legal guardians. 

“I’m open to platonic partnership, I think. Like a teammate of sorts where we just… agree that that’s what we are?” I wrote to the audience of a wall of anime avatars. “But it’s not like anyone is looking for that so it’ll either happen by chance or it won’t. I’m not… expecting it or… looking for it. I might not even really be suited for it so it’s really not on my life agenda.” They tell me to be more optimistic. “It’s not like I don’t have friends,” I try to explain. “That’s plenty enough for me.” 

A man says he likes porn but is repulsed by the thought of touching a real woman. A woman says she dissociates while her husband penetrates her but she feels better knowing that’s just a symptom of her asexuality. Another woman says she likes BDSM-style punishment and degradation but only if it doesn’t end in sexual intercourse. She says it helps her manage her depression and get in touch with her innermost self. An older woman says she loves sex, both kinky and vanilla. She’s just not attracted to anyone she’s having sex with. “Action does not equal attraction,” she says. 

I become aware of the ghost of Kinsey observing us taking turns talking in this white room. 

“Does anyone… think this feels like male culture?” I ask. 

Upon explaining what I mean, I get a warning for violating community guidelines.

Exhibit F. 

In the transgender critical domain of the internet (more commonly called “gender critical”) to be what is called “TQ+” (anything after “LGB” in the alphabet soup) is to be a narcissist. To call oneself asexual is, typically, to be a liar as well. It is an announcement that it is your intent to invade LGB spaces. To have symptoms that look like a true manifestation of asexuality is to have a physical defect or to be so mentally repressed, the rest of the body falls in line. And it is most commonly thought that if there does seem to be a genuinely untraumatized asexual individual, then they can just keep that to themselves.

“I understand being put off by asexual internet culture, but I also don’t think it’s that far fetched that if there are people who describe attraction to one sex or both sexes, it seems reasonable that some people would lack interest in either sex,” I explain. 

“Even so, there’s no reason to make an identity out of it. They’re not oppressed.”

“Are sexual orientations identities or descriptors? Should heterosexual people stop describing themselves as such because they are not oppressed?” I ask. “And would it make you feel better if asexual people just said, ‘I don’t have a sexual orientation’?”

“Yes,” is the opinion of many.

“The split attraction model is a bit silly to me, personally. But I do understand why it has maintained momentum,” I say. 

The split attraction model refers to separating out different components of attraction. In asexual spaces, this primarily means looking at sexual attraction and romantic attraction as two separate things which means - at minimum - you’ll have two orientations. Some examples? Asexual homoromantic. Heterosexual aromantic. Asexual aromantic. Bisexual heteroromantic… in theory. 

“It’s homophobic. It’s suggesting that being gay is just about fucking,” is the pushback. I understand why, historically, that might be bad for publicity. 

“I’ve seen many responses to posts of those saying they are ‘asexual lesbians’ that if they ‘don’t want to fuck women,’ they’re not lesbians, and that they need to stop invading the community. So they made their own community based on the split attraction model which they are now being told is homophobic,” I say. “Also, in one breath I am corrected if I say ‘a romantic partner is a friend you have sex with’ because apparently ‘there’s more to it than that.’ But if I describe a committed relationship between two people building a life together who aren’t having sex, it is disregarded as two people ‘just being roommates.’ I guess what I’m getting at here is that there is really no consensus and that is a contributing factor to how all this has played out. Lots of fighting about lots of words.” 

Silence.

“I think it’s also worth thinking about why we categorize things the way we do. Like if you just imagine for a second that you lived in a world where nobody had ever cared which category of person you had sexual relations with. If for a thousand generations, sexual intercourse and offspring weren’t used to legitimize the merging of families and assets. Does choosing meaningful partnership with someone inherently have anything to do with sex? What happens when we center sex? How did that become the glue at the center of our humanity?” I ask. “It just feels unusual to me that the narrative seems absent of these ideas.”

