The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
6 — Wednesday, January 19, 2022
S T A T E M E N T
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The Sex Lives Of College Girls And Also Dani
DANI CANAN
Statement Correspondent
So
lately
I’ve
been
thinking about
sex; or rather,
thinking about
why I don’t
think
about
sex. I started
watching
“Criminal
Minds”
for
the
plot,
but stayed through
all
15
seasons
for
actor
Matthew
Gray
Gubler.
By all accounts, he
is
my
celebrity crush and
current
phone
lockscreen,
yet I don’t
think he’s “sexy.” In
fact,
I’ve
never thought about
anyone as
being “sexy.”
It wasn’t
until recently that I
gave much
thought about the
distinction between being “very
attractive” and “sexy.” Perhaps that
is just how I am, frank and slightly
unbothered. Over the past year it has
become one of my personal projects,
trying to put a finger on why my
experiences with sexuality have been
so different from many girls my age.
Because it has come to my attention
that there could be an actual,
biological reason.
This all started in my junior year of
high school during a shift at Hungry
Howies Pizza. My co-worker Abby,
older by just a few years, was standing
on the pizza line with me, prompting
the first conversation about sexual
orientation that I ever had.
“Dani, who are you attracted to?”
The orders were slow, so conversation
was plenty.
“Like, at work?” I began to
get
anxious
about
potential
embarrassment. The answer was
definitely ‘nobody.’
“No, I mean girls or boys,” Abby
said, half chuckling as she leaned over
to grab some pepperoni. “You don’t
have to answer if you don’t want, but
I decided to start asking people ever
since I found out Nick was gay. Like,
if he didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t have
known.”
Nick delivered the pizzas. I also
didn’t know he was gay.
It wasn’t the first time I pondered
this question and, eyebrows furrowed,
I always gave it serious consideration.
I thought about women. I thought
about Zendaya. I thought about men. I
thought about Matthew Gray Gubler.
“I’m pretty sure I just like guys,
but I haven’t ever kissed anyone, and
how do you really know until you’re
in that situation?” I felt happy with
that answer, but then the conversation
ended with something I will never
forget: “You know Dani, I wouldn’t be
surprised if you were asexual.”
To this day I still have no idea
what prompted her to say that, but I
can’t get it out of my head. What I do
understand now is that people tend to
know before they know.
Biology wise, prokaryotic and
eukaryotic organisms, the single
celled and multicelled, have been
reproducing asexually since before I
was born, which is an understatement.
Mitosis is likely the most basic form of
asexual replicating. A cell makes copy
after copy after copy after copy after
copy of the personal information in
the nucleus, and it then pinches apart
in order to clone itself. Look, I even
made this educational diagram to
demonstrate:
Cells don’t need to worry about a
sexual orientation before “doing the
deed” because no partner is required.
Also because cells don’t think about
things. This makes sense for cells,
which are constantly trying to make
as many of themselves as possible in
the quickest amount of time while
expending the least amount of energy.
This splitting mechanism is meant for
survival for the species in the case of
prokaryotes like bacteria.
The first time I looked up the
definition of ‘asexual,’ I put my
phone in private browsing mode ––
if that’s any indication of how I felt
about acting on my own reasonable
curiosity. Youtube videos popped
up along with blogs, unofficial
LGBTQIA+ education sites and a
wealth of personal testimonies. I
spent a lot of nights scrolling through
the comments under asexual content,
a space where real people relayed
their experiences in mini slices of
life. It would be 1:13 a.m. for me in my
small town summer, fireflies weaving
in slow motion through the leafy
branches outside my window, and
I’d glow in apprehensive pulses along
with them while reading every new
anecdote –– real people’s real words.
