Let’s Be Blunt, Real Blunt, For A Change
It’s been a bit since the last time I wrote here. In the meantime, I got a new job which I began this week. I am now teaching three sections on English Composition at the community college in the next county to the west. I’ve tried to write a few times, but when I sat down to do so I found I didn’t really have much to say.
I’ve also obtained a very special asexual young lady in my life (who I have gently urged to guest blog here) as well, so often things I might have blurted out to my readers on this weblog have gone to her first lately. By the time I think to write a weblog post, I’ve moved on.
Did you notice the reference to Gone’s excellent first album in the title?
To be blunt: I’ve found in the past few months that masturbation means about as much as taking a shit does.
It’s just a bodily function really. Like shitting, it is something I do in the morning, or at night before bed. Both seem to be necessary for comfortable human living, but neither means much to me. Outside of the moment I cum, and even then that is debatable honestly, I feel nothing.
A big change that has happened lately as well has been my body’s lack of “hurry” to self pleasure. It used to be I “had” to do it when the urge came, but now if I say “fuck this,” snuggle up with my cat and plop down in bed nothing weird or bad happens. How great is that? I feel liberated by this revelation; that “need” to pleasure myself had becoming boring in the past few years and honestly annoying. I still do it, just did this morning, but once the moment ends it is over and done.
The Nonlinearity Of Asexuality
Lately I have been giving a lot of consideration to the idea of asexuality as a nonlinear, to be determined, label that continues to change over time. My own sexuality has been ever evolving over the years. At one point, briefly, like a lot of asexuals it seems, I thought I might be gay. I quickly realized I dug the parts, but not the persons attached to them. At one point I could sleep with women and at least vaguely perform hetronormatively. Sort of.
While considering all of this, I was reminded of the article about asexuality which ran in The Guardian last year. Near the end of it, Paul Cox writes about the relationship he and his wife have in regards to sex:
People always ask how our marriage is different from just being friends, but I think a lot of relationships are about that – being friends. We have built on our friendship, rather than scrapping it and moving on somewhere else. The obvious way we differ is that we don’t have sex, though we do kiss and cuddle. We like to joke that the longer we’re married the less unusual this is. By the time we’ve been married five years we’ll be just like everyone else.
Do I feel as if I’m missing out on something? Not really. We’ve decided that if either of us wants to try sex out in the future then we will see what we can do. We would both be willing to compromise because we’re in a relationship and that’s what you do.
Asexuality should always be something that is not written in stone. That was the primary factor which drove me away from the Straight Edge movement. Straight Edge was an end for most people, not just a means to move onto other higher ideals (animal rights, women’s rights, etc). All of this led me to asexuality. Who knows what is next for me; I have no idea how I will evolve and change next. Everything is to be determined.
The Pleasure Of The Text
The other afternoon, I was discussing French theorist Roland Barthes’ spectacular The Pleasure Of The Text with a friend. This short book is probably my favorite work of literary theory. It combines semiotics with a grand discussion of texts and their intermittent nature. As with most of Barthes’ work, it is also about numerous other things. In this case, it is romance and sexuality which seems to come up occasionally. Barthes, rumored to be asexual himself, discusses romance and sexuality in the same terms that he discusses texts. Both are a jangled web of connections and intermittent ideas, never showing too much but always indicating there is something more hidden beneath.
Anyhow, one quote from near the beginning of the book has stayed with me since I finished my reading. This quote sums up how I feel about a few different things:
Is not the most erotic portion of a body where the garment gapes? In perversion (which is the realm of textual pleasure) there are no “erogenous zones” (a foolish expression, besides); it is intermittence, as psychoanalysis has so rightly stated, which is erotic: the intermittence of skin flashing between two articles of clothing (trousers and sweater), between two edges (the open-necked shirt, the glove and the sleeve); it is this flash itself which seduces, or rather: the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance. (10)
The Betrayal Of Confidences
I’ve been on the Internet on a day to day basis since late 1994. In that time, I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in dealing with Online communities. Until about five years ago, I really pounded my fist for alternative culture forums/listservs/weblogs/ to be a place for people to connect with others like them, whether it is animal rights, sexuality, straight edge, politics, whatever. But then I finally concluded that these Web Sites are just filled with the same petty high school bullshit we all thought we defied when we embraced ____. No thanks.
In these ups and downs, there are two significant situations where I felt betrayed by others who I had opened up to or divulged privileged information about myself. The first came in 2002 when I began my first, what we call today, weblog. I wrote pseudonymously, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out who was writing each post if you knew me well. This was a period in my life where I was dealing with crippling depression, body issues, self mutilation, and the disgusting racist, sexist, and homophobic “post 9-11″ world. I was also mourning my best friend, who committed suicide a week before 9-11 and helping another friend, who attempted suicide a day later, deal with his mental and substance problems.
I began writing about what was going on in my mind, where I hid myself amongst a number of voices, real and imaginary, body issues, my devolving mental state, and frankly discussed what I thought should happen to the patriots on my campus. About four months into this venture, I woke up one afternoon (did I mention at this point I was barely sleeping? I would go days without sleep. In the spring of 2003 this got really bad) to a number of emails from friends warning that my weblog (didn’t we still call them “journals” at this point?) had been posted, with my name attached, on a number of forums I read or posted on. I was openly mocked, ranked on, and generally ridiculed. From people who claim to be “punk” or “different” or defying society somehow. Cowardly, I closed the Web Site down and pretty much distanced myself from that community for a few years.
In 2005 this happened again, but with an Online acquaintance. This was a person who was a friend of a friend that I had gotten to know over the years. Sometime during that time period we had a number of conversations Online about sexuality that I assumed were confidential. Of course, this line of discussion ended up, again, pasted into the public discourse. This time, I didn’t even bother to reply. I was so busy with school and actually dealing with these issues that I gave up giving a shit. Since then, I place no confidence in alternative communities doing anything but giving assholes another place to feel awesome about themselves.
So that is why I borrowed the Dale Nixon pseudonym to create this weblog. From a childhood of fights, ridicule, and trust violations I already had serious trust problems. My last girlfriend was the first person I think I ever let into my life without assuming they’d eventually steal from me or fuck me over. It’s fucking pathetic that this is how things have to be, but it is how it is and let’s move on.
