293. circumspect

You didn’t see my valentine
I sent it via pantomime
While you were watchin’ someone else
I stared at you and cut myself
It’s all I’ll do ‘cause I’m not free
A fugitive too dull too flee
I’m amorous but out of reach
A still-life drawing of a peach

– Fiona Apple, “Valentine” from The Idler Wheel (2012)

tumblr_o1htgfvsun1qhmfh4o1_r1_400 One of the depressing aspects of being single in your mid-30s is that virtually everyone else you know is probably in some manner of relationship by this point. You’ve become the token single friend.

And it sometimes goes like this:

You had a close group of friends. They’d make plans for Tuesday nights; go on outings to apple orchards or see a film; get together to play games or make dinner a few nights a month. You feel a sense of kinship and belonging here.

Then, gradually, everyone starts to pair off. Maybe a few people in the group start dating or find partners outside the group who then Yoko their way into the fold.

You progressively find yourself more on the outside. Activities become couples-oriented since you’re pretty much the only person who isn’t dating or married now.

They ask if you’re seeing or interested in anyone and you watch them exchange worried glances when you say “no.”

Eventually they start doing couples-only dinners and get-togethers.

You find out about plans after the fact because so-and-so forgot to include you on the group email/chat (but they “totally didn’t mean to leave you out”), but you feel increasingly out of place and othered when they do invite you to do things.

Wedding follows wedding like supernovas going off in a star cluster. You get invited to some, always RSVP’ing for one; are part of the wedding party in some and a musician in others. At receptions, you get seated with random family members or the other misfits who don’t know anyone else there.

People start having children and soon their lives have room for only other parents and families. Talk involves school, vacation plans, sickness, and other familial things. You “wouldn’t understand until you have children of your own.”

When you do get together with someone from the old group, you both feel like such different people, with little in common. It’s like being on an awkward first date.

You didn’t really know how to say anything to prevent it, but somewhere in there you fell through the cracks.

Of course, none of this was intentional. People change as life circumstances change.

Their personal life choices are shaped by the considerations of another’s. Yours are not.

Their sleep is interrupted by their bed partner snoring or a child crying. Yours is not.

They have to coordinate multiple family schedules over the holidays. You have just one family to deal with, yet even those feel lonelier as your siblings and cousins get married.

Le temps passe.

This is the world in which I increasingly find myself. I had such a group of friends after college that gradually dissolved as people started dating and getting married. Our ties, too, dissolved.

In some ways, I feel like a human talisman who brings romantic fortune into the lives of people I’m close to. Every flatmate I’ve had started dating their current partner shortly after we moved in together.

A new friend group forms and the cycle repeats.

This matchmaking power seems to work for everyone else but me.

However, I don’t know if it’s they who change towards me or me towards them. Maybe a bit of both, with my anxiety backseat driving.

And one truth I’d rather not admit to is my inferiority complex around those who are in relationships. I feel I’m somehow not as mature or put together in their presence, like I should have achieved the same things and haven’t, and am therefore not as worthy.

One way this manifests is with guys I’ve long held a torch for, despite all evidence to the contrary that anything would ever come of it.

My response when they inevitably start dating someone is to withdraw and tacitly cut them out of my life, or limit contact to occasionally commenting on or liking a social media post that isn’t of him and the new girlfriend (and hiding those that do).

This just happened with a guy who I’ve known for a couple years—and on whom I’ve been crushing for some time. I’ve never said anything since he’s insisted that he’s 100% heterosexual, and didn’t want to jeopardize the friendship by having that conversation, make everything totally awkward, and in all likelihood lose the friendship.

The crazy thing is I always know this will be the outcome; disappointment is inevitable. It happens over and over because it seems I have zero control over who I’m attracted to. It’s always hetero or bi guys who aren’t interested in me that way.

This is unfortunately how demisexuality works. My brain and conscious mind are in separate departments and never consult each other. So it’s a perennial hazard that, despite ourselves, we tend to fall for friends or people with whom we’re close.

He posted the relationship status last week so I’m faced again with the choice of whether to protect myself and preemptively distance myself before he, too, drifts away; or break the cycle and find an emotionally healthy, mature way to proceed?

In light of all this, I have been asking myself two questions:

Why do I care so much about this?
What exactly do I want/expect from a relationship?

The second question is probably the more important one, but the answer to the first is, again, the intense desire and need for the permanent, secure home I lacked as a child. The emotionally violent reactions I experience to rejection or disappointment is the raw, unregulated response of that child to pain and the fear of abandonment.

We learn how to deal with stress and disappointment from watching how our parents react. As the first born, my mom especially treated scrapes and bruises as if I’d been shot. So instead of being shown how to calmly assess a situation and its actual seriousness, I learned to go into fight mode to protect myself.

In other words, I developed anxious-resistant attachment.

Thus, the need for learning to reparent myself to become more secure.

290. circadian

“I don’t think I’m very good at gay… I used to sit there and watch [the Mardi Gras parade] and go, “Where are the quiet gays supposed to go?” I still do.

“… the pressure on my people to express our identity and pride through the metaphor of party is very intense. An afternoon of that … [and] I need to express my identity through the metaphor of a nap.”

– Hannah Gadsby. “Nanette.”

What does it actually mean to be gay—aside from being attracted to other men (which I tend to think of as the defining criteria)?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself the last couple of years, in part because my brain is incapable of not overanalyzing everything.

Thankfully, society seems to have firmly settled opinions on this for me.

According to mass media, in no particular order, gay men:

Are extroverted, gregarious, youthful, and always happy, and ironically witty. They especially love clubs. And dancing. (So much dancing.)
Go to the gym, are underwear-model fit, and are comfortable stripping to their Aussiebum briefs/jock strap in public. Especially at the club or pride.
Speak in a higher pitch, often reminiscent of speech patterns and inflections of teenage girls.
Love pop music, especially dance music (e.g., Madonna, Carly Rae Jepsen, Cher, Gaga, etc).
Have location-based dating (i.e., hookup) apps (e.g., Grindr, Hornet, Scruff, Jack’d, Recon, etc).
Are rapaciously flirtatious, unabashedly promiscuous, attracted to all [physically fit] men, and sort neatly into the categories of top and bottom.
Walk quickly and with excellent posture, are very tidy and smartly dressed, and are often more than a little eccentric (which is why they can’t sit properly in chairs).
Can plan your wedding, organize a brunch, and redecorate your apartment in a single afternoon.
Belong to at least one kink community. (Leather is a given since every gay man owns a harness, armbands, and tight black t-shirts.)
Primarily have open—or monogamish—relationships (because #6).

