Third card down was a face I knew, and I have not been the same on here since
- Looking for
- somebody who understands that this city is a village with trams
- Experience
- Five years, two dynamics, the longer one eighteen months.
- Around
- Didsbury, Manchester
Third card down, on an ordinary Sunday evening, was a man I have sat opposite at three or four dinners. I closed the app so fast I genuinely do not know whether it had already shown me to him, and I have thought about very little else since. We have seen each other twice since then and neither of us has said a word.
Nothing happened and nothing is going to. What it did was change my whole understanding of what this thing is. I had been treating a phone as a way of meeting strangers, and in a city this size it is not. It is a machine for showing you the people who are already two steps away from you, and finding out which of them you had not met yet.
Thirty six, Didsbury, submissive, five years in. Two dynamics, the longer of them eighteen months, ended when she moved to Leeds and neither of us wanted the version that runs on a screen.
What I want has not changed. An ongoing arrangement with a shape, standing expectations, somebody who notices when I go quiet. What has changed is that I would rather that person came from outside the circle of people I see at things.
Not looking for anybody who thinks discretion is the same as shame. Not looking to be told I am overthinking it, since the last person who told me that was recognised at work eight months later.