Underwritten

This report covers the morning of Saturday, July 4, which was M.’s birthday. No date took place. The encounter lasted a few minutes in a parking area at 8:00 am, between the overnight shift she was coming off and the one she would start that night. I then left for a trip of 16 days.

The duration recorded above is not time spent together. It is the manufacture.

Summary of charges

• Labor: between 360 and 480 minutes, recorded at 420
• Travel, round trip: 90 minutes
• Materials and contents: $84.51
• Out-of-pocket costs: $84.51
• Amount contributed by M.: $0.00
• Dates held: 0
• Follow-up: none

Cumulative: $1,257.80 and 815 minutes of road across 8 dates and this.

The product

A glass box containing 16 birthday cards, 1 for each day we would be apart.

The cards are not only cards. Each one is a policy. The terms, as written by me, are that if I miss a birthday, an anniversary, or an important dinner, I owe her something, and she holds the card that says what. A few were written for immediate redemption and the rest sit against a future event.

I want that stated in the plainest terms available. I wrote a set of instruments that pay out to the other party on the occurrence of my own failure to perform. I priced the failures in advance, I assigned each one a remedy, I put them in a glass box, and I gave them to a person I had been seeing for 75 days as a birthday present.

This site is an accounting document and I have been keeping it since April 20. I did not need the site to arrive at the idea. It arrived on its own, over 2 days, at a kitchen table, in my handwriting.

Manufacture

The labor took place across July 2 and July 3 and ran between 6 and 8 hours: writing, signing, assembling. It is the first labor figure this file has recorded.

For scale, this arc has produced 1,350 minutes in person across 8 dates over 75 days. The gift took roughly 420 minutes across 2 days. I spent, alone at a table, close to a third of the total time I have spent in her company.

None of that is a complaint and I am not entering it as one. I am entering it because this form has a column for time and the column had never been asked to hold anything but dates.

Delivery

She was coming home from a 12-hour overnight shift. She would start another that night. Her birthday fell between them, and I was leaving the state.

I drove 45 minutes and met her at 8:00 am. I gave her the box and explained the cards. She would open 1 a day for 16 days, which is how a gift built for an absence works. I hugged her.

The kiss

I attempted to kiss her.

She said:

“I don’t want a kiss right now”

I drove 45 minutes home.

Kissing had by then been a feature of every date in this arc, beginning on June 9 at her request. This is the only occasion on file on which one was declined, which is why it is on the file at all.

The physical initiation column reads 1 and 0 for this morning, as it has on 7 of the 9 occasions it has been recorded. It is the only one of the 9 that did not land, and the figure is entered as an initiation either way, because the column records who moved and not what happened next.

The rationalization

The form asks what narrative I told myself at the time in order to keep going. On this occasion there is one, and it is the second in this file after May 5.

The narrative was that she had just come off a 12-hour overnight shift, that she had been awake all night, and that a person in that condition might reasonably decline for reasons that have nothing to do with the person asking.

Then I wrote down, in my own notes, that who knows what she really meant.

That correction is the third of its kind in this arc and it completes a set. On May 5 I explained a 5-day silence as space I was granting and appended the words maybe hoping. On May 31 M. listed what she prefers to receive and appended maybe I’m just selfish. On July 4 I explained a declined kiss and appended who knows what she really meant. Three stated positions, three self-audits, each one attached by the speaker in the same breath, none of them acted on.

I will also record what this file already holds. On May 31 M. said that the way she shows love is physical touch. It is the only output she has named for herself in 75 days. On the morning of July 4, at the point of the largest single input this arc has recorded, that output was declined.

I am not characterizing it. She had been awake for 12 hours and had 12 more coming. Both facts go on the form.

Findings

Labor recorded: 420 minutes, the first in this file, and 31 percent of all time spent in her company.

Dates held: 0. The account was active anyway, which has happened once before, in June, and on that occasion the terms of the arrangement were settled and nothing was spent.

Self-corrections appended by a speaker to their own position: 3. Two mine, 1 hers.

Physical initiation: 1 and 0. The running figure is 12 mine and 1 hers, across 8 dates and this morning.

Instruments issued: 16, each redeemable by the other party on my failure to perform. Instruments redeemable by me on hers: 0. This file records 9 disclaimers from her, 2 of which describe costs with no figure attached, and no policy of any kind was written against either.

Contributed by M.: $0.00, across 8 dates, 1 negotiation and 1 birthday.

Costs

• Materials and card contents: $84.51
• Labor: 420 minutes, unpriced
• Total out of pocket: $84.51

It is the largest single figure in this arc that did not buy an evening. The 16 cards, the box and the contents cost less than the meal on May 30 and less than the show on June 28, and the labor that went into them is not in the number at all.

Running position: $1,257.80 out of pocket, 1,350 minutes in person, 815 minutes of road, 420 minutes of manufacture, $0.00 contributed by the other party.

Status

The follow-up field reads none. I left for 16 days on the morning this report covers and we texted throughout.

The account is open. There are 16 cards in a glass box, each one a promise that I will owe her something later, and the first thing I asked for after handing them over was declined.