*Afraid to ask

Dear sir:

At last! For some time I have been wondering why the asexual hadn't reared hi ugly, impotent head—if for no other reason than to serve as an arbiter between his brethren in flesh, if not spirit, the homos and heteros.

I suspect it's because the average asexual doesn't realize he's an asexual. I mean it's damn hard to come to grips with a problem—quote unquote—that doesn't merit media attention, like an hour special in a television prime time slot. Or clinical coverage in a Dr. Reuben "Everything You Always Wanted to Know…" etc., etc., sex book.

So the asexual's whole raison d'etre becomes, as Harold Nederland suggests (Voice, February 25), to become something—homo or hetero—one or the other—but something. Few, I would imagine, ever really realize the true limbo of their lives.

Now I don't know if I'm an asexual or not, but I know that when many of my friends are claiming to be staving off their primitive, lustful desires, I'm spending most of my time trying to reassure myself that I have them. I suspect I'm in pretty good company, too. I mean, how many of us are there out there who could care less about being dated up on a Saturday night? Or picking up a broad on Broadway? Of Flirting—or being flirted at—in the office? The thought of these things turns me off (if I ever was on, that is), though I'm not unopen to suggestions.

If I'm an asexual today, I think part of it was just having to overcome all that formality before the Moment of Truth—and finally getting to it and discovering it really wasn't worth the trip.

I don't think asexuals are incapable of having or appreciating sex—if they knew what it was. But I think that it's nigh impossible these days to know. Before you even bite into your first forbidden apple there's that sex movie to remind you of your inferior labial technique. Or that Tanfastic poster with the bronze-skinned girl to compete with your vision of the object of your immediate affections.

Sex, in other words, has gotten to be a big drag. Because you always know about somebody—or something, like a movie—that can do it better. For the asexual it's just easier to let the Supremacists live life for him, and go on watching the Big Picture on the wall.

— Name Withheld

Manhattan