There are two things you can do when the colour leaches from the world: accept it and dwell on your memories, or fling a pot of paint in the face of the cosmos. You're in the 1% of people who do the latter. Sure, it's stupid to get into a position where you need to, but it's even more stupid to do nothing about it. And the thing is, you know there has to be a prodigality of experience in store for you: you're attractive, you're intelligent––you're formidable. Maybe you have responsibilities and you can't walk away from them, maybe you're lonely, maybe you're in a relationship that makes you feel lonely: I don't care about the details. I want to help you carve out a space of reality that is yours and refuses every other claim.

Why me? I'm all the good shit: witty, attractive, in superlative physical shape, socially adept, professionally accomplished. In my company, you will never be bored; I am as compelling as the rising fare on the taxi meter, except I'll take you somewhere you want to go and it won't cost you a week's wages. I work most of the time as a university professor, but my real work is far more difficult and dangerous. That feeling of depressing superiority you feel in relation to most men? Kiss it goodbye. I savour interesting people and will plunge into your being like it will earn me a Nobel Prize. Together, we'll make regular romance look a dog dragging its ass along the carpet.

For us to work, you will need to have a penetrating, cynical intelligence and a facility for reading between the lines that makes schizophrenia look like it's not even trying. You will look after yourself physically and be attractive (evidence: people tell you that you are; nice-but-boring colleagues fall in love with you; strangers on the tube defy the government directives and look too long anyway). You will be receptive to risk-taking across all domains of behaviour, from the erotic to the chemical. Most of all, you are aware that we are not here forever, and if we are to redeem the experience, we need to take and not ask.

What do I propose? Next Monday, the 9th of January, we meet for a drink after 5pm. I say central, but can be anywhere it doesn't take 40 days in the desert to get to. Before we meet, we'll have established that we find each other attractive; when we do meet, our our conversation will be irrepressible and urgent. After that, who knows? Maybe it's a drink and a kiss, maybe we get through the singularity and watch the last stars burn out:

Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself.

If this resonates, talk to me; if doesn't––don't. Just remember: it's getting late ... but it's never too late ...