Instead of summarizing me, why don't I summarize us. That's why we're here, right? You want to know who I am, but more specifically, you want to know who I will be to you.

It's a Monday evening as I write this, so let's start there. You arrive home from work - you work a job that you enjoy without requiring that it give meaning to your life; after all, we work to live, not live to work - and you find me puttering in the kitchen. I still eat dinner early, even after all these years that you've been trying to convince me to be more cosmopolitan. "The French don't eat until 10pm," you remind me for the millionth time. "Mais, je ne suis pas français," I argue, kissing you and asking you to feed the dog. I'm busy experimenting with a spinach recipe that Martha swears by and I'd really rather not leave it unattended. I'm also working on a crossword, and I think I'm close to figuring out 56 across.

We sit down to eat, and we chat about our day. Neither of us kvetches about things we can't control. Instead, we talk about our weekend plans. We don't spend most weekends at home, but instead trade weekends to find something nearby to go do. This weekend, we're going camping. Neither of us is very rugged. Actually, we can be downright squeamish and prissy. But one night, after we had been dating for a few months, you asked me if I wanted to take a ride out into the country to look at the stars. We brought a tent but couldn't set it up because we were idiots and forgot the damn flashlight. So instead, we lay out on a blanket until the night got too cold, and then we climbed into the back seat of your car and fell asleep together. It wasn't comfortable, but it was perfect. That's when we realized that we could handle a night of camping every now and then.

I fucked the spinach up, and mid-sentence you take your first bite. Your eyes become huge and begin to water. You try not to spit it out because you're afraid you'll offend me. You know how hard I try in the kitchen. I notice your pain and start laughing. "It's terrible, isn't it?" I ask. You nod managing a weak smile, still unable to chew, swallow or spit. I shake my fist in mock anger at Martha. Nobody is as good as that bitch. She makes it look effortless. I try my spinach, pronounce it inedible and demand that you spit it out.

After dinner we have some things to do. The DVR recorded some shows that we like, and we sit down to watch them together. We don't make it a habit to watch TV every night. Along with our philosophy about getting out of town regularly, we agree that there are just too many other things to enjoy. We hear live music - sometimes together, sometimes separately. You still can't stand opera, and I'm okay with that.. especially because it means I never have to sit through another country music performance in my life. We keep an eye on the local artsy movie theater, and we always know when something noteworthy is playing. Some mornings, I email you a review from the NY Times, and you respond with one line, "6:40 showing, see you there." But tonight we're watching something mindless. E! is doing an exposé on Lady Gaga and her recent decision to hire eight surrogates to carry the children she's having with an assortment of gay men. We momentarily pout that we weren't chosen.

You need to jog before going to bed, but I went to the gym earlier in the day, so while you're running I tidy up the kitchen and read an article from The Economist on the water shortages in the southwest. I circle the article, cause I know you'll get a kick out of the delicate and vaguely condescending tone chosen to describe the fact that the south has "discovered!" that government intervention is sometimes both necessary and prudent. As I hear the treadmill stop upstairs, I put the kettle on to boil, eat a mint and sprint upstairs to meet you in the shower.

Steam pours out of the screaming kettle, and blankets the mirrors in the bathroom as we emerge and towel ourselves off. I sprint downstairs in a towel to make a pot of tea for us, and you climb into your pj's. You usually wear a pair of sweatpants which long ago lost all elasticity. To most people, they just look ratty - but to me they serve as a reminder that you can love things for a long time, until they fall apart and lose all value to others. Other boyfriends tried to throw them out, but I secretly wash them separately in a delicate cycle so that they'll last longer.

I arrive in my towel with a tray holding tea service for two. You've started reading the article that I left on your side of the bed and when you see me grinning you very pointedly remind me that people have died because of this water shortage. I blame it on their refusal to move closer to cities - that damned southern independence that drives people off into the country to stockpile rations and firearms. You raise your eyebrows and I know it just means you expect better of me. I announce that I'm leaving you if you ever decide to live with the Elk Snout Mountain Folk and try to make me drink well-water which is probably contaminated with some parasite. You take the 80s movie quote cue, and run with it, switching from "Overboard" to "Troop Beverly Hills" seamlessly by reminding me that "If Phyllis Neffler were giving you a wilderness girl badge for it, you'd come right along." I mention that Phyllis Neffler's idea of roughing it was staying at the Beverly Wilshire and her idea of a campfire horror story was recounting her recent perm. Not drinking contaminated well water.

You toss the magazine onto a nearby table and grab a slip of paper that has your illegible scrawling all over it. It's a list of things we need to check before the weekend. You like lists, and I like that you like lists. And even though we've done this a million times, you are still pretending like there might be something you forgot. You ask if I have bookmarked the directions on one of my many gadgets. I ask if I've ever gotten us lost before. And you remind me of that time in Mexico, which I will never live down, even after somehow managing to navigate our way through Southeast Asia last spring.

I've finished my tea, and I roll over to read a little of the book I'm working on for book club. You've already read it, and although you found it dull and unnecessarily expository, you didn't share that analysis with me. I knew anyway.

