The Lives of Otters: I, Ex-Asexual (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bottom)
There was a time in my life when I took part in an immature, selfish, and destructive lifestyle. It cost me in friends, it cost me in youth, and it cost me dearly in prostate health. The memories are as vivid as they are desperate: brightly-lit Friday evenings spent alone with German homework and hot chocolate. Marathon coffeehouse reading sessions passed with eyes that never strayed off book pages. Hard drives full of illegally downloaded 30 Rock episodes instead of illegally downloaded porn. The half-frustrated, half-pitying expressions of dozens of beautiful young men who, after hours of gin-drenched dance-floor loin-grinding, never got their hands around anything firmer than a tangible sense of inadequacy. Only now can I say that it was a dark time.
I was an asexual. I was entirely comfortable with it, so far had I strayed. And by the redeeming grace that is the infinite erotic generosity of the DC gay scene, I was made whole.
You might be inclined to meet these kinds of claims with skepticism and even resentment, especially if you or someone close to you have ever been similarly afflicted (if you’re really on point, you’ll suspect that this article is just an underhanded attempt to drive blog traffic and solicit sex from a far larger readership than craigslist personals could shake a stick at.) If this is the case I would ask for another few minutes of your patience. Growing up Protestant taught me from a young age the value of inappropriately public confessions of intimately private details (the kind that this blog pretty much runs on); listen to mine before you indulge any amateur psychoanalysis (this is, after all, what the comment box is for.)
About a year ago my first and only long-term relationship came to a sudden and unexpected end. Wracked by feelings of loss, betrayal, and the terror of realizing I would have to learn to cook for myself, things got rough fast, and stayed rough for a long time. I went out often enough, drank enough, and stayed close enough to good gay friends to ward off anything more catastrophic, trying my darndest to have fun, be young, and fill as many gaping holes (most of them emotional) as I could before they sealed up forever with scars (most of them emotional) that no one would ever be able to penetrate (mostly in an emotional way) again. But slowly, creepingly, with all the subtlety and awful inexorability of a drag queen’s wig coming unglued under can lights, something went wrong. Skintight denim stopped catching my eyes from across a room. Making out started to seem silly, then burdensome, then disgusting. My long-time interest in the male form withdrew from bars to dudetube (NSFW), from dudetube to the occasional Butt magazine (NSFW) blog post, and from there to sparse and unremarkable wet dreams. I even started wearing boxers.
One tranquil summer day I realized it had been an entire month since I last masturbated, and it didn’t concern me in the least. More than anything else I felt relieved, happy to be rid of the inconstant passions that suddenly seemed so troublesome and distracting to my lustier friends. With the simple joy of a eunuch I threw myself into school work, venturing out just often enough on weekends to be reminded of the yawning libidinal chasm that separated me from my gay peers. An atheist and political leftist, I even seriously considered the priesthood, desperate to find a community of men who would help me to embrace and cultivate the total extinction of my sex drive.
Through all of it, I was more or less happy. Sex never seemed so much threatening or sickening as it did bothersome and inconvenient. I discovered the word “asexuality,” read stories from people who identified with it, and became convinced that I had finally found a home.
Radically and recently, something changed. A few chance encounters and astonishingly good luck conspired to introduce me to just the right kinds of people in the right kinds of places to flip a switch buried deep in my limbic system. A conversion experience that would make Saint Paul soil his underpants swept me away to somewhere wonderfully strange and new, and as the dust and sweat and lube settle I only now begin to understand the error of my ways.
Here you might expect me to copy and paste from the TNG sexual pluralism manifesto to say something that, I don’t know, respected the irreducible libidinal and physiological particularity of human bodies and subjectivities, or that praised the kinds of hard work being done by groups like AVEN to raise awareness of the special kinds of oppression that still-invisible sexual minorities face. I will do no such thing. Rather than being one more difference to be celebrated in the queer patchwork, asexuality as I’ve lived it strikes me as an immature and incomplete way to get on in the world, hardly worthy of recognition and encouragement. The deep and monkish sense of contentment I felt during my sexless year came at the cost of ignoring a whole range of feelings and body parts, both mine and (more importantly) other people’s . Asexuality meant for me a cowardly denial of the sometimes terrifying, always electrifying flux that is sexuality, an unconscious retreat to the suffocating but comfortable predictability of childhood and a turning away from the kinds of pleasure and pain, affection and heartbreak, spiritual topping and bottoming that make lives like ours worth living. I’m aware that there are people who identify this way and have done so for much longer than I – I sympathize with them and at the same time condemn their lack of courage, the same fear of the unknown and uneasiness with sensuality that stole from me what could have been one of the best years of my life (start thinking now of how many times you can squeeze the word “homonormativity” into the comment box.)
