Demi Interested

One of the key indicators of being a demisexual is not experiencing sexual attraction unless there is an emotional connection.

I my previous post, I quoted a couple of people who thought this was admirable.

In short, it's not, it's just the way I work.

There's a conversation from over 20-years ago that's long stuck in my mind. The fact that a seemingly incidental moment has made such a lasting impression goes some way to indicating how significant this was to me.

Again this is long before I'd even heard the term demisexual.

I was at the bar at my work, most likely sipping on a Diet Coke (I was teetotal at the time) having a conversation about one of my work colleagues.

My colleague was a young woman, a couple of years younger than me. She was the type of attractive that drew all the young men (and some of the older ones) to our office on any excuse they could reasonably contrive.

I liked her well enough. She was pleasant, she was good at her job, but that's about all the impression of her that lingers after two decades.

At the bar, I was asked the question "Do you fancy Laura*?"

My answer, greeted with a certain amount of incredulity, was along the lines of "I think she's attractive, but no."

After a few moments, the person I was speaking to came back with another question. No incredulity or condemnation, just curious: "Are you gay?"

I could probably have come back with an answer about how I was the least likely person to be gay, how I didn't even like men brushing against me (another sign of demisexuality rather than homophobia, I've since learned), but I wasn't offended by the question or questioner, so again it was a simple "No, I like women. I think Laura is very attractive. I'm just not attracted to her."

She's not my type may have entered into the conversation. At which point I probably would have been asked to describe what my type was.

I never managed to have a decent answer to that. Breathing and of a legal age, would probably be the best answer I could give.

I thought back about this a lot, and wondered if my response was just because I was embarrassed to admit I was attracted to my colleague. Perhaps I was fooling myself into believing there was no attraction. Except, when I examined my response honestly, I knew it was genuine, as much as others might not believe that.

A few months later, Laura's sister, Emily,  joined our office (at this point Laura had moved on into another department.

Again, I don't remember much about Emily. Except she had an almost elfin look about her, her ears protruded just a little too much, there was a certain goofiness to her, and on a purely aesthetic level she wasn't as pretty as her sister.

I absolutely adored her. She was fun, she was smart, she had bags of energy, and I connected with her on a deeper level than I did with her sister (no sniggering in the back, please).

Funnily enough, there weren't as many men hanging around the office as there had been with her sister.

That's been a fairly constant pattern for me throughout my life. While the crowd is turning right, I'm sprinting left.



*Names have been changed.