geek2geek

It’s Valentine’s Day, I suppose. Cupid’s here holding an arrow to my head until I write something relevant. I already talked about the dating habits of Klingons and androids, what else is there? I could talk about what turns me on: brains.

I was biking home from my accidental Valentine’s date and thinking about a word Jess introduced me to: sapiosexual. “One who finds intelligence the most sexually attractive feature.” Yo, that’s me!

At some point me and my friends were trying to figure out what my “type” is going back over my past and current trysts. Physically, I’m all over the place. Nothing stood out about their professions or hobbies. What stood out was that everyone was smart, independent, positive, assertive and adventurous. Mental traits, all. Being able to put up with a flaky programmer that wears goofy shoes helps, too.

brains > boobs

Then I thought: how do I convey my sexual preferences to the world in t-shirt form? My first impulse was “Where the smart women at?” I like it, but maybe only because I get the Blazing Saddles reference.

I like my second idea better: “Brains before Boobs“.  (Thanks to Liz Henry for the use of her brains).  Perhaps a simple black shirt with “BRAINS > BOOBS”.

Or you could go with pictures of a stereotypical smart woman and glamor model. The one thing we can all agree on is that I suck at Photoshop.

talk nerdy to me

At a friend-of-a-friend’s party recently, where I didn’t really know anyone, I found myself looking at a woman there and thinking “wow, she’s gorgeous”. It bowled me over. It’s so rare that I have an immediate and physical attraction. I usually find physical traits attractive because they’re associated with mental ones. More often I meet someone can think “eh, she’s ok”. Then she opens her mouth and speaks intelligently about intellectual property or programming or network routing or ontologies or film or makes some awfulsomely geeky pickup line joke (”I wish I were helicase so I could unzip your genes“) and I melt. Suddenly I’m seeing this person differently, and the mental attraction becomes a physical one. I want to say, “hey, let’s talk geek and make out”.

Which is the opposite of the cliché about someone being attractive until they open their mouth. For me you’re attractive after you’ve opened your mouth.