Interesting (it a bit smarmy) piece on the strange twilight world of the asexual amid all this week’s stories about World Pride–which is what they’re calling it in Canada this year and may be calling it everywhere else too, for all I know or care.

I’ve been “asexual” for quite some time now, not because it’s my natural orientation but through a series of circumstances that have made it the easiest option for a variety of reasons. Initially, it was about the depression thing combined with the fact that I’d more or less just been dumped…and as a result wasn’t exactly overflowing with self esteem at the time. In my younger days, I would probably have reacted to this by becoming more sex-obsessed, but the middle-aged version of me recognized his limitations. And frankly, I just wasn’t that interested at the time. I most certainly didn’t want another relationship, and I’d sort of gotten out of the habit of casual sex too.

I’m pretty much past all that now and might be inclined toward debauchery if it weren’t so much fucking work–or of it weren’t so much work fucking. (Sorry, it was too obvious not to go there.) Given my age and size, I’m not an unattractive man, really, but I’m not the sort who turns a lot of heads when he walks into a room either. Sad as it may seem, pudgy librarians approaching fifty are just not a really hot commodity around here. Fifteen years ago, I may have a certain sexual presence that attracted attention, but nine years of marriage and even more years of reduced testosterone production have tempered that considerably. They’ve also made me much more nervous about STDs and allowing strange men into my house.

So while I probably could get laid, it would involve a great deal of effort than it used to. And that’s more effort, it turns out, than I seem to want to put into the process. I’m still not interested in a relationship; my identity does not depend on that. I was single most of my adult life, so I know how.  And hookups just sort of work differently now than they did before the turn of the century (I was dying for an excuse to say “before the turn of the century”). I don’t want to cruise using an app. I’m pretty tech-savvy–I work in the IT department ferchrissakes–but that’s just not how I do it.

Then there’s that whole issue of the fact that someone who is interested in me is very often someone in whom I have no interest at all. It’s much harder to feign interest at my age too…both from a physical perspective and from the “I don’t need to be bothered with this bullshit” perspective.

So I call my current condition “situational asexuality” mainly because it sounds better than “celibate due to lack of initiative”, which is how I described it last week.

If it changes soon, I’ll let you know. Maybe with pictures.

Yer Humble Host in 1966:

And in 1968:

The Summer of Love had a profound effect on many of us…

According to the screening I went through at the doctor’s yesterday, I’m precisely 60% less depressed than I was six months ago.

Despite the fact that the test struck me as about as valid as one published in Family Circle about 1985, I will say for the record that I am indeed in a lot better shape than I was last fall. I no longer burst into tears at oddly inappropriate moments, I spend a lot less time just staring at the TV looking for motivation to do something, and I seldom feel the urge to break things unless I’m driving behind some dumb ass on I-40. I think I’ve generally become a much more tolerable person all the way around–more positive and less caustic (unless..ahem…it’s really justified)–and am probably much more pleasant to be around.

I’ve done a good job of starting to concentrate on my future rather than my past, which has always been a problem for me, and I’m much more adventurous and experimental than I’ve been in a long time…food and music being good examples.

I still can hold a good grudge (hell, the Coors boycott probably ended fifteen or twenty years ago and I still won’t touch the stuff) but at least I develop them less frequently now. And at least I usually recognize which ones are silly and irrational now, even if I won’t always let them go.

My therapist/counsellor/whatever seems happy with my progress. Her only sticking point is that she really wants me to move toward romantic involvement again. And I just don’t want to. Hear me out; I have rational reasons.

I spent more than half my adult life as a solo act and I ultimately grew quite happy with that state of affairs. No one was more surprised than I was when I suddenly and seriously coupled thirteen years ago. It was uncharted territory for me; I was actually a rather independent sort and was quite proud of that fact. And all that changed really fast. In retrospect, I’m shocked at how much it changed and how quickly I was willing to give up a lot of that independence and how much of my individuality flew out the window in the process. When I look back now, it seems to me that I just got really lazy. being independent and making decisions on your own takes work and on some level I used my relationship as an excuse to take a long vacation from that work. I spent a lot of time really resenting the fact that just as I had to start taking responsibility for my own life again, I also had to assume responsibility for my parents’ lives. And it’s taken some time to get back into the swing if it.

Ultimately, I think I like myself better as a single person. I suspect most of my friends do too. This is not a reflection on anyone else but just a recognition of my own weaknesses. Or strengths. Or both. Coupling involves–by definition–losing some of one’s individuality. There’s no way to avoid it; some decisions have to be made based on the needs of unit rather than of either individual. When one or more partners are no longer willing to do that, the relationship ends. Since I’m just rediscovering who I am, I’m not really ready to give up any of that control right now. Having someone to curl up with every night is not worth giving up things I really love like traveling alone and never fucking having to celebrate Christmas again. The positives do not currently outweigh the negatives for me.

That may change. Or it may not. Frankly, there’s not a huge contingent of people around these parts who fetishize chubby middle-aged librarians so there’s no major pressure to commit right now anyway.

I’ve been depressed for years; all the shit over the past few years in my life did not “cause” it. My mom was profoundly depressed for most of her life so I was pretty much at risk right from the womb. Stupid heredity. Yes, having my whole world implode on me in a matter of months did bring a lot of it to the forefront, but that eventually made me do something about it too. Like many other things in my life that have sucked, this was just one more part of the equation that adds up to me. And I still kind of like myself.

Now, back to planning my big birthday trip for August and my two upcoming long weekend. If you’re nice, I’ll let you come along–but only virtually.

And no more navel-gazing for a while, I promise…

i’ve probably had these clippers close to fifteen years. I bought them before I got married–at the giant Target store in Daly City, if I recall correctly. They replaced the set I’d had for two or three years before that. This was obviously the better purchase. They’re very heavy and very blue. They’ve been everywhere with me, and I probably won’t be able to buy anything nearly as good now. That’s sad.

Last month marked exactly twenty years since I last had my hair cut professionally. I’ve saved lots of money and have had to deal with no annoying hairstylists since then. This set of clippers was responsible for much of that.

I will miss them.

The quest for a replacement begins this afternoon.

This is what is so heartbreaking about Alzheimer’s. I almost lost it for a minute tonight when I saw this reminder that my mom–a very intelligent woman who worked in computer security for the IRS in the 1980s–declined to the point where she had to write notes so she could remember that this object was a stapler. And this was three years ago when she was still living at home and hiding the symptoms more or less successfully. Suffice to say things are much worse now.

You don’t realize quite how nasty this disease is until someone close to you has it.