At forty I rewrote what I was asking for and lost most of my queue
- Looking for
- somebody who wants the arrangement rather than the intensity
- Experience
- Fifteen years, four dynamics, the last two quite different from the first two.
- Around
- Kreuzberg, Berlin
For years I asked for intensity, because that was what I thought this was, and I got it repeatedly and it kept ending in about five months. Somewhere around forty I rewrote the whole thing to ask for consistency instead: a weekly structure, obligations, somebody paying attention over a long period, nothing dramatic. My queue collapsed almost immediately and the two arrangements I have had since were both better than anything before them.
Forty four, Kreuzberg, switch, fifteen years in.
I mention the collapse because it is the part nobody warns you about. Asking for the ordinary version makes you far less interesting in a place designed around browsing, and the reward arrives much later and only from one person.
I am equally comfortable in both directions and I have been for a decade. What I want is one arrangement with real structure and enough time in it for either of us to be boring occasionally.
Not looking for anybody looking for the version of me that existed at thirty. Not looking for something that has to be constantly at a high temperature. And not looking for a person who describes what they want entirely in terms of activities, because I did that for a decade and it produced nothing that lasted.