“Oh, that’s what you were trying to do? I thought you were just showing your age.”
I grit my teeth in a seething smile. If Maeve was somebody else, somebody whose boundaries and limits I knew, whose buttons I’d learned more about, I would take her to task for talking to me like that. I would call her a brat.
Am I disappointed that Maeve is not like that? Possibly, a little. But truly, I’m much more intrigued by figuring out what is going on in that head of hers, of understanding more about what makes MaeveMaeve,and honestly, it’s a revelation to embark on doing so without the use of my stern voice or the flat palm of my hand.
“What?” she asks, accusatorily again.
“What do you mean, what?”
“You have this strange look on your face.” She points at me.
“Just considering my next move,” I say and I pull the wrap off my head and fold it on my lap.
“Your next move? I didn’t realize we were playing a game of chess.” She cocks her head at me.
“We’re not playing any kind of game,” I admit. “I’m simply thinking before I speak. I find people don’t do enough of that.”
“But what is it you actually want to say? Because I find people don’t do enough speaking their mind, their truths.”
I rub my face with my hands. “Maeve, I just woke up from what was possibly the best nap of my life, I’m not about to get out a soapbox and stand on it…” I hold my hand out when I see her mouth fall open, “…and speaking of soapboxes, how’s the keynote going?”
She groans, loudly. “Disastrous. It’s a fucking poxy shitshow.”
I glance at my phone on the nightstand, ignoring the notifications on the front screen, for now. I’ve been asleep for little over two hours. “Want to talk about it? Maybe I can help.”
Maeve studies me for a long moment, her lips pulling to one side. “May as well. You can’t make it any worse than it already is.”
I sit up a little straighter. “Okay, hit me with it. Pretend I’m a room of five hundred attendees.”
“Five hundred? Jesus fuck! You’re not exactly helping.”
“Okay, a couple hundred. I guess some will skip it, being hungover or still asleep.”
“Still, that’s a couple of hundred too many.” She groans again, but shifts her weight and tosses her hair over her shoulder before turning toward me and setting the laptop to the side of her on the bed. “But here goes fecking nothing…”
She coughs and looks up at me. I give her what I hope is a reassuring nod.
“Hi, I’m Mae and like many of you, I’m queer. Unlike most of you, however, I do not work in the adult content creating industry. Sure, I’m an adult and content creation is my job, but I’m not an adult content creator like many of you are. So whyam I standing here and talking to you? That’s a good question, and I’m not sure I have the answer to it, but I do believe the organizers wanted to bring a fresh voice to your ears. To bring a different perspective on queer identities, on sexuality, and specifically, on what being asexual can teach us all about the good and less-than-perfect things in our world.” She steals many glances at the laptop as she talks but in general her eyes stay on me. Her very blank, very empty eyes. “I was in my teens when I started to think there was something wrong with me…”
“Wait!” I hold my hand up. “Just… wait.”
“What is it? I’ve not even got to the main part of the speech.”
“I gathered, but I think I know what’s coming.”
“You do?”
“Sure. You’re about to tell everyone the story about how before you knew you were queer, you thought you were broken. You’re about to share the long and winding route you took to discovering your asexuality. You’re about to use it to hopefully connect with the audience, to unite us all in our queerness.”
“Well, yeah. Duh.”
“And that’s great. That’s cool to connect with people in that way. But I think there’s more to your story, Maeve.”
“You don’tknowmy story.” She crosses her arms. “You’re literally not letting me tell it.”
“Are you about to share anything that you’ve not already talked about in a TikTok video?”
“No, but not everyone there will have seen all my videos.”