The residue of Snowmageddon may still clot the District of Columbia like so much cold semen on the bathroom floor of an Apex college night, but somewhere just above my perineum spring is in full bloom. And I will suck its nectar greedily until my stomach has to be pumped by horrified ER technicians. I will cruise coffeehouses and bookstores, not now in the hope of getting free drinks or merchandise discounts, but because I want to see boys naked. I will take names and phone numbers of other young men at bars and clubs, not because they work for influential K street offices I’m desperate to send my résumé to, but because I want to grab dinner and, with luck, toned calves. I will annoy the hell out of my roommate by stumbling in after sunrise on weekdays, reeking of alcohol and something faintly bleach-like, because I am young and gay and I can. And I will spend months failing to live down today’s column, which will invariably make it much harder to convince some guys that I’m really just not into them, thank you very much.
I am an ex-asexual, and by gays that surpasseth all understanding I will continue to be healed. The road is long but it is wide, and along its course there are many ready to lend a helping hand (you know who you are). I have seen a light shining in the darkness, and the darkness has come all over it.
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beautiful and poetic… wear a condom… every time! :)
Andrew, I’m really happy for you, and I’m going to let you finish (on my chest), but Morrissey had one of the best ex-celibate conversions of all time.
I am glad you out of your runt and living life :)
Sex is good, but lets not get reckless. WRAP IT before you tap or get tap lol!
To be quite frank, from your description of what asexuality apparently means to you, I don’t think you were ever asexual in the first place. What you seem to describe is a temporary lack of a LIBIDO, rather than a lack of sexual attraction (which is how asexuality is defined). There are plenty of asexual people who have a sex drive, but the difference is that we don’t feel attracted to other people in a sexual way. I never look at someone and get turned on by their appearance (or anything else about them), or think “I want to have sex with that person.” I just stare at them if they’re pretty, and that’s about it.
That doesn’t mean I’m opposed to having sex; I just happen not to be attracted to anybody. I am entirely capable of normal sexual function, and I enjoy it just fine. The only difference is that for me sex is based purely on physical arousal, with no mental component. It doesn’t really occur to me to initiate, but I am able to be receptive.
There are lots of people who go on AVEN thinking that asexuality just means that you don’t want sex, which unfortunately is perpetuated by asexuals looking for an easy way to describe to others what asexuality is. For their own experience that may be a fine description. That is, however, not true for all asexuals, because some of us are totally fine with sex. You can’t really say there is any such thing as an “asexual lifestyle” because of how different we all are (“celibate lifestyle” sure, but not “asexual lifestyle”). Unfortunately, that is how asexuality is often framed.
It’s no wonder that asexuality strikes you as immature, incomplete, and destructive. You used it as a crutch in order not to face your own emotional issues caused by the loss of your first long-term relationship. For you, asexuality was a convenient way of lying to yourself. I’m sure there are plenty of other people on AVEN who are doing something like that, but I hope you will eventually come to realize that not all asexuals are. For me, it was celibacy that was my crutch, and asexuality was my liberation from it. Coming to realize I was asexual (ironically) allowed me to start being sexual (as I discuss here, asexual does not mean “not sexual” so this is only a seeming contradiction in terminology). Since I am not expecting myself to feel this sense of sexual attraction to other people anymore, I am not just waiting for the “right person” to come along and flip some switch that will make me want to have sex with other people. Although I admit that is a possibility, I do not consider it probable, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to live my life assuming it is going to happen. If it does, that’s cool. But in the meantime, I’m going to figure out an approach to sex and relationships that I can deal with, and I think that I have managed that successfully.
Sorry that your experience with “asexuality” has been so negative!
I agree with Elizabeth. (Thanks for well thought-out response!)
I just figured out what bugged me about this, which is: This reads exactly like how I’ve heard some gay folks deride bisexuals. They (the gays in question) identified as bi before coming out as gay, so obviously all bisexuals are actually gay, cowering in their closets, and bisexuality is a crutch for immature fence-sitters.
I suppose that there might be some “asexual” people out there who genuinely like it and want it as a thing in its own right, but then there are people like me (and I think this is the type of person that you were addressing in this post) who are basically asexual out of laziness and/or cowardice. And it’s sad. But what’s perhaps the saddest thing is that, after a while, it ceases to be sad. One gets used to it. One settles into life without sex and takes up more predictable pastimes in lieu of it.
