Just because I’m in a May-December relationship with an older man who happens to be cereal icon Cap’n Horatio Magellan Crunch doesn’t mean I have daddy issues. Yes, even though my father was a mariner who disappeared at sea when I was but a slip of a girl, my red-hot romance with the Cap’n is unrelated, and it’s important to me that people understand that.
For one thing, older men are sexy. It’s like the commercials say: the Crunch doesn’t get soggy. I’m not alone here; lots of women like dad-bods and not all of them had husky seafaring fathers like my Papa who once kissed me on the forehead, set out to the docks at dawn, and ne’er did return. Correlation is not causation!
Also a common and normal thirst trap? A man in uniform. The Cap’n comes from a different time when men wore pea coats with brass buttons that glinted one last farewell to their loved ones.
The Cap’n also has a job. While guys my age are still working part-time at a GameStop, my grown-ass gentleman friend is on duty as a Commanding Officer in General Mills’ Naval Division. My father was first mate on a merchant schooner, but that’s honestly a very different line of sea-work. I burst into tears each Monday when the S.S. Guppy casts off for the week, but every Friday at 5 p.m. my honey’s ship comes crashing back in through my living room wall. A consistent return…unlike some people.
Being first mate to an elder navigator has shown me new ways to find intimacy. Fuzzy handcuffs are sexy, but having the Cap’n teach me how to tie a proper french bowline is even hotter. He hums a sea shanty as he guides my hands. It’s comforting and strangely familiar.
Horatio also feels very deeply, yet is emotionally inaccessible in a way that keeps me coming back for more. After a day’s adventures on the Guppy, I love to curl up under Horatio’s distinguished white mustache. His eyes stare pensively at the TV, a rerun of Gilligan’s Island, and I feel like he’s stranded on his own island. I wonder if he’s thinking about sailing away from me, like Papa – Papa, who never explained why he left. No note; no way of knowing if he was dead or alive. Oh well!
Are there some slight similarities between the father who abandoned me and the mature Cap’n who captured my heart? Sure, I guess? But, like, they’re definitely all coincidental. Now for a big ole bowl of the Crunch!
