The problem here is not what I am like, it is that nobody can say so

Everything I have learned about looking in this city comes down to a single sentence somebody said to me last year: it is not what you are like, it is who will say so. And nobody will say so about me, because everything I have done has been in writing with people who live nowhere near here.

Thirty four, Salford, five years in. Two real dynamics, both conducted at a distance, one of which lasted two years with a woman in another country. Good experience by any measure and completely invisible to anybody local.

So I am in the odd position of being neither a beginner nor known, and I have watched the door stay shut in a way that has nothing to do with me personally. It is not unfairness. If you have watched somebody behave badly and there is no way to check a stranger, of course you rely on the people you trust.

What I would like is one woman prepared to take somebody on his own account and go extremely slowly about it. Months of writing. Meetings in daylight. No key to anything until whenever she decides, if ever.

What I want eventually is a structured arrangement with duties in it and a real place in a week. Not scenes and not occasions.

What I cannot offer is a reference. I have thought about how to solve that and there is no honest way to, so I am simply saying it plainly instead.