On the Second Time

The first time you asked me for something you barely knew what you were doing. That is its charm, and it is also why it does not count for very much. You were carried. The nerve came from somewhere outside you, from the late hour or the wine or the sheer relief of finally saying it, and you would not be able to reproduce it if you tried.

The second time is different, and the second time is the one I pay attention to.

By then you know exactly what you are doing. You know what it costs you to write it. You know that I will read it and that I will not be shocked, which removes the last of the drama and leaves you nothing to hide behind. There is no momentum. There is only you, deciding again, in the cold.

Most men do not manage it. Not because they stopped wanting it, but because the first time was an event and the second time is a choice, and a choice can be postponed indefinitely without ever quite becoming a refusal. I have watched a great many men mean to write to me for a very long time.

You should also know that I do not treat the second one as a repeat. It tells me something the first could not, which is that this is a part of you rather than a mood that visited you once. Anyone can be honest by accident. Doing it twice is character.

If it has been a while and you are working out how to begin again, do not construct a reason. You do not need one and I will not ask you for one. Begin the way you began the first time, and I will know exactly what it took.