On the mainstream products nobody knows any of the words and I feel like the only person present who has thought about it. On the specialist platform everybody knows all of them and I feel like somebody who wandered in from another building. Same person, a fortnight apart, fraudulent in both rooms, and I have begun to suspect the problem is that I am genuinely in the middle rather than that I am hiding.
Twenty nine, the Bronx, still working it out, three years of reading and nothing beyond it.
The specialist side has a real vocabulary and it does a real job, and it also functions as a door. Use a term slightly wrong and people are kind about it in a way that makes it perfectly clear you have been noticed. I watched that happen to somebody else in my first month and it made me quieter rather than better informed.
What I want, in plain words instead of terminology: somebody who decides things, a routine I am required to keep, and the experience of being checked on afterwards. If there is a proper name for that I will learn it later.
Not looking for anybody who wants to correct my terms before answering the question. Not looking to be a beginner anybody enjoys having. And not looking for a person who needs me to already belong somewhere, because after three years the honest answer is that I do not.