from I Go To Some Hollow
by Amina Cain
from “Black Wings”
I want to know what it is like to be asexual. I read an article about the asexual movement and asexual rights and though I feel like a sexual person, I crave something else. In the mornings I sit down to think, but there is something that gets in the way, and I think it might be everyone else’s sexualities. I have met someone and asked him if we can just read books together. To my surprise, he has agreed.
It is hot and humid tonight and we are reading Lolita. After we read for a while we take a bike ride, and when we are tired we get off our bikes and sit against a concrete wall. From where we sit I can see a small part of the ocean. This is what I think about the whole time we are sitting against the wall—not other people’s sexualities, not Lolita, but about this small peice of ocean.
Against the concrete wall we begin to read again and though I don’t still think only of ocean, it begins to enter the story of Lolita. I become aroused at certain points in the book. I hold his hand when this happens, and I think he can feel me through my hand.
[continues in I Go To Some Hollow]