(The word “real” deserves a pause
to grant the full weight that the word
carries with it. Realness is tangibility,
grazing the receptors that allow the
body feeling, leaving a tickling trail
down one’s arm. What you see on
a piece of paper, r-e-a-l, is so much
more than what the occipital lobe
receives. The urgency of the meaning
it contains is the heaviness of the
physicality of any existing person,
place, thing or idea. To be really, really
real is to be pulled out of the brain and
shocked into the middle of a freeway
during a midnight storm, clothes
instantly sopping down to the socks,
horns and engines demonstrating the
doppler effect 100 times over in quick
succession, cars crashing past on polar
opposite paths with enough force to
whip your head in around in perfect
180º motion, momentum spinning the
rest of your body in suit. And anyway,
I think the word itself has been used
so much that people tend to lose the
feeling of what it really means. Hang
on. I might be part of the problem.)
I want to feel real in this way, to feel
real with somebody in this way.
Naturally, reading through the
experiences of others inspired me to
reexamine some of my own. I used to
make up fake crushes in elementary
school, giving me something to giggle
about with my friends at sleepovers. I
never felt like I needed to shave my legs
for any reason, and I wore whatever
the hell I wanted without thinking
about how it would make other people
(boys) see me. I have a tendency to be
initially oblivious to the connotations
of “Netflix and chill,” calling a teacher
a “silver fox,” or saying things like “I
like sucking on nuts” (I was eating a
bag of almonds, ok?). Perhaps most
notably, all through middle and high
school I repeated the same motto:
“I just don’t see the point in dating
anyone. No one actually knows what
love is at our age anyway, and it won’t
likely make it past senior year, so why
even bother?”
The evidence began piling up, and
the slightly bewildering part was how
neatly pieces were fitting together.
Youtube videos and comment
sections also lead me to research the
different types of attraction, which
may seem like an obvious concept,
but you’d be surprised what you can
discover about yourself when these
feelings are all defined and separated
out. I loved reading about types of
attraction in the same way I love
taking Buzzfeed quizzes about which
kind of soup I am, which is to say this
framework is a good facilitator of self
reflection and self understanding. Not
every source has the same categories,
but there are six that show up often:
intellectual
attraction,
emotional
attraction,
aesthetic
attraction,
sensual
attraction,
romantic
attraction,
and
finally,
sexual
attraction. If someone falls on the
spectrum of asexuality, they would
experience sexual attraction least of
all. As far as I can tell, I experience all
of them except for sexual attraction.
* * *
Intellectual attraction is a magnetic
draw toward the mind of someone
else — a desire to hold a microscope
to the way they think by engaging in
discussion. Every person contains
an entire ecosystem of thoughts
that almost no one sees, therefore
appreciating the complexity of each
and every one of a person’s musings
is an imperative. This want goes both
ways, for if there’s an infinity in one
there’s an infinity in the other, and this
endeavor is more important than the
body. Dodge, parry, contemplate. Two
dance together in a fencing match of
cerebral pursuit.
“I love you and your mind.”
To return back to biology for a
moment, I’d like to zoom out from
mitosis and consider more of what
eukaryotic
organisms
can
do.
Through fragmentation, a starfish can
break off one of its legs and eventually
it will develop into a completely new
starfish clone. Worms can do this, too,
with just one segment of their body.
Plants like succulents accomplish
a similar feat through propagation.
‘Fear and Loathing’
in 2022’s America
VALERIJA MALASHEVICH
Statement Columnist
Almost 17 years ago today, the
renowned
journalist
Hunter
S.
Thompson, author of the classic novel
“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” shot
himself in the head in his Colorado
home. Following years of struggle
with crippling health issues and bouts
of depression, Thompson’s outlook
on life dwindled over the years as he
watched the era of counterculture
and revolutionary upheaval fade from
the American horizon, now taken
over by mindless consumerism and
romanticized atavism for the “good
old days.” The passionate idealism
that once dominated the youthful
landscape of the United States — the
pleas to “Make Love Not War” and the
cries for political equality and freedom
— had faded before Thompson’s very
eyes, resulting in a dim reality that he
was grossly critical of.
