5.12

I suppose it doesn't matter, at the end of the day, what I call you, friend. I knew you once by a different name, and now you've changed it, but it hasn't changed you. Shakespeare knew. But wherefore are you Romeo, instead of Juliet? Wherefore are you he instead of she? Why would it matter to me? Romeo henceforth: I hear that's what you like.
I heard once a person confused over your new terminology, the cluttered aperture of language obfuscating the simple truth of the new You, and I had a revelation as they spoke. This boor, uncultured and uncouth, bemoaned the discomfort of the change with a simple supplication. This barbarian said simply "I never cared about gender before. Why do you care so much?" It seemed selfish of them, but I saw that it seemed selfish to them, to ask for a pointless difficulty, and the simple translation from boor to human shocked me. I know their motivation. Like looking into a mirror after a long time struggling to survive, I saw my haggard likeness in this statement. Our reactions could not be more different, I acquiescing, the boor declining, but our motivations were the same. We didn't care, perhaps equally disinterested in the names you choose for yourself.

Maybe the boor doesn't care about your names because the boor doesn't care about you.
I don't care about your names because I don't care about me.

My pronouns:
My gender:
My sexuality:
I'm not pan or asexual, not bi or trans. Whatever label you choose for me, I feel no pain. Call me cissexual, call me male. Pick labels for me; you always have. I won't repudiate them. Call me woman, call me gay. It says more about you than me, at this point. Labels don't matter, my very good friend. A rose, remember? Your labels are cheap.
Are you selfish to ask so little of your friends? Yes. But it is a very little you ask. Am I selfless to let you call me what you will? No. I only gain from your assumptions of me. Why? My proclivities seem conventional to you, I suppose, but don't judge me. (I don't judge you.) Convention holds an equivalent value to the subversion, in this case. Convention: I like straight women. You label me by the way I look and act, thinking the label matters to me, thinking to build my self-worth by gilding me with ideas I value.
Oh, friend.
I appear as such not to fit this corporeality to some idea of self, but because I'm hunting. This foul form is only a lure to attract the attractive. You call me male, you think I'm straight. Excellent. I hear that's what she likes.