Sometimes called "A Fourth Orientation", asexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by a persistent lack of sexual attraction toward any gender. This book explores love, sex, and life, from the asexual point of view. This book is for anyone, regardless of orientation. Whether you're asexual, think you might be, know someone who is, or just want to learn more about what asexuality is (and isn't), there's something inside for you. This is one of the first books exclusively dedicated to the subject of asexuality as a sexual orientation. Written by an asexual, it discusses the topic from the inside.
I am asexual.
I don’t feel sexually attracted to anyone.
Not men. Not women.
I’m not gay.
I’m not straight.
I’m not bi.
Asexuality is real.
It’s not fake.
It’s not a hormone problem.
It’s not a way of running from a bad relationship.
It’s not a physical condition.
It’s not an attention grab.
It’s not an inability to have sex.
It’s not an inability to love.
It’s not some way to be “special”.
I don’t care if you have sex.
I don’t care if you don’t.
I don’t want to shame you.
I don’t want to convert you.
I don’t want to recruit you.
I was probably in high school when I first realized that I was different.
It was a sunny day in the springtime. We were just coming out of the last chills of winter, but we hadn’t yet started into the oppressive heat of the Nevada summer. On a day like this, many of the girls in the school would decide to begin working on their tans on the lawn in front of the school.
On this particular day, I was with a friend who decided he wanted to “check the weather” on the way to our typical lunch gathering point outside our next class. “Checking the weather” meant taking a path across the front lawn, even though that route was probably three times as long as the most direct path.
As we passed a concrete sculpture in the middle of the lawn, one of the girls lying on it called out a “hello” to me. She was in one of my classes, but I barely knew her. I nodded politely and kept walking. When we entered the hall on the far side of the lawn, my friend stopped me.
“Oh, wow, the weather was so hot today! You
“Yeah, she’s in my PE class.”
“She’s so hot! Why didn’t you stop and talk more?”
“What about? Badminton?”
“Does it matter?
At that moment, the whole situation seemed odd to me. I knew that the purpose of the walk was to ogle the sunbathing girls, but it wasn’t until right then that I realized that I had no interest in actually ogling the sunbathing girls. Moments earlier, I had looked right at a hot, well-endowed blonde, in a tight white shirt and black shorts that ended at mid-thigh, and didn’t really pay any attention to her. That is not the reaction of a typical 15 year old boy.
I didn’t think much of it at the time. It didn’t launch me into an identity crisis. It didn’t leave me wondering if I was actually gay. However, it did make me aware that sex really was a thing and that other people were more interested in it than I was. I had always been on the outside of all of the locker room talk and rumors about who was doing what with whom. The other boys would talk about their dreams of making it with so and so, but I never felt the same. This event made me look those conversations in a different light.
The closest I came to having a girlfriend in high school was the geeky redheaded girl in my math class. She was smart, liked my writing, had a subversive sense of humor, and wanted to save the world when she grew up. I never bothered asking her out, because I could never think of anything we’d do together if she said yes. I was satisfied just sitting next to her for an hour a day and occasionally talking about homework. I never secretly fantasized about her, I never pictured her naked, I never even thought about kissing her. When I did think about what she’d be like in bed, I always imagined her in comfy flannel pajamas, sleeping soundly.
It wasn’t until after college that I got a girlfriend. Everyone else thought she was a knockout stunner, but the strongest word I could use to describe her looks was “cute”. She hated that. She’d get upset that I didn’t call her “hot”, but I couldn’t call her “hot”, because I didn’t feel that she was. She’d send me half-naked pictures or wear skimpy clothing in an effort to get me going, but nothing ever worked.
It took great effort on her part to convince me to do pretty much anything sexual with her. It wasn’t resistance or fear, I just wasn’t all that interested in taking part. And when I finally did get to rounding the bases, I had no idea what I was doing. For much of the physical side of our relationship, I felt entirely out of place, like I’d shown up at a 5-star restaurant wearing a t-shirt and sandals. Curiosity drove me more than any particular urges. I wasn’t particularly enthralled by seeing her naughty bits. Touching her breasts was about as exciting as touching her shoulder. I distinctly remember feeling bored in the middle of sex once. That is not the reaction of a typical 22 year old man.
