The first time I arranged any of this it was done on paper, and then for a long stretch on a message board, and the whole etiquette of it was written. I am sixty one. I have watched the entire business migrate onto products that show you a face and ask for a verdict, and my honest view is that the written form survived only because it is the one that can carry the necessary detail.
Queens, dominant, thirty years in. Two long arrangements, one of eleven years which ended when she died, and one of six after that.
I am not a nostalgic man about most things. But an arrangement of this kind requires two people to agree on a great many particulars in advance, and there has never been a way to do that except in words, at length, with time to think in between. Everything else is a method of finding somebody to have that conversation with.
What I want is an ongoing arrangement with a woman who wants structure. Weekly, domestic rather than theatrical, reviewed properly twice a year.
Not looking for anybody who wants to be swept along. Not looking to exchange photographs at the beginning. And not looking to be somebody's education in how it used to be done, though I will happily talk about it once we know each other.