Despite his dwindling optimism
for a better future, Thompson, in his
attempt to admonish the people that
fed into this disillusioned society,
had
accidentally
spearheaded
a
journalistic
revolution
that
had
the potential to beguile readers
worldwide. His work reads like a
lullaby for proliferant romantics, but
cuts sharp and deep where it needs to.
Through his writing, Thompson
revolutionized the idea of “gonzo
journalism,” a type of nonfiction
narrative that becomes so altered by
the speaker’s subjective interpretation
that it becomes a different beast
entirely. Placing more emphasis on
the narrator rather than the events
at hand, gonzo journalism allowed
Thompson to insert his opinionated
(and sometimes cynical) views on life
into his writing — and fundamentally
altered the structure of cultural
criticism pieces. While there is
much to be said about Thompson
and his profound contributions to
postmodern literature, the bulk of his
eloquent anthropological critique is
featured in his most infamous novel,
“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”
— one that allowed the reader to
peer inside the mind of a pessimistic
idealist and watch his world unravel.
Thompson, you see, started off as
a small-time journalist, publishing
pieces in various magazines and
journals until Sports Illustrated
asked him to cover a motorcycle race
in Las Vegas, Nevada. Doped up on
marijuana, ether, speed and anything
else he carried around in his “briefcase
of narcotics,” Thompson instead
presented an almost 3,000-word long
‘gonzo’ piece that was immediately
rejected by Sports Illustrated.
The Rolling Stone magazine,
however, believed in Thompson’s
limitless potential and sent him
back to Vegas to cover the District
Attorney’s anti-narcotics convention.
The cumulative result of Thompson’s
composition was a belligerently
stimulating
yet
philosophically
ravishing novel titled “Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas,” later made
into a film starring Johnny Depp and
Benicio Del Toro, and becoming a cult
classic among the fan community,
myself included.
I will admit — I had watched
the movie long before I had ever
considered picking up the book,
but the film began to feel like a
drug, drawing me in further and
further until I couldn’t resist reading
Thompson’s writing firsthand. The
narrative, in both formats, is just as
unintelligible and meaningless as one
might predict, but the beauty, for me,
lies in the revelations of Thompson’s
didactic monologues and finally
feeling the irascibility that he felt. Just
like most viewers, I did not exactly
comprehend the plot correctly the
first time around. But, like a good
painting, Thompson’s works must be
studied under a microscope, where
the beauty is not found in the sum of
the parts, but the parts themselves.
The novel is a roman à clef of
Thompson’s
own
adventures,
a
fictional piece that features real events
and real people with fake names.
Narrated in the first person, the reader
closely follows Raoul Duke (Hunter
Thompson’s transplant within the
novel) and his Samoan lawyer, Dr.
Gonzo, as they wreak havoc in Las
Vegas and on the people around them,
all while ingesting almost-lethal levels
of LSD, adrenochrome and other
narcotics. Mentally and physically
strung up by the free-spirited period of
the 60s, Duke hopelessly tries to keep
the era alive with virtually no success.
Toward the end of the novel, Duke
finds himself reflecting on the bygone
era of counterculture, remarking how
foolish those “pathetically eager acid
freaks” were for thinking they could
buy peace and understanding for
three bucks a hit.
To the unlearned bookworm,
“Fear and Loathing” reads like a
usurpation of modern values, a 300-
page long hallucinogenic trip that
promotes nothing but drug abuse and
ceaseless hedonism. But to the trained
eye, Thompson’s novel is a much
more harrowing piece that mourns
as much as it celebrates. It illustrates
a glistening utopia that was once just
out of our reach; the new reality of
our America has faded to some kind
of mangled beast, a distorted present
where no one cares about anything
or anyone — a reality that Thompson
couldn’t live with.
Whenever I pick up “Fear and
Loathing,” I am ultimately entranced
by Thompson’s manipulation of
perception and his immersive reality.