Of course, these are stereotypes.

As such, they do not accurately reflect individuals or an entire population.

That said, as with most stereotypes, they exist partly because there are gay men for whom many of these are true. (Also: gays make great supporting characters.) But many of them do have a basis in the history of gay communities, especially leather and bars.

They also present a wee brain teaser to those of us who are trying to figure out where we fit in all this, and who often wonder “where the quiet gays are supposed to go”.

For me, I’m largely incapable of flirting, partly because I’ve no patience for the subtle rituals men (especially gay men) perform when they’re interested in someone.

Mostly because my style is so distinctly German.

Ditto patience for clothing or grooming habits that take more than two minutes.

Mostly, I just don’t care.

Meaning that it’s difficult to find where—and with whom—I might fit.

This past weekend, as recounted in the last post, I was surprised to find myself both attracted to and flirting with a guy at the gaming mini-con. Granted, we were both pretty inebriated due to a miscalculation of 1) the amount of food I’d had that evening and 2) the strength of an alcoholic beverage a friend of mine had made.

Also, the guy in question was married and avowedly monogamous, even as he was coming to terms with the possibility of being bisexual.

There were a number of reasons why I was surprised at suddenly being attracted to this person and experiencing over the next day or so what can be described as a crush. He wasn’t my usual “type” and was also, for all intents and purposes, unavailable.

In hindsight, that was perhaps what made acknowledging that attraction so easy—the low risk it ultimately presented.

Again, it wasn’t sexual; it was probably more aesthetic or emotional, and even a little romantic. Our deep conversation allowed for a space of vulnerability to open up, where it was safe to acknowledge that I was attracted to him. It’s a bit hazy who first admitted it, but it’s the first time I’d done that in a very long while.

It was kind of nice.

There are moments when I miss sex, of being intimate with a guy. These are moments when I question if I’m truly on the asexual spectrum, but on further reflection, sex has always been secondary to connection, like a palpable extension of the emotional bond that exists between us. Of course, that’s only happened a handful of times, but it was always intense.

Those times also amounted to just a moment in the woods.

That’s part of what frightens me so much about attraction based on past experiences: their one-sidedness. What puzzles me about so many gay men is their casual attitudes towards sex, as if it were just another fun activity—one guy’s much like any other. To be fair, this is probably men in general, though exceptions (as usual) abound.

But, at least outwardly, there seems to be little ruminating or emotional fallout.

I get so caught up in what everything means, whether or not we mean something to each other now, the nature of the new context (if one exists), and if I’m ever going to even find someone with whom I’m compatible.

It’s all a bit of a mood and fun killer.

A healthier, less tortured way of approaching last week’s flirtation may be as practice: just a simple step towards easing back into dating. Because if a partner and emotional connection is what I want, that won’t happen if I just complain about being lonely.

Learning to hear and acknowledge my inner voice’s worries and fears of disappointment would certainly help allay anxieties.

Approaching it in an experimental manner might also be healthier: setting aside biases, setting expectations low, and simply exploring what’s there rather than worrying about what might happen—not to mention trying to make something happen.

Plus, being less resistant to experiencing attraction sounds less tense. Simply noticing when it’s happening without judging it.

(It also makes me ponder whether I really need a boyfriend or if a small group of guys with whom I had an intensely close bond would be enough.)

There’s also knowledge of what didn’t work the first time around: that I was “trying” to be gay, following models set by others for how gay men were supposed to behave rather than following my intuition.

I can find my own way of “being gay.”

289. frisson

Man and woman on motorcycle. Digital image. Unpublished for a Reason. October 5, 2015. https://bit.ly/2Pxx6Xr This past weekend I attended a four-day mini gaming convention with some friends of mine. It’s a biannual event, with one in the spring and one in the fall. The spring one is usually smaller, but it’s still a bit of a stretch for this highly sensitive introvert because of the sheer number of people.

Thankfully though, the combination of meds, therapy, going on walks (thereby getting some vitamin D), and taking introverting breaks helped.

A couple of years ago I attended this con prior to starting grad school, after which my schedule (and inability to cope with most social situations) did not permit my going. This year though, with all the positive steps forward, I decided it was a good thing to test out my new outlook on humanity.

Overall, with a few instances of feeling overwhelmed, it was a good experience. For me, it was less about the gaming and more the freedom from the normal responsibilities of life to just “be” and refresh my wells of creativity.

On one of the evenings, I had a surprisingly frank conversation with a few people about emerging awareness of their sexual orientation or acceptance of a shift thereto. Some of the conversation was about poly relationships and the realities of dating – or being partnered with – multiple people.

(To me, that sounds exhausting, but I’m glad it works for other people.)

Another of the longer conversations though was with a guy I met last time who is coming to terms with the fact that he’s probably bisexual. This is complicated by the fact that he’s married and hadn’t really had that talk with his wife yet.

This was further complicated by the fact that we appeared to be attracted to each other, and actually talked about that, something that may have been facilitated by how much we’d had to drink before this conversation. At first, he said he thought he might be “drunk bi,” but later acknowledged that he’s been noticing this when he’s sober, too.

Apparently later he confided to another friend of mine that he’s now fairly certain he’s bi and was going to have that talk with his wife over the weekend.

Speaking of shifts in one’s sexuality, I’ve become aware of experiencing a recent uptick in attraction to guys. On one of the long walks over this weekend I tried to parse through my feelings about this, ponder what might be going on, and assess whether I’m actually demisexual these days or if it’s a mix of anxiety and growing up repressed.

One of the truths to come out of therapy is that I spend a lot of time in my head analyzing and picking apart everything and that my brain often works much faster than my mind. By the time my mind gets around to even considering something, my brain has already fast-forwarded to the conclusion it has determined absolutely will happen, which is usually the worst-case scenario.

