Adventures in Asexuality

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Bored now.

Sometimes I feel like if I were a sexual person, I'd be the "love 'em and leave 'em" type of person. I have a bit of an intense personality - not intense interaction-wise, but when I'm interested in something, I'm really interested, and nothing can distract me from its pursuit until the subject has exhausted itself. I'm a stay-up-all-night-to-finish-that-last-chapter kind of person, when the desire is there.

However, I also have a short attention span, and I never know whether or not the Thing I'm Interested In Now is going to become the Thing I'm Obsessed About Tomorrow. Add this to my pickiness when it comes to seeking a mate, and it's practically a recipe for disaster.

I've been chatting with a few (sexual) prospects for dating, and I've discovered that after the initial thrill, I've become bored with them already. There's such a fine line between people I'd like to be friends with and people I'd like to date that I can't always tell if the chemistry is leading in one direction or another. It really sucks to chat with someone I think of as a friend, only to discover I'm developing a crush. But it sucks even more to chat with someone I'd like to date, only to discover I don't really want to date them after all.

What's the etiquette on that? How do you shift the tone of the conversation from "feeling you out as a potential partner" to "this shop is closed! how about that weather we've been having, huh?"

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Only lobsters mate for life

In the year and a half that I have known my roommate, she has been seriously involved with four men. Not all at the same time, of course (though there was some overlap between #2 and #3, come to think of it). But four. In 18 months.

She started out engaged to one, then broke up with him and started dating #2, which ended up badly, with tears and chocolate, and in the meantime, #3 was sort of a brief fling. Now - ha! - now she's pregnant with #4's baby. But hey, she says she's in love, and that this is the man she's going to spend the rest of her life with.

I feel like I've been living with an alien. Not only do I not understand what she sees in these people, I don't understand how she sees so many of them and manages to develop such strong feelings for them so quickly. Boyfriend #4? She's only known him for about three months! How can she possibly know she wants to spend the rest of her life with him and have his baby?

Don't get me wrong; this isn't an entry all about judging my roommate's questionable choices in men. It's the whole situation that's baffling to me. In talking about her relationships, she displays exactly the kind of behaviour I think people are expected to display, and it only serves to frighten me. When her knees physically buckle as she describes her boyfriend's physique, or she talks about how she feels sick and can't think straight when he's not with her, she sounds like every pop song ever written over the past fifty years, and I can't say that I have the faintest idea what she's talking about.

Is that sexual attraction? Is that what it feels like? Is that what it does to you? My roommate's serial dating aside, I wonder if this is what the world at large means when it uses words like "love" and "desire" and "want."

I feel like such a stranger.

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Be Optimistic, Not Delusional

I've recently been corresponding with someone who lives very far away and is looking for a relationship. This is a person I get along with, who knows how far away I live, has seen my pictures, and still wants to keep writing. Boy, is he in for a surprise! Ha ha!

I haven't mentioned that I'm asexual yet, but we're not really at the deep-reveal level of conversation, either. At the moment we're still only discussing surface things like movies, weather and job pursuits. But he's very friendly and any time I manage to keep a new online friendship going for more than a week, I'm pretty impressed with myself.

Of course my imagination has gotten away from me and I'm already envisioning the possiblities of a long-distance relationship, complete with late-night instant-messenger chats and culminating in a romantic encounter at an international airport wherein he greets me with a single rose and a teddy bear wearing a foreign cap.

But hey, I do that to all the regulars. Almost any good friendship I maintain leads to me developing asexual crushes. Once you take the "would I have sex with this person?" aspect out of the equation (since for me it's a purely academic question free from pesky factors like actual sexual attraction), suddenly everybody seems a whole lot more appealing. Any time I encounter a kindred spirit in some form or another, I get all starry-eyed and drift off into fantasyland. Imagine, I think to myself. Watching movies with this person would be so much fun!

So I've got myself a new crush. The exhileration is building! What adventures lie ahead for me and my uncommitted online penpal?

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Book meme (very a-sexy!)

