When I was younger I was told by my old man that when you live with a woman there are four important things that you as the alpha male need to take control of: the recycling, the maintenance of the car, the garden, and the cooking (so long as it's either steak or BBQ). Of course, if I mention this to him now then he strongly denies it. I have also never seen him cook anything more than toast in his life.
Nevertheless, these words rubbed off on me, and if I ever find myself settling down with a lady I will ensure that she is a vegetarian, that we have our own gardener, no car and live next to a bottle bank. However there was one thing my father forgot to impart on me as a young man and that is the importance of DIY.
Judging by the rate of my skill set development, I'll be calling an electrician to help me change light bulbs when I'm 44. In the British TV sitcom Coupling, one of the lead female characters states how she likes a man with a trade because he can "do things around the house," and when he wears a tool belt she has "everything she needs in a line." I am starting to realize that this is true of most women over the age of 25. Regardless of whether he has a trade behind him or not, a man is supposed to be able to wire a plug, assemble anything from IKEA within 2 hours, fix a broken fence, and mend a toaster. He is supposed to be an all-knowing expert on everything you can procure from Wickes and Homebase, and regardless of how competent he is he should have a go at any odd jobs that need doing round the house.
I, on the other hand, have about as much knowledge of screwdrivers, fuses, and sandboards (is that even a word?) as I do about the dental history of the woodlouse I stepped on this morning. I wouldn't say that I am the world's most amazing and successful lover, but I will say this with my hand on my heart: I am 99% better at sex than I am at anything involving DIY.
Sketch of a birdhouse I was banned by the RSPCA from making.
Looking at the instructions of an IKEA wardrobe are so meaningless to me they may as well be written in Klingon. I would have better luck looking at a dog poo in the street and trying to guess what flavor Pedigree chum the offending pooch had for lunch than decipher the instructions for a flatpack desk. I remember once I needed to mount a TV on the wall, which involved drilling and screwing on some quite basic metal things ("things" is about as technical as I am going to get in this article, and the word may pop up often along with "stuff" and "thingybobs"), and my girlfriend at the time quietly suggested that we call her brother over and get him to "solve the problem." I hadn't even lifted a hammer yet (I'm not sure a hammer was even necessary, but you feel pretty cool and powerful holding one), and had never felt less of a man. She may as well have texted her ex-boyfriend halfway through sex and got him round to "solve the problem" of my inadequacy and lovemaking prowess.
My only DIY experiences include putting together a double bed with the help of a female friend, then finding out my measurements were so wrong that rather than having a few bits left over we had more bits left over than actual bed; and trying to make a small bedside chest of drawers by myself, then ending up getting angry, then drunk, then drunk and angry, then destroying it with a drill and hammer before finally sitting down for a cry. I am such a stranger to DIY that my own father wouldn't let me borrow his hedge trimmers once because they are "not a weapon." What did he think I was going to do, give a nemesis a particularly offensive haircut?
Does it still count as being homeless?
It's not completely my fault of course. Parents have a slight responsibility to teach these things to their children and my father had two approaches: either he did it on his own and spent the whole time PG swearing ("bloody" and "blast" rather than "fuck" and "shit"), or he'd just hire someone else to do it instead. Judging by the rate of my skill set development, I'll be calling an electrician to help me change light bulbs when I'm 44.
Of course I cannot completely blame my dad. He didn't get me into football, tennis, or pool, but I discovered all those things on my own. He didn't give me my first cigarette or talk about the birds and the bees but I've managed to give myself a smoker's cough and forge a fairly unsuccessful sex life. It was my own fault that I chose to ignore my DT lessons because I found it too hard to draw a margin on sheets of paper so big. I could have gone online to find out how to bleed a radiator (is that the right terminology?), but instead I go on Facebook and Twitter, write blogs and stand-up, and watch film trailers on YouTube. This generation is raised to be in front of a monitor. I'm a creative. I feel at home with a keyboard or a pen, not a wrench or a saw. Just like musicians need a guitar, piano, microphone, or drum kit to be whole, I need blank pages to give meaning to my mind and fingers. And yes, I do realize that sounds very wanky.
Unfortunately, there is nothing particularly sexy about a pen or a keyboard. I have to face the fact that women will always prefer a guy in a builder's outfit wielding a mighty tool over a guy with unmanageable hair and a limp microphone, just as I've come to realize that when women say they are attracted to funny guys they mean they are attracted to hot guys who laugh at their jokes when they flirt with them, not guys who tell amusing anecdotes about having sex with a blowup doll. Anecdotes that they actually spent hours writing and which went down a fucking storm at open mic night I'll have you know.
But I digress.
Of course in an ideal world we'd all like to be good at sports and DIY, then show our sensitive sides with some creative outlet. Unfortunately, we live in the reality which sucks balls and while I can make words and comedy out of nothing on a blank screen or page, I will be forever destined to make birdhouses that look like a badly designed trap from one of the Saw movies. Likewise there are men out there who can build a dining table in five minutes using only their feet and genitals, but don't really understand what's happening in Memento. Let's all stick to what we're good at shall we?