Some random rambly shit about bodies & sexuality, & my weird head

I have pretty eyes. Big and deep brown, with long eyelashes. Bambi eyes. People have complimented me on them before now. Sometimes they say I should swap my glasses for contacts(no thank you; the thought of floating something on my eyeball just grosses me out and anyway I’ve worn glasses so long they feel like part of my body now)so as to render my eyes more visible, make the most of them.

I remember looking in a mirror, aged about thirteen or fourteen, and not liking what I saw. This was of course commonplace. But it wasn’t always about imperfection in my face and figure…Sometimes I’d look, and see those big Bambi eyes. They looked like they belonged on some baby creature. They looked vulnerable.

And I thought, ‘I hate that. I don’t want to look that vulnerable.’

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, sometimes, be in that space, be the small thing held in warm arms, and be comforted. But I didn’t want it all the time, and I didn’t want it to be the thing people saw when they saw me-regardless of what I wanted.

I was hanging out with some of the Final Fantasy spirit folk at this point in time, so I had no shortage of pretty girls to observe. I never really thought the thought in so many words, but I sort of formed an assumption-sexiness is something your body does to you. If your features add up in a certain way you’re ugly and there’s nothing you can do about it; if they add up in another way you’re pretty and there’s nothing you can do about that.

That girl I talked to back then, for instance; my friend in the blue wool cardigan. She’s pretty; by her world’s standards she’s what everyone would think of immediately if someone said ‘pretty’, slim dark-eyed and dark-haired. That’s always there, whenever anyone looks at her. It’s like she’s always in some sense on show. Not that she flaunted herself or anything, or revealed anything much. Her clothing was otherworldly of course, since she was too, but basically it was a cardy and bike shorts and a top no more revealing than the sort every Thulc girl in town was wearing. But her prettiness was always on display, even if her tits weren’t. She was an attractive woman, and people could see that straight out whenever they saw her. Her attitude didn’t have anything to do with it. Didn’t matter whose pants she actually wanted to get into, didn’t matter what she thought about people looking at her. She was on show, and everyone could see. She could have dressed in sackcloth and ashes and she’d still have been pretty, and she’d have gotten a lot of ‘what the fuck?’ comments on top of that.

Of course prettiness didn’t make her a weak person-and anyone who thinks beautiful women have to be weak should go to a dozen worlds I could name, make an observation like that to a hundred deadly and determined ladies. Go on, I dare you-but it did inject a quality into her strength, a kind of defensiveness. Don’t look at me like that-I’ll show you what a pretty woman can do…But that didn’t stop them from looking. Touching, yes. But not from looking.

She was a powerful being and a sexual being. She could offer or withhold as she liked. And she was with folk who respected that she had the choice of it, decent folk. And she dated, and the relationships went their way, and lasted for a while, or not, though sometimes she was turned down, and sometimes she turned other people down, but for the most part she had a pretty good time…

…but that prettiness. That bit of her that was there for anyone to see, a free sample of her. That vulnerability. A bit of her given away before any interaction even started. And yes, with some people she wanted to give that away, there’s one boy I know she wanted to give that to, wanted to give him the sight of her, wanted him to want it-

-but she didn’t get the choice about that bit, and nobody asked.

She was sexy. It was the way her body was. It was a fact that she simply could not get away from.

She didn’t seem to have any problems with this, didn’t even think about it probably. Like I wasn’t consciously thinking about it. But I was noticing. Somewhere, I was noticing.

And time passed, and my hormones kicked in, and I begin to notice something that puzzled me a little. The thing that seemed to make the difference about whether I was attracted to someone or not wasn’t physical. It was…well, it was a whole lot of things, different in every person, but all mental. Mind, I could appreciate physical beauty just fine, but it was just…stuff. Like how a waterfall or a sunset is beautiful. It was when I noticed an interesting mind in a well-formed body that I would start getting interested. And I don’t mean interested in a relationship, I just mean horny! I could not, and still cannot, muster up any attraction for a physically good-looking person who I know nothing about.

Hmm, I thought. Interesting.

Recently I’ve been puzzling this out a bit, and it’s been prompted by noticing a spirit or two(most of my friends are spirits)who seem to do this whole sexiness thing differently to how I saw it.

Spirits who, on pure physicality and according to my tastes at least, are not attractive. Just plain, or even a bit ugly or grotesque.

But I’ve seen them being sexy…It’s strange. I wasn’t turned on myself, but I could see the intention and the power that they could call up, an attitude, a way of moving differently, a look about them that’s just impossible to pin down…It was sexy, though it wasn’t aimed at me, wasn’t meant to be, and didn't register on my internal radars. Does it make sense to say that I could see the sexual power that they had even if it wasn’t one that touched me? And even though they weren’t doing anything overtly sexual, like stripping or whatnot?

I’ve seen them, and for them sexiness isn’t something their bodies do to them. It’s something they do to their bodies. Or with their bodies. And there’s no defensive air, no feeling of vulnerability-though they weren’t always doing it, calling up that power, for someone who they wanted to see them! Sometimes they seemed to just be doing it for the sheer joy of it.

It’s hard to put words round all this. I keep typing and then deleting things, trying to capture the concepts shifting in my head.

It’s just, sexuality always seemed to me to be a sort of vulnerability.

But I’ve read stuff people’ve wrote, about sexuality being power, being empowering. And I never really understood that. Only now I think I start to get some idea of what they meant…