Thursday, 03 September 2009

• Have You Had Brain Sex?

  According to my former roommate, who introduced me to the term, “brain sex” occurs when mutual tastes and interests spark an attraction between two people. The difference between brain sex and actual sex, apart from the obvious, is that brain sex occurs by happenstance and almost without notice. You and the other person’s intellectual tendencies just happen to match up in all the right places.

  Imagine that you’re reading The Great Gatsby on the D train when a stranger walks in wearing a Great Gatsby T-shirt. Your eyes meet and you exchange a smile of acknowledgement. Brain sex? Not yet. He says, “I hear that’s a good book,” and you say, “It’s the best,” to which he replies, “I wouldn’t know, I just thought the cover looked good as a shirt.” He’s joking, of course, but he’s completely deadpan and you’re polite in case he is actually a literary ignoramus.

  “Well, I recommend it,” you say.
  “I was joking, it’s one of my favorite books.”
  “So I figured,” you say, as if you were playing along the entire time.

  He takes the empty seat beside you. He introduces himself, you introduce yourself, one of you cracks another joke, and before you know it, you’re having brain sex right there on the downtown D train.  Embarassingly enough, you miss your stop in the heat of the moment, but you’ll pretend that you really did mean to wander around Brooklyn instead of Chinatown that day. “Well, I’m getting off at the next stop,” he says. “I’m taking the afternoon shift at the coffee shop. I’ll give you a free muffin if you come with me.”

  You have more brain sex over carrot muffins and stories about your respective childhoods. Which was better, freeze tag or color tag?

  “Neither: cheese tag!”
  “What the hell is cheese tag?”
  “I don’t remember, but it was fun.”
  “There’s no such thing as cheese tag.”
  “Yeah there is, my friends and I played every recess.”
  “Was this with your imaginary friends?”
  “Oh shut up, it’s real. I’ll Google it on my iPhone right now.” (Google finds nothing).

  A familiar song comes on, something indie yet lacking in hipster cred. The singer’s voice is a little flutey. “I love this song!” you say. At that moment, his cell phone rings, and what do you know, his ringtone is that EXACT SONG……

  Oh, but if only real-life “brain sex” and initial attraction were as TWEE as this. Truth be told, I automatically profile strange men as creepers when they attempt to converse, let alone flirt, with me in public. What can I say, this blog’s called “cuddly cynic” for a reason.

  My extra-sensitive danger radar works as a pretty good defense, but sometimes I suspect that the radar’s working in overdrive. Granted, I’m never gonna wander into Brooklyn with a stranger, but my brain could use some special friends, if you know what I’m sayin’.

  For people like me, accidental brain sex invariably occurs over some really lame medium, like Facebook chat, and with those whom we’d hardly consider a romantic possibility. That’s the beauty of brain sex though. It catches you totally off-guard. One minute, you’re talking about tomorrow’s quiz, and the next, you’re confessing the real reason you started avoiding college bars. Before you know it, it’s 2 AM and the conversation has inexplicably shifted to one about carnivorous plants. It might not be love, it might not be attraction, hell - it might not even be bragworthy brain sex - but admittedly, most people don’t care to converse about this type of thing at such an hour. It’s nothing glamorous, but at the same time, brain sex hardly ever is.

  He ends the conversation at 2:15 in the morning, which somehow feels too soon.

  “I hate to cut this off, but we have that 9 AM quiz tomorrow,” he says.
  “Do you think you’re ready?”
  “Meh, ready enough to pass, but I’d rather neither of us accidentally oversleep.”
  “You’re right, I’m sorry for you keeping you up.”
  “Don’t worry about it,” he replies before signing off. “It’s not every day someone stays up with you to talk about rat-eating plants.”

  Have you ever had brain sex?
  

  Guest blog submitted by cuddly cynic

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