Boston is a funny place—peculiar, not ha-ha—as for conducting relationships. Something about the layout and the pace of life seem more conducive to convenient associations than deep attachments. Personal relationships often seem provisional, maybe because Boston is a launch pad for a lot of people: they come here for school, or to kick-start a career, and then follow their ambitions wherever they lead. This is the formula for any college town, of course, and Boston is the quintessential college town.

Everyone I know here is terminally pressed for time. This is the case everywhere nowadays, but in Boston it's exacerbated by the high cost of living, the teeming local talent pool—amped-up ambition, intense competition—and, of course, there's the weather: the long, dark winters lend themselves to introspection, to plotting and planning, and the short summers are frantic, packed with plots and plans the complicated execution of which sometimes leaves little time for the enjoyment of them.

There seems something slyly self-defeating in all of this. But that's modern life.

A long daily To-Do List and never enough hours in the day to tackle it takes its toll on relationships, of course. And I'm not referring only to romantic relationships here. It doesn't have to be a romance to be a logistical pain in the keister. I have good friends in Jamaica Plain and Roslindale I haven't seen in months. We keep talking about meeting, but something always comes up, on one end or the other. I've only been back to Dorchester a handful of times since leaving last year.

The fact is, weeknights no one wants to go back out across town after fighting traffic to get home. And everyone likes to freeform—and freeball—it on weekends, myself included. Lately even I have been busier than usual (which is not to say all that busy, but I'm still having to take work more seriously than I'd like)—a whole day without obligations is like a little slice of Shangri-La. 

In the past I've simply avoided trans-Charles relationships, knowing that they're doomed from the start. All of my local lovers up to now have been on the same side of the river as me. 

I don't really have "a type". Tall, short, brawny or lean. IQ from sixty to one-forty. Blonds, brunettes, redheads. Kinky, curly, straight or nappy-headed. I'm an equal opportunity ho. I have only one hard and fast rule: my tricks, lovers, and friends must all be T-accessible. I am willing to switch subway lines once on my way to your place, but absolutely no bus transfers. And a maximum ten-minute walk from the T station.

It's brutal, I know, but this is just the way it's got to be. Boston being what it is, and Bostonians—whether natives or transplants—being what we are.