need, in the most aggressively nonsexual aroace way imaginable, some forty something gruff man who smells faintly of cigarettes, motor oil, old coffee, and whatever ancient masculine sorrow permanently lives inside work jackets to become my accidental parental figure.
not a boyfriend. not a crush. absolutely no erotic subtext hiding beneath the floorboards. i need masculine apprenticeship i need this man to look at whatever catastrophically inefficient thing i’m doing, sigh from somewhere prehistoric in his chest, take it out of my hands and go “no. watch.”
teach me how to fix something without immediately consulting the internet. tell me when i’m being an idiot. make me hold the flashlight correctly. complain about my posture. show me how to tie something, replace something, sharpen something, negotiate with a machine that has decided it hates me. occasionally hand me some completely obsolete piece of fatherly wisdom that sounds ridiculous until, six months later, i realize he was right.
there is something deeply appealing to me about masculinity being transmitted through ritual rather than declared, all these stupid tiny inherited gestures that accumulate into identity: how you stand, how you carry yourself, how you use your hands, how you remain useful when something breaks, how you take care of people without announcing that you’re taking care of them.
basically i do not require romance. i require a weathered middle aged man to adopt me through acts of practical criticism until one afternoon he wordlessly hands me the good wrench and i realize i have passed some invisible patriarchal examination.
