The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
6 — Wednesday, January 19, 2022

S T A T E M E N T

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

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.

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

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Priya Gangi and Tamara 
Turner
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Chung and Paige Hodder