There is an intangible component
of his writing that adapts and molds
to the reader, urging change from
within. Perhaps it lights that spark
in the rebellious part of my soul, one
that (I hope) exists in all of us. As the
recently passed novelist Joan Didion
once wrote, “our favorite people and
our favorite stories become so not by
an inherent virtue, but because they
illustrate something deep in the grain,
something
unadmitted.”
Didion,
much like Thompson, was also
somewhat of a “counter-journalist,”
intent on critiquing the socio-cultural
aspects of current America through
emphasis on racial and sociological
components.
Attracting a strictly dichotomous
crowd of either blind haters or
intrigued
admirers,
Thompson’s
“Fear and Loathing” comments on a
hopeless time much like our own. An
era plagued by Nixon, the Vietnam
war, and the resurgent energy crisis,
the ’70s turned its back to all the good
the pioneers of the decade before it
had hoped to achieve; the dream that
figures like Martin Luther King Jr.,
Che Guevara and Cesar Chavez once
held that dwindled to a soft flame and
then went out. Thompson watched
the backbone of America degrade to
an unimaginable state, a complete 180
from the period that boasted peace
and perseverance.
By the turn of the new millennia,
the energy and excitement that had
once snowballed into a potential
current for change had been shattered
into smithereens, resulting in a
conservative, winner-takes-all-and-
leaves-none-to-rot individualism that
swept the 2000s. Social Darwinism
became the new collectivism, and the
ultimate badge one could wear would
illustrate how many hours of your life
you had devoted to capitalist crusades
and covert cupidity.
Wall Street. 9/11. War on Terror.
Thompson fell further into his
depression, remarking that 67 was
too decrepit of an age to live to, 17
years past the ultimate prime. He shot
himself in the head in the dull month
of February, while on the phone
with his wife. Although he didn’t live
long enough to see the days of the
2008 recession, or the weekly school
shootings, or the deplorable Trump
era, Thompson had predicted it all.
The 2020’s. The time is our own.
Our Nixon is Trump, our cigarette
crisis is the Juul epidemic, our country
still hates immigrants but loves
gerrymandering, and our ambition is
still fruitless.
Still, even a broken clock is right
twice a day.
Following the events of the COVID-
19 pandemic, our nation has witnessed
another rise in counterculturalism
and revolutionary idealism. Our
generation is hungry for something
more,
something
independent,
something radical. In a time when
college students can no longer dream
of owning a house, funding their own
education, or attaining a retirement
fund, the rise of counterculture greets
us once again.
When I entered elementary school,
I was told that I would be able to
reap all the sweet fruits of life if only
I would work hard toward my goals
and maintain self-discipline. It was
a mirage, I think. Because today, I
am standing in the middle of a moral
desert, gripping on to those empty
promises that were once whispered in
my ears. The fact of the matter is, many
of us have nothing to show for our
subordination to societal standards.
I am an immigrant, so college was
never an option for me — it was a
necessity. Yet, the degree I am earning
now might be unable to support me
in the way I originally intended it to. I
am a woman, so having control of my
own reproductive and bodily rights
is of utmost importance to me. Yet, I
read about Roe v. Wade potentially
being overturned every week. Our
generation follows the comedown
of a gilded tragedy, rewards once
promised but never bestowed — but
don’t think we haven’t noticed.
Young people across the nation
have, once again, become outspoken
about the things they care about most:
economic inequality, police brutality,
women’s rights and proliferating
racism. Perhaps as a reaction to the
desolate reality our parents had to live
through, our generation has cyclically
reached another era of sweeping
change — and the pressing urge to
realize what our predecessors could
not.
Yes, I think “Fear and Loathing”
was intended to be an apprehensive
warning for future generations;
however,
Thompson’s
ideology
stood for much more than gross
antagonism. He spoke of optimism,
of riding high and beautiful waves of
change, of eloquent absurdism and
of his own incapacities. Thompson
was one of the pioneers of a new era
of postmodernism, literature that
attempts to comment on society much
more than it tries to emulate it.
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