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

All right, I have three books within arm's reach of me, and two of them are Harry Potter, so this is what you get instead:

"Who's working tonight?" I asked, hoping the answer would be "Jolene Blalock, and she wants to see you without your pants in her trailer right now."
-Wil Wheaton, Just A Geek

[obligatory asexual commentary]
It would just figure that the quote I'd find would be a sexual joke, right?
[/obligatory asexual commentary]

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

I do not think it means what you think it means

It's a little disorienting living in this world as an asexual among sexuals, and coming to learn that the things you feel and the things you say are not the same as the things sexuals mean and say.

The first time I suspected I was a little different was nearly ten years ago, when I was comforting a girlfriend of mine after a particularly nasty breakup with her boyfriend. Talk turned to man-bashing, as it tends to do, and my friend said, "right now the thought of being with another man just makes me sick."

"Yeah," I agreed, having thought the same thing myself more than once. (I can't remember if I was still having sex with my boyfriend at the time or if we had broken up by then. No matter; my feelings about sex didn't change either way.)

"But," my friend added, "the thought of being with another woman is just as disgusting."

Hey, I thought. I'm sure it's not that bad.

Uh, another voice in my head said. Mayday! Mayday! Do not voice that thought aloud!

And that's how I knew I was different. Of course, then I thought I might be gay, or bisexual. After all, if I wasn't disgusted by the thought of sex with women, then that must mean I like the idea of sex with women, or would soon begin to... right?

It wasn't until recently that I realized my feelings about sex are really more like indifference to mild distaste, and have nothing to do with how I feel about the people themselves. What I didn't realize is that people actually feel strongly about who they do and don't want to have sex with, and here I've been using the terminology of sexuality all my life to indicate that I'm slightly inclined towards a person. For shame!

So, a few quick definitions, to set things straight:

Hot-- Usage: "Wow, that guy's hot."
When I use this term to describe someone, I mean that I think they are so attractive they probably even look good sneezing, or in the throes of passion (or other times when a lot of people look downright silly). It does not mean that I want anything to do with the throes of their passion.

It's like people who cry prettily. You know that kind of actor, right: the ones who cry with single tears tracking gracefully down their cheeks? This is as opposed to normal people, whose faces get all snot-filled and red and blotchy. Demi Moore in Ghost cries prettily. Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias? Not so much. Hotness is kinda like that for me.

Cute-- Usage: "You are so cute when you do that."
People who are cute remind me of babies and kittens and generally everything that is good in this world. They make me happy, and there ought to be more of them. Occasionally people who are cute are also hot, but not always. I have a tendency to fall in love with cute people (hot people are boring).

Want-- Usage: "Oh, my God, I want him so bad."
I'm stupid, okay? I didn't even know this had anything to do with sex until I was in my twenties. I honestly thought it meant you wanted to hang out with the person and be close. I'm so embarrassed to think about all the people I've said I wanted, and given the wrong idea to my friends and acquaintances.

(I still use the word, though, and to me it still means "Oh, my God, it would be so fun to talk about literature over coffee and go shopping for CDs and then jam at a concert with him.")

Sexy-- Usage: "That dance move you just did was really sexy."
That dance move you just did made me think you were hot. (see: hot.)

Horny-- Usage: "I'm really horny right now."
Actually, this term means the same thing to me as it does to sexuals, which is why I never use it. Psych!

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

No, it's not a #&%$ typo

Sometimes I allow myself to sit back and imagine a future fantasy world in which asexuality is accepted as a sexual orientation (this might have to be preceded by homosexuality and bisexuality being accepted in the first place). And in that fantasy, I try to guess which side of the political spectrum is going to love/hate us most... (most... most...).

I like to think that the "left-wing liberal media" (whoever they are) would be among the first to support us. A substantial portion of us are gay- or bi-asexuals, and others are transgendered, so many of us are active in our GLBT communities in some form or another. If the GLBT community will have us - and there have already been strides made in this direction - there may one day be a GLBAT community or something.

