An Ace and His Gay Friends

photo by C. Kellam Scott

I'm not the kind of person who has ever made it a point to know anybody. What I mean by that, is that I don't chose my friends. I don't look in one age group, social class or subculture's ranks and I don't like to force friendship. I tend to rely on neighborly good behavior, lending a hand or a hearty smile. I find life is more interesting when your friends don't share any of your interests, they're just good people who enjoy sharing a sense of human camaraderie. This outlook has given me friends, both fleeting and long lasting, of all types. It has made it essential that I keep an open mind about everyone. When I was in some of my darkest places in the closet, my outlook saved me. In my confusion I always had examples of people who had been through hell to find out who they were at heart. But they had come out happy and free on the other side. My platonic relationships with gay, bi and trans men and women gave me reason to hold out hope for the future. That I would figure it all out one day and that it just might be ok.

This past December was for me, the end of a very long road. I had been questioning a difference I had noticed in myself since childhood. In December I accepted that part of me as essential to who I am. I have never felt relief such as I did that day and that week and that month. The weight I had always assumed would be present, that constant aching fear that everyone else knew something I didn't, melted away. I was asexual and happy for the first time and on the new year, totally by accident of course. After a week or so, when I'd gathered my thoughts, I told my family. My folks and my brother, they probably didn't even know what to think, they just accepted it. The person I really wanted to tell was my maternal grandfather, my Granddad. Unfortunately, he succumbed to the complications of emphysema and died in those early weeks of January. I was devastated, he was my tribal elder, more than just my mother's father. He was a self taught intellectual who had lived an amazing life.



When his wife, my Grandmother, died in the 1990's from cancer, she told him what he'd always needed to hear. That it was ok that he was gay, and he should find a man to share his life with. And he did, after a period of grieving the woman he had raised three kids with and built a life with he began to date. Eventually he met a man around the same age as my mom. A tall and sweet tempered Midwesterner. They moved in together and Steve (not his real name) became part of the family. In my early twenties, when I hadn't been on a date in over three years and was at my most at ease with myself, I went for a visit for a week. They lived in Florida, I live in Boston, who wouldn't want to go?



Getting to know both of them was great, I got to know my Granddad as an adult and he had begun to treat me as an equal not a child. That was an important milestone for me. Steve had come out in his forties and my Granddad was in his seventies. That was another important thing for me that really sunk in on that trip. They talked about what it was like, trying to hide your desires from yourself. Trying to live in a world not of your own choosing. And yet they couldn't say why they had tried so hard to fight it. I saw and heard and also understood deeply, how happy they both were. I envied what they had in that moment, but it was a serious reason to hold out hope.



I've always had friends in the gay community, as I think I've already overstated. But in the last years of my final closeted relationship with a woman, I actually was surrounded by the gay community. We lived in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood to the south west of Boston. JP has a diverse population, relatively free of the student part of Boston life. The sidewalks are choked with strollers, dogs and artists. Oh and lots of lesbians, JP is owned by women in some ways. Our roommate was a fixture in the JP scene, she had been my ex's friend since kindergarten. I loved having tons of female company again, it could be hard in my straight guise, to maintain platonic friendships with women, close ones any way. And in JP I was often the only male in the room. I've always felt at least as feminine as I do masculine and there were times in JP when I could forget I was a man. I always think that a good friendship gets you to do things you never would have on your own, and to enjoy those new experiences. I'm not a dancer or a club goer, but I have danced in gay bars to the top 40 at least once or twice in my life. I may never go back, but that’s mostly because I avoid dance floors altogether (I've only danced to the top 40 in bars maybe 10 times in my life, definitely less than 20).



When my relationship with my ex fell apart because of my closeted asexuality, one of the friends who stuck with me was my ex-band mate/drummer. A big hearty kid of a man, oh lets call him Walt, he liked to drink and bitch. Even after the band broke up he kept coming around, he's one of those friends that its easy to underappreciated. He's so mouthy and lippy that I sometimes forget how thoughtful he is. He was the gay man in my own age range that I knew the best. I think he came out in his teens or early twenties so by the time I met him he was fully at ease with himself. At least in that respect. Its been important for me to have friends like him, that are comfortable with their difference. That's what I mean when I say that my friends gave me hope.



Just recently I've been in contact with Steve, my Granddad's partner. I had sent him an email thanking him for an act of kindness he had done for me during my Granddad's last moments. In the note he sent back, in its warmth and openness, I felt pulled to tell him about my recent personal revelations and the role he had played in them. He wrote back with gladness that he could play such a role in my life. He told me that my Granddad would have loved to discuss asexuality with me, and if he didn't already know about it, he would have loved to discover it as well. I've gotten to know Steve much better since my Granddad's passing. It's given me something to be thankful for, which is what my Granddad would have wanted. My family believes in celebrating life.



