Work Text:
I blink, slowly, at the screen, feeling (disgustingly) how my eyelids struggle to peel apart out of sheer tiredness. Jeez. It’s freaking—the clock is irrelevant, now, I’ve been in three different timezones over the past four days, but it’s not late enough to crawl into my twin bunk on the Stratt Vat and pass out. That would only make the jet lag last longer. It feels like I should be able to say that it’s some ridiculous hour of the night, though. It’s depressing to conduct sleep-deprived research when the sun is still shining.
Over the past two years, I’ve been through enough confusing jet-lagged timezone messes that I’m probably a few hours older than I should be. Or maybe younger. If this is how time works. Gosh. All this time I’ve spent immersed in calculating relativity across light-years and incomprehensibly far solar systems, yet I can’t even handle time differences on Earth.
Anyway, what I’m looking at now, from within the windowless cube that passes for my room and office on this forking boat, almost makes me laugh. It’s a reversal of a reversal of a reversal of a reversal.
That made no sense. Oh, man, I wish I could sleep so badly.
Basically, most molecular biologists spend most of their time (pretty much all of it, actually) looking inward. Inward to a concerning degree. Yeah, I have a doctorate in something completely (to us) invisible. Or something. But the bottom line is, anyone with any kind of background in this field always has their face stuck in a microscope. But in my chosen specificity, I’ve got mine pointed up through a telescope. Boom. That’s reversal number one.
Versus when I started to study Astrophage, Eva Stratt grabbed my head and forced it right back to the molecular level of existing cells again. Whoopee. So there’s reversal number two.
Except that I’ve also somehow tripped and fallen into an elite team that tracks how cells impact system-wide functioning across a whole galaxy, so here’s reversal number three.
And right now, at this moment, I’m using my expertise to…
My head jerks as I nod off. Again. I slap my hands against my face, Kevin McAllister style, and beg my eyes to stay open. Please. Lord. If I go to bed in the afternoon, I’ll wake up at midnight and ruin my sleep schedule for half a week.
Something about reproduction of cells is on my computer. Is this reversal four? What was I thinking about earlier? I accidentally hit the “back” button in the top left corner, and my tab momentarily disappears. Crud.
Then the Wi-Fi kicks into high gear and I’m back. We’re so back. I switch over to my current running Word doc on reproduction of Astrophage. This is getting attached to some email to be sent to Stratt to be sent to heck knows where. I certainly don’t know. All I do know is that the recipients are not experts in this field, and this writing is kind of stupid and pointless and doesn’t actually help Me, Who Literally Figured Out How these little idiots reproduce.
Someone else could probably do this. I’m tired and need sleep. But that’s not happening and really I’m almost done. Done. The concept of being done with this and then sleeping later is tantalizing. I’ll focus on that.
My last typed sentence ends in the words “binary fission,” which I suddenly realize may be like the word bicycle to me, but the word velocipede to everyone else. A lot of scientists who have been doing this for so long struggle to find the line between common knowledge and specialized information, but I teach thirteen year olds science. That makes me uniquely strong in that department.
Using the average middle schooler as a basis for the general scientific intelligence of most world leaders is scarily accurate. I replace “binary fission” with “asexual reproduction” throughout the doc and hope that’s enough.
I sigh. That’s really not specific enough for me. I open Google and copy/paste “asexual reproduction” into the search bar (who types anything when there’s a convenient keyboard shortcut).
I don’t really know what I’m looking for, or why I looked it up. I’m tired, but not tired enough to forget a definition that’s fundamental to the discipline of science I have dedicated almost half my life to studying. I must be tired enough to nod off again, because I open my eyes having clicked to an entirely different page. It’s Wikipedia. Maybe the best website ever created. And yes, I say this as a middle school teacher.
But I’m halfway through the first paragraph and very confused about its content, which I shouldn’t be. Asexual reproduction is like, a high school biology topic. I don’t even need to be reading this stupid Wikipedia article. I know every fact listed on the page. I TA’d BIO 100 like, four times in undergrad. I’ve been knowing this information. This isn’t right. I’m so… tired. I shouldn’t be on Wikipedia for something like this. I literally… am in charge of the entire scientific community when it comes to Astrophage.
My eyes drag themselves up to the header of the article, which reads in big, bold, serif-studded letters, Asexuality.
Huh. That’s, uh, not right.
I track down to the smaller, lighter, less important paragraph before the actual definition. It reads,
This article is about humans who lack sexual attraction or interest in sexual activity. For the lack of romantic attraction, see Aromanticism. For the lack of a gender, see Agender. For other uses, see Asexual (disambiguation). Not to be confused with Asexual reproduction.
So I am confused. Or, I did exactly what that little dummy paragraph said and confused asexuality with asexual reproduction. Which is something I don’t ever need to be Googling because I have a flipping doctorate in this crap. Why am I looking this up agin?
I scroll. An automatic response to spending so much time on computers. Tables, new links, even a flag all flash by. I wonder what time it is in that country. Country? No. This is an article about asexuality. Which I am slowly realizing is very different from asexual reproduction.
Researchers generally define asexuality as the lack of sexual attraction or the lack of interest in sexual activity…
Something sticks in my brain there. Why.