This bodes not well for living in the moment and taking things as they come.

Another truth is the reality that I’m pretty rigid when it comes to things like sexuality… or if I’m being honest, most things. It’s funny though because I’m actually pretty open to change—even though I still like to have some degree of control over those changes, even if that just means knowing as much as possible about what’s coming next.

Now that I think of it, this rigidity is probably my parents manifesting again.

This was a theme that came through in a tarot reading I did for myself on Friday evening during an introverting break.

(If anyone is curious, you can see the spread here: https://bit.ly/2IRFG2P.)

I was reminded by Temperance and reversed Judgement of the need to be kinder to myself and to find balance—essentially becoming friends with my inner critic and acknowledging the fears and worries that get expressed as negativity.

The reversed Page of Wands blocking my Magician makes that pretty clear.

Breaking free of unhealthy cycles of thinking and action was another message that resonated. Fixating on worst-case scenarios is one way my mind protects me from hurt or disappointment, which is also self-defeating but understandably fear-based.

Taking back control of my life and not fixating as much on what I don’t have was yet another theme that came out of the spread.

As was learning to manage my emotions better. Hmmmm…

This led to a couple of insights on my walk on Sunday.

First, in regards to demisexuality, I don’t think there has to be conflict with experiencing an uptick in attraction. The nature of these attractions continues to be chiefly emotional rather than sexual.

What I do think has been going on the last few years is the fear to even entertain those attractions when they arise.

Again, my brain is awfully good at shutting down any hopes or possibilities.

And a big thing for me is the fear of rejection, because without fail, every guy I’ve been attracted to has wanted nothing to do with me beyond being friends. (This goes the other way for me, too.) So at the first sign of interest, my brain quickly fast-forwards the tape to the end of the scene where yet again I’m getting let down.

It would be easy to dismiss this if there weren’t ample justification for the fear.

The reality is I do tell and re-tell myself these stories about how no one is interested in me and how I’m going to literally die alone and forgotten someday.

Another reality is that I seemingly have zero control over who I’m attracted to (e.g., a married, currently monogamous, and emergently bisexual guy), so it’s impossible to predict when and where it will occur.

So am I unconsciously selecting guys who will fullfill my brain’s worst-case scenario to maintain control over a situation in which there is little control?

And what do I even want??

And how to loosen up but stay true to myself?

284. litotes

This week I’ve been working on cleaning up and tagging old blog posts. I’ve finally compiled a complete list of tags used and have been trying to normalize the metadata as much as possible.

I’ve also been gradually saving entries to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, as they’re updated. It’s a slow process, but it does mean reading entries from the beginning of this blog, which has been an experience.

Quite the memory trip.

For instance, I forget sometimes how Libertarian and politically conservative I used to be, as well as how obnoxiously Christian. It’s difficult to say how much of that I actually bought into, but I think there was an unhealthy amount of denial, identification, and amplification going on then—the more sure of myself I sounded, the more doubt I was probably experiencing at the time.

… I was also really angry after losing my faith.

Like, really, toxically angry.

Reading some of these entries is like watching a horror movie that you’ve seen before, knowing what’s going to happen to the main characters but not being able to affect the outcome—no matter how much you scream and cry out at the screen.

Someday I’ll be able to see all of this as the comedy it is.

I hope.

And in the daylight we can hitchhike to Maine
I hope that someday I’ll see without these frames

As a cataloger, one of the advantages of tagging with good metadata is that—if properly indexed and stored in a faceted way that lends itself to analysis—it supports excellent subject analysis.

For example, it allows for a graphical representation of the distribution over time of all blog entries tagged with “dating” (of which there are sixty-four, from 8-June 2009 to 25-June 2017).

What this graph suggests is that, over the past three years, I have been thinking about dating a fair amount. There were periods between 2010 and 2012 (i.e., between when I broke up with Aaron I; went through Slutty Phase I; dated Aaron II; met Seth; had Slutty Phase II; got dumped by Seth; had Slutty Phase III, the sluttiest, which ended around 2013) when I seem to have not really been thinking (or at least writing) about dating or long-term relationships very much.

But there are periods, especially around the beginning of a new year, when I apparently think about it a lot, probably because the new year is a time for reflection and contemplation of the year ahead, and what it all means.

I like qualitative data.

My blog tells me that in the early days of coming out, I was chiefly concerned with how popular images of homosexuality conflicted with the traditional conceptions of masculinity I’d picked in evangelical Christendom. I hadn’t read Judith Butler or Eve Sedgwick yet, and was still deeply immersed in the heteronormativity of my childhood.

But in reading some of those early blog entries, I can pick up on (at least in kvetching about gender and extravagant sexuality) the fact that I knew there was something different about me from other gay men. I didn’t have the vocabulary yet to articulate that the reason many sex-centric cultural expressions of gay culture didn’t interest me was because I wasn’t that interested in sex.

Well, I was, insomuch as it involved a deep connection to the person with whom I was having sex. I was still years away from discovering the concepts of asexuality or demisexuality.

Similarly, I wasn’t interested in queer culture, not because being queer or queer culture is wrong or perverse, but because gender expression doesn’t interest me. I was always more into music, writing, performing, researching, reading, etc. Those are the expressions of my identity.

Sex is secondary.

Always has been.

There were guys who I was interested in growing up, but there was never any sexual component to that interest. It was more that they were highlighted for further review.

Of course, we could deconstruct my sexuality and say this is a manifestation of my repressed homosexuality as a gay man raised in evangelical Christian culture, that I lacked models for male-male attraction, so my developmental interest in men up until that point was largely arrested—stunted, if you will.

But that’s not true.

It wasn’t until I started developing closer friendships with men I was attracted to that any sexual feelings emerged. They were more an extension of the emotional bond and concerned with intimacy itself than anything specifically sexual.

My theory is that, if I had found a guy who was openly attracted to me during that period, sexual activity would have progressed organically—that it would’ve been more about being together than imitating anything we’d seen in porn.

Two other major themes of my blogs have been relationships and dating, probably two of the biggest sources of anxiety and stress in my life—because I don’t understand how they work.

