Attraction

It is interesting how outsiders, those who are not in the same “attraction bandwidth” assume what is attractive to others. I recall many years back a gay male friend tried to hook me up with who he called my perfect match, perfect because this was somebody who I could easily have shared a closet of clothing with. And while such a match would have been perhaps economical, it definitely wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow of desire, I suspect, for either one of us. It reminded me of a conversation I had once had with my mother who suggested that if I was adamant about not wanting to transition (which was for her the only option that made sense) then I should make an effort to “feminize”- because no one would ever be really attracted to a masculine female. I was reminded of these conversations, after recently hearing a very heterosexual friend of mine tell me that she had received advice from an equally heterosexual male, that she needed to stop acting like a man if she wanted to attract one. Given that this person makes Barbie appear Butch, I was of course curious. It turns out that a propensity for risk-taking, a successful career, and ambitions in life, are male acting attributes, accordingly one could then assume, that the opposite characteristics would be necessary for a woman to be seen as attractive. And then it occurred to me, for some it is impossible to imagine that attraction, outside of our own personal understanding of it, exists. That attraction feels so innate, so primal, and instinctive, that when we attempt to help others find their mate, that we can not but help to project our own desires into the equation.

I’m old and have lived in a very broad and mixed circle, and have seen just about every combination of attraction and pairing, and as I’ve looked at the total eclectic matchings, I am always amazed that they have been able to find each other. I’m sure most of us have heard, at least once, someone say, “I’m just attracted to the wrong type”, and have been quick to offer our expert advice on what they should be looking for instead. Most, I would suggest, if asked could articulate in a perfect (and safe) world the type of person that they find the most desirable, the type of person that when they cross their path however fleeting, causes their brain to become disengaged long enough to miss taking a breath, and for words to fail to form; a reaction that lends no doubt to the instant attraction that we feel, an electric all-consuming type of attraction, that makes it very clear that the beat of the heart can drown out the chatter of the brain. It is true, I believe, that for some the delay in having that first overwhelming experience of attraction can result in the perfect-person criteria that we write to look very different, but once experienced, once we have known pure, unconstructed, honest attraction, the criteria that we would then write I’m not sure ever changes. So, when I hear “Hy/they/she/he, isn’t who I’m typically attracted to but…” I wonder. I wonder if it’s the pounding of the heart or the chatter of the brain that they are listening to.