Confused. Possibly Dazed.

It was like I had just hit her cross the face with a small trout.

“A sexual what?” she asked, a few seconds after my declaration.

“No… I mean I’m an asexual. Full stop. It means… well ‘asexual’ literally means ‘without sex’. Uhm… and as it applies to me… well I’ve never been sexually attracted to anybody.” I’d had practice with this before, but looking at Regina made talking difficult sometimes. I did recognize her expression though. It was the usual look of skepticism, like maybe I was in on a joke that she wasn’t.

“What do you mean… never been sexually attracted? To another person? To anyone?” she asked, brow furrowed, and she was even beautiful frowning. Her uncertainty made me feel a little better about my own current feeling of imbalance. I had a sense that I was teetering on a tightrope several stories high with no safetynet below. I leaned back into something I was familiar with for now.

“I mean, I grew up just not interested in sex,” I explained patiently, like I had done a hundred times before to various friends and family members. About six separate times to my Aunt Debbie. “I’d kissed boys and girls and it used to just feel kind of… wet. I’ve had sex as well and it was okay but nothing I wanted to rave about. And I guess I just never really thought about it after that… never had an interest in pursuing it.”

Regina stared at me like I had grown a second nose. Or would a demon even find that weird? She was looking at me like I was weird. I was not unfamiliar with this look.

“You don’t like sex?” she asked, incredulous. I shrugged. Apart from the obvious biological end goal, I never quite understood the point of it… at least before today. I used to have pretty clear feelings on the matter. I kept on clinging to my memory for the moment.

“Sex is okay,” I said, the best concession I could make. “It’s just… sort of like running. Only messier.”

“SORT OF LIKE RUNNING?”

She didn’t scream, exactly, but the way her eyes widened, and the disbelief in her utterance, made it clear that she did not agree with my assessment of the world’s oldest past time. “Are you sure you've just never had good sex?” she tried, needing to tackle this from another angle lest it become too incomprehensible to penetrate.

“I’ve had orgasms. They’re good. Great even. But I’m not all that bothered about the whole thing. I tried regularly masturbating too but it seemed unnecessary after a while. I know it’s hard for people to wrap their heads around,” I said sheepishly. Regina was a thread’s breadth away from pacing about my small apartment, but she seemed to slow herself down in a way. Calm herself. And she was thinking. It wasn’t a long thought.

“So you don’t want to have sex with me?” she asked, and she gestured to her naked body, blatantly on offer. Before I could answer that she found another question. “Why did you want to kiss me?”

I blinked at the woman. That question of hers had been repeating in my head the moment I saw her. The moment I laid eyes on Regina and found myself licking my lips.

“I’m not… sure,” I started, the imaginary highwire now flexing under my soles. “I think… there’s just something about you.” I couldn’t help where my eyes wandered, like they had a mind of their own. But wherever they landed, and lingered, I liked what I saw. The dips and swells of her body made my heart ache, and also like I needed to pee a little? Not exactly the same… but bordering that region. “When I look at you I feel things I’ve never felt before… with anyone,” I went on. “When I think of kissing you… touching you… and how it might lead to sex… I think I want to.”

“You think you want to?” She had to play my thoughts back to me, because I had just made another statement she had never heard before. Of course people wanted to have sex with this woman. This fertile Goddess. Regina looked made for it, quite honestly.

“I do want to,” I said, correcting myself, but that wasn’t the point for her any more. The beautiful entity before me seemed to arrive at something which lit up her face.

“So you’re telling me, you used to never want to have sex,” she said, moving closer to me now and taking my hands, like you might do to make sure someone was paying attention to what you were saying. Regina had my full attention from the minute she had materialised in front of me anyway. “In your entire life, sexual urges never plagued you… but now, today, with me… You have those urges for the first time?”

She about covered it, which settled the noise in my head too. I found myself on the other side of the tightrope, feet on solid ground. I nodded. Her galaxies of hazel eyes searched mine, then they looked down at my hands in hers. We both regarded the small silver band wrapped around my finger. “This ring…” she said. “It increases the wearer’s natural sexual urges… expands them over time. But in this case… it gave you sexual desire.” There was a smile on her face, and I only noticed now it was the first true, genuine smile I had seen her make. “This ring… fixed you.”

I pulled my hand away. I almost took a step back but fought the instinct to. I knew it didn’t help to overreact.

“No,” I said flatly. “It didn’t ‘fix’ me. I was never broken.”

She was surprised by my shift in mood, and for the first time today I didn’t mind disagreeing with her. My words weren’t harsh, only straight forward. “I was always just a normal person like everyone else,” I told her. ‘There was never anything wrong with being asexual. There was nothing that ever needed to be ‘fixed’.” This wasn’t just a belief I had come up with to make myself feel better over the years. I hope I didn’t sound defensive. It was just something I knew was true. Still was.

“Sorry,” she said immediately, taking my hand again. There was a gentleness to her touch this time, different to the more needful pressing from before. She seemed almost distraught to have even mildly upset me. “I just… this is all kind of new to me.” The admission made her blush. For an ancient entity to discover something novel must have been like the experience I was having now.

“Me too,” I said, suddenly feeling a strange assurance with just that moment of vulnerability Regina had let show. And that urge rose in me again, and this time I didn’t question it. She looked up curiously.

“So what do-”

I kissed her this time. She squeaked, and knowing I could surprise an ageless Goddess was a new thrill for me that almost felt as good as her warm, wet lips. Regina recovered quickly and I once again got lost in her. Melted against her, and she seemed to be more breathy this time too. She tasted. So. Good. “The ring…” she gasped, our lips parting momentarily. She was gripping the front of my shirt with both hands, holding herself up as much as she was hanging off me. Our mouths kept meeting, but Regina seemed to have a need to explain something to me, while at the same time didn’t want to stop kissing me. Or stop me kissing her. “It has … powers…” - she brushed the side of my mouth with her tongue and I turned to swallow it - “it will… let you… do …” - we pressed our lips together, moaning - “ ..whatever you want.... With whatever woman you want. Whatever you want… ” That seemed to be the extent of her need to inform me of my newly acquired abilities. But I was already doing the only thing I wanted to do.