“I didn’t choose to be a lesbian. I was born this way. I love women and so I want to have sex with women. This is why we don’t want you and your queer theory bullshit in our communities. Sorry you can’t relate to something so simple and, quite frankly, universal.”

Exhibit G. 

“I have a life overflowing with a great many wonderful things,” I say to Jenny who looks at me like she’s trying to read my mind. 

“But you’ve never been… interested in anyone? Ever?”

“Make no mistake, I like some people more than others. I like you a lot. And I’ve got this other friend, Molly. I’ve told you about her, right? So if the husband and kids plan doesn’t work out and you want to team up, gimme a call. I plan on having a place with a spare room or two or three for whoever in my life… needs it, I guess. Stay for a night or the rest of your life. I’ll be here. Doing what I always do.”

“And you’ve never had any urges.”

“That’s correct,” I said. “Though I hear I’m really missing out.”

She chews on the straw of her milkshake and shrugs.  

“Nah. I think you’re lucky.”

Exhibit H.

Molly and Kevin walk into the cafe. It’s a new one. Didn’t exist when we were high schoolers loitering around this very same street. But the bread smells good. Molly is a bread connoisseur. The only things I know about Kevin are that he’s basically on the Air Force bomb squad and he’s nervous about meeting me. 

“I’ve heard a lot about you. You’ve known Molly for… a long time.” 

“Our whole lives, basically.” Molly watches me size him up. I promised I wouldn’t embarrass her. None of her past boyfriends have ever gotten to the point of meeting me. I stick to my word. “So… bombs… that sounds like a story.”

“Not really.”

“Not really or you’re not at liberty to talk about it?”

“A little bit of both. But I’m sure doing concerts for a living is a lot more interesting,” he says.

“Flattery will get you nowhere, but yes, I suppose it could be.”

I ask about his friends. He says he doesn’t really keep any. I ask where he’s from. He says a little over here, a little over there. I ask what he likes to do for fun. He says he likes hanging out with Molly. I ask if he likes Star Wars. He says he’s never seen it. I slowly turn to look at Molly.

“He likes Lord of the Rings! Tell her how much you like Lord of the Rings,” she instructs him. 

When he gets up to pick up our drinks from the counter, I ask Molly what she likes about him. And this all really writes itself, doesn’t it?

“He’s funny,” she insists. “And he treats me well.”  

When he comes back to the table, he lays out her order in front of her and neatly stacks some napkins. He awkwardly pushes my hot chocolate toward me. 

After they leave, I know I’ll either see him at the wedding or never again. 

Exhibit I. 

Greta Gerwig’s breakout film, Frances Ha, opens with a touching vignette depicting the friendship between Frances and Sophie with the backdrop of New York City. Their life together in a half decent apartment is seamless. Being in each other’s space is natural. Frances’ boyfriend breaks up with her after she says she doesn’t want to move in with him because she’s got a good thing going living with Sophie. 

Soon after, Sophie announces she’s moving in with her own boyfriend in a much nicer neighborhood in the city a fair distance away. The announcement leaves Frances scrambling to find a place to sleep at night. 

Over the course of the film, their friendship drifts apart. Sophie’s circle shifts to become her boyfriend’s circle. And when her boyfriend gets transferred to Japan for his job, she follows. 

Eventually, Sophie drunkenly reappears to seek comfort with Frances. Her relationship with her boyfriend, she says, is essentially in shambles. She’s lost and all she knows is that she’s going to leave him. She’s going to leave him right now. Frances agrees to help her. They’ll get through this together.

In the morning, Sophie is gone. She leaves a note saying she’s returning to her boyfriend. They’re going to get married. But she thanks Frances for being there for her. 

Exhibit J. 

“Tell me about the apartment,” Jenny says. Her voice comes from my phone over the sound system in my car.

“Wooden floors and nice vintage wood paneling too. Two bedrooms, a living/dining room combo, and a modest kitchen.” 

