Is that a 10-inch spanner in your toolbelt, or are you just happy to see me?

I've been chatting over email with a guy who contacted me through gaymatchmaker.com.au, and while we're getting to know each other we've fallen into the subject of hot tradesmen. As you do. His most memorable blue-collar lust object was his TV antenna installer:

"I had a TV antenna installed a while back by an absolute GOD! He was about 30, 6"2', tanned... the face of an angel and a body for sin. He was really chatty and friendly. After the installation, I gave him a can of coke and he saw my guitar. He picked it up and played a tune - he even sang to me - and I melted and nearly had to be scraped off the floor. I was so tempted to get on the roof and rip the antenna out so that I could call him back to re-install it."

I'm jealous; I've never been serenaded by a deity. The best I could manage was the delivery guy who brought me my new bed last year. He was a complete lowlife, but quite cute under all the mullet and checked flannel. Not to mention the fact that he could lift my double bed mattress over his head without so much as a grunt, while I could barely drag it across the floor. I was tempted to lay on the old GTR charm, pat my new bed and say, "So, wanna see what this baby can do?"... but then I remembered that I live in real life, not a porn video, so I thought better of it and let him go on his way unmolested.

Maybe my correspondent lives in a better suburb than me. I have a theory that the really hot tradesmen gravitate to servicing the wealthy areas of the city, where image is more important than cost. Obviously the trophy wives of the riverside precincts can't tolerate having ugly, flabby men digging out their koi pond or designing their coordinated garden lighting scheme. Put yourself in their position: what would your friends say if they've used 30 year old hunks in tight blue singlets to install their antique Italian fountains, and you've used a fat hairy 50 year old named Lou?

It scarcely bears thinking about.

If you have any hot tradesman tales of your own to tell, I'd love to hear about them in comments.