Outside the ring is not far, and we both know it

I live outside the ring, which is the closest thing this city has to far away, and it is still twenty five minutes. I have had that distance offered to me as a reason three times this year, and on all three occasions both of us knew it was not the reason.

Twenty eight, four years in. What I have come to think is that the absence of distance makes people uncomfortable. Everywhere else you can decline by referring to a journey. Here you have to either come or say something true, and a surprising number of people would rather invent a difficult tram than admit they are not interested.

I would genuinely rather be told. It takes ten seconds and it saves me a fortnight of misreading somebody's politeness as a slow yes. I have done that misreading often enough to recognise the feeling now, which does not stop me doing it.

I switch, and I want one partnership over a long stretch rather than a rotation. Two evenings a week once we are there. Somebody who lives wherever they live and does not treat my end of the map as an obstacle, because it is not one and we are both adults.

I am not interested in a lot of managing, in something that only happens when it is convenient, or in a person who cannot say a plain no. That last one I have come to value above almost anything else.