The Little Prince and the Fox

Travel solo to explore or escape?

[Content warnings: loneliness, sorrow, loss, breakups, death of parent.]

Traveling has always been part of my life: it was something we did with my family of origin; then, I also started doing it with the families of my best friends and, eventually, just me and my friends.

Technically, the first time I traveled by myself was at the end of high school, to go visit a friend in Germany. My first real solo trip, though, wasn’t until grad school: January before starting my PhD. Prompted by my first really painful breakup, I went to visit a friend in Milan for a few days; from there, I went on to Vienna, where I spent a week by myself, meeting up just a couple times with an old friend who lived there, but not staying with her: I stayed in a 10-persons mixed room in a hostel and soothed my pain with long walks in the cold (I don’t recommend visiting Vienna in January!), visits to museums and palaces, bookstores and cafés. I quickly found my favorite café, its walls covered in bookshelves, where I would sit in a comfy armchair in a corner by the window on the upper floor. On sunny days I rambled for miles and soon made my favorite, familiar routes, usually in parks and/or along the river.

That was nearly twenty years ago. Since then, traveling solo has become one of my habits, or rituals. Even when I was in close, monogamous, cohabiting relationships, I made a point of having one solo trip per year, just for myself. The pattern of my solo trips is always very similar: I combine travel to new places with visits to friends or acquaintances, often people who can host me for a few days; as much as I can, I include stretches “on the road” (either driving a car or riding a train for hours); I try to get a mix of new experiences together with some of my routines (e.g. running, hiking, walking, swimming); I seek out unfamiliar landscapes while quickly finding, or building into them, places that are familiar and beloved to me (rivers or other big bodies of water, bookstores, small cafés, squares or parks or meadows).

Traveling solo has become almost a necessity, almost the only choice I have since there’s nobody in my life who’ll really go on planned trips with me. I can visit friends or acquaintances on some of my trips but if I want to travel, most of the time I have to do it by myself. So I travel solo.

Traveling soothes my pain.

Traveling soothes my pain in ways that are similar to how running and motorcycle riding and rock climbing soothe my pain. When I found out about my father’s death nearly two years ago, I got on my motorcycle and rode. When I broke up with my European (gender)queer ex-friend in the summer of 2023, I went on a long road trip. Actually, I have coped with every major loss or breakup in my life by traveling, by getting out and going somewhere.

Traveling soothes my brain. It literally feels as if my brain were being rewired, as if the chaotic tangles in my head were getting combed out smoothly. New places, new landscapes, new experiences capture my attention, fill me with excitement, joy, awe. The practical aspects of the journey force me to think about the “real” issues at hand (e.g. fluids check in the car, mileage, weather) rather than the painful issues in my heart. I can (hyper)focus on interesting, pleasant things like new places or practical issues while also zoning out from daily life and/or small details that on a daily basis become overwhelming for me. I bring with me or rebuild many of my routines and find new “homes” on my trips. And being alone on the road feels less lonely than being alone in my daily life at home.

While traveling, I can forget how alone I really am or, at least, justify it temporarily with the fact of being in a new, unfamiliar place. While traveling, I can let myself be completely absorbed by the new experiences and unfamiliar landscapes and practical issues and logistics. While traveling, I can remain on the surface of human interactions with strangers and not have to worry about relationships. While traveling, I can forget the pain of being aro-ace, the pain of my many fundamental relational needs being unmet. While traveling, I can forget how stuck I feel in my “real” life.

Yes, I travel to explore but I also travel to escape from the pain of my profound loneliness and the inescapable fact that my life is a long chain of failures.

Wanderlust

I just got home from a week’s trip and can’t wait to leave again.

My autistic burnout is making it really hard to travel at the moment, especially when it involves driving (like this long trip, driving ~400 miles each way across several mountainous areas), but my love of traveling is deep, an essential part of my nature and of my identity (which is one of the reasons I want & need to get over this burnout ASAP).

This trip was really good for me, it brought me in touch with important parts of myself again: my wanderlust is back and that feels wonderful.

