The man who turned up had almost nothing to do with the profile
- Looking for
- somebody whose writing matches the person in the room
- Experience
- Six years, two dynamics, one very instructive disappointment.
- Around
- Brickell, Miami
Six weeks of excellent messages. Careful, funny, specific about what he wanted and how he worked. Then a man arrived who could not hold a conversation, checked his phone eleven times in an hour, and referred to two things we had discussed as though he had no memory of them. I do not think he was a fraud. I think the writing was where he lived and the room was somewhere he visited.
Forty one, switch, I work in shipping documentation, Brickell, six years in this, two arrangements, and a much better sense now of what a screen can and cannot tell you.
So I meet early. Not on the first day, but inside two weeks, somewhere ordinary, for an hour, with nothing riding on it. Everything I need to know is in that hour and none of it is in the previous fortnight of typing.
What I am after is an arrangement with room to move in both directions, with somebody who is roughly the same person in writing as in person. I do not need charm. I would take slightly awkward and consistent over polished and absent, every single time. And if a long chat window is the thing you actually enjoy, that is legitimate, it is just not what I am here for.