Smoke and Mirrors

In movies, more so than books, I place myself with the lovers.

I see lovers in bed together, arresting beneath sheets, a gasp and pulling closer...and they are all making love. Not a love I dont know or share, but a love I can't make. I cant be touched the same way and I cannot even give intimacy the agency of a name. This makes it difficult to draw lines and make borders where there seems to be none with these beautiful, flawless lovers on screen. What makes this different from that is not something I can draw out in a Ven Diagram anymore than the blind can lead those blessed with sight. 

I want to make love the way they do. I want that seamless transition between the two- but it is not possible in this life. It is not a disease, not a cancer nor a curse. I know it is an identity and orientation to be asexual, and it is different than chastity- but it is treated like a cancer everywhere I go and it feels like one, too. 

I have all of this affection which must be expressed creatively in word, action, and a different but nonetheless loving touch. But still, it feels like forever having a word stuck on the tip of your tongue, reaching out in the light for something only for it to be dark at your fingertips. 

It is baffling to me that actors can perform this on screen and conjure up this fake passion which translates so distinctly to me. It is baffling and hurtful to think that they can just waste their reserves of physical desire which I so long to have. For actors, it is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. But then I remember that it isn't just the sex that it is acting- the whole relationship on screen is acting. I don't have what those characters are experiencing together naked in that bathtub. I do have the love that they work to build up in their characters, except for me it is real. 

I place myself in the places of lovers in movies, but there is a distinct space and disconnect between them and us, and in moments I am sick at the sight of their making love- feeling inadequate and fake and wrong. In moments like these I need only look at myself, and look at Kyle, and I swallow said worry like a thick glass of molasses. 

There are no smoke and mirrors between us. This much I know is true.