Entry 17

So it's my bday next weekend, but thanks to adulting and life in general (and uh, my work schedule) me and my bff have decided to celebrate my bday yesterday since we were both free that day.

I got a lot done as well yesterday! I planned to come out as aroace to my friend with a handmade card (just a silly lil "who's that pokemon?" type card to fit the coming out theme lol) and I even got some balloons to match the aroace flag. We sat at one of my fave cafes and had a great convo on sexuality and gender, which is always fun. I didn't think it was gonna go badly at all, but I was just so excited to finally talk about asexuality and all that jazz with someone... like out loud lmfao

I love and appreciate the community I've managed to find online but boy oh boy is it gonna be great to finally just sit down with some actual human beings irl and just talk all about compulsive sexuality and amatonormativity. Ugh, it'll be great lol

AND at the cafe-- since it's also a bookstore-- I found Sherronda J. Brown's "Refusing Compulsory Sexuality"!!

It's a book I've had my eye on for a MINUTE now since I've first heard about it when I resigned myself to collecting every aspec thing I can get my hands on. There doesn't seem to be many POC-focused books or mediums wrt asexuality, and I agree that the ace community can be a lil... white lol so I was super excited to see this sitting right there on the shelf next to our table!

I've been reading a ton lately, old books from my childhood just for the nostalgia, new books on capitalism (well, anti-capitalism if we're gonna be specific), and ofc books on asexuality. and the uh fanfics but we're not gonna talk about that. I'm ngl tho, as amazing as these books are and they DO touch upon the topic of aromanticism every now and then, it'd be fantastic to have a book that solely focuses on aromanticism one day! But that's a dream for the future, since not that much data is floating out there to collect on aromanticism just yet. We need more ppl to figure that out about themselves first LOL

So I'm making my way thru this book and BOY is Sherronda not fucking around in this one. If you've ever wanted to read about compulsory sexuality in society and how it often intersects with racism (bc in the good ol US of A what doesn't involve racism, amiright folks?), then this is the book for you. It often talks about asexuality, ofc cuz that's what the book is about but it also paints so many issues in society in a brand new light. Not that many books and shows are out there criticizing societal inadequacies from this kind of perspective. It's really refreshing, and it's helping me put so many issues I've had with society and sexuality, romance, relationships, etc into words. It's a real good book, easy to follow.

I also got another lip piercing as well! I've been meaning to get another one to accompany my medusa for like the illest minute, and I finally found a local piercing shop that seemed sketchy as hell at first but the people who owned it were super nice, and for the price I paid? Absolutely no complaints. It was an old dude who pierced my labret and he absolutely knew what he was doing. My medusa was done in a mall 2 years ago, and while it healed nicely (all things considered LMAO) it was kinda obvious the piercer was kind of new. This piercing didn't bleed at all, and hurts very minimally.

So yea even tho I'm most likely not going to do much on my actual day of birth, I'm happy with how yesterday went. It was a good ass day! I love my new piercing, my bff and I had good convos on asexuality, picked up another great book, and I ate some bomb ass food at my absolute fave cafe ever. Not bad, all things considering!

I'm still broke as hell from my week off thanks to COVID, but I'm making the most of my situation. I'm not gonna stay broke forever right? Well, relatively speaking lmfao

Gonna have to start making preparations for pride now! I'm not entirely sure what I'm gonna be doing, esp since I found out about me being aroace pretty recently, but I'm part of some cool discords with active ppl in the community so I'm sure I've got something to do lol