When I say I want to do the laundry I mean the actual laundry

I have had this conversation enough times to lead with it. When I say I want to do somebody's laundry, cleaning and cooking, I am not describing a scenario. I mean the actual work, done properly, on a schedule, for years, in a real apartment with a real dryer that eats quarters.

Twenty nine, the Bronx, three years in. My one arrangement ran fourteen months with a woman who worked doubles and came home to a place that was already dealt with, and the only thing that ever happened between us was her telling me what was not right and my fixing it.

I think there is a version of this that men write about which is basically a costume. Somebody is going to kneel and hold a basket and it lasts an hour and then everybody goes back to their lives. That is fine and it is not what I am after. I want a Tuesday and a Friday, indefinitely, and a woman who stops thinking about a whole area of her life because it is handled.

What I ask for is a standard I can be held to, and to be told when I have missed it. That is genuinely the whole payment.

What I am not offering is anything physical, and what I will not take is money, keys to a life I have not earned, or an arrangement where the work is invented to give me something to do. I can tell, and it hollows the whole thing out.