As The Head & the Heart sing:

“

You caught me staring off the cliff again

And looking down on everyone

Wish my goodbyes could be more innocent

But every part just wants to run

I have this deep, deep feeling in my ribs again

I just keep, keep, keep moving on

Like the deep, deep current on the riverbed

I have to keep, keep, keep moving on

There’s times I need direction

There’s times I need to roam

I move station to station

I showed up here alone

I am my own arrow

I am my own home

It’s all right, it’s all right

It’s all I’ve ever known

It’s all right, it’s all right

It’s all I’ve ever known

It’s all right, it’s all right

So if you’re falling through the cracks again

Maybe the fall was by design

‘Cause someone’s gonna break your heart again

That’s just proof that you’re alive

I have this deep, deep feeling in my ribs again

I just keep, keep, keep moving on

Like the deep, deep current on the riverbed

I have to keep, keep, keep moving on

There’s times I need direction

There’s times I need to roam

I move station to station

I showed up here alone

I am my own arrow

I am my own home

It’s all right, it’s all right

It’s all I’ve ever known

It’s all right, it’s all right

It’s all I’ve ever known

It’s all right, it’s all right

There’s times I need direction

There’s times I need to roam

I move station to station

I showed up here alone

I am my own arrow

I am my own home

I am my own arrow

I am my own home

”

[“Arrow” by The Head & The Heart]

The way he looks

I renewed my driver’s license. The previous one is from only two years ago but it needed to be changed. The two photos of me side by side show why. A chiseled jaw that takes the soft square of the previous face a step further. A blond mustache that wasn’t visible two years ago. Even the throat has changed: too late for me to develop an Adam’s apple, yet the area around the vocal cords seems more pronounced now — which would make sense since the vocal cords have thickened, bringing my voice from soprano/alto to baritone.

But there’s something more, something deeper, something even more powerful than that strong jawline.

It’s the way he looks.

“She” looks uncomfortable, uneasy, almost scared. He looks confident, almost defiant. They are both me, and yet one is definitely “more me” than the other…

As one of my oldest friends put it, “I feel like seeing now your outer shape matching your inner shape. Are you feeling this too? […] for me personally your outer shape is not too important, or only important because it’s important to you — you look good for me always and in all shapes — but now your eyes seem to see what they wanted to see […]”

It’s two simple photos taken quickly at the DMV but the way those two faces look is saying something about what lies deep in their soul: and in the new picture, indeed, my eyes are seeing what they wanted to see.

The important, painful reality of my being ace-aro & autistic

‘[…] Most of us are haunted by the sense there’s something “wrong” or “missing” in our lives — that we’re sacrificing far more of ourselves than other people in order to get by and receiving far less in return.’ [from Chapter 1 of the book Unmasking Autism by Dr. Devon Price]

Although seemingly “superficial” and written in a rush, the post I wrote this morning is arguably one of the most important and profound ones that I’ve published since starting this blog four years ago. Among other things, it is a concrete, real-life example of the words I quoted above from Dr. Price’s book Unmasking Autism.

Being nonbinary trans and being gay are huge, profound, parts of my identity. And they certainly are aspects that have affected my entire life and still affect me almost daily. Especially the fact of being nonbinary & trans makes my life more difficult: not being seen or accepted or loved as myself or even allowed to be myself as a child and for decades even as an adult was traumatic; and being able to come into, and express freely, my transness relatively late in my life is still a source of intense pain and loss and grief for me. And being a nonbinary trans gay guy with a vagina probably, effectively, “restricts my dating pool”. Despite these difficulties and sources of pain, though, being trans (or gay) are less painful and problematic for me than being ace-aro and autistic. Despite the trauma and sorrow I have from having been allowed to come into my true self (at least from the viewpoint of gender & body-mind-soul alignment) so late in life, I am a lucky, or privileged, trans person: I was able to get gender affirming care relatively quickly once I realized what I needed & wanted; I got most of my paperwork in order before this fascist, transphobic administration took office; and now I “pass”, which is both gender-affirming and a source of (at least relative) safety.