Unlike most of my peers during their formative adolescent years, when they were starting to date, explore their sexuality, and figure out the rules of the game of human romantic relationships, I was largely oblivious to what was going on. For me, I’d figured out by then that I was gay and had completely shut all that away, for the obvious reasons.

So much creative energy was lost in suppression my attractions when they did emerge.

In short, I’m 34, basically in my second adolescence, and still have no idea what I’m doing.

More than sex though, one of the major themes in my writing is desire for context and meaningful intimate relationships.

This is mainly what doesn’t appeal to me about gay male sexuality: There’s little to no context. Everyone appears to be everything to everyone else.

It’s just about getting off. Guys are just potential fuck buddies or hookups to each other. It’s about numbers, not meaning.

I’ve never known what it is to experience family and belonging, but it’s something I’ve observed and desire for myself.

For me, I prefer fewer but deeper, richer relationships.

281. maffick

Friday evening I had a pretty positive experience in my summer practicum class, and I have been trying to hold on to the feeling that went along with it.

We recently had an assignment to put together a mock resume and cover letter for our target jobs. I had an anxiety attack reading job requirements for entry-level cataloging jobs, realizing how much I still don’t know and how much is expected of candidates.

What I ended up taking away from Friday though was feedback that my resume and cover letter was actually pretty strong, that I know more than I think I do, and most everyone is worried that they’re unqualified for the job they really want.

It’s one of the downsides of ADD and anxiety that my brain tells me that I’m not good enough, that I’m far too behind and will never find a salaried job or able to support myself, and that no one will ever love me—or be willing to accept my crazy.

One comforting thing about the ADD community is that these kinds of feelings are almost universal, so it’s not just me.

Something I’ve been thinking about recently is how to manage my dating life as a demisexual, because dating doesn’t work the same for us as it does for everyone else.

Mainly, I’ve been thinking about attraction.

There are several different kinds of attraction¹:

Sexual attraction: attraction that makes people desire sexual contact or shows sexual interest in another person(s).
Romantic attraction: attraction that makes people desire romantic contact or interaction with another person or persons.
Aesthetic attraction: occurs when someone appreciates the appearance or beauty of another person(s), disconnected from sexual or romantic attraction.
Sensual attraction: desire to interact with others in a tactile, non-sexual way, such as through hugging or cuddling.
Emotional attraction: the desire to get to know someone, often as a result of their personality instead of their physicality. This type of attraction is present in most relationships from platonic friendships to romantic and sexual relationships.

What I have observed is that (at least in most people) most of these attractions overlap. They might overlap in different ways, and some attractions might be more dominant than others, but they seem to work in consort towards bringing people together.

For me, it’s rare for any of these to overlap. I might experience aesthetic attraction for a guy, but not have sexual or romantic desire for him. Similarly, I might be emotionally attracted to someone, but not aesthetically or romantically.

In short, sexual attraction is basically the last stop for my brain, which takes the long way around through every other type.

It’s rare to meet a guy who either understands this or is on the same wavelength. I’ve never met anyone like that, at least. Most gay men seem to run on aesthetic and sexual attraction, with little thought to romantic or emotional.

This is ironic for me, with my ADD brain, since impulsivity is a hallmark of the condition. Maybe it’s that sexuality is based in a different area of the brain, or that my sexual desire is bogged down by anxiety.

This is relevant because my previous sexual history back when I was much more active needs to be explained.

What I think was going on in those days was that I was applying a “fake it ’til you make it” mindset, working under the assumption that I needed to overcome internalized homophobia by having as much sex as possible.

What I learned was that I just wasn’t into the sex. A handful of the guys I found attractive, some I was sexually attracted to, but at no point did I encounter anyone I wanted to date.

A friend of mine pointed out later that some of that was probably where I was finding these guys—hookup apps, mostly.

Even outside that though, in social circles, work, and volunteer settings, I still never met anyone. Statistically, that should have happened, right?

Or were all my chances in my early twenties, when I was closeted?

Where does one meet a guy who’s fine with dating a guy who takes longer than others to connect? I don’t belong in the queer community, am unlikely to find a guy amongst the heterosexuals, and I’m too principled to change myself just to snag someone.

It seems a problem without a solution.

I skipped Minneapolis Pride again this year, mainly because I don’t need additional reasons to feel bad about myself.

It’s not a place where I fit in. I’ve never been much of a reveler, and my body image issues prevent me from wearing anything short of long pants and a short sleeve shirt.

Also, I don’t belong to any kink/fetish communities and my identity isn’t sexuality or gender nonconformity-based, which seems to be a big thing at Pride. Cataloging and role-playing games are more compelling, and I haven’t found any guys in those realms.

Maybe it’s just the community I find myself in now, but it seems like almost everyone I know is into leather, bondage, drag, pop culture, etc. A relationship founded on shared core values and a deep emotional bond feels almost outdated for my age group.

The curse of being an introverted gay man on the asexual spectrum.

So what am I doing about this?

To start, I’m trying to be aware of when I’m attracted to someone, and what type, trying to think of them all like indicator levels. With this hypothetical guy, the overall rating is 43%:

Whereas with this guy, it’d be 78%:

Second, I’m trying to do better at boundary setting. This can be difficult for ADD brains, thanks to under-performing anterior cingulate cortexes, which regulate things like impulse control.

So I’m trying to be aware when my anxiety activates and resist the impulse to fall back on mirroring the other person’s behavior, which is how I find myself in unhealthy situations.

Having to write a manual for this from scratch is SO MUCH FUN.

279. hiraeth

You’re unhappy. You’re isolated. You think you’re the cause of this unhappiness and are unworthy of affection so you’ve few friends… you can’t stop thinking about what you’ve lost, again, for which you blame yourself. So the cycle goes on, the snake eating its own tail.

– Dr. Seward, “The Day Tennyson Died,” in Penny Dreadful (Season 3)

I’m finally done with the spring semester of grad school, so I can write again.

This term felt harder to get through than others, maybe because I’m so close to the end of my master’s—seven months, exactly. Even though the two courses I took were interesting and the projects that I worked on intriguing, summoning the resolve to get through the last two weeks of the semester felt like scaling Everest in the middle of a storm.

