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“What is Capital Pride?” Steve asked Sam, pointing to a flyer on the noticeboard at the VA.
“Oh. I’d almost forgotten that’s coming up soon. I need to mark that on my calendar,” Sam replied. “Capital Pride is DC’s LGBT Pride Parade. Pretty much a ton of LGBT people get together downtown and celebrate all weekend.”
“LGBT?”
“Uh… Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. But that’s just the short acronym; there are a lot more identities that are involved in Pride and the LGBT community and movement. Like asexuality. But the acronym starts getting unwieldy if you try to include them all, and no one seems to be able to agree on another term.”
“What was that you mentioned… asexuality?”
“Yeah. It means we aren’t sexually attracted to people at all. Let me just…” Sam trailed off as he pulled out his phone and started typing something. “Here,” he said, handing the phone to Steve.
On the screen was a wikipedia article titled ‘Asexuality’. Steve skimmed the article quickly, asking “you said ‘we’?”
“Yeah. I’m ace- asexual. And homoromantic. Like homosexual but without the sex. So I like to date guys, but I don’t have sex with them.”
Steve clinked on the link for the related article on romantic orientations. It was a lot of information to take in at once, and he had never heard some of the terms before.
“So, you mean there are other people like me? I always thought that it was just because I was so small and sick all the time, but the serum didn’t fix it. I still didn’t feel I was supposed to about Peggy even though I loved her. I never wanted to have sex with her. I just thought there was something wrong with me…”
Sam just hugged Steve in response, and after a moment’s silence he said, “there is absolutely nothing wrong with you.”
And when they parted Sam said, “so, back to the original topic, do you want to join me at Pride this year?”