The 4th Orientation

I read an interesting article today, at http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=are-there-asexuals-among-us-on-the-2009-10-29.

I've heard of asexuality before. I'm not talking about the high school biology kind of asexuality, where single-celled organisms reproduce by fission. I mean the so-called "fourth orientation." Someone who describes themselves as asexual lacks the desire to have sex with either gender. It seems to be very difficult to categorize oneself as asexual though, since it requires one to recognize the lack of something that he or she has never experienced to begin with. How do you know you're missing something if you lack the experience necessary to properly understand and define it?

At one point years ago I thought I might be asexual. Now I'm revisiting that possibility. Of course, these days I have a more open view of sexuality and view it on a multi-dimensional continuum. I know I've used my "compass" metaphor in my ramblings here before. To reiterate, the length of the compass needle represents the intensity of one's sexual desire, and the direction it is pointing describes the orientation. My difficulty in determining the direction is largely due to the lack of intensity.

Now that I've read that article and browsed through some of the internet discussions about asexuality, I'm beginning to wonder if I've EVER really experienced "sexual attraction." I know I'm not comfortable with labeling what I feel towards guys "sexual attraction." I like looking at attractive guys, and often feel drawn toward interacting with them. But this is not accompanied by sexual fantasies or a desire to see them naked or do anything sexual with them. The same goes for girls. I actually had a drunk girl try to climb into bed with me fairly recently and I had no problem resisting (to be fair, I had to leave for an interview the next day, haha). I had no primal urges to speak of there either.

So I guess what I'm getting at . . . can anyone describe for me what sexual attraction feels like? I know I'm pretty much asking this to an almost empty room since not many know I'm (tentatively) starting this up again.

On a related note, I found this blog . . . thereisnocloset.blogspot.com Interesting blog from an asexual perspective.

B

Dusting it off and opening it back up

So, here I am a year later. I had fully committed to leave the blog behind me, though perhaps I was a little hasty. I think I was feeling the pressure to update and was a bit ashamed of the complete lack of forward progress that was going on as far as figuring things out. I was also under the stress of trying to decide on what to do with the rest of my life in other areas (i.e., career). Well, now I've made the decision to pursue grad school, and just spent a month visiting various schools for interviews. So, that's a huge weight off my shoulders.

I also just wanted to sit back and let life happen for a while, to see if my perspective changed at all. Reading my previous post, I find it a little humorous how confident I sounded that I had it all figured out. I think I just wanted to leave the blog with some feeling of closure. I wasn't necessarily being dishonest with myself. I do tend to flip flop a lot, I'll admit to that much. There are times when I feel pretty confident that I could have a relationship with a girl, if I could just find the right one. Other times I seriously doubt it. It is true, as I said in my previous post, that I find it easier to imagine myself in a relationship with a girl than with a guy, though how much of that is society-bred bias I don't know.

Attending the interviews this past month has been an interesting experience. I got to meet a whole lot of people in a short amount of time, something that I enjoy doing but don't get to experience that often. Most of the interviews involved staying in a hotel near the campus with a roommate. The first roommate I had was a very outgoing individual. After the first day of interviews he made a comment about how many cute girls there were among the recruits. Immediately after that he asked me straight up if I liked guys or girls (cue spike in heart rate, haha). He said my sexuality was hard to read. I told him girls. He then revealed that even though he likes girls, there was a time earlier in his life when he experimented with guys. He said it wasn't really based on attraction, but rather it was kind of an 'acting out' thing. Still, he said he had several gay friends. At this point I decided to do the unthinkable: I told him the truth. I told him that I am physically attracted to guys, but have also periodically had crushes on girls in the past. We talked about this for a while before he fell asleep (it had been a long day). That was the last we discussed it, but I couldn't believe how I had opened up to someone I had just met like that. Other than my mom and the counselor, he is the only other person in the world that I have spoken to about these things in person.

Another one of my roommates was a pretty attractive guy that I got along quite well with. I was shocked after I came home and found out through Facebook that he's gay (and has a bf). Since I was able to open up with my first roommate, I'm considering perhaps doing the same with this guy at some point, if we continue to be in contact.

At the end of one of my school visits I arrived at the airport 3 hours early. To kill some time I began browsing in a movie/music store and ended up chatting with the store clerk. I asked him about the city and told him about my academic pursuits. We got into a pretty good conversation. After I had bought some items he suggested I hang out a bit, since I still had a lot of free time. At this point the thought crossed my mind . . . could this guy be gay? Yes, I know, maybe he's just friendly. Well sure enough, shortly after he made sure to mention that he was, in fact, gay. We talked a while more before I decided to go get some lunch. After I had walked a ways down the hallway though, I realized what a shame it would be if I ended up moving to this city and had no way of reaching this guy. Moving to a strange new place would be a lot easier if I had some already established connections. So I actually went back to the store and asked the guy for his card. He wrote down his phone number and email address on a card and gave it to me. So I guess you could say I asked a guy for his number, haha. Now I'm leaning toward another school, but who knows, I may still send him a message, I don't know. You can never have too many friends.

Now that my interviews are over it's just a matter of waiting to hear from all the schools and making my decision about where to go. So my mind is free to think about other things. I can't guarantee I'm going to be continuing to update this blog, it really depends on 1) whether I have anything of note to report and or just vent about 2) whether I have some privacy (I'm currently sharing a room).

As far as where I see myself going at this point . . . I'm still not sure. It's a huge leap to identify as gay, especially for me since I've always been a rather conservative person (not religious, just conservatively mannered I guess). I am and have always been deeply concerned with what others think of me. The idea that a good portion of individuals would take an instant strong dislike of me for just one characteristic of my personality frightens me. Aside from those issues though, is the very real concern about whether I would be happy in a gay lifestyle, because in the end that's really what it's about.

Still, I'm feeling fairly optimistic right now. I'm on the verge of a transition in my life as I prepare to enter poverty . . . I mean, grad school. Once I get out of the town I've lived in for the past 8 years and to a big city there will be a lot more opportunities to explore. If an opportunity comes up to go out with a girl (or a guy), I might take it. Each experience is a chance to learn.