A friend of mine has an interesting spoon. (Bear with me.) It’s slightly larger than a teaspoon and has a large hole in the middle, making it incapable of holding—let alone carrying—the sort of substance that typically requires a spoon. My friend has no idea where it came from. And so for entertainment he keeps it in his sugar bowl, waiting for unsuspecting guests to attempt productive engagement with it. Some will quietly (but unsuccessfully) persevere with it, not wanting to make a fuss and assuming the fault must somehow be theirs. Others will immediately point out how the spoon is ridiculous and insist on something better suited to the task at hand.

But the spoon, my friend eventually discovered, was an olive spoon. It was meant to be like that. The hole in the middle is to drain the fluid as you lift the olive to your mouth. You can’t make sense of the way the spoon is without understanding what it’s for.

It is true of my friend’s olive spoon and it is true of our sexuality.