Back in 1999 I was 20 years old and I had just moved to Boston MA, I hadn't gone to college so I was a bit slow to leave the nest. I had decided to live the way I was happiest but I still held out hope that I might be straight. I wasn't going to pursue any women, because I wasn't interested. But I wouldn't reject offers. Luckily, I'm generally blind to flirting and I tend to mistake it for friendliness. I'm a solitary person, not a loner, I enjoy socializing and I value my friendships very highly. But I need allot of personal time. When I wasn't engaged in my hobbies and pursuits I sought out entertainment and information like anyone. I didn't have a computer because at the time, you still didn't need one, my friends and I made fun of people with cell phones. I had three TV's of varying quality that I'd trash picked from the neighborhood and of course my radio. One of my favorite programs was a show called One in Ten, a sometimes fun and sometimes serious discussion of the goings on of the gay community. I also started reading the local LGBT rag Bay Windows. Growing up in the 1990's was great, I felt like I was witnessing a historic moment in American history, real equality for all sexualities. Not just the heterosexuals alone. There are people of my generation that have been out since their early teens, and they were raised in loving supportive families. That's a beautiful thing to get to see.



One of my best moments with my ex was one lucky day when we were in Provincetown, MA. We just needed to get out of Boston and we loved going to the Cape with our two dogs. As we strolled around P-town with our ladies yanking us down the winding brick sidewalks we noticed an air of celebration. The closer we got to the waterfront the thicker the throng became. There were families celebrating in the streets, news cameras and beaming couples spilling out of churches. It was the day that equal marriage had become law in Massachusetts and we were lucky enough to witness it firsthand.



In getting to learn so much about such a huge segment of society that has never had such a clear voice before has been a privilege. It has broken my heart to hear about the hate and oppression directed at the LGBT community and a learning experience to see how they've dealt with it and advanced their cause in the process. I never knew what people would think if they knew how I felt about sex and my only reference point was the LGBT community. My paternal grandfather would have disowned me for being gay. When I found out that there are other asexuals it finally didn't matter what he might think if he found out. He's the one person I don't feel like telling at all. I'd just rather not but if he finds out and wastes the last years of his life hating me, so be it. I'll still love him anyway.



But my point is that the example of the LGBT community and my friends who are a part of it have I think shown me a way towards being happy with who I am. But also being able, and being excited to talk about it. When I first found apositive.org and asexuality.org I began posting non-stop. When someone else posted that Freedom Requires Wings was looking for new contributors I decided I had better just take the opportunity. I was tentatively excited when my application was accepted.



The thing I've learned the most from watching the LGBT rights movement is that the best thing to do is to talk about it. I was watching some youtube a few weeks back and finally saw David Jay of Aven, interviewed on the View however many years ago. One of the hosts asked "Well, if you're not having sex, then what is there to talk about?" That question pissed me off so much I can hardly recall Jay's response. The reason I feel asexuality needs to be talked about is so it can be heard.



Heterosexual culture talks about sex non-stop, they play songs about it on the radio and plaster it on every available surface. That's the conversation. The LGBT community figured out how to organize. Because of many reasons their struggle is a civil rights struggle and that has been a powerful catalyst toward greater understanding in the larger conversation. In many parts of the world now that expanded conversation has become the status quo. In some places there is still spewed vitriol and confusion, but the conversation has been started and in human society only massive tragedy can end such changes. I think the human experience has gotten to big for that to happen and I'm hoping that life will just keep going on and getting better.



The asexual community, I think, finds itself at another interesting and amazing moment in history. We have coalesced for the first time and so have the benefit of framing our entry into the conversation. I can understand the reticence of some people but I must encourage boldness. I have to if just to bolster myself. Though I've written so many words on the subject of asexuality here on the internet, I still rarely use the word in normal conversation. Talking with my close friends and family is about it, I have to admit. But small steps are where you learn to walk and stumble. You fall for the first time and find out what it's like to get a bruise. But before you can say "damn", you're running and falling again and getting back up for more! I'm like a perpetual motion machine, once I'm off down a path I keep going until that path ends, if it is something that is more infinite than me and my finite life, then I'm along for the ride for as far as life will take me. I was worried when I signed up for this blog that I wouldn't be able to keep writing, even on asexuality, that my drive would begin to dissipate. If anything this experience has strengthened my resolve.