Vol. 3 - Mmmmm brains... and a book with magicians and another with ghosts

Dearest Reader,

Following last week’s Geological Gay Scale slideshow, I spent some time reminiscing about my stint working in a jewelry store when I was a wee lamb, right after college. Once I helped a woman who came in looking for amethyst. She told me that it had to be amethyst because that was the most healing gemstone—that she had been reading up on the properties of crystals, that amethyst had the most beneficial properties, and the darker purple, the better for healing. This was a fine jeweler, so healing crystals were not really our specialty, but we did have a nice selection of fine amethyst.

I showed her the options, and she narrowed it down to two rings that she really liked. One had a large oval in a traditional setting, and the other featured a large trillium-cut (basically, a slightly rounded-off triangle), set in a more modern style. As she was debating between the two, I said something like, “I understand that a lot of people who work with crystals find the triangle or pyramid shape to be really valuable for channeling the healing properties.” (This was me drawing on my deep knowledge of the arcane arts from having occasionally visited shops that sold little pewter dragons and books about Wicca, and from my dim recollection of the product descriptions from old Pyramid Collection catalogs.) And she gave me a look, like What kind of ridiculous hocus pocus is that?, and just said, “Oh, how interesting.” And then I think she ended up buying the oval ring.

Definitely a lot of healing power in this one.

Also last week, I got a couple of great questions about the term “sapiosexual” in the title of this newsletter, including the excellent question, “Huh?” and also, “Why the choice of that term in particular?” And that second question took me to some interesting corners of the internet.

Sapiosexual refers to a person who is sexually attracted to intelligence (over appearance). This is the thing that I knew when I put it in the name of my newsletter. It’s a concept I identify with, and it also seemed like a cute bit of wordplay for a newsletter that aspires to apply a really needless level of intellectualizing to poor defenseless queer romances. What I didn’t then know is that after the term was coined, apparently there was some online debate about whether it was non-inclusive and ableist because I guess some people using the term were tying it to IQ scores? And the term noetisexual was proposed as a more inclusive alternative, being described more broadly as attraction to the shape of another person’s mental landscape, with sexual attraction being premised on that mental connection (and with some other layers and nuance suggested).

Clearly I am not the Keeper of the Words, and there will always be room for personal interpretation and how an individual feels a word applies to them. But since I do feel myself on my home turf with this, I will defend it accordingly. Because I’m definitely attracted to intelligence. But if some wanker out there is going to insist that intelligence has to be defined in a particular way, by IQ score or similar, then wanker, please meet me in the back parking lot at 4 o’clock tomorrow because I WILL FIGHT YOU.

It should be obvious that intelligence is not a uniform quality which can be conveniently measured, as evidenced by all the problematic cultural constructs and racist and ableist standards that historically have done a piss-poor job of attempting to measure it — and also by the way that different people find different things to be particularly clever or smart or interesting. Intelligence encompasses all the ways that a mind makes itself, curiosity as well as knowledge, life experience and competence and creativity, problem-solving and innovativeness, humor, interacting with puzzles and pulling apart knots, willingness to learn new things, and to be wrong and learn again. It certainly is not dependent on neurotypicality, which I can attest as a ADHD-brained person myself and as evidenced by my pretty wide acquaintance of intelligent neurodivergent folks. It’s definitely not dependent on education or conventional markers of achievement. My maternal grandfather was a country kid who never went to college, was a farmer most of his life and then a school janitor for another couple decades; and today he is in his 90s, makes amazing folk art, and is still goddamn brilliant.

From my grandpa, December 2021 — those thumbs ♥

On the flip side, I have known many highly educated, apparently neurotypical people who have been very academically or professionally successful and who quantitatively would rate as intelligent by the usual metrics … but who I personally find uninteresting because they balk at engaging in rigorous debate or dialogue, can’t meaningfully defend or argue a proposition, can’t work out how to approach solving a problem that doesn’t have a predefined solution, have no idea how to get their hands dirty, and/or are totally uninterested in exercising their mind beyond the scope of what they already comfortably understand.

So really, this is about being attracted to someone’s expression of intelligence, which is maybe analogous to the expression of gender? It actually doesn’t tell you a whole lot when I say I’m attracted to intelligence, no more than a straight woman saying “I like guys” tells you what sort of guys she might like. It is, as we say in the corporate world, only directional. Whereas if that straight woman says, “I like built guys who drive pickup trucks” or “I like gentle guys who wear lots of sweaters,” that tells you a little more (although, again, still not actually that much). So for me, if I were to see someone wearing a t-shirt with a badass gender-bending Victorian woman on a bicycle, that would immediately spark my interest. And then if I say, “Nice shirt!” and they say, “Oh thanks, it’s totally me because I love my Peloton so much,” then I am going to be less interested.¹

And to belabor the analogy further: If a straight woman says, “Tee hee, you have to be at least 6 feet tall to ride this ride,” that is absolutely equivalent to a person saying, “I’m super into intelligence, so I only date people who scored in the 90th percentile on their most recent standardized test.” Like: mmkay 🙄

Now, you may notice that up to this point, I have not picked a side in the sapiosexual / noetisexual terminology debate. And that is because I think both of these are perfectly good words, which mean slightly different things:

• Sapiosexual means sexual attraction to intelligence.

• Noetisexual means sexual attraction premised on mental connection and appreciation of the shape of the other person’s mind.

Are you seeing what I’m seeing?