By last week, it felt like I was just hanging on for dear life.

I’ve realized that in addition to depression and anxiety, there’s a third spoke to my fun wheel of mental health merriment: adult attention deficit disorder.

It’s one of those conditions that I always associated with rowdy boys, or an excuse for subpar students.

Yet what the literature has taught me is there are three types of ADD:

Type 1: Predominantly Inattentive
Type 2: Predominantly Hyperactive
Type 3: Combination

It’s the second type that gets the most press, while the first one most often gets missed or misdiagnosed.

Amen, Daniel. “Are There Really 7 Types of ADD?” ADDitude Magazine. April 17, 2017. https://www.additudemag.com/slideshows/7-types-of-add-adhd-amen/.

Type 1 is the one I seem to have.

Had I not been homeschooled, and been fortunate to live in a district with decent in-school mental health services, I might have been diagnosed earlier, because so many of the symptoms describe things I’ve struggled with over the years, such as:

Poor sustained attention span for reading, paperwork, etc.
High susceptibility to boredom by tedious material
Frequent lateness for appointments/work
A tendency to misplace things frequently
Poor organization and planning
Procrastination until deadlines are imminent
Failure to listen carefully to directions
(source)

I see evidence of this type of ADD throughout my life, in various manifestations. For example:

My bed growing up being covered in books as I’d read a couple of pages in one, then switch to another
Starting hundreds of writing and composing projects, but only completing a handful
Constantly losing my keys, books, belt, etc.
Making careless mistakes on tests or project work
Struggling to process verbal statements or instructions unless I take copious notes, or record audio to review later
Having no concept of time and constantly being late
Double-booking myself for appointments

What I’m learning from the literature so far is that ADD is not a matter of laziness. People with this condition lack filters most people have to block out distractions and stimuli.

For people like me, everything in an environment is a potential distraction, because everything comes in at once.

There are other characteristics of ADD, such as the ability to hyperfocus on things that interest someone, which is how I was able to practice piano for three hours a day growing up, or lose track of hours reading Pathfinder background material for a character backstory.

There are other less positive characteristics, such as fixed or inflexible thinking and an inability to shift easily from one task to another, which sounds like a contradiction until you consider that it takes neurotypicals an average of 25 minutes to refocus on a task after an interruption (Sullivan & Thompson, 2013). For people with ADD, day-to-day workplace multitasking can leave them feeling like untethered balloons in the wind.

Poor self-image is also a characteristic of ADD since individuals with this condition tend to be hyper aware of how they differ from others. Our post-Industrial Revolution society values conformity and efficiency, so people (and children especially) with ADD are often made to feel bad, inferior, or worthless.

And for me, add all the religious bullshit on top of that about how I wasn’t living up to the ideals the Bible supposedly set for me, along with post-traumatic stress from the trauma of internalized homophobia.

Then add the fact that ADD is often comorbid with other conditions—depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, substance abuse, schizoid personality disorder, and so on.

Fun.

A few weeks ago, I had a realization that I tend to scrutinize my sexuality and sexual values with the same level of severity that I used for evaluating my spiritual life.

Growing up on the bookish side, I developed a quasi Christian Gnostic, Neoplatonic mindset in which I came to view the body as low and bestial, while the soul and intellect could remain pure and uncorrupted by physical desires with discipline.

In retrospect, I think some of that was in response to being made by my parents to feel my needs (beyond physical sustenance) were unworthy, a bother, and therefore bad. My mind did what it needed to for survival.

Basically, I learned to discount my needs and my feelings.

This stayed with me, even after I came out. There is still a part of my mind that views physical desire as base and vulgar (as well as fearing it), and emotional connection as the highest and purest form of intimacy. This is also a coping mechanism in response to realizing that, as a demisexual, I didn’t experience attraction in the same way as most other men.

So I went back to my Gnostic, Neoplatonic roots.

A while ago I was reading Rik Isensee’s 1991 book Growing Up Gay In a Dysfunctional Family. It helped put into perspective how my parents employed shame and the threat of withholding love, and how they taught me to view homosexuality as wrong. There’s a lot in there about the effects of self-hatred on sexual development, and the emergence of self-deprivation.

I still have difficulty acknowledging my physical desires as legitimate as asking for something requires believing I’m worthy.

So analyzing everything to death is a surefire way of ensuring that I never have to deal with any of it.

278. esoterica

There hasn’t been much time to write recently, nor is there much time to write today, so this is going to be a bit scattered. We’ll see where this goes.

Eighteen days ago was the four-year anniversary of my breakup with Jay, the narcissist ex-boyfriend who nevertheless turned out to be—as I rightly feared—my likely last chance at a relationship before I turned 30.

I was hoping for some spark of insight about lessons learned about life choices, but instead I found little more than regret at having stayed with him for nine whole months.

Besides, there isn’t that much of my mind free to reflect on things like that these days.

One of the insights that I did have after things ended with my last therapist is that one of the reasons I feel so ambivalent about my parents is that there was a time when I was very young when I was happy with them.

This was before I was self-aware and able to internalize the bullshit theology that they were feeding me.

The world was simpler, brighter, happier, and there’s a part of my mind that still remembers what it felt like. A gulf of time and trauma now stands between me and that previous proto-self, and there is no way to get back.

You can’t go home.

I suppose that’s one of the things I most hate my parents for—robbing me of my childhood (and my future adult happiness) by teaching me to hate myself.

They also robbed me of the ability to truly enjoy things since I constantly view things that I like with suspicion or skepticism. There was always a fear growing up that one or both of my parents would disapprove of something I enjoyed or liked, for whatever reason, and would take that thing away.

I’ve also been thinking about my emerging asexual/demisexual identity as of late, where it came from, and whether I’ve always just been this way.

The present hypothesis is that, yes, I have always been this way. My hypothesis acknowledges that the relevant events happened between twelve and fifteen years ago, and that memory is an imperfect reconstruction of past events.

There’s also the reality that my sexuality formed under hostile, repressive circumstances, so it’s possible that my resultant sexual identity is a product of emotional trauma and abuse, isolation, and cult-like psychological programming.

