Four years, one person, and no idea what anybody else is like

Four years, one person, and that is the entire account. We started at the same time, learned on each other, and I have never once been tied by anybody else. It ended in the spring for ordinary reasons and I now have to find out what any of this is like when the other person is not him.

Twenty six, the south of the city. Everything I know is one man's way of doing things, and I have no idea which parts of it are general and which parts were simply his. I suspect a great many were simply his. That makes me a slow prospect, and I would rather write it down here than have somebody discover in week three that I am quietly checking every assumption against a sample of one.

I am not fragile about the ending. It was a decent four years and it stopped for the reasons things stop. What I am is inexperienced in a way that a number completely disguises: four years sounds like something, and in practice it means I have done one thing many times.

So I want to go slowly with somebody who will not read slow as a lack of interest. Talking first, more than once. A long stretch of ordinary time before anything at all. Then, I hope, a proper partnership, because I liked being in one and I would like another.

Not looking for the man who wants to be the one showing me how it is really done. That framing puts me off entirely and it arrives about once a fortnight.