Chronophobia
a poem by queer artist and writer Joe Nasta
This week thecuriousclit features the poem “Chronophobia” by Joe Nasta!
I met Joe all the way back in 2017 at a writing workshop with Corporeal Writing in Portland. A few months prior to the workshop, I had decided that instead of going to grad school for public health, I wanted to focus on writing — but I was terrified to actually be in a community of writers and to share my writing out loud, especially in the presence of one of my favorite authors, Lidia Yuknavitch. Joe, who was also attending the workshop, helped me feel so comfortable and welcome.
I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to keep in contact with zir over the years and that ze has shared this poem for the newsletter. Zir writing always feels so raw and whole-hearted to me, and ze is truly a community builder within the writing world.
You can read the poem & zir answers to the interview questions down below, and to listen to zir read the poem out loud, see the “Article Voiceover” section above.
What inspired this poem?
I wrote this from a prompt from Winter Tangerine’s We Sweat Honeysuckle workshop for queer writers in 2018 – something about writing a letter to someone that you wouldn’t send.
For most of the workshop, I was staying in New York at my friend Alison’s apartment in the East Village. During that summer a few people visited me (including a painter I was dating who flew across the country) so I wanted to get a separate space to host them. We ended up at the SIXTY LES hotel because it was just a few blocks from Alison. It was really nice to stay there a couple weekends, and when that guy came I even splurged for one of their special suites with a balcony and a view of the Empire State Building. I invited a lot of people to hang out by the rooftop pool and my sister brought croissants from Supermoon. We lounged in the heat, drank from the minibar, and had a great time. It was right when Aperol Spritzes were super popular so I drank a few of those. I also spent some time thinking about a poet I wished was there but was too scared to text.
One of my favorite things about staying in a nice hotel is the luxurious drama that can sometimes rear its head. Different tensions and desires in a relationship that don’t expose themselves in ordinary life. Like in “The Pink Hotel” by Liska Jacobs!
When I wrote the first full drafts of this poem I had returned to Seattle for the fall. I was in an old studio apartment across the street from St. James Cathedral with hardwood floors and a really old bathtub. I was pretty lonely and would go to the sushi place around the corner alone to read during happy hour, then came back home and wrote in the early evening. We got a lot of light there because it was in the ground floor corner of the building and had large windows on multiple walls. This time of year in Seattle the light is usually more of a soft blue than gold at that time of day. I reflected on some of the tension I had felt when my boyfriend stayed with me in the Empire Terrace suite in New York, and how that related to larger miscommunications that were often never discussed again.
The poem also deals with the urge to document, write, exhibit, share that fuels a lot of my writing. I also had just taken a bath so thought of the piece as a concrete image that showed how quickly we can lose track of our thoughts and desires when we attempt to pin them down.
I actually got myself into a bit of trouble with that boyfriend because of this poem. I used to edit by posting excerpts as Instagram captions and he really didn’t like that certain details of our relationship seemed to be on display. But I think of those details as transcending the moments I experienced with him and now that we are just memories to each other, I am really glad I can return to them every time I read this poem. He also took some really great photos of me on the balcony and those have come in handy, ha!
Can you share more about the idea/theme behind the title for the poem?
Yes, of course! I will often write a poem and figure out the title much later, and that was the case with Chronophobia. It’s had a few different names. It was originally “Dear ___” as it was inspired by a prompt to write a letter that you wouldn’t send, but that didn’t fit. In 2020 I started submitting it as “Chronophobia” so I guess that’s when I settled on that title.
Some of my early poems were named after unique emotions that are pinned down by very specific untranslatable or invented words. My favorites were sonder (the intensity of remembering that all the strangers around you have their complex inner lives you will never know about) and exulansis (the frustration created by the inability to communicate a specific experience to someone who can’t relate to it) from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows or saudade (a particular kind of lonely melancholy or incompleteness) from the Portuguese language.
I used to be obsessed with capturing these almost indescribable emotions by writing in a concrete form or by describing the physical sensations that accompanied them. When I was searching for the proper title for this poem, I was trying to find a phrase that I felt could capture the core emotion I was feeling when I had written it.
When I finally settled on “Chronophobia,” I was honing in on the urge to document, to remember, to hold onto moments in a tangible way that is mentioned in the poem. That urge is a large part of why I write poems. I seek not only to remember the present moment, but find a way I can return to the past and reflect on how things have changed. Even when the passage of time is terrifying and there is no way we can actually relive the special moments we share with our loved ones once they are gone or a relationship has shifted. Which is all easy to say now, five years later!
