What causes attraction between the sexes? Certainly, good-looking people cross our paths every day, but that doesn't mean we are attracted to all of them. True attraction, instead, seems to come with a certain magnetism. Eyes meet, and instead of discomfort due to encroached boundaries, sparks fly. This is not a fumbling, uncertain glance. It is an assertion, question, and offer rolled into one - as effective as saying "I'm interested in getting to know you better. I believe I have something to offer you, do you have something to offer me?"

What bothers me, I think, about dating and the way my interaction with males my age has gone is that I've only experienced that once, but that one time convinced me that that's the way things should always be. Although I'm sure some very solid relationships developed out of close friendships, I think that hugely downplays the "initial attraction" component, which might be more important than is politically correct to think.

Why do you become close friends with another person? Why do you share your hopes, dreams, fears with them, and they do the same? And if you have that, what would make you want to take the jump from "friend" to "lover" besides the biological impulse to procreate?

The appeal of a relationship, to me, lies in knowing that when the commitment is made, something in the way you interact with the other person changes. Simple desire, fondness, and fun with someone else develops into a more complex form, including reliability and interdependence. This can be present in intimate platonic friendships, true, but they overlook the desire part.

All I know is that it's much healthier (saner? more rational?) to enter into a relationship because you want to be with the other person, as opposed to needing something they can give you, or think they can give you. Knowing someone doesn't need you, but wants you anyway, is much more flattering than the reverse, isn't it?

I don't want to date someone because I was his first something-or-other (friend, confidant, acquaintance, etc.) that was a girl. I refuse to date someone because he wants to see what a relationship's like. I won't date anyone who feels like they need another person to lean on in order to go on.

My next involvement will be with someone who makes my world better by being part of it, and I can do the same for, as opposed to being what holds someone's existence together. There are a few things that go hand-in-hand with that, and my being initially attracted to them, or at least being willing to give them the chance to have them grow on me, is a crucial one.

This, of course, means that I'll have to come up with some tactful way of rejecting guys with whom neither of the above applies. But that will be some indefinite time in the future, when I start dating again, so I needn't trouble myself with it at present.

As for now, I'll just ponder what it is that makes those first sparks of attraction fly. Is it a gaze? A certain air of confidence? The feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when I open my door and see him standing there? The stories he's written that make me want to cry? That he makes me smile? His views on what's important, that seem to mesh so well with mine? Helping me up when I fall on my ass on a patch of slippery ice?

Only time will tell. I'm young, and in no hurry, which is the way it should be. <(* *)>

I was in 4th grade, a substitute teacher I had taught the class a lesson on pie graphs. To demonstrate, she went around the room and asked each student his or her race, then put a tally mark under the corresponding group on the board (Mexican, White, Black, Asian, Other). I wondered why she was doing it, because I thought attention wasn't supposed to be drawn to race in school. But I paid attention anyway, curious to eventually see the graph of the racial makeup of our class.

Finally, she got to me, and asked me my race. I said proudly, "I'm mixed! Half white and half black. Put me under 'Other.'" She frowned a little and said "No, what's your father's race? He's black?" I nodded, confused. Then the teacher said "You're black, then," and added a tally to the Black category. I was astonished, and somewhat angry that she would completely ignore the other side of me, but I didn't say anything to her. I was only nine, after all.

When I got home that night, I told my mother about it, including how it upset me. She told me not to worry about it, that some people are just like that - they don't want to have to deal with the 'Other' category. Although I don't remember quite what my response was to that, I know that throughout the years to follow, I took great joy in checking the "other" category on any form that asked me for my race. Except for being proud of being biracial whenever the issue of race came up, I didn't give it much thought besides checking the forms, though.

Somewhere between elementary and high school, though, that changed. I did two things that stand out very clearly in my mind now to illustrate that change. The first occurred in 10th grade, I created the first email account that I actually learned to use - on yahoo. The ID for that account was simple, a combination of my name and zip code, but I thought it was boring, so I decided to come up with a name of my own for online chatting, inspired by names like joeblow21 or angelbabey. And what was the first thing to come to mind? My race. I wanted people who knew nothing about me, who hadn't even spoken to me, only seen my name on an online users list, to know I was biracial. I tried mixedgirl and the like, but those were taken. After a few variations, I came up with colormixgirl, and my online alias was born.

The second happened my junior year, when we received our house teacher mid-year. When a friend of mine and I went to meet him for the first time, the very first words out of my mouth were "Hi! I'm biracial, and my name is Gena." Now, Mr. Daly's a good guy, of course, so he laughed and said "Years from now, I'll have no idea what your name is anymore, but I will remember that you are biracial." And though part of me was pleased that that particular part of me would be recollected, a larger part of me was disturbed that that was the first thing to come out of my mouth!

So I tried to stop dwelling on my ethnic background, but I continued to think about it nonetheless. And some things did change, but for the first few weeks of college I did still go around telling the people I talked to that I was biracial. I take a small comfort in that it wasn't the first thing I told them, though.

Now I generally tell people only when they ask, specifically, for my ethnic background, or they ask the meaning of my AIM name. But the alias is starting to bother me somewhat now - there are so many other things about me that I could showcase in those characters that make up my online name, and it bothers me that I chose my race, which I tell myself, and anyone who will listen, isn't important.

Yet the issue remains - the fact I give it this much thought merely shows that it is still important to me, though I'm trying to change that. I like the uniqueness of my online alias. I like that I can design my site with various rainbow colors because of it. But I'm not comfortable that that's the first connotation people have when they see me online.

I've been considering changing, or adding to, the meaning of the name, actually. I could take up painting, or get a job in the ink business. Or I could discuss my dreams of racial homogeneity (though that isn't exactly far away from the original meaning, either).

I'm not sure. Maybe I'll just let myself become genuinely comfortable with it, instead. Good online identities, without numbers and the like, are hard to find. And though I could switch to sortasleepy or lukewarmfuzzy for good this time, are their connotations really more positive?

Laziness and frigidity? I think not.