Attraction

This is a fairly non-religious post, but I don't think this gets discussed enough.

We're wired for attraction. This seems to be true for all of us, although I've heard of people who claim to feel no attraction for other people. I think I've maybe met an asexual person or two, but not entirely sure. I know I've met some repressed people (takes one to know one!), which is not exactly the same thing.

Anyway. So we're wired for attraction. Sexual attraction, yes, but emotional attraction, too. Personally, I don't like it. I sort of wish I was one of those asexual people, who just has friends and the feelings never get more complicated than that. I wish that sex was something that people just sort of decided to have when they were ready to procreate and I wish it didn't feel so good so that we want it even when we weren't ready to procreate.

But attraction seems to be about more than procreation. People who can't procreate, whether as a result of genetics, medical history, surgical history, or being attracted to the "wrong" gender, still experience attraction.

Shortly after I came to terms with my sexuality, I had a very distinct "aha!" moment. It happened as I was walking to the HEB (which is a Texas grocery story chain, for those reading outside of Texas), and suddenly a mystery that I'd pondered all my life became clear. I understood why there was a "battle of the sexes" and why it was such a difficult transaction when women started moving into the workplace and not only as secretaries and such. It was sexual attraction. All my life, I'd always thought, "what's the big deal, why can't men just get along with women, why all this friction between the sexes?" I'd grown up in the '70s of "women's lib" and all of it just made sense to me. It never seemed shocking to me that women would want to aspire to the same positions as men---and be compensated in the same way.

At the same time, all my life, I'd always gotten along better with women, had always had better relationships with women supervisors and bosses (with a couple of notable exceptions). Almost all my best friends in school were girls and while I definitely wanted to be the boyfriend of a particular girl in high school, I realized it was more out of a desire to be "normal" than out of, well, desire. Grant you, I still hadn't realized, consciously, that I really was watching boys more than girls, so the desire to be normal wasn't about consciously avoiding being gay (although I'd been called gay from junior high on---funny how the straight cowboys and jocks I went to school with knew who I was before I did!), but I just wanted a girlfriend and to date like you're supposed to in high school. I mean, I did learn something from years of reading Archie Comics!

But despite some clear opportunities, I never so much as kissed a girl in high school. I didn't want to. I just wanted a girlfriend. (Okay, here's the religious aspect of this: I assumed I was not kissing girls---or picturing them naked, or daydreaming about getting them naked or whatever it is that teenage boys supposedly do---because of my superior morality. I assumed the other boys were simply not exercising will power or proper prayer or whatever I imagined I was doing to not notice girls breasts.)

But there, on my walk to HEB, I suddenly understood what it was I felt around women that made it so easy for me to get along with them. No sexual tension! I was completely at ease with women because I wasn't interested in their breasts or much of anything else about their naked bodies. On the other hand, I had very few male friends because---guess what---I was experiencing sexual tension! I may not have been picturing them naked, but quite often, I was studying their faces in ways I didn't with women. And, okay, full disclosure, I realized after the fact that while I never tried to look down a girl's shirt, I was always curious about the presence and amount of chest hair on a man. There were reasons I loved The Six Million Dollar Man that went beyond the action/adventure that we boys discussed on the playground.

All of this was unconscious. Until I came out, that is. Now that I was finally acknowledging my attractions, I finally understood what the tension was between something like 90% of the men and women of the world. I also understood why there are "girls' nights out" and men's poker nights. Just as we're wired for attraction, we're also wired to be with people for whom we do not feel attraction.

I don't know if any of this is making sense or not. One thing about blogging is that it feels very off-the-cuff and I certainly couldn't blog everyday if I did a rough draft, edits, rewrites . . . so these entries are rather rough and maybe too stream of consciousness.

Here's my point: I'm not attracted to women. There are studies that show that this is even more than a visual thing. Studies show that straight women and gay men respond to men's sweat in similar ways. Likewise, lesbians and straight men respond to women's sweat in similar ways. I've always built strong emotional ties to women, but never have I been drawn to kiss them.

I'm drawn to kissing men.

It seems to be a part of who I am, something that I can look back on in my life and see places where I've always felt this way. An early memory: Watching some dance number on Lawrence Welk and being fascinated by the male dancers tight, black trousers. I just had no idea what that was about, but it was there as a preschooler. I once had a straight male friend who, after I told him that story, thought for moment and said, "I think I must have been heterosexual as a preschooler, too. I remember thinking one girl in particular was just fascinating to look at, even if I couldn't put my finger on why." (I've always felt blessed by that man---the first straight man I'd met to take seriously the question "when did you realize you were heterosexual?")

So if I (and most GLBT folk, I suspect) can look backward on their lives and find these points of attraction even before they knew what attraction was, before the hormonally crazed years of adolescence, doesn't that suggest that attraction is innate? And doesn't it suggest that you just can't "choose" to be otherwise?

We can choose to be sexually active or celibate. This is true, and honestly, I would that more people chose to be celibate, or at least monogamous. With the exception of some notable lapses in judgment or restraint, I do choose celibacy. (All bets are off as soon as Harrison Ford comes out of the closet, though.) I'd like the next man with whom I have sex to be the last man with whom I have sex---I also hope to have recurring sex with him for a very long time. This may or may not happen. I make no predictions for the future as the past has proven that life has some disappointing episodes.

What I and many other gay Christian GLBT folk are asking is this: If we didn't choose this state, why does the church give us only one choice: celibacy? I could probably have sex with a woman, just as most men could probably have sex with another man (as happens in prisons), but that doesn't mean I would suddenly be attracted to the woman, any more than prison rape suggests attraction between the men involved. The church asking a gay man to marry a woman is unfair to everyone because the woman is likely to feel unattractive---which she will be to the man---and the man will likely not give her the attention she should have in a marriage relationship. I mean, I know a marriage is hardly all about sex, but I think most people would say it's a part of it, and doesn't everyone want to feel desired by their mate? I just don't believe God, who wired us for attraction, would then command us to act counter to our attraction. (Not that, as they say, attraction requires action, but . . . I won't belabor the point.

Which I've probably already done.

Something I wrote above---about feeling morally superior to all those boys whe were trying to look down girl's blouses---reminds (as so often happens) of a saying from the Desert Mothers (in this case):

"The holy Syncletica said, 'I think that for those living in community obedience is a greater virtue than chastity, however perfect. Chastity carries within it the danger of pride, but obedience has within it the promis of humility.'"

I know what Amma Syncletica is talking about here. Boy was I proud of not being attracted to the girls!

Of course, that saying opens a can of worms about "obedience," doesn't it? Well, perhaps another time. I've typed in my rambly way enough for this entry . . .