You eventually scribble something on your magic list and cross another something off, drop the paper on the bedside table and lean over to turn out your light. You curl up behind me and kiss the spot on my neck behind my ear. Without missing a beat, I drop the book turn off the light and pull your arm around me for warmth and security.

We sleep. Around 2am, you are awakened by the sound of someone speaking in a foreign language. You smirk and realize that I'm practicing something in my sleep. It sounds like Latin. The choir that I sing with has a performance coming up soon, and you are always treated to nocturnal previews when that happens. You roll over and fall back asleep, hoping that you'll remember to give me a hard time about it in the morning.

We have a nice life together. We have a home base which we love, but aren't tied to. We have plans to live abroad, but put them off for a few years because our poor old mutt just couldn't make the transition. We own nice things, but we are wary of conspicuous consumption. We visit family regularly - they're crazy, but they're ours.

It isn't always sunshine and cocktail parties, vacations and sexy showers. Sometimes it is hard. Sometimes, when the crowds in the supermarket are loud and rude and the local streets all seem to blend together into one great big montage of monotony, I get quiet and withdrawn. And when the tricky north wind creeps in at the turn of seasons, I stop circling articles for you to read. After too many cloudy nights of winter or too many long days of summer, I stop leaving obscene notes in your briefcase about what I plan to do with you when you get home. And even though I love it, the incessant spring rain eventually washes away my smile completely. But you know not to take it personally. So one day, you pack my bags while I'm at work and you call my secretary to find out when I'll be out of my last meeting. You drop the dog off at the kennel and at a quarter to 5, I find you standing in my office when I arrive back from my meeting. In a quiet but firm voice, you say, "Better get moving or we're going to miss our flight." Because you know that I don't want to run away from you. You know that I want to run away with you.

And I know the same about you.

Apparently, writing an epic tome of an online dating profile.

In other hours of the day, I work as a case manager for people who lost their homes in Hurricane Ike. I help make sure that they are connected with the services that they need to put their life back together after a catastrophic loss.

In another life, I went to law school. Someday, I might actually grow up and be a lawyer. If I'm a very good boy, that wont have to happen. But if it does, I think I'm ready to be adult about it and face my profession with the steely determination required to really make a go of it.

I have an uncanny sense of direction and can recognize if a composition is by Chopin within only a few notes. Those are my superpowers. Some people got flight or invisibility or preternatural healing factor - I got internal GPS and a Polish composer. That's just how the cards fell.

I'm an INTJ personality type. (If that does anything for you, you're either a sick freak or a dream come true. And if history is any indication, you're probably some combination of the two.) That's Introverted-Intuitive-Thinking-Judging. That personality type comes with a lot of qualities that are pretty readily apparent, and I am a textbook case. INTJs often appear impassive, making us difficult to read and easy to misunderstand. My default setting is blank. That doesn't mean I'm unhappy. It doesn't mean I'm deep in thought. (Though, I might be.) And it doesn't mean I'm harboring some deep resentment or thinking nasty things about you. It just means that I don't wear what I'm thinking on my face. Mostly, that's the first thing people notice, but they can't put their finger on exactly what they've noticed. Instead, they just feel unsettled and awkward, trying to figure out what I am really thinking or feeling. Instead of agonizing, go ahead and ask.

Also, I've been told that my blue eyes sparkle.

I love short fiction (and nonfiction, if I can find it). I prefer to stick to the classics, but not because I'm a snob. I have just been burned a couple too many times on what looked a potential modern classic (most notably, "Wicked") and I just don't have the energy to read things that aren't going to stand the test of time with me. On my bedside table, I have a couple of things that I'm currently working my way through. A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole); Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein); The Gulag Archipelago (Solzhenitsyn); and a couple Martha Grimes mysteries.

What someone chooses to read says a lot about them; you don't need to have read "War and Peace" - but it would be nice if you had read something, anything within recent memory and can carry on a conversation about it.

The only movies I refuse to watch are Holocaust Dramas and stories in which someone dies from AIDS. I'll watch and enjoy anything else, from classic Hollywood to foreign nonsense to cheesy blockbuster. I have a soft spot for costume dramas, though.

I am commissioning a soundtrack for my life. It will be a collaboration between Joni Mitchell and Philip Glass.

I'm a foodie. But I'm a foodie with low expectations and a McDonald's budget.

The five people you meet in heaven, and a Ghostbusters proton pack with which to nuke them.

Why I have, over the last eight years, collected hundreds and hundreds of the little fortunes from fortune cookies. I don't know what I'm going to do with them, but at this point it's going to be fabulous, whatever "it" is.

Scheming.

I don't drink. And that's important to me.

It's okay if you drink. It's just not okay if you drink irresponsibly.

You have the strangest feeling that you've been looking for me all along.

Also, winks are nice and all, but if you can't find something in this profile to write to me about, then I'd say we're off to an inauspicious start and we're probably both better off finding something else to do with our time.