I seek my secret sharer. This of course should not surprise you since that is, I assume, why all of us are here. However, it might startle you when I add that the woman who would be my secret sharer is someone who may well be more complex, more complete, and more admirable than the man who, with these words, would begin to court her. Yet I hope that I am revealing something worthy about myself when I also reveal the kind of woman for whom I search, and it should be revealing, too, that my search for her begins not only in hope, but from weariness as well, for I have grown tired of doing little more than merely dreaming of her, while all the while still more of love, and thus the best of life, await.

So, what is it I know of her already, even before we have met? She is, most importantly, warm, affectionate, and emotionally generous, qualities that signify the best of both character and personality, the two great proofs of our humanity. She is playful, too, and she understands that laughter shared is an intimacy, while her own sense of humor would make celebration of the joyfully absurd. She loves long, wandering conversation, dreams and daydreams, a great story told by book or film or friend, a balancing of the serious with the mischievous, and the mysterious, curative power of making love - the anticipation, the gloried act, the lingering afterglow, and all the good that flows from each.

She is also strong, proud, and independent, and she loves both being a woman and being with a man. She is beautiful (and please trust that I hold to a more generous meaning of this sacred word than many other men) while no immodest share of modesty would blind her to this fact, and she is honest, not from a reflexive adherence to moral principle, but from a reverent understanding of the supreme value of the truth.

She knows, too, that there is after all an abiding resolution to the enforced solitude of human awareness, and that it is found in the divine refuge of intimacy. Love, romance, laughter, dance, both sleep and silence when they are shared, the adoration of beauty as well as the reverence for mystery which is its kin, the private idioms of glance and touch, and the reverie of inward monologue (an intimacy with oneself without which all outward forms are incomplete) – these are the gifts for which she lives in thankfulness, even as much as for life itself.

She would be a woman who, once united with her own secret sharer, would be unlikely to know, ever again (if ever she had), the terrible monotony of unfulfilled longing. Wanting full equality of treatment and regard, she would, once given each, expect only to be loved, genuinely and for all time. Thus, she a queen, and I a courtier made nobleman by her presence. However, if I have made this secret sharer appear beyond all mortal reach, if she seems more goddess than woman, I assure you of my belief that many of you would merit this portrayal as well.

And what of me? Well, by now you may suspect that I am little more than an unskilled salesman desperately working to convince you to buy his merchandise, a brightly colored package promising much, yet filled with a useless product. Further, now that I will be describing myself, I must tread the blade-like ridge between my ardent wish to offer you the kind of purely objective self-portrait that is surely a human impossibility and the further wish to attract the notice of my queen. Nevertheless, I will try to do each within the constrained realities of this virtual rendezvous.

I should begin with my weaknesses (at least in part, I admit, because it seems best not to end with them). I would first tell you, because many women understandably consider the following to be a vital clue, that I am divorced, although my former wife will always be a trusted friend. I am not “handy” and while I remain constantly willing to try my hand at a tradesman’s task, that hand possesses very little native talent for those tasks. I am not a highly organized man and may never be, nor even want to be, yet neither do I represent that form of domestic chaos known to many exasperated women by the name of an animal deserving ...