That being said, while I definitely experienced the Saturn V rocket-like explosion of male sex drive during my teenage years, I do not recall ever being sexually attracted to specific guys. I had crushes, yes, to varying levels of intensity, but I don’t remember wanting to do anything sexual with any male peers.

Was that because I was unconsciously suppressing those desires on account of the then-impossibility of realizing them? Perhaps. I was intelligent enough then to have done that. Yet while my peers (even the Christian ones) seemed preoccupied by their sexual impulses (and, naturally, the struggle to resist and remain “pure”), I was more aware of the absence of such impulses in myself.

Piano, writing, research, or literally anything else held more interest for me than sex.

For my male friends especially, the struggle to tame their sexual needs and desires seemed ever-present, something that created a mountain of anxiety for them. I, on the other hand, struggled with just the reality of being same-sex attracted rather than any specific desires.

Being gay was largely an abstract concept for me.

What I experienced in terms of desire for other men wasn’t even necessarily sexual. Even today, I don’t have sexual fantasies about guys. What I do have are emotional fantasies—imagining going on vacations with a partner, buying our first house together, brushing our teeth, curling up on the couch together under a blanket while rain patters on the window.

It’s more the desire for intimacy than it is for sex.

That’s the homoromantic aspect of my orientation.

However, I’ve also been thinking back over my experiences as a sexually active gay man, because over the course of just a few years, I did have a lot of sex. I’ve been thinking about what that meant, especially considering how emotionally unfulfilling and empty it was.

To use a metaphor, I felt a lot like Dharma and Jane when they pretended to be German tourists and were confronted by an actual German speaker.

When I was sexually active, I largely went through the motions, doing what I grew up doing in most social situations—mirroring behavior, and generally faking emotions without understanding what was going on.

Fahrvergnügen?

At the time, I thought I was “discovering” my sexuality after years of repression. The discomfort I felt was internalized homophobia, I thought. Yet no matter how many guys I fucked, I didn’t feel any less confused or empty.

If anything, I actually felt resentful.

No automatic alt text available. — Wolf, Tikva. “Kimchi Cuddles.” Comic strip. 2014. http://kimchicuddles.com.

Reactions to my demi or asexuality have been interesting. There’s been a lot of Oh, I’ve felt that way before. I must be demisexual too.

Or: Are you sure I can’t convince you to give me a try?

Or: Your view of sex is just too traditional.

The notion of the absence of sexual attraction is apparently stymieing to many people. It’s the air they breathe, familiar and comfortable. Gay men especially seem to have a difficult time imagining life without being aroused by any hot or cute guy.

That’s one of my worries about dating again—finding a guy who:

I manage to establish an emotional connection with that’s strong enough to move into sexual attraction;
I find physically attractive;
Is fine with not rushing into sex, and even waiting for me to determine if I’m attracted or not;
Isn’t scared off by my crazy.

So yeah… I don’t know how this is supposed to work. Ultimately, my goal is to build a family of my own to make up for the one I didn’t have, but that doesn’t seem likely.

277. affable

The spring semester started up again last month and thus I haven’t had much time to write recently.

First, to my readers outside the United States, things are truly surreal here.

For the 74+ million citizens who did not (and will not) support the toupéd fucktrumpet our sketchy and antiquated electoral process installed as President, every day brings new, increasingly frightening portents that the government is run by truly incompetent, dangerous people.

So, in addition to school and work, the news has me constantly stressed out and anxious.

Yay.

Just over a year ago I started writing about identifying as demisexual. My views have evolved significantly since then, partly thanks to the work I did with my therapist last year to start pulling back the curtain on the machine of lies and bullshit my parents raised me with as fundamentalist evangelical Christians.

I did get some pushback from one reader who commented he didn’t understand my decision to stop identifying as gay. “I could acknowledge strong similarities with you on almost all of the points you made and I’m gay as a goose,” he wrote.

Another friend wrote to ask why I couldn’t identify as demisexual and gay, while another asked if “demisexual” wasn’t an adjective that could be applied to gay.

Still another wrote to express confusion at how I could discard a label he had fought for years to claim for himself.

In part, I want to address some of these comments and share some of the work I’ve been doing.

AVEN’s definition of demisexuality is “a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone.”

While I knew demisexuality was on the “sexual” end of the asexual spectrum, I didn’t fully grasp how true it was for me.

As I’ve thought back over my teen years and sexual awakening, I realized that my sexual feelings have rarely been directed outward. They’re there, and I did (and still do) experience sexual arousal, but I don’t recall it being directed at anyone. I had crushes on guys, but the desire to do anything sexual was almost always absent.

My sexual fantasies were abstract—in hindsight, more about intimacy than sex.

I’ve been trying to determine if this was some kind of coping mechanism. That is to say, because I’d been taught those feelings were forbidden, my mind found a way to block them since they were inaccessible.

This might be the case. I’ve compartmentalized so many other feelings, so why not this too?

However, I’ve never been terribly interested in sex. I was always more focused on writing, practicing piano, or reading. Even today, I’d rather be cataloging than hooking up.

When I was having sex, whether with a boyfriend or some random from an app, I felt nothing. It was disorienting and alienating. The sensations were okay, but there was no connection.

As harsh as it sounds, frankly, I don’t think I was much attracted to any of the guys I dated.

I may as well have been masturbating.

This process of deconstructing my sexual upbringing has also resolved some issues with being externally defined.

When I was growing up, my sexuality was defined for me by my community and what the Bible supposedly said about it, which meant that I was defined as a heterosexual male.

Obviously that did not work.

When I finally came out in 2008, it took some years before I really started having sex, and when I did, I did what I thought I was supposed to do—seek out strangers and friends to bang.

I assumed the feelings of emptiness that resulted were from lingering internalized homophobia that I needed to fuck out of my system.

I was doing what I’d been raised to do: suppress my feelings (no matter how miserable it made me) and do what I perceived was expected of me.

It still felt forced though. I didn’t really understand what guys were doing when they checked each other out, or ogled some hunky god from afar. Some of that might have been posturing or trying to impress each other, but I didn’t get it.

