I don’t often have spontaneous sexual attraction to other people. I’m both demisexual and reciprosexual which means that I don’t usually experience sexual attraction to others unless we’ve formed an emotional connection and the other person has expressed a sexual attraction to me.

But on the very, very rare occasion, it has happened before. The only other time I remember having spontaneous sexual attraction clearly is many years ago when I was attending Comic Con in London with my ex and a friend. We were sitting at a table furthest away from the halls where the convention was taking place eating food and talking when a woman wearing a nurse’s outfit started dancing and bending over and playing with the zip along the front of her outfit. I think all three of us (and many more amongst the crowd of people who could see her) was experiencing some sexual attraction in that moment.

But it isn’t a common occurrence for me. Which is why I was very surprised when I was on the train recently and experienced it.

I was getting the train from London back home. The train itself was fairly crowded and I’d walked through several carriages trying to find an empty seat. I remember I passed by a man sleeping where his rucksack was falling off his lap onto the empty seat next to him in order to take an empty seat with a table and three other seats that were occupied. I wasn’t sure if the three of them were together but I asked the older man who had the empty seat next to him if I could sit there and all three people around the table nodded and smiled at me.

Including this gorgeous man who ended up sitting opposite me. I get travel anxiety so I was really pleased to get a seat so I could take some deep breaths and try to relax. I’d had my headphones in and was listening to my soothing music playlist. And I think I relaxed fairly quickly after sitting down.

It was a warm day so after he smiled and nodded at me as I was sitting down, the next thing I noticed about this man was that he’d picked up his Oasis bottle and pressed it against his neck to cool down. He was wearing a thin white button up shirt and the first three or four buttons were undone showing off a slightly muscular chest and some little curls of dark hair. I didn’t want to stare because he was obviously with his wife or girlfriend and I heard him telling her that she could fall asleep if she wanted, he’d make sure they got off at the right stop.

So I started paying attention to other people in the carriage. The older man next to me had been on his phone and when that conversation ended, he left his phone open to his Notes app where he was writing a letter to his parish priest. He had put his phone down in order to retrieve a book from his bag which he opened and read with a pencil hovering under the words he was reading and I was fascinated to find out which words he’d underline and which words he’d skip over.

And as I was watching this older man it was like the Gorgeous Man opposite me was watching me watch the older man. He watched me check out the note on his phone, he watched me check out the title of the book, he watched as I had a half smile on my face as I was wondering about the underlined words. And I think it was that he was looking at me that caught my attention so I looked over at him and caught his eye and he smiled. One of those relaxed, carefree smiles which took over his whole face. One of those smiles that I had to look away from.

Who openly appraises another person on a train like that? I was doing all my looking as subtly as I could, unlike him. And I couldn’t stop. I had noticed that the woman sitting in the window seat on the other side of the train had pulled out a book so I turned my head to see if I could see what the title was. And then the person sitting next to her moved so that her skirt fell off her leg and I could make out an intricate sun tattoo just above her ankle that looked interesting that I wanted to see a little closer. And he watched me do that too. Even turned his head to see what had captured my attention.

He seemed fascinated not in other people but only in me and what I found interesting to look at.

And that was pretty much it. A ridiculously attractive man, with a kind face and an easy smile that welcomed me to sit near him and noticed me. That’s all it takes.

And in all that taking me in I started to wonder what it would be like to kiss this man? to crawl into his lap and have all that attention on touching me, licking me. To have all of his attention on giving me pleasure. How would he react if I pulled his lower lip into my mouth, if I licked along that neck he was trying to cool down earlier, if I slipped my hands along his chest, his back.

I was almost glad that mine was the first stop and when I’d gotten off the train he had already gotten up to find the toilet so there wasn’t any awkward eye contact. Was this one of those missed connections?!