Apart from issues like the lack of accessibility and/or recognition I encounter as a nonbinary trans athlete — which are painful and frustrating and shouldn’t be disregarded — most of my deepest and most pervasive, even daily, sources of pain come from being autistic and ace-aro. And I believe that these instances of pain would still be present and sharp even if I weren’t trans or gay. In Dr. Price’s words, I would still feel haunted by the sense that there’s something “wrong” or “missing” in my life — that I’m sacrificing far more of myself than other people in order to get by and receiving far less in return.

I would still feel haunted and full of this painful sense of mismatch or of sorrow or of “something wrong” even if I weren’t trans/nonbinary or gay (at least as long as I’m living in liberal/progressives places like I have been in the past decade).

It is my neurodivergence, not my trans-ness or my gay-ness, that has made it basically impossible for me throughout my adult life to hold down a full-time job working “standard” (9-5) hours, effectively leading me to live on the brink of poverty despite a PhD in physics and fluency in five languages.

It is my aro-ace nature or orientation, not my gay-ness, that makes it impossible for me to get all my fundamental relational needs met, effectively leading to a constant sense of “hole in my soul” even if/when I’m surrounded by wonderful, loving, accepting, present, solid friends.

This is why the post I published on this blog this morning is of paramount importance: it is not simply some “venting” or “ruminating over a silly hookup that I cannot let go of”. My difficulty to let go of what was, seemingly, “just a hookup” and the real, deep reasons why it’s so hard for me to let go of what was, seemingly, “just a hookup” are some of the most concrete and recent symptoms, or evidence, of how painfully the fact of being ace-aro & autistic affects my life in this amatonormative & neuronormative world.

Two reasons that are hard to let go of

With all the genuine attention and affectionate gestures/behaviors I’m getting from several people in the gay men’s chorus, including even physical affection when I open/loosen up, why did I get so hung up on that one guy with whom I hooked up?

After all, he’s not the only one who’s shown me interest, he’s not the only one from whom I’ve received physical attention or affection, he’s not the only one with whom I’ve had interesting conversations.

But he’s the only one with whom I met up & hung out several times, intentionally, outside of rehearsals. That meant a lot to me.

But there’s a reason that is even more basic than that — probably one of the two basic reasons why we actually did hang out outside of chorus: because we wanted to have sex with each other.

I think that’s one of the two main, basic reasons why I got so hung up on him and why it’s still taking me some time & effort to process this and let go completely. There were two connections I felt with him that felt special (& rare) to me.

One was the sexual connection. As a high-libido ace-aro person, I find myself torn between two opposite drives both within my nature: as an ace person, I very rarely feel sexual interest specifically towards someone else, I hardly ever feel that type of connection; but as a high-libido, sex-favorable person, I really enjoy, and often crave, sex. Sometimes I come across people with whom it feels good to me to have sex: in those cases, it’s as if my two “natures”, that usually are pulling me in two opposite directions, are finally pulling me in one and the same direction, so it’s a relief. Plus, it can be fun or interesting to have sex with someone other than myself for a change. So when I come across those people, because it’s so rare for me, I can get hung up on the situation with them.

The other was the neurodivergent connection. Although he & I never spoke about it explicitly and I certainly don’t want to diagnose him or attribute him an identity unless he claims it for himself, to me it felt like our neurotypes are extremely similar: I am a “highly verbal, outgoing, sometimes sensory-seeking” Autistic with some ADHD mixed in; and from the interactions I’ve had with him, he seems to be very much along similar lines. The result for me was that I didn’t have to mask with him, not at all even when we hardly knew each other: it felt so easy, like simply being at home, which is something that I rarely feel with people unless we’re either similarly neurodivergent or we’ve known each other for many years.

Rationally I know that regardless of these two deep connections that are meaningful to me, if there’s no availability for a relationship, then it’s just not going to happen — which is why I finally stepped away from it weeks ago. But these two deep connections felt real to me and still make it hard for me, emotionally, to let go completely.