At the moment I was just afraid. Afraid of losing my boyfriend over a miscommunication, but also recognizing the need to move forward from the relationship. Afraid of not being able to remember the beautiful experiences that had been touched by complicated moments. Afraid that I wouldn’t be able to say how I felt if I didn’t write it down as soon as I got out of the bath. But now I’m less afraid! I’m really happy that time has moved forward. Funny how that works!
One of the themes of this poem (and with your essay Grey) that has really resonated with me is the challenge that comes with navigating emotional and sexual intimacy as someone who is asexual – the longing for connection yet also the fear that comes with not knowing how someone will react (and having some very real experiences of people undermining one’s identity). Are there things that you wish more people knew about asexuality?
Yes, yes. It can be hard to navigate relationships and intimacy for everyone, especially when sexuality has been a really emphasized part of our culture in different ways that may not align with people’s individual lived experiences and identities. In some environments, the expectations of sex can take a front seat – which is not a bad thing! It can be difficult to confront head-on but often leads to really fulfilling encounters and relationships.
I think it’s really exciting to have words to describe things in really intense detail, and that is why I was so excited to discover the Ace spectrum. Having the words to talk about it paves the way towards the meaningful connections we want in our lives. It provides a lot of nuanced language to discuss sexual, romantic, and aesthetic attraction that helped me understand my own relationship with sex, dating, and queerness.
It helps to think about different types of attraction on a spectrum, and to realize that the way we relate to that spectrum can change at different moments in our lives. As a grey asexual person, I experience varying levels of sexual attraction but am more driven by my romantic attraction to a person.
For me, an asexual masculine-presenting person who typically dates gay men, the challenge is usually that my partners often expect me to completely identify with their experiences and experience sexual attraction the same way that they do. They’ll even be confused and hurt when I say I’m not really driven by sexual attraction, as if I am saying I’m not attracted to them in any way. It can be a lot easier for queer masculine people to use sex as a quick way to develop a connection with each other – and I do it, too! – but realizing that it wasn’t a primary driver in my most meaningful relationships with men has helped me grow. That’s the main reason I share about it: I want to help people access identity language that helps them create the lives and community
Sometimes asexuality is framed in a way that implies it takes away from other queer identities or doesn’t deserve to be discussed, but I think it’s just another exciting layer to our community. What I wish more people knew is that it’s not actually a prescriptive label and can be empowering! Some asexual people are sex repulsed, some are demisexual and experience sexual attraction when they have deep emotional connections, some enjoy sex without attraction, and many others fall elsewhere on the spectrum. And a person’s romantic attraction, or the desire to be in a romantic relationship with someone, can be totally divorced from their sexual orientation. Even if someone does identify as allosexual and experiences sexual attraction, it can be helpful to think about!
I think that one of the challenges that can come with asexuality is the lack of understanding around it and just how little it is talked and written about. Have there been any authors (or speakers) who have helped you along your journey?
Great question! A lot of the information I had access to was online. The Asexual Visibility & Education Network (AVEN) has a lot of resources. My essay Grey was included in a really exciting interdisciplinary journal that publishes work by asexual, aromantic, and agender people. Aze was founded by Michael Paramo.
A great book just came out in the past few years. It’s called “Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex” by Angela Chen. Chen incorporates a lot of different perspectives on the identity in a really accessible way.
I also really loved the portrayal of Andy Warhol’s relationships in “The Andy Warhol Diaries” on Netflix. Before watching I knew he identified as asexual but seeing those portrayals of an asexual person with important long term relationships was really nice. Actually, it seems that some of the media coverage of the series used those portrayals as a way to “debunk” his asexuality, which is strange. It’s intriguing to think about how evolving ideas about asexuality and representation in culture has an affect on young queer people.
Anyway, I’m glad there’s more and more discussion so that people have the language they need to feel comfortable in their bodies. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to chat with you about this!
Joe Nasta is a queer writer and artist in Seattle. Ze is the head curator of Stone Pacific Zine & the author of “I want you to feel ugly, too” and "agony: love pomes." Zir work has most recently appeared in Ghost City Review and dream boy book club.
Thank you for reading the thecuriousclit, my newsletter + podcast where I hope to spark curiosity and conversations about sex and our bodies. Most of the posts in this publication are free, but if you’d like to support my work and the de-stigmatization of sexuality, you can like, comment, and/or share my posts, become a paid subscriber, follow my Instagram, or check out the embodiment classes I offer for people who identify as women, trans, and non-binary <3