Tony and I were watching Jeopardy! last night, and the returning champion was, in my opinion, a total cutie. He had that all-American, everyday, boy-next-door look ... boyishly handsome, strong jawline, good hair. I didn't care for how his mouth looked when he was speaking, but that's beside the point. Tony didn't see my attraction at all (and he doesn't really get my almost total obsession with Matthew Fuh-Fuh-Fox from Lost, either), but I didn't expect him to. We don't cross hubba-hubba paths very often, although I will say it's happened a lot more lately than it ever has before. Later, we were watching the much-delayed season premiere of Scrubs. I've always been a fan of the show ... T just sort of tolerates it, having never really "gotten" the appeal or gotten into the characters (although I think he chuckles most at John C. McGinley). ANYWAY ... all this got me to thinking about attraction ... what makes each of us, individually, attracted to people, places, things? What flips those proverbial switches?

There are so many different types of people in the world ... and someone finds each one attractive. I wonder if it's something that happens when we're young ... an overly friendly mail carrier, or a charming sack boy at the local A&P, that shapes what we're drawn to as adults. Tony mentioned once having a big crush on Dan Haggerty as a kid ... and if you look at the type of men he's attracted to now, you'll see the major similarities. I wonder what sparked that gravitation toward bearish men?

My personal taste in men is all over the place, really, so it's not as easy to discern reasons for my attractions. Although I wonder -- my first "real" experimentation with another boy happened when I was about 11 or 12. The boy was Kevin ... maybe 16 ... the younger brother of my brother's best friend. Everyone from my brother's "group" was hanging out in the garage, smoking, drinking, whatever ... and I somehow weaseled my way into the sea of boys for the final moments of that particular day of delinquency. There were moments, now and then, when my brother's friends were nice to me. His best friend, Alan, especially, had a way of treating me like a normal kid, and even bought me birthday presents. They were never nice to Kevin, however. And Alan was particularly brutal to his little brother. They'd been berating him about something, and when that finally got old, they left to carry on in someone else's garage. Kevin was always the good kid ... he started cleaning up, throwing away discarded soda cans, Suzy Q. wrappers, and other such trash. I started to help. We talked. Definitely the typical "all-American boy," Kevin was also a bit of a nerd. He had an obsession with outer space ... ships, aliens, and the promise of exploration. I think he was wearing a Star Trek t-shirt that day, actually. He seemed to like me ... he didn't yell at me or anything. He shoved me around a little, playfully, and then started rubbing his crotch. I remember being a bit terrified, but also quite excited. He locked the garage door and turned out the light, the switch making its patented "click" just as he started unzipping his pants...
"All-American," indeed.