Best friends have always been levelheaded in love, easily navigating various relationships since college while staying clearheaded and self-possessed. There’s only one thing she’s willing to throw caution to the wind for: physical attraction.
For her, attraction is attraction, and she is willing to fully commit. She once taught herself advanced-level Japanese for her boyfriend, traveled the world for love, applied for a work visa to his country, and flew 13 hours just to spend three days with him over Christmas.
When asked why she feels this way, she can’t explain it. “Maybe it’s the scent on his body? Maybe it’s the way he flips through pages? Maybe it’s the cute nasal tone he has when he wakes up early?” She can’t put it into words. Even if she could, it wouldn’t be physical attraction.
Physical attraction is like an encrypted phone call where he sends pheromone-based messages that only you can hear amidst the crowd. It’s also like the magnetic back cover of a phone case where words are unnecessary—you just pass by and click into place.
I unconditionally support physical attraction, loving this random, accidental, yet irresistible phenomenon. A line of gibberish suddenly appears in life’s programming, and you experience joy or chaos, yet you can’t do anything about it. It’s like when the entire building suddenly loses power and everything deviates from the order you can control. Yet, we find exhilarating pleasure in the chaos of disorder.
How wonderful. Physical attraction is like a tornado on the horizon, an unexpected day off work, or Wang Jiazhi—you can’t predict the outcome until the very end.
All of my relationships have begun with physical attraction. It’s amazing, like when you’re standing in an elevator with a group of people, but you just want to be close to him. Or when you’re eating Japanese food and you no longer notice the wasabi flavor. Or when a casual touch can trigger a mini-earthquake. After thousands of years, humans have retained some animalistic instincts, and your body reacts before your mind does.
Your senses become ten or a hundred times more sensitive at that moment. I still remember the scent of the boy I was infatuated with at twenty: the quiet, diffused scent of plants in the botanical garden on a rainy night, with the scent of lemons growing stronger the closer you get to his neck.
Even now, when I smell pure lemon, my heart trembles and I’m instantly transported back to that sweltering summer with the constant cicada chirping.
If scent is a sanctuary of memories, then physiological attraction is repeatedly breaking all taboos. I will forever be captivated by this chaos and allow myself to reach you.