For me, it precisely is laziness and cowardice. If a girl were to knock on my door one day when I find myself well-rested and without pressing obligations, and if she demanded that we have sex right there, then it is very likely that I would have sex. I am not without sexual impulse. I still watch porn. I still masturbate…occasionally (much less than in my middle school and even high school days, admittedly). So if I could be sure of obtaining sex without exertion or threat of rejection–in short, if I could be sure of obtaining sex without testing myself and investing myself in it (which includes things that I often don’t do like getting enough rest, shaving, showering every day, brushing my teeth every day, wearing clean clothes, and paying especial attention to another human being)–then yeah, I’d take the sex. But otherwise? Usually I prefer having the free time and escape from effort instead. It is always oh-so satisfying to wake up at 11:30, throw on some clothes that may or may not be clean, throw on the magic tweed jacket, get a muffin to eat on the way to class, and walk into section at noon, not caring a bit what the girls in the class might be thinking about me due to the fact that I have already ruled out any hopes of attracting any of them.
You are correct that not concerning oneself with sex frees up all sorts of free time and energy (especially energy of a particularly emotional/mystical sort that would usually get incorporated into sex, but which needs to be sublimated otherwise if you aren’t having sex)–enough to make one thing about joining a religion–or starting one yourself! Ah, the many times in the past sexless ~15 months that I’ve fantasized about starting a Salvia cult or something. And I have no doubt that part of this strange (and even to myself unaccountable) mystical impulse comes from the unfulfilled sexual impulses that need to be sublimated away.
The funny thing, though, is that even with Salvia the same problems tend to pop up: laziness and cowardice–cowardice because Salvia can be just as terrifyingly unpredictable as interacting intimately with another human being in sex, and laziness because it takes a fair amount of effort to mentally and physically prepare oneself for a high-level Salvia session. One needs to be well-rested, relatively free from stress, feeling open towards encountering something unpredictable and uncontrollable, etc. After I have planned a Salvia session with my friends, I often find myself going into it unwillingly at the last moment, although I am always glad immediately afterwards that I went through with it. But for some reason I don’t seem to process this experience to change my outlook going into the next experience. Strange….
In any case, what I have been fearing is that this avoidance of sex is just a part of a larger trend of avoiding extreme experiences. We are domesticating ourselves. The last thing now to be domesticated, now that we have domesticated our food supply, living spaces, occupations, entertainment (with pre-fabricated entertainment experiences such as amusement parks, movies, etc.), the one thing left to domesticate is sex, a very wild thing that has so far escaped domestication. But now we are approaching that dystopian nightmare of regulated sexuality, where instead of having physical sex with other people, we strap on virtual reality goggles that produce orgasms remotely. Where we orgasm by watching porn. Where our sexuality, and thus our self=dosing of what must be some of the strongest psychoactive, quasi-mind control compounds known to man (such as oxytocin) is mediated by powers that are not accountable to us. Where we no longer conspire with our confederates directly in our brewing of our sexual chemical magic. If I am at all symptomatic of larger trends that are afoot (and judging by your blog post, I might indeed be, at least more than I would have assumed), then humanity is heading in a very bleak direction. And I do not think that it necessarily has to do with technology. It has to do with domestication.
I think it’s important to refrain from judging people. I’m not asexual, but you’ll never stand in another person’s shoes, or truly know why their life is what it is.
But…how? Why? You didn’t explain the only important part–how and why were you asexual, and how and why did you come out of it? Part II, please!
I have never met anyone nor been myself in any way asexual but, and this may already be a well established concept so forgive me if I am just repeating something everyone already knows but me, but it seems to me that asexuality exists in nature to some degree as well as in human society so it makes sense that it would be easy to embrace and feel “comfortable” as some folks have put it. Perhaps my definition of asexuality, which has been thrown a bit by the other, very complex responses, perhaps it is a bit off. However animals that live in packs often have members that stop having sex or being part of any kind of reproductive participation in the group and contribute in other ways. Now, who knows how the libido of animals function, but it seems to me that their sex drives get “turned off” as well. I don’t think I will try to examine here all the ways this comparison does or does not fit, but it still gives me the feeling that, although as the above article suggests in a very raucous way that sex is fabulous and all, I don’t think someone who finds themselves loosing their sex drive for a while is being weak or not living up to their potential. Besides Matthew O’s example which is different I think than what the original post implies, I think embracing sexlessness to one degree or another, for phases in ones life or even as a lifestyle, doesn’t sound so bad. The important thing is to try and feel fulfilled no matter what you are or are not doing.
Oh, I love this. A homosexual claiming that staggering in drunk after grinding on and getting numbers from strangers is truly ‘fulfilling’, and asexuality is ‘immature’.
Can’t wait to read what the next phase in your growing-up will be. Hopefully, it will lack the bad poetry.
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