A conversation about attraction

H noticed that all the trees were crying now too, though their leaves were acting as handkerchiefs, trying to wipe them away. “Just, anecdotally did that have a point? I mean, we are all kind of hurtling towards our deaths here, and I’d prefer to spend that time valuably-“

“Sitting in your room watching  a sitcom?”

“Not every night, but some nights, yes? Okay, but only the good ones.”

“Debatable. Anyhow, I read something really interesting a year or two ago about attraction that really stuck with me. It was an essay by a married woman talking about just how batshit crazy attraction really is. How we can see it in Rousseau’s love of cross-eyed girls or those Shakespearean stories where a person is convinced that they’ve fallen in love with one of two twins. As if you could tell a difference between them. But we all know that we both can and can’t. What is it that makes a person attractive to us, particularly at first?”

“Cultural mores?”

“That, yes, to a degree. The conversation is fraught with peril. But beyond that, it’s weird right? Like, have you always been able to pinpoint exactly why a certain configuration of features makes you attracted to a person? The gist of the essay, and I’m giving it short shrift here because I don’t really remember much of what I read, is that you objectify the beloved. I think the author is spot on because she points out that women objectify men as well. What the hell else is a person but an object we’d like to possess? Her point is that we need to kind of reify this reality with our notions of sexual equality and roles etc.

“So I’m objectifying Lauren?”

“Of course you are. If you weren’t you wouldn’t be thinking about her at all. She is, after all, an object, holds mass and is comprised of atoms. I’m not advocating for some return to baser values of the middle ages or anything I’m just saying it’s the sort of thing that you might want to consider.”

“I think when we’re talking about attraction here we’re somehow conflating it with sex, which isn’t necessarily the same thing.”

“Have you ever been attracted to someone with whom you did not want to copulate?”

“Probably.”

“I’d guess the real answer is no. That it’s a bit of a mystery, yes, but that the desire to be on a stalled elevator with someone to see what happens, probably just a lot of panic about oxygen levels followed by confession of fears of confined spaces, but yeah, that desire is central to attraction.”

“I feel like you’re drawing a mind body dichotomy here that isn’t useful. I’d argue that the elevator scenario is tangential, rather than central to attraction. And that it’s possible to be attracted to someone for all sorts of things that don’t involve the two of you going back to her place for the evening.”

“You have clearly not been back to enough places.”

And so on.