“Two bedrooms? So I can move in?” I laugh.

“Yeah you can come over whenever. The second bedroom will be a combination of a library and a guest room.”

“No I mean… I could leave Los Angeles, bring all my stuff, and move in with you. I could take the smaller room?” 

My brain is shocked but automatically begins to recalibrate. Something like this was not part of the plan at all. The last time we planned on moving in together was when she convinced me to give LA a shot. I’d said yes. Then COVID happened. Then a few months into COVID, she got engaged and moved in with the guy like that had always been the plan. My mother told me I’d dodged a bullet not going out there. I tried not to feel bitterness about it. The engagement eventually fell apart. I would’ve been immediately happier about that had I not been informed through her calling me in the middle of the night on the street with a hastily packed suitcase.

“I could… change my plan? You know I’m not exactly close to New York City, right? Also, what about Roger?” I asked about her current boyfriend who strategically manipulated her for a whole year following the failed engagement.

“Why would I want to live with him? First of all, he doesn’t get me like you do. Second of all, don’t you want to be teammates?”

I grip the steering wheel trying to not get ahead of myself. I wonder if she realizes what she’s asking me. I wonder why, out of the blue, she’s saying all of this. 

“Of course I do. Yeah I’ll… send you a video of the place. Just so you’re sure.” 

“I don’t even care. I think this will be really good for us. I’ll get to be in constant proximity to your big brain. I’ll absorb all the Star Wars knowledge. We can get jobs in town together. Make a real name for ourselves like we’ve talked about,” she says. It seemed a bit fantastical, but the general sentiment amused me nonetheless.

“I can get a Gryffindor sign for your door and a Ravenclaw sign for mine,” I suggest. 

“Oh gosh, you’re gonna have so much nerd stuff everywhere, aren’t you? I can’t wait to see it.” 

I remain quietly bewildered. My mother is highly skeptical. Jenny begins telling our mutual friends at the gigs she’s on that we’re set to become housemates. I find out because they message me saying they heard the news. Roger sends me some passive aggressive text messages. Only after a few weeks of that, I allow myself to start to believe it.

I never thought anyone I was so fond of would choose me or even consider me. Or at the very least, choose my way. Because that’s what it has to be. A choice. I’d come to understand that most people don’t end up where I am naturally or by accident. Most people don’t even consider where I am to be a viable destination. And maybe it’s not. I’d been told on more than one occasion that I don’t know what it’s like to be human, after all. Maybe it’s a lack of destination. I start to wonder if, for Jenny, that might be the appeal.

Exhibit K. 

Jenny changes her mind soon after. I say it’s fine. I’ll move ahead with my original plan.

Quietly, I suspect I’ve been used as a bargaining chip in a lover’s spat. I’d taken in a few wayward friends before, free of charge. Gave them the space to get back on their feet. Sent them on their way. It’s a role that I’ve found suits me quite a bit. It’s half the reason Jenny even calls me “big brain” in the first place. A little outside perspective can often have the appearance of being groundbreaking. I’m good at being the outside perspective.

My mother gives me that look that says “I told you so.” I roll my eyes.

Exhibit L. 

“Yo but for real, why ain’t you never had a boyfriend?” the rapper who just had the biggest show of his career in New York City probes. He’s the first popular artist I’ve worked with who acts like a normal human being which is refreshing. There’s pizza and alcohol everywhere in the front lounge of the tour bus as we make our way through the snowy Adirondacks. I take a sip of my chocolate milk.

“I’m a Jedi,” I say proudly. 

“Well you need to be a Jedi with a boyfriend. I’m going to keep this tour chatroom open and I want my whole management team to know when Anna gets a boyfriend. I should go on Instagram live RIGHT NOW and get you a lineup.”

Everyone screams in laughter. He’s not serious and he’s not drunk enough to convince himself he’s serious and create chaos in front of his million followers. I smile and hold up my arms in protest.

“It’s not the Jedi way.”