I blink hard, three times, and somehow the sweeping motions of my eyelids fan away the serious case of brain fog that has settled over my poor consciousness. Ah. Sexuality. A sexuality. I must’ve stumbled onto an article about gay people, or something. I flick the mouse back up to the top. I think I’m more lucid now. Gotta reread that definition now that I’m not trying to force it into a definition for how Astrophage reproduces.
(which, why do I have to reread that definition? I actually don’t think I do. I think I have to type up a conclusion and send this document to my students. No. Wait. World leaders. Thirteen year old world leaders who don’t know about binary fission. No, that’s wrong too. Stratt. I’m sending this to Stratt when I’m done. Thank God no one ever gave me the nuclear codes.)
Ah. Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity.
“Wait a minute.”
I really need to go to bed, because those words don’t even make sense the fourth time I read them. And then, halfway through my sixth reread, it hits me.
I’ve never, ever, told anyone about this. Like ever. It’s weird, and a little bit unfortunate, and almost makes me glad I now have a job (is this a job or indentured servitude?) that keeps me so fatally busy.
Here it is: When I was twenty-two, I accepted that sex just kind of sucked.
Which is not the type of thing one would expect to hear from a fresh college grad. (Especially a male one.) I’ve never been a social butterfly, but I’m not a recluse, and I knew when I came to this conclusion and I know now that that’s a fairly unpopular opinion. It was not, for example, an opinion shared by any of my exes. Or friends, for that matter.
I kind of spent a while believing that I’d spent so long chasing academia it’d fried my sex drive completely. (Which. Looking back. Not true. I don’t think I ever had much of anything to fry. And anyway, the increased workload tended to make some grad students hornier. Not me, I suppose.)
And I know there’s not something medically wrong with me. That is, I Do Not Have early onset, constant erectile dysfunction. I can still functionally orgasm. And I have not, to my knowledge, just been having embarrassingly bad sex all my life.
It’s been fine.
Which, I guess may be at the crux of my condition. It’s Been Fine is not, historically or biologically, how humans typically feel about intercourse. If it were, human life would be a whole lot different. Better, question mark? It would be for me, maybe, I think, and then wince. Yeah. That can’t be a normal thought.
But, at the bottom line, I realized I was some kind of sex freak (and not in that way) over ten years ago. And I’ve been living, sometimes feeling like a weird mutant, sometimes forgetting about it entirely, my normal life ever since. I briefly entertained the idea that I might be gay, but yeah, no, I feel the same sort of general sexual ambivalence toward men as I do toward women, so here we are.
But hey. Here I am, staring down a Wikipedia page and having a sexual identity crisis. There’s even a pride flag (not a country). Like the ones people take to, well, pride. Holy smokes. Ten minutes ago I was straight.
“Mmmf,” I mumble, jamming my palms into my eye sockets under my glasses.
Then I’m waking up.
-
When I lift my head off of my keyboard (and surely I’ve got the whole alphabet printed across my cheek), the clock on the wall reads 3:07. Military time. It’s three in the morning. Wonderful.
My face, head, and neck ache with a fervor, but I am, unfortunately, well-rested. Well-rested enough to not crawl into my comfortable comfortable bed and sleep for another four hours. I don’t know what time I fell asleep last night (last evening? Last afternoon, perhaps?) but it was at least ten hours ago, so there’s no returning to sleep for me.
I try to rub some of the soreness out of my shoulders with one hand and start up my computer with the other. It brings me to a Wikipedia page.
Ah. Right, yes.
It’s really not any less weird to think about with a full night (day?) of sleep under my belt. I give the whole page another once-over, and come to some conclusions.
I’m a part of a small group (1% of the population, apparently) that experiences little to no sexual attraction. It’s not just a weird me thing.
“Fudging heck,” I mumble to myself, dropping my glasses off of my face to faceplant more effectively. It would’ve been nice to know this kind of thing maybe ten years earlier. Just for my own peace of mind.
At the end of the day (night?), peace of mind is all that this really gives me. This kind of thing is sort of irrelevant right now, to be honest. It’s not like a years-long, high-stress, and extremely classified project with limited personnel has a great dating scene. I think this is technically the type of thing that, if I ever told anyone about it, would be a “coming out.” Which is something I could do. If I had friends who cared. Thinking about my options, I really don’t. Because if I didn’t know what on Earth asexuality was, there’s no reason any of them would. I did public school sensitivity training in California for four years running. If something like this didn’t come up in that, then I’m hanging out with the wrong cohort of people to “get” something like this.
And I don’t care about explaining anything like this. Sure, we’re not strictly colleagues at this point, but there’s still a limit to our friendship.
The only tangible benefit to telling people about this is that it would put the rumors about me sleeping with Stratt to rest.
Even that’s kind of pointless, though. I scan the article again. Eye the clock. I should go get breakfast. Dinner? A meal.
I think I’m going to ignore this. It has joined the ever-increasing list of “personal things about me that are now completely irrelevant and unimportant because I spend every moment of my time as the personal scientist chew toy of the scariest woman on Earth.” A few key items on the list are: I enjoy free time and well-being, I need eight hours of sleep nightly, I don’t like flying, I don’t like being told what to do, and I’m sick of shitty coffee. Also, I’m asexual, I guess.
I stand up. I brush my teeth put on a different shirt. Big changes are happening here. I leave the room, realize I left my glasses on my desk, double back, and then go to have my 3am breakfast.
I’ve got a big day, night, week, and month ahead. We’re so back. Unfortunately.