In the most open city I have lived in, I am the one who is hiding
- Looking for
- a dominant who can keep something entirely private without resenting it
- Experience
- Five years, two dynamics, both of them completely unknown to anyone.
- Around
- the west of the city, Berlin
Everybody around me is remarkably relaxed about all of this. My colleagues talk about their arrangements at lunch. Half the profiles I read have a face on them and a full name in the first photograph. And I am the person with no picture, a written profile that says almost nothing identifiable, and a family in another country who would take it very badly indeed.
Thirty eight, the west of the city, submissive, five years in, two arrangements both of them entirely private.
What is strange is that the openness here makes discretion harder rather than easier. Nobody expects it, so everybody assumes an unfaceted profile means something is wrong. I have been asked more times in this city than anywhere else whether I am married or a fraud.
I am neither. I am a person whose parents ring twice a week and who is not going to have that conversation.
What I want is a real ongoing arrangement, structured, with a weekly evening and contact in between. Not looking for anybody who wants to be seen with me anywhere. Not looking for somebody who will find the privacy charming in month one and constraining in month six. And not looking to explain the family again.