This has also helped explain ambivalence I feel about things like kink, or gay identity markers like hairstyle, fashion, or speech mannerisms. That’s not to say there’s any universal identity marker. Each community has its own set.

However, I figured out where the disconnect is for me: namely, that those identity markers (hair, dress, etc) are ways gay men telegraph their availability to each other, whether for flirting, dating, or just sex. From an anthropological view, the majority of humans do this, whether deliberately or not. It’s how our brains work.

Life, uh, finds a way.

On a subconscious level, I have been telegraphing my lack of interest for years. If I were interested, I might have adopted a more “gay” haircut, tried to dress more like other gay men, or adopt their mode of speech.

I prefer to march to my own beat, and have always been happiest that way.

The third thing I’ve just recently been able to articulate is that demisexuality best describes the manner in which I experience sexual attraction, while “gay” describes its direction.

One blog post from The Asexual Agenda helped put this in perspective. It’s about overlapping circles.

From https://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/visualizing-demisexuality/ — Source: QueenieOfAces. “Visualizing demisexuality.” The Asexual Agenda. September 05, 2013. https://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/visualizing-demisexuality/

The author writes, “‘Homosexual’ defines the ‘direction’ of the sexual attraction… while ‘demisexual’ defines the manner in which that sexual attraction is experienced–only after forming an emotional connection.”

The model also works for someone who is heterosexual but is capable of homosexual attraction after emotionally bonding with someone of the same gender.

In this sense I am both gay and demisexual. Putting my cataloging hat on, my pseudo-LC subject heading would be:

Homoromantic demisexual cisgender male androphile.

While my dating life is a lot more complicated, finding myself on the asexual spectrum just feels more aligned and true.

That’s what matters.

274. draconian

A few months ago, I experienced something that hadn’t happened in a while.

Now, I’m not reticent about my sexuality.

True, I don’t talk about it non-stop, and (contrary to how much I write about the subject) it isn’t the sole thing that defines me. But if asked or if I am in company where gender and sexuality are discussed, I am not shy about opening up about my experiences.

So it takes me aback when I have to come out to someone.

This episode happened following a gathering of friends in November as we were discussing a post-Thanksgiving get-together at my house. One of our newer attendees asked whether the decor would be Thanksgiving-themed.

“Decorating really isn’t my thing,” I said, and then joked, “I tend towards more of a sparse Scandinavian style, myself.”

She gave a look of mock surprise. “What kind of gay man are you?” she exclaimed. She was mostly joking (I think), but there was a hint of true incredulity in her tone.

I got this a lot in the first few years after coming out. Women would assume that I wanted to check out hot guys with them and provide brilliant, witty insights on the male psyche in between shopping breaks or redecorating their living room.

Sorry, heterosexuals. Your token queer I am not.

However, the episode got me contemplating the assumptions people might make about me as a gay man (specifically, what I’m interested in and who I have sex with), the various tropes and trappings of gay culture, and whether or not it was helpful to continue identifying that way.

Since the end of this past semester, I haven’t had much to occupy/distract my mind, so I’ve been mulling over what it means to be demisexual.

The common usage is to treat it as an adjective: you might only fuck people you have a close emotional bond with, but you’re still gay.

“You’re still one of us,” seems to be the subtext.

However, the fact that I experience sexual attraction but rarely, and then only with men with whom there is a strong emotional connection, indicates that I seem to fall more on the asexual spectrum rather than the homosexual.

It’s not that I’m seeking a label to define myself by, or a tribe to identify with, but rather to better understand myself (short-term goal) and hopefully develop strategies for managing friendships and finding a partner (long-term goal).

The challenge of dating is summed up in an article by Emma Lord:

… while you can generally tell on a first date whether or not you’d want to be friends with someone, it’s nearly impossible for a demisexual person to decide whether or not [they’d] be sexually attracted to [you] without the element of friendship and trust already in place… And you can’t exactly explain your feelings to someone you just met, particularly in an age when not engaging in romantic or affectionate activity on dates is considered a rejection.

While I have expressed frustration with the hypersexuality of large parts of the gay community, I am still cognizant of the history and significance that underlies its various communities and institutions.

Pride parades, for example, emerged shortly after the Stonewall Riots in 1969, and was a radical and political act of defiance in an age when being out was illegal. Although derided by many now as commercial and mainstream, they encouraged unity and solidarity in the face of oppression and later as friends and lovers were dying during the AIDS epidemic.

Gay clubs, too, served as safe spaces for self-expression, identity building, and community networking. Same for institutions such as white parties, drag shows, and leather bars.

Writers and activists encouraged LGBT people to reject the heteronormativity they had been raised with, to throw off the shackles of “traditional” models of sexuality and relationships, and express their liberation via total sexual freedom.

Kiyoshi Kuromiya wrote in the Philadelphia Free Press in 1970,

“Homosexuals have burst their chains and abandoned their closets… We come to challenge the incredible hypocrisy of your sexual monogamy, your oppressive sexual role-playing, your nuclear family, your Protestant ethic, apple pie and Mother.”

So, I get that all that silently informs, shapes, modern gay life.

Yet it doesn’t feel like my history, my institutions, ones that feel true to who I am.

Thus, when someone assumes I am mad for decorating, dress shopping, strapping on a leather harness, or running upstairs for a quick romp in the sheets, it feels like a denigration of my needs, values, and identity.

That the only way to be is to be a gay clone.

There’s another variable at play, however.

Yesterday, I learned that a friend of mine is randomly connected to Seth. (Yes, that Seth, of the 2011 birthday.) I noticed my friend had commented on a post of Seth’s, and asked how they knew each other. Turns out they’re in a gayming group.

My friend wrote: “There’s an inkling at the back of my head that I should be wary of him, though.”

Even though it’s been nearly six years, the shockwave of that night still ripples, supernova-like, through my life today.

Seeing that name again, catching a glimpse of his thumbnail profile picture, brought a sea of unwanted emotions and memories back.

That incident, and a handful of others (where I’ve experienced attraction, decided to open myself to the possibility, and been rejected), left me distrustful of my taste in men and ability to make healthy romantic decisions for myself.