• Sapiosexual = brains are hot

• Noetisexual = once I get to know someone’s brain, that brain is hot

Personally, I think expressions of intelligence are hot regardless of whether I have an intimate connection with the person in question. Like, I can get all starry-eyed over a stranger on the internet making a witty book reference or topology joke², or sharing a clever webcomic or especially ridiculous scientific diagram. So based on the above framework, I would place myself on the side of sapiosexual. Whereas perhaps someone who self-describes as noetisexual has an experience that’s more tied to their attraction to a particular person upon forming a connection and developing an understanding of that person’s mind. I think there’s plenty of space for these terms to peaceably coexist.

Some cute brain-appreciation from Etsy.

I also think that both terms fall under the broader umbrella of “noetic attraction,” which could also extend to romantic or platonic attraction. So if you’re not sure which term you might self-apply, or if the -sexual suffix doesn’t fit, then talking about noetic attraction or noetic connection might work better.

Anyway, if you catch someone using “sapiosexual” in an shitty exclusionary or ableist way, then let them know that Santa Beas is going to put coal in their stockings. (And if you are tempted to cyberbully someone into using one term over another, please just don’t.) Also, I would suggest that this is maybe more of an attribute than an identity. As in, I think it’s a useful descriptor, but trying to assign it a flag does kinda feel exclusionary to me? (I mean, I don’t think there’s a flag for “attracted to sexy people” either, is there?) And anyway, nothing is going to be a more meaningful flag than the actual references that are relevant to your interests. Peep M&M chili is my flag. Widdershins is my flag. Having an emotional support knife is my flag. You get the idea.

On to the book reviews:

New(ish) release: Spells and Sensibility by K.L. Noone and K.S. Murphy, released late January 2022.

This is the first book in what will be a trilogy, an m/m romance in an alternate world where Britain’s magicians were instrumental in the war against Napoleon. This first book substantially stands on its own, ending with some issues in place for the next book to pick up, but not on a painful cliffhanger. I’d previously read other books by K.L. Noone, and this one shares a similar gentleness: the conflict in the story is all external, with the characters finding care and refuge in each other. Theo Burnett is chief librarian at the Royal College of Wizardry; Captain Henry Tourmaline is a magician returned from the war, who visits the library in hope of finding a solution to the magical wound that is wearing him away from the inside. Interestingly, this is the second “gentle domination” relationship to hit my reading list with recent releases (maybe saying something about the collective psyche in 2021 that this was on authors’ minds?), here with perhaps a little more emphasis on “gentle.” Or at least, tidy. Theo is neat and orderly in all things, to the point of having some distinct compulsive tendencies, while Henry is used to the disarray of a large, chaotic family and then a battlefield; and Theo’s orderliness and willingness to take charge of Henry is a soothing balm to everything that is sore and threadbare in him. And in return, Henry is so pleased to order things as Theo would prefer, which is a totally new experience for Theo, who is used to being teased or fielding irritation from others. It’s a very sweet dynamic, and with each step of the characters learning about each other and unfolding the mystery of what happened to Henry, there’s a lot of world-building that mortars everything together with a strong sense of place and history and magic. This was a fun read, and I’m looking forward to the next.

Upcoming release: Unfinished Business, Tim Susman, coming July 5, 2022.

A private detective, working with the ghost of a Russian bear shapeshifter as his partner, agrees to do a favor for an old friend, and when everything goes spectacularly sideways, the ex-boyfriend he left but never got over helps to save his butt. There’s a lot layered into this story: portrayal of a pretty diverse range of ethnic and cultural heritages, discrimination against “extrahumans,” the experience of past military service in supporting humanitarian aid efforts and working with refugees. While this was categorized as a paranormal romance, I think it’s more accurate to call this a paranormal detective story with an incidental romance (including a little smoochin’, but only a little). The book is all written in first-person from Jae’s perspective. His closest friend is the ghost he works with, Sergei, who is bound to him through a ring that he wears. (This is perhaps an inopportune moment for a colorful Russian sidekick, but that’s hardly the author’s fault.) And then it turns out that ghosts are a pretty important building block of this story. Czoltan as a love interest was a bit thin; we know a bunch of broad facts about him, and he’s sympathetic and likeable, but I can’t say that I came away with a strong sense of his personality. (This is why I’d call this book romance-adjacent—because it has a main character and a love interest, rather that two main characters.) There’s a lot done with the intersection of regular human culture and extrahumans (which mostly ends up revolving around shapeshifters in this story, although there’s mention early on that vampires are part of the extra community as well), plus all the ghost stuff. Overall, it was an interesting twist on the classic gumshoe, though I had some unanswered questions about ghosts which never really got sorted. And sometimes I had a bit of difficulty getting my head around the physical logic of partially-transformed werewolves doing stuff. Like, how does a person with a wolf’s head drink a cappuccino? I tend to get hung up on the feasibility of physical interaction with the environment, so my brain would stutter over things like a werewolf holding a gun in his “paw” and firing (so do the paws have fingers and thumbs?), or opening and drinking from a can of sparkling water (I guess claws would be good for opening a can, but then would you hold it up to the end of your snout to take little sips?). Still, I think these things were handled consistently, and for another reader, they might not give a hiccup at all.

Thanks for reading! If you missed Sunday’s issue of The Steamy, you can read it here (NSFW).

Any books you’d like to see reviewed? Other thoughts? Please let me know in the comments — would love to take your suggestions.

Also, I’m considering maybe adding an audio recording or podcast version of the newsletter, as a matter of accessibility and for those who just might prefer it. Let me know in the comments if that’s something you’d be interested in.

With love,

Beas

1. No offense to lovers of Peloton. It’s just not Hark, A Vagrant.

2. Ok, I don’t actually know anything about topology, but I can appreciate a good ☕ = 🍩 joke when I see one. And ok, ok, note that the hot beverage emoji varies across character sets, as a cup with or without a saucer. So if you’re seeing a cup with a saucer, that would more properly be ☕ = 🍩 + 🥐