I want to be the person who waits in for the plumber

The thing I want to be is the person who waits in for the plumber. Who takes the delivery, argues with the building, sits through a four hour window, and absorbs every small logistical humiliation that living in this city generates and that a woman working sixty hour weeks has no time for.

Thirty seven, Queens, I work from home doing something with databases that nobody has ever asked a second question about. My day is entirely portable and I can be anywhere with a laptop by lunchtime.

I did this for one person before, for two years, and it is the most useful I have ever felt. She was a lawyer with unpredictable hours and I gradually became the reason her apartment functioned. There was a dynamic around it, and there was also an enormous amount of me sitting in her kitchen waiting for somebody to turn up between eight and noon.

Nothing about this is paid. I am not a service and I would end it the day anybody tried to make me one. What I want in return is to belong to somebody's week and to be told, without softening, when I have done it badly.

Not looking to be given keys in the first month, and I would say no if they were offered, because that is a decision for a year in. Not looking for a woman who wants an assistant and no relationship at all. Not looking for something that quietly ends the moment her work gets easier.