I seem only to find myself attracted to impossible guys, or to guys who will end up using me for sex or to stroke their fragile male egos until they got what they came for.

I don’t know if other guys, the George Michaels etc, are simply satisfied with surface-level intimacy, if that’s all they want, or if they simply experience it in different ways.

Can any of us know?

Am I this way because of genes… Seth… my parents?

Who knows.

It is what it is.

273. factitious

That first night when we sat on the trunk of my car and looked at the lights above the Arby’s? When I got up to leave, I looked at you, and I tried to think of how to say everything I was feeling. But I’ve never really been good at describing feelings. I’m only good at describing facts, and love, love isn’t a fact. You know?

Love—it’s a hunch at first and then later it’s a series of decisions, a lifetime of decisions. That’s love. And I didn’t know how to express that and so I just said: “I’m glad I decided to call you.” And now, tonight, I say I’m glad again, for this decision and all the decisions that will come every day after.

Which is to say, scientifically speaking of course, speaking from the point of view of mere facts and logic and you know, what with the science and all… I just thought that it was time for us to make a life together.
— Episode 100 – Toast, from Welcome to Night Vale¹

A few days ago justmerveilleux commented on a previous post that it was “much too cheerful.” I’m endeavouring to bring the tone of this one back to my usual stark, grim, crepuscular realism. 😉

The last few weeks for me have been spent weathering feverish bouts of anxiety as we learn more about the Drumpf administration and what he, his cabinet, and the Rethuglican Congress have in store for the world over the next four years.

Basically, every time I scroll through New York Times or Guardian headlines, it’s a brand new something to haunt my dreams:

The planet is going to be trashed, sea levels will rise, and resulting droughts will bring about starvation and catastrophe.
We LGBTQ+ Americans are going to see all our civil rights gains taken away thanks to ultra conservative Supreme Court justice replacements.
With the almost certain repeal of Obamacare looming, the future of my health insurance is uncertain.

It’s been interesting to compare my reaction to this election to the one in 2008, and look at how much I’ve evolved since then. In short, where I once feared what Obama might have done as our first socialist President (which turns out not to be true—Hoover, Johnson, FDR, and even Nixon were just as Socialist, if not more so), we have a fairly clear idea what Drumpf is going to do. He has filled his cabinet with cronies, homophobes, and bigots who want to enact a theocratic, Objectivist agenda of revenge on this country, regardless of who suffers.

My nightmares don’t seem like a matter of “if.”

More like “when.”

I had a brief exchange with my youngest sister a few days after posting blog # 271. In short, we both feel similarly fragmented, made up of disparate parts, the result of decades of living in fear of our parents, their omnipotent and omniscient god, and a judgmental community of holier-than-thou Christians.

Okay, time for gross generalizations.

From what I’ve observed about most people, I gather that they function largely as a holistic whole, different modules and pieces of their psyches that work together in their functioning as a person.

For me, growing up in secret for nearly three decades feels like being a lump of coal trapped underground for thousands of years, under enormous heat and pressure, until suddenly ripped out of the Earth one day as a diamond.

I grew up managing a complex bureaucracy of desires and needs, making sure none of them drew the notice of anyone who could make my life unpleasant or difficult. I couldn’t be too ambitious, too needy, show too much self-efficacy, and certainly not any of my deviant sexual desires.

Now, nearly six years out as an atheist, I’m still living with disparate parts of myself that don’t talk to each other.

For most people (again, making gross assumptions here), when they want something, they think it and their cogs and wheels work out the specifics. Their child selves talk to their adult selves, sharing memories between them. And when a man is attracted to someone, he feels desire and the rest works itself out.

With me, none of those parts communicate. It is sometimes a daily inner civil war just to decide what I want for dinner—or to decide that I deserve to even want to eat.

I rather feel like No-Face from Hayao Miyazaki Spirited Away, an otherwise neutral being that absorbed the desires and intentions of those around him, a friendly mask disguising a dark and dangerous mess underneath.

When I fully, truly, came out in 2009, after breaking up with my first boyfriend and deciding I needed to “experience” everything I’d been missing, sexually speaking, I was still largely in the mindset of needing to be who I perceived everyone wanted me to be.

It’s how I survived evangelicalism as a gay teenager—by blending in, adapting, never being myself.

The hesitancy and emptiness I felt in hooking up—engaging in casual sex with guys who I knew weren’t going to be boyfriends or long-term partners—I chalked up to a puritanical upbringing; remnants of a lifetime of being told homosexual desires were evil, perverted, and sick.

I just needed to push through that to become the liberated gay man I knew was there, somewhere.

It never occurred to me that my reticence was the result of the reality that I experience sexual and romantic attraction through emotional intimacy rather than my pelvis.

The frustration in being a demisexual is feeling no control over who I’m attracted to. It happens suddenly, mysteriously, and very gradually.

I see couples at Target, holding hands and buying produce or a birthday card, and long for that kind of domestic intimacy. Granted, I have no real frame of reference. It’s academic, but still an abstract direction I’m aiming for in hopes I stumble onto something concrete.

I don’t want spectacular romance. I don’t need suffocating togetherness.

I’m not entirely sure what I want from a boyfriend/partner. Yes, I want companionship, the usual trimmings of a long-term relationship.

It’s more than that, though.

I want the significance of a look shared between two people experiencing something special and beautiful—a sunset, a moment in a Mozart opera, seeing something that reminds them of a moment five years ago before they knew any of it meant anything.

I’m suspicious of the fire, the passion, the Sturm und Drang of the early stages of a relationship. I want the quiet certainty of sitting on the hood of a car, staring up at the lights above the Arby’s, and am glad that I called someone.

These are the cares of a time traveler who lives in both the past and the future, knowing that everything that happens between is uncertain and surprising, but inevitable, unchanging.

Unchanged.

“The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.”²

I’m not hopeful that I’ll ever get any of this, but a fellow can dream.

Works Cited

¹ Fink, J., & Cranor, J. (2016, December 15). Episode 100 – Toast [Audio blog post]. Retrieved from http://nightvale.libsyn.com/100-toast

² Nicholson, W. (1989). Shadowlands. New York: Samuel French.