I've seen uglier

A girl once told me she wasn't attracted to me when she met me but, once she got to know me, she developed a crush. I did not take this for the compliment she intended it. (I could not hold much of a grudge. She meant well and, in our brief entanglement, better than I did.)

I have never felt that I was much of a looker. I had little trouble attracting feminine attention - along with a couple of collegiate gay men who should have had better taste in wrong trees to bark up. I took this as that I was charming and clever. When I was a teenager, I could talk a girl out of her bra, but it is possible I overestimated how much they wanted to keep them on. It was not so much that I was attractive as that they were keen to be attracted to someone. I fit the bill for a month or a night.

I'm a touch confused when I realize someone is interested in me. I assume this doesn't happen much anymore. A friend some time ago had been flirty with me. In rampant exaggeration, I would flirt back, seeing it as nothing more than a shared, ribald joke. Then she made some remark -- I can't recall now what -- and I realized she wasn't joking. Maybe she had once thought it was a joke, maybe she never did. She wouldn't be the first person to not find me attractive on first blush and change her mind through habituation. She said, in almost these words, that she would be keen to bang me if I were not married. This is only fractionally different in intent than saying she wants to have sex with me. It was boundary crossed enough that I was always cautious thereafter.

Melissa insisted I was an asexual being, like a sentient doll, smooth betwixt the legs. Though she spent time with my girlfriends, she could not fathom that I had sex. She made clear I was not attractive to her. (She still offered to have sex with me any time I wanted and tried once against my will. In her early twenties, that was to be expected. As upset as I was that she tried to force herself on me, I could almost not take it personally. It was the sort of thing Melissa did.) Even Daniel said I was like a golden retriever and once told someone that I was "aggressively non-threatening." (Not that "threatening" should be attractive, but its opposite surely isn't.)

I doll-up nice

I do admit that I am not my type, though the feminized Instagram version of me above does remind me of a few girls over whom I have salivated in the past. When I shared it on social media, friends and associates agreed Female Thomm was a looker, though Actual Thomm gets less attention.

Along with not focusing much on my gender identity - I'm male and that is fine with me, but I wouldn't care if I were female instead (aside from the blight of rampant misogyny) - I never invested much in being overtly sexual. Though I usually had an acceptable amount of sex in relationships, three months might pass since the woman in my bed had wanted to touch me. This did not make me feel attractive, even if she tried to blame her medication or her stress. Since I was seventeen, I have accumulated less than a year single. During half of that I was seeing a few young women without it going much further than kissing. The week I finally decided that I was happy staying single for the foreseeable future, I met Amber.

I am not positive Amber sees me much as a sexual being or wishes to most of the time. I am attractive to her, but she isn't usually very interested in being attracted. She is cuddly and cozy. As far as Amber's concerned, having me present and loving me is all she needs, not sex.

I do take mild offense to the idea that I am asexual because I am not filled with insecure bravado. I want to be attractive to strangers, even as I wouldn't want to do a thing more about it. I am happily married and react with disproportionate distance when someone might be trying to step over the line.

Despite what people say about men growing ruggedly handsome, it is likely that my attractiveness peaked years ago. I have a wife who loves me and whom is darling, but the time where strangers will find me attractive is likely over. They may be keen on my words -- I would find this flattering on another level -- but they won't think I'm hot. I may never I've had the opportunity to actually be hot to people. I was only ever cute.

Soon in Xenology: Writing. The End of the World.

last watched: American Horror Story: Apocalypse
reading: Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates