n. frustration with how
long it takes to get to know someone—spending the first few weeks chatting in their psychological entryway, with each subsequent conversation like entering a different anteroom, each a little
closer to the center of the house—wishing instead that you could start there and
work your way out, exchanging your deepest secrets first, before easing into casualness, until you’ve built up enough mystery over the years to
ask them where they’re from, and what they do for a living.