On the other hand, I wonder if we might be appealing to the religious right, since we're the very opposite of the promiscuity and moral degradation they see running rampant in the world. No "abstinence only" education necessary for us, thanks - we already know we don't want it! Of course, the religious right might look at us as deviant freaks because we never want to have sex, and we could end up viewed with the same suspicion that's currently heaped on priests and other religious celibates.
But hey, at least we're not gay, right? Oh, wait.

*****

Occasionally, I consider dating religious men who are already inclined towards celibacy. Oh, not that I don't still intend to be honest about my asexuality, but I wonder if it might not be nice to date a guy and know he's not going to make a move on me because he's afraid God will maim him. You know, not a guy who's so religious that he wouldn't date a borderline agnostic or that he would try to convert me all the time, but religious enough.

*****

When I type "asexuality" or "asexual" into Google, it asks me if I'm sure I didn't mean "sexuality" or "sexual."
I'm just gonna lay that one out there without commenting.

Monday, January 03, 2005

I ain't missing you at all

Now, here's something I'm not so sure is an asexual thing and may just be more of an A-Sexy Mama thing, but: I don't miss people. In fact, my thesis for this entry is going to be that I'm pretty much an "out of sight, out of mind" kind of person.

I mean, I think about people I care about from time to time, and I have been known to recall people fondly. But when I am separated from family or friends by an ocean or a sizable chunk of land, I'm not one of those people who coos, "I miss you so much!" over the course of a heart-wrenching phone call. Come to think of it, I don't make heart-wrenching phone calls, either.

I have often wondered if this meant I was not capable of loving the people in my life as much as they love me. I'm not sure it's possible to measure the amount of love I have for my parents, say, versus the amount of love they have for me. I can tell you that the thought of losing either of them makes my blood run cold and has kept me up for more than one sleepless night pondering the possibilities. Yet if my father calls me his routine seventeen million times a day, just because he "misses the sound of [my] voice," I can't say I understand the sentiment. How about I just make you a mix tape of me, and you can listen to that any old time you like, huh, dad?

I have a friend who, when we're separated for over a week, will call to tell me how much she misses me. She says it like that: "I know I just saw you, but I just had to call you because I miss you so much!" Now, I love my friend dearly. I would give her the shirt off my back, the full contents of my bank account, the larger portion of my bed if she ever needed it. But I don't even think about eating as often as she claims to miss me, let alone missing food, and I need food to live. When I do think about her, it's along the lines of "yeah, that's my friend, and I love her," not "I must immediately communicate with her face to face, and if I can't, it's a tragedy! Woe!"

So what does this all mean? Is missing people a sign of sentimentality? Is not missing people a sign that I lack emotion? Is any of this because I'm an introvert? I am an ISTJ, but there's nothing in there about a lack of recurring warm fuzzy feelings towards loved ones. Really, all I need from them is a monthly update by e-mail. (You're fine? No diseases I should be worrying about? Great - we'll chat again next month sometime.)

And where will this leave me in my pursuit for a relationship? Seeing as I'm just as inclined to date someone who lives on another continent as I am to date someone who lives right down the block, you'd think this would make life easier. Hey, I'm the girlfriend you never have to see! Now with 100% less stereotypical feminine nagging! Now that's what I call low maintenance. We could date by e-mail, and just meet up for the wedding! It's so hassle-free.

Nobody ever really seems to go for the long-distance angle, though. I suppose I should feel like I'm missing out, but-- well, we all know how I am about that.

Sunday, January 02, 2005

Organize Thy Priorities

Overheard during a real conversation between a couple, named - oh, let's call them Abby Asexual and Sully Sexual.

Abby Asexual: Baby, I'm not going to be able to come over for New Year's, because my brakes are failing and I need to get my car checked out before I make any road trips.
Sully Sexual: ...
AA: I'm sorry?
SS: [sighing] It's just that I was so looking forward to sleeping with you tonight, then spending the next day lazing around in bed.
AA: ...
AA: Well, let me just risk a car accident so you can get laid, then.

Okay, maybe Abby Asexual didn't say that last part. But I'll bet she wanted to.