Sending people (or money) to Mars instead of school

The current government is cutting funding for schools and a host of national research centers, labs, organizations while trying to get to Mars. How could it be more perverted?

How can people be blind to the damage this government is doing to this country (& the world) for decades to come???

“

✏️ Elon Musk is on a mission to take over NASA—and Mars. The world’s richest man has extraordinary influence on many U.S. federal agencies as a leader of DOGE. But NASA is where Musk is making the biggest shift in an agency’s priorities to align them with his own, both financially and personally. Separately, AI is reshaping overlooked corners of rural America. Finally, we explain how to avoid oversharing personal data with chatbots.

Emma Tucker
Editor in Chief, The Wall Street Journal

Musk is in position to speed up plans for a voyage to Mars, with a potentially huge impact on SpaceX.

The billionaire is working to recast NASA’s programs, reallocate federal spending and install loyalists to aid his decadeslong goal of sending people to Mars, report Emily Glazer and Micah Maidenberg. Musk has also worked to win backing from Trump by telling the president that getting people to Mars would burnish his legacy as a “president of firsts.” The push to reach Mars could be transformational for SpaceX, which has emerged as the dominant space technology and operations company globally and is already one of NASA’s biggest contractors.

“

Sweet belonging: a beginning?

A 72% dark chocolate-raspberry bar and a small white envelope with my name on it. Inside, a pretty card with three dangling light-bulbs:

“It means so much to have someone here who understands being different in a lot of non-visible ways and also is just so genuinely kind.

Here’s to as many cycles as we can muster!

-J.”

Do I just need to be more patient about building connections and deep friendships within this gay men’s chorus?

These guys — and maybe people in general — respond more than I realize to my own cues, signals, actions or words. And I guess oftentimes they’re responding to some of my more or less explicit, more or less conscious, cues of “Stay away from me” or “Leave me alone”. In larger groups and crowded environments, I probably give signals of that type much more than I’m aware of. Are these gay guys in the chorus just waiting for me to open up? For me to explicitly ask for a hug? For me to say, “It’s OK to touch me”? For me to say, “Please invite me to gay bars with you all”?

The shows were fantastic. I had dear friends come see us at both shows and I had a blast, really enjoying both performances. I was somehow able to strike a balance between getting enough time by myself, despite the chaos of performing, and connecting with people in the chorus in meaningful ways and enjoying the presence of my friends who came to see the shows.

And yesterday evening, when some of us from the chorus went to socialize at a gay bar after the show, despite being the only trans guy in our group, I felt like I totally belonged. I even felt at ease at the gay bar in a way that I had never felt before: I felt like I belonged in a way that was new and profound and yet, somehow, simple or obvious. Was it because I was there with a group of cis gay men? Was it because I actually really pass as a cis (gay) man myself now? Or was it rather because I finally ditched my N-95 mask, because I was more relaxed and happy and simply full of joyful energy than I usual am?

The past couple of days turned the previous couple of months of this concert cycle on its head, in a really good way: I went from feeling disconnected, isolated, unseen, and uncomfortable to feeling seen and accepted and even loved just as I am, even if I am “different in a lot of non-visible ways”, as my baritone friend put it so well.

Will it go a step further? Will I get those deep connections to flourish into friendships even outside of chorus, doing things with some of these guys beyond rehearsals and shows, as I so badly yearn?

Foreign languages and unknown codes

This morning my housemate asked me how tech rehearsal with the chorus went last night and suddenly I found myself in an almost-flow-of-consciousness explanation of the type of overload, or overhead, I feel at rehearsals with the gay men’s chorus in general.

Even when the rehearsals go well or are fun from the musical viewpoint, there is always an overhead of effort, an emotional and/or sensorial overload for me that is really tiring. And the analogy that came to me spontaneously as I explained this to my friend this morning was some trips I did in Arabic-speaking countries.

