I was giving you space to reach out

This report covers a third date with the subject referred to here as M., held on Wednesday, May 6, at 7:30 pm, at a go-kart and gaming venue in her area, 45 minutes from my house. The cost was $154.69, paid in full by me. No karts were driven.

The first 2 entries in this file record no rationalization. This one records one. It was sent by text on May 5 at my own initiative, it is quoted below in full, and it is the reason this report exists in the shape it does.

Summary of charges

• Duration: 150 minutes, of which about 120 were games
• Travel, round trip: 90 minutes
• Questions asked by me: 10, approximate
• Questions asked by M.: 10, approximate
• Phone checks by M.: 0
• Phone checks by me: 0
• Gaming card: $102.19
• Drinks, including tips: $52.50
• Out-of-pocket costs: $154.69
• Amount contributed by M.: $0.00
• Value on the card when I gave it away: $70.00
• Disclaimers issued: 1. Arc total 2.
• Follow-up: none. Nothing set at the venue or after it.

Third consecutive date in her area. Third consecutive 45-minute drive. Third consecutive $0.00 contributed.

Scheduling

I proposed date 3 by text on Sunday, April 26, the day after date 2. I chose the activity. I chose it in her area, which by this point was not a decision so much as a setting.

M. offered 2 dates the following week. I took one, May 6. The date was therefore agreed on April 26 and held on May 6, a gap of 10 days.

The gap

We texted daily from April 26 through April 30. Then we did not text at all until May 5.

That is a gap of 5 days, and I want to be exact about what produced it, because the file will be read later. Nothing happened. There was no argument, no stated reason, and no message from either party. On my side the silence was deliberate.

On Tuesday, May 5, the day before the date, I sent a message asking whether we had settled a time. M. replied:

“No we didn not… we barely chat lol”

I replied:

“You’re right, we havent. I didn’t want to be the only one initiating conversation, I was giving you space to reach out (maybe hoping).”

M. replied:

“Hmm I hear you … What time works for you?”

I set the time at 7:30 pm.

The rationalization

This form has a field for what I told myself at the time in order to keep going. On the first 2 dates I recorded it as absent, because nothing required justifying. This one is not absent, and it did not stay inside my head, which is the only reason it can be quoted.

The narrative was that 5 days of silence was a decision I had made on her behalf. That I was not waiting, I was granting. That the absence of messages was a space I had built rather than a thing that was happening to me.

The parenthesis is the part I would like entered into evidence. “(maybe hoping)” is 2 words, added by me, unprompted, at the end of the sentence that had just explained the strategy. The strategy took 17 words. The correction took 2. I have reread the exchange and the correction is the only accurate clause in it.

What the record shows is that the silence ran 5 days, it ended when I ended it, and the subject I had been granting space to had not registered it as space. She registered it as us barely chatting, and she said so with a lol.

The venue

The premise of the evening was go-kart racing. We arrived and were unable to get on the list for the last adult race of the night.

This is the second consecutive date on which the stated activity did not occur. On April 25 the restaurant was chosen to represent a cuisine and did not. On May 6 the venue was chosen to put us in go-karts and did not. In both cases the evening continued and in both cases I paid for it.

The arcade

We got drinks at the bar and played arcade games for about 2 hours, inside an evening that ran 150 minutes. There was laughing. By the standards of this file it was the best 120 minutes on record.

I let her win. I also made sure she believed I was losing on the merits, which required a performance across multiple games and which I maintained throughout.

I want that entered plainly. This site is an accounting. On the evening in question I produced, deliberately and repeatedly, a false figure, and the only party who could have audited it was the one I was producing it for. She was under the impression the scores were real. They were a gift, and she did not know she had received it, and that was the condition of the gift working.

The card

I loaded $102.19 onto the gaming card. We used $32.19 of it.

At the end of the night I handed M. the card with $70.00 still on it and told her to use it with her children.

That is 68.5 percent of the card, given to 2 people I have not met, for use at a venue 45 minutes from my house. It is the single largest line item in this report that produced nothing for me at all, and it is the one I would authorize again without reading the figure first.

The site this report appears on is organized around the principle that these amounts are not recoverable. This is the first entry in which the money was not spent in order to be recovered.

The walk out

Walking after the date, M. said she preferred to take it slow physically.

That is the second disclaimer on file. It was volunteered, it describes what she is going to do, and it arrived on the third date, before anything physical had happened at all. The first was April 25, when she told me where the switch on the communication was. Both were issued early, both were accurate, and neither was asked for.

At her car I asked whether I could kiss her. She gave an awkward look. I kissed her on the cheek and hugged her.

I record the sequence in the order it happened: she stated a pace, I asked for something inside the same hour, and the answer was a look rather than a word. What I did next was reduce the request rather than withdraw it. The physical initiation column reads 1 and 0 for the third consecutive date, and this is the first of the 3 on which the other party had already said, out loud, what the answer was going to be.

Findings

Questions came out even a third time, 10 and 10, approximate by the same method as the first 2. Phone checks were 0 and 0 for the third consecutive date, now across 390 minutes at 3 tables.

3 dates. 3 even counts. 0 phones. The conversational column has never once failed to balance. The road balances too, on a form that asks the drives to be within 40 percent of each other rather than equal, and 40 minutes against 90 clears that. The proposals, the venues, the bills, and every follow-up are on one side of this ledger, and the side is mine.

The reciprocity this file has been measuring is conversational, and on this date the conversation was not the instrument. The instrument was a card with a balance on it.

Disclaimers: 1 on this date, 2 on file. Physical initiation: 1 and 0, all 3 of them mine.

Costs

• Gaming card, loaded: $102.19
• Drinks, including tips: $52.50
• Total: $154.69

Value consumed: $84.69. Value transferred to M. and her children: $70.00. Amount recoverable: $0.00, which is the usual figure on this site and the first time it has been $0.00 by design.

Cost per hour in person: $61.88, against $84.02 on date 2 and $47.91 on date 1. Cost per question asked by M.: $15.47.

Running position: 3 of 3 dates held, $382.44 out of pocket, 390 minutes in person, 270 minutes in the car, $0.00 contributed by the other party across all 3. Table time now exceeds road time by a factor of 1.44.

Status

The follow-up field reads none. No fourth date was set at the venue, or that night, or the next day. It was discussed on May 8, 2 days later, by text.

That is 3 dates and 3 agreements, all of them reached by text, none of them reached in person, including the 2 that were made while both parties were sitting at a table with nothing else scheduled.

The account is open. It records 1 rationalization, sent by text, on the record, with a correction attached to it in the same sentence by the person who wrote it.