The tingle

I can tell whether I want to fuck you within ten minutes of being in your company. Often less. Naturally, I'm using "fuck" in it's broadest term. Using it to mean whatever activity we chose to do that follows up on the pull from my sexuality to yours, or vice versa. Oftentimes it won't involve just straight fucking, and frankly, it's been a long time since I've done that, so call it BDSM, call it kink, call it kinky sex. The upshot is that whatever we do, I'll know pretty damn quickly whether I want to do it with you.

But I have to be near you to decide.

I can't tell from a photo, but I will ask to see one, because first I need to think you are hot, and second I want to know you are who you say you are. You don't have to be wrapped up in latex - and frankly, if you are and I can't see your face then what's the point? Seeing you in the flesh is always better, but I'll want a photo first. I have no qualms about saying I want a partner who I find attractive, I doubt that those who see my photos on a website immediately go into paroxysms of joy over what a marvellous personality I have (I don't, incidentally, for those new readers who haven't yet cottoned on).

I can't tell over the phone, which is ok, because, frankly, I won't call you and I won't give you my number if we haven't met. But rest assured your voice is important, the way that you sound, the words that you use, how, when and whether you laugh. They indicate the noises you might make, the whispered phrases I might hear. When I hear it though, I want to see your lips move.

I can't tell from any text that you write, although I will look at your words carefully. The turns of phrases, the grammar and spelling - yes, I do this - what you've chosen to say about yourself and how you've said it. Whether you are overly familiar or completely estranged from the shift key. Whether you've bothered to write anything at all, or written War and Peace or used excerpts from poems or prose, and where those excerpts come from. In one rather exciting case, I'll be bemused as to why you have copy and pasted my own description of me and shrug, accepting the old adage about imitation whilst deciding that I really wouldn't want to meet a mirror image of myself.

I have to be near you.

I have to be in your company for a few minutes, acclimatise myself to you, your use of space, how you are around me. I have to see you in the flesh, how you sit in your skin and hold yourself. Get a waft of your smell, the scent of you and your skin can make all the difference. We don't have to touch, but if we do and especially if we kiss I'll know like *that*. I'll get the tingle, you see. That buzzing sound at the base of my skull, like alarm bells for sexuality, something in the animal core of my brain pricks up its ears and is primed and ready. If we do kiss, then there will be a genuine tingle, my lips will hold the imprint of yours for perhaps days afterwards and I'll be able to bring that sensation back to mind for months. It goes right through my lips and down into my cunt, like electric shocks for sex.

I don't know what it is, but it can feel a little bit like a submarine pinging on a radar, in the depths of an otherwise silent sea. Maybe it's pheromones, and that would certainly explain my mild obsession with smell, although interestingly I've wanted to fuck people whose smell I have found initially off putting (although it was a strong, clear scent that stood out) and which later because a sex-smell for me. Maybe it's another bizarre form of body chemistry and desire that has yet to be understood by science. I can tell you how you did it, in the aftermath, and it will never be the same thing twice, although some things will be similar. It might be the way you unfastened your tie a little, the way you pushed your hair behind your ears, the shape of your hands, anything, really, about you. I absolutely can't tell you how to do it, you already either have it or you don't, frankly. You push my buttons and it only takes a few minutes for me to know. But that's all I know. I won't know if I like you, if I want to be friends, if we suit each other or if we are a terrible match. I won't know whether our kinks align, whether the sex will be awesome or merely very good (if I get the tingle it's never bad sex, so I've learnt to rely on it). It's absolutely not love at first sight - it won't tell me my emotions towards you, beyond want-desire-lust. I won't know if I love you or want to be with you for months and months and months, if I ever do.

But fuck you? Yeah, I'll know before we've finished the first drink.