A Boy That Never Wanted To Be A Man
April 16, 2017.
It’s been six years since I knew Josh. Friend. Brother. Disillusioned spoken word poet. Some nights, I imagine him as a white maple leaf floating on an ocean of blood, booze, and the visceral sound of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of The Moon album. Some other nights, I imagine him sitting in a bar at the heart of Ontario, arguing in French and English about simulated reality as implied by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. But most nights, I imagine him at the corner of that same bar drinking, smoking, and wondering how long he has to keep fighting the torment pervading his marrow.
Josh and I got connected in 2011 through AVEN ‒– the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network. AVEN was founded in 2001 by David Jay as a platform for creating public acceptance and awareness around asexuality, and it has since gone on to become the biggest online community of asexuals. On AVEN asexuality is regarded as a sexual orientation no different to heterosexuality and homosexuality, but a lot of people still compare asexuality to sexual disorders like HSDD, and you would even find allosexuals who believe it’s a shame-induced denial of sexuality.
Josh was a sex-repulsed heteroromantic, while I considered myself a sex-averse aromantic. Although he always called me a closet antisexual, my views on sex were more personal than political. There were many anti-sexuals on AVEN at the time, and most of them were either Eastern European or female. Josh was Canadian and I was in Nigeria, but we were able to develop a bond beyond distance.
According to a study by Anthony F. Bogaert, a prominent asexuality researcher, 0.99% of the world’s current population are asexuals. “That means we’re not worthy of being called a minority.” Josh had argued when the figure was even at 1%. “It’s a bit of a joke isn’t it? That’s why nobody in the LGBTQ community gives a shit about us. In their minds they all think asexuality is some kind of watered-down deviation from heterosexuality. To them we’re the stray sex. The weird deviants too pusillanimous to be gay, but too fucked up to be straight. And maybe they’re right.”
Stray sex ‒– that was a portmanteau word Josh had coined from straight and gay, and he used it more often than the much popular “ace”. He felt the slang-term “ace” made being an asexual feel like a juvenile sociocultural fad, which hampers its acceptance as a rare state of being. A sexless state of being that deserves to be understood in its authenticity. “We’re not trying to stand out of the crowd,” he would say, “we’re trying to blend in with the crowd without being treated as the odd ones out.”
I and Josh had our ideological differences, especially when it came to feminism and women. I wouldn’t say he hated women, as he was rather indifferent to their existence and relevance. That was something I couldn’t relate with, however, because while I would admit that I’m not sexually attracted to women, there’s this emotional pull, like dark clouds to rain, that means I often end up empathizing with the travails of femininity and all it embodies.
Josh was also a member of many anti-gynocentric networks in the manosphere, like the Men Going Their Own Way movement. He wanted me to join the MGTOW, and although it was largely a network of celibate heterosexual males, I ultimately didn’t join them because it’s ridiculous to think men can do without women ‒– and this goes beyond sex and sexuality. When I think of gender I think of it as left and right, and how we need both to achieve a balance between the parallel symmetry of up and down.
Sometimes, when I ask Josh if he ever saw himself having sex with a woman, he would reply with an “LOL” before asking if I ever saw myself having sex with a cat. When I tell him women aren’t cats, he would reply by asking, “Then why the hell do they have pussies?” I used to find his sexist jokes witty and funny at first, but as time went on, I found them to be a smokescreen for something deeper ‒– something he didn’t yet feel comfortable telling me.
Eventually, I got to know the truth through a mutual friend of ours, Bren, a Swedish asexual who doubled as my antagonist on the Thinking Asexual Blog. Bren told me Josh had been sexually abused by his aunt after his parents died in a car accident, and the trauma had been the trigger for his sexual apathy and repulsion. I asked her if he had gotten any kind of counseling or treatment as he often struggled with spells of depression; she said she had no idea, but felt he most probably didn’t because of how suicidal he gets sometimes.
Three days ago, I got a series of ping messages from Josh, and by the time I got to the end of it, I realised it was in fact a suicide note. He was going to kill himself, and he was going to do so accepting that some fights only feed off the vulnerability that lurks within everyone us. His last words to me read, “Life is hell, man, fucking hell. But maybe I’ll find some heaven tonight.” Along with the message was a ton of doc files containing poems and essays he wanted me to help him edit and publish.
Josh would have been twenty-eight next month, and like me, he was a boy that never wanted to be a man. Life stole our childhood, and made growing up a burden that was harder than an erect phallus. Josh couldn’t endure that burden anymore, and though I will miss him, I can’t begrudge the fact he did something I have never had the courage to see through.
