It is ten past one. I have been up since half four, I was on site until six, I trained after, and I have got to do the whole thing again in three and a half hours.
And I am sat in the van outside my own house with the engine off, looking at your name.
One in the morning is an honest hour
Nothing you think at one in the morning is a lie. It might be a bad idea, but it is not a lie. All the sensible arguments you use during the day stop working at about half twelve, and what is left is just what you actually want.
During the day I have reasons. I am busy, it complicates things, I have got a full week, you are not the only one who messages me. All true, and all of it holds up perfectly well until it is dark and the street is empty and there is nothing left to be busy with.
So I open it. And I write the whole thing.
What is actually in it
Not much, if you saw it written down. It is not a speech. I am not a man who writes speeches.
It says I am still up. It says why. It says what I was thinking about on the drive back, which is not the job and is not the gym. It says one specific thing about you that you probably do not know I noticed, because you were not looking at me when you did it, and I was looking at you.
And then there is one line at the end that I would not put on a website. That is the line that does the work. That is the one that would sit in your phone all week.
Why it usually stays there
Because sending it changes who is in front. Right now you are the one waiting. You check, you wonder, you tell yourself you are not doing either of those things. That suits me and I am not going to pretend it does not.
Send it at one in the morning and I have handed you the whole thing. You would know exactly how much of my night you take up. You would know it every time after that, and it would show, and men always let it show.
So I read it back. I sit there with my thumb over it for a lot longer than I would ever admit to. And then I put the phone face down on the seat and go in.
The weeks I do send it
Not never. That is the part you should probably worry about.
There have been three or four nights where I have decided that being in front is worth less than the alternative, and I have sent it exactly as written, at ten past one, with no softening.
Nobody has ever replied in the morning. Every single one of them replied inside two minutes, which tells you that they were also awake, also holding a phone, also not sending something.
That is the bit that gets me. There is a very good chance that at ten past one you are doing precisely what I am doing, at the other end of it, and both of us are being sensible at exactly the same time and getting nowhere.
So consider this the safe version
This is the version that goes on the website. It is honest as far as it goes. It just stops about one line early.
If you want to know what that last line says, you are not going to find it out here. I have never once put it anywhere Google can read it, and I am not starting now.
What I do send
Something small the next afternoon. Deliberately ordinary. Nothing that gives anything away, nothing you could screenshot and show anyone.
And you will read it four times looking for what is underneath it, and there will be nothing there, because I wrote it at two in the afternoon when I am a completely different man.
That is the game. The one in the daylight says nothing. The one at ten past one says everything and never gets sent.
Do not let any of this go to your head. Although if you are reading this at one in the morning, it is already too late for that.