Asexual or Non-Committal to Losers?

I have been labelled a perfectionist. Friends assume that I set my standards too high to allow any man to be too intimate with me. When I was younger, there was the thrill of doing something that was absolutely forbidden by my parents. Perhaps I was bored, curious or I was about to do something I thought could not be normally achieved by my peers. After all, I was fond of collecting trophies and medals in anything from reciting a poem, scoring the highest marks in a Math test or running a race; an obsession I inherited from my mother. I spent most of my childhood resenting her when most of my accomplishments were subconsciously meant to please her. Nothing, it seemed, was ever enough for her and so my siblings and I struggled to be what she could never be or have. I do not hate my mother because when I think as an adult, she simply wanted the best or bring the best out of her offspring. Now, as I think as an adult, how many mothers these days are like her because many children these days are misguided lambs lacking focus with a distorted sense of priorities.

Then, I wonder about my sexual orientation. I had my momentous fascination with the opposite gender as I was growing up to my mother’s grievance especially when I spent most of my youth away from her. Should I have been fortunate? Perhaps her presence might just have driven me to some extreme behavior just to annoy her. Nevertheless, my youth was not without its difficulties. I never had sex education in secondary school just before I found myself confronted with blossoming males of every nationality. I might have called it a buffet of a magnanimous order and I was curious but afraid… I did not want to disappoint my parents. How could I? My father was the personification of silent patience and understanding while my mother’s only fault was to drive me to be accomplished and remain a good girl unlike most Filipino girls, she thought. I guess, more than anything in the world, she did not want me to become a penniless teenaged unwed mother who did not complete her tertiary education. No mother would want that for her daughter. Naturally, I did not understand that at the time. Still, I was cautious of all those tempting beautiful bodies. There was no harm indulging in viewing pleasures from a distance. My eyes had to be made better use of besides their basic visual function.

I lost my one love in the process. The distance between us made it easier as well. Both of us had parents, families, and obligations. I had to remember Propriety and “first things first”. My parents could not set a better example. How could I forget that? Then, I wonder…was that the best or worst of the fusion of Singaporean and Filipino values? My mother was a rare Filipina; not one to compromise and commanding of her life. She was indifferent to people’s perception of her. My father was British and worse…Chinese. We were just another family in old-fashioned and predictable Singapore. I would never truly appreciate our togetherness until years later in Manila infested by rampant corruption, immorality, and illegitimacy. It is not my intention to put emotion into my opinions of Manila because they are facts that I live with. It is also a fact that I live in a primarily Christian society. I can now laugh at myself as a paradox living in another paradox. My seemingly libertine idiosyncrasies hardly confess to a celibacy maintained for as long as I can remember at this point perhaps borne out of my disgust for what my eyes have seen in liberal males. I do not think their behavior has anything to do with modernity but the vast opportunities that have been created from population explosion and exposure.

It is said that asexuality is based on purely emotionally-based relationships. I may be the heteroromantic with just a romantic attraction for the opposite sex but certainly not lacking in sexual desires. I just believe, more than ever, that sexual activities are best conducted in their proper place and time. Then, it will be no one else’s business how or what I do with or to my partner. Perhaps, I may be called the particular intellectual sexual strategist (P.I.S.S.). This would frustrate my male friends both gay and straight because of the implication of deprivation there. Am I starving? Consider it a prolonged fasting that when broken, would surely reap the rewards beyond my imagination. This is perhaps why I cannot comprehend the autoerotic woman who prefers to satisfy her desires alone. However, she does exist. I exist. Society does not understand. Instead, it assumes we must be bordering on lunacy, ascetic or asexual. Some people assume that I cannot be happy the way I am so I do not have many friends since they have failed to impose their lifestyles on me.