Two years reading this board, and this is the first thing I have written

Two years of reading boards like this one and this is the first thing I have ever written on any of them. There are about twenty drafts sitting in a notes app on my phone, none of them sent, and I could not tell you what stopped me on any particular evening.

Thirty eight, south of the river, I assess insurance claims, I live alone in a flat I have never got round to decorating. Everything I know about this I know from reading, and I am aware that reading is not knowing.

What finally made me write is that I had started to enjoy the reading for its own sake, the way people enjoy looking at houses they will never buy. That frightened me considerably more than being turned down would.

So: a woman who leads, in a relationship rather than in an evening. I am not asking anybody to be my education and I do not want a repertoire taught to me. I want to be in something ordinary that has her at the top of it, and to find out whether the thing I have read about for two years is what I actually want or whether I have simply been in love with the reading.

Not looking for anything that begins with instructions before we have met in person. Not looking for a woman who wants a man with nothing else going on, because I have work I care about and a brother I see every week. And not looking to be told that two years is a long time to have waited. I know exactly how long it is.