I’m fluent in several European languages as well as their cultural norms; so for me often traveling or living in many countries spanning most of Europe and even Mexico feels comfortable to the extent that I generally find myself immersed in environments where I can understand at a glance what is going on around me, at least superficially, from the words I hear/read as well as from most of the gestures or body language or social codes. When I traveled to Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, though, this wasn’t the case: I didn’t speak the language and also many of the social norms or codes were unknown to me, including simple things like hand gestures or body language; so I found myself constantly wondering what was going on around me as well as questioning what was actually being said, or otherwise communicated, to me. And that made those trips so much more tiring (albeit wonderful) than trips in countries where I spoke the language and/or was familiar with the social norms/codes.

With the gay men’s chorus for me it feels similar to my travels in Syria. I don’t pick up on most social cues — and this is true for me in any environment. Unless something is explained/said to me explicitly or has been familiar to me for a long time, I don’t understand it. So when I find myself in big groups of people that are new and/or unknown to me, I don’t really understand what is going on. And it has always been this way for me, for as long as I can remember (school was a nightmare for me as a kid). Through the years, I’ve “learned the social codes” of several groups where I spend, or have spent, more time, like among scientists, sailors, runners or climbers, and some genderqueer environments. These are the groups of people with whom I spend, or have spent, most time and whose “languages” or “codes” I’ve learned to interpret even if they’re unnatural to me. And even in those familiar environments of which I’ve “learned the language” or “cracked the code”, I still try and find a few friends or buddies with whom to connect in small groups or one-on-one because that is easier for me.

When I’m with the people in the gay men’s chorus I feel like I’m in Syria because I don’t understand their “language”, their “codes”: I’m always in doubt of how their words are meant — is there a double meaning to some comments or compliments? — I’m confused by the meaning of their body language or gestures — why do they touch each other like that? — I often don’t get their jokes and/or references; and I’m never sure whether someone is flirting or not.

So every time I go to rehearsal, regardless of how well it may go from the musical point of view, for me it’s always like traveling to a foreign country of which I don’t speak the language and don’t even understand the codes (e.g. gestures or body language). It feels like I’m navigating a whole new world — which, I guess, in some senses I am.

Rephrasing, Reframing, Reclaiming

Maybe I’ve been acting a bit too much the victim in the situation with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I hooked up.

After all, if I led most of the thing and/or took the initiative most of the time, it’s because I wanted to, because I chose to. I started it, I kept it going for a while, and I ended it. With some encouragement and/or “collaboration” on his part, of course, but I led the game and he played along. What I did was what I wanted to do, what I chose to do; and what I got was, mostly, what I wanted and/or needed.

I went into it as a fling, as a fun and affirming experiment for myself with someone who felt safe and gave clear signs of reciprocating at least the physical/sexual interest. I didn’t go into it expecting anything more than a fling, anything more than a hookup (and, for me specifically, an aro-ace hookup). I was curious, I was horny, and I was seeking affirmations. And I got my curiosity, my horniness, and my affirmations satisfied.

As we sing in one of the pieces for our upcoming show, “they can’t take that away from me”: that’s mine to keep, mine to remember, mine to cherish, if I want to.

Yes, as our hanging out & hookups progressed, it turned out that we had more in common than initially expected and that we might be able to be friends. Yes, for a short while it seemed that we were on the same page about trying to be friends with benefits. And yes, he changed his mind and didn’t tell me openly until I prodded, which remains something painful and/or frustrating for me. And yes, things “not working out” with him reactivated some sorrow & grief from old losses. And yes, things might feel awkward for me (& maybe for him, too?) in the chorus for a while. And yes, I do still feel like an outsider and/or uncomfortable within the chorus but that is mostly unrelated from him and something I need to solve for myself independently from what happened with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up.

But when it comes to what happened with him, it was my choice from the beginning to the end and many parts I really liked; so it would probably do me good to rephrase the story as my choice, to reframe the relationship as a fun, affirming, interesting fling, and to reclaim the experience as my own.