There is no halfway in this city and I have stopped agreeing to one
- Looking for
- somebody who will name their side of town honestly and early
- Experience
- Ten years, three dynamics, one ongoing friendship from the first.
- Around
- the Westside, Los Angeles
Whoever invented meeting in the middle did not live here. The middle of a line drawn between two people in this city is generally a stretch of road that neither of us wants to be on, reachable in an hour by both, convenient to nobody, and psychologically arranged so that the whole thing starts with two slightly irritated people. I did it for years because it seemed fair. It is not fair, it is symmetrical, which is a different thing.
Forty three, the Westside, dominant, ten years in, three arrangements and one long friendship that came out of the first.
Now I ask straight away which part of town somebody is in and we decide honestly whose side makes more sense, usually mine to begin with and then alternating. It takes one message and it has removed the single most common way these conversations quietly died.
What I am after is an ongoing arrangement with a submissive who wants structure through the week rather than an occasional evening. I write things down. I revisit them. I am direct and I expect directness, including about the boring parts.
Not looking for anybody who says the geography does not matter, because in four years of this it has mattered more than anything else. Not looking for a long correspondence. And not looking for anyone who names a neighbourhood they do not live in because they think it sounds better.