In which all my characters are demi

 (FYI, this particular post doesn’t really contain any spoilers—there’s nothing here that I particularly WANT my readers NOT to know before they read my book, or that would typically go under a spoiler cut in a review. However, if you really really want to know NOTHING but what’s in the official blurb, maybe read the book first and then come back. <3 )

 

So, all of my characters are demi.

 

Well, maybe not all of them. Just the really important ones.

 

I’ve talked about this a lot on Twitter, but learning what the term “demisexual” meant a few years ago was like a puzzle piece clicking into place for me. When I was a teenager, I just thought I was too young. I legitimately did not understand how people accidentally got pregnant—why not just NOT HAVE SEX if you weren’t ready for the possible consequences? I understood how the act worked and wasn’t repulsed by it, but I also had zero interest in doing it myself. And even though I was like 16 I just thought... well, I guess I’m still a kid and I’ll want to someday?

 

I went through a phase where I wondered if I was a lesbian, not because I was sexually attracted to girls, but because I certainly didn’t feel about boys the way it seemed like I was supposed to. Eventually I’d racked up a grand total of one boy and one girl I had felt what I suppose is sexual attraction for (I’m still not sure if what I feel is at ALL what allosexuals do, though), but neither of those relationships worked out. I distinctly remember thinking at one point, “It’s not so much that I like guys. If society wanted me to date girls I’d do that. But guys are the norm, so guys it is.”

 

Then I met my husband and... no more need to worry about labels, right? I thought I must be straight because I was with a man, because we had sex at least enough times to produce our children, and it was not torture. I must be a normal, straight, allosexual woman, right?

 

I wrote THE STARS MAY RISE AND FALL during that period of my life... when I was sort of aware that I’d had feelings for women before, but still basically thought I was a straight allosexual. So when I wrote the parts where Teru’s really conflicted over the fact that he IS attracted to a man, I was consciously drawing on my own experience. But what I didn’t realize was that I was writing everyone—or at least Teru, Rei, and Kiyomi—as demi, too.

 

I... sort of think I tried not to. There are some, uh, kinda awkward parts where I really really tried to write sexual attraction, particularly with Teru thinking about partners he’s had before. I... honestly wished I hadn’t tried to do that, but I’m willing to give my past self a break. I was aware that I was “weird” and was trying to make my character seem “normal”. Still, if you want to ignore those awkward sentences, feel free! XD

 

But in retrospect... he loves the way I do. His initial feelings for Rei are more emotional than sexual (and yes, some of that’s pity (at first, not forever), and yes, that’s absolutely something for another blog post so I won’t get into it here), and BOTH of them are largely attracted to each other at first because of their mutual respect for one another as musicians. That’s... totally a me thing too. I don’t necessarily require my partners to be brilliant singers or anything, but I’m very very VERY attracted to people who have a comforting voice. It can be a speaking voice, rather than a singing voice, and what I think of as “comforting” isn’t always what’s considered mainstream sexy... but yeah, voices are super important for me, so they are for my characters too. #sorrynotsorry

 

One of the things I also tried to specifically address as well is that Teru IS physically attracted to Rei, but that it’s not BECAUSE of Rei's scars and disabilities, and it’s not DESPITE them either. It’s just because he’s Rei. Totally demi.

 

With Kiyomi, too... Teru acknowledges that she’s attractive, but they don’t have a super strong connection, and what they do have is more friendly than romantic. Now, you can choose to read that as “He’s just not into girls”—it’s not really made clear in the book whether he’s gay or pan or bi or what, but I personally think it’s just that he loves Rei. And so Rei is the only one who’s going to seem sexually attractive to him at that particular time. It’s not necessarily that he doesn’t have the potential to be attracted to women—or even to Kiyomi, in an alternate world. But once he loves Rei, he’s just not going to see anyone else in that way.

 

Now, when I first started thinking about writing this post a couple of weeks ago, my first thought was to say, “Rei’s maybe kinda on the ace spectrum, but that’s probably something that changed over time due to age, chronic pain, etc.” But... actually the more I think about his backstory the more I think... NOPE, ALWAYS DEMI, because I apparently don’t know how to write anything else.

 

A lot of this didn’t make it into the book, but what we DO know about Rei’s backstory on the page is that he moved to Tokyo from Aomori (which is at the very northern tip of Honshu; i.e. Pretty Damn Far Away) when he was 16, and didn’t have a lot of money or success at the time. Mostly-headcanon backstory... he was a broke kid with a 9^th-grade education (he’s obviously very intelligent, but nothing that would look good on a resume), gay in the 80s and with only two real marketable assets: looks and musical ability. I think he definitely had casual sex. Probably had relationships of convenience with older, wealthier men. Not sex work, but relationships that weren’t as much about love as about mutual benefits (an attractive young lover vs. money, or if not money directly, food and clothing and career opportunities). But... while I think he definitely had casual sex and multiple partners, I’m not really sure that any of it was so much about ATTRACTION? Enjoying the sex? Sure. But that’s not the same as being sexually attracted to the person you’re with. So... I kind of think that maybe he’s always been demi too, and didn’t really have ATTRACTION, per se, until the relationships that we know about.

 

When he first meets Teru, I think it’s honestly INTENDED to be “This person can help me achieve what I want to achieve, and I can help HIM achieve what he wants to achieve, so let’s form a business/artistic partnership”.... but I think that dissolved on Rei’s end pretty quickly. Again, this is sort of something that I experience too, but a lot of the people I AM attracted to are... not real people? They’re characters, sometimes, or sometimes the “character” that an actor or musician plays as “themselves” for the public eye. I think Rei kind of fell for that “character” possibly as soon as the first time he saw Teru, and then when he realized that was genuine, and not an act, it was pretty much over. <3

 

I do think there are other issues that contribute to how very, VERY long it takes them to do anything more than kiss and sleep in the same bed without actually sleeping together... It’s hard to feel like having sex when you don’t feel very sexy yourself (even if you are attracted to your partner, and your PARTNER thinks you’re sexy, lack of self-esteem is definitely an obstacle), and pain itself and pain medication don’t help either. But I also think they’re just not the kind of couple who NEEDS to have sex that often. Sometimes just being there together is enough?

 

Finally, Kiyomi... a lot of people don’t “get” Kiyomi, and why she seems so strongly attached to Teru after they’ve only had a few dates.... well, hello personal experience once again! This, I think, is sort of the flip side of “falling for the stage persona and realizing it’s real.” I think she.... thinks she’s madly in love with him, but isn’t really. She’s deeply attached to SOMETHING, but it’s more the IDEA of Teru than Teru himself? They don’t really know each other that well. But she has this idea of who he is that’s been building up since high school, and when they meet again and she sees that he’s still doing what he loves, I think that just sort of builds and what she ends up being in love with is a character that doesn’t even REALLY exist even on stage—she half made him up.

 

I’ve said this before, too, but I do think that eventually she does find love. I think it takes her awhile, but that when it happens, she realizes that what she felt before wasn’t really romantic, and possibly wasn’t even really sexual attraction as well. She eventually gets a nice little friends-to-lovers story and falls in love with someone she knows backwards and forwards and is attracted to even more because of it.

 

Of course, I didn’t know any of that about any of them when I actually wrote the thing. I just created characters that felt real and understandable to ME, and had them do what it seemed natural to do under the circumstances. Which probably means they’re all demi, because when I try to do anything else it ends up... super cringeworthy.

 

Of course, you’re allowed to headcanon them however you want! No one actually says “Hey, I’m demi,” on the page. But I’m pretty sure this is where my subconscious came from when I was writing them. Just took me more years than I like to admit to figure it out!