I’m not made of wood, and going from a pandemic to a wallpaper of fire and blood ate away all my capital of serenity. Namaste is no longer enough, I’m afraid.
The Vietnam War slogan, “Make love, not war”, adapted to 2022, to celibacy, to the many post-pandemic divorces and separations, to individualism, to “iel”, it would give… “Make a dildo , not war. A dildo made from cherry wood, also known as wild cherry, is poetic.
To calm my nerves and stop eating away at my fingers, I decided to keep them busy and signed up for a wood lathe course at Les Affûtés. This educational organization’s mission is to free us from planned obsolescence and the anxieties inspired by instruments such as the scroll saw or the drill press.
Except for baking and love, I’ve never been a manual. I need to be held by the hand to dare the hardware store. That’s good, Les Affûtés do all this, and you leave with your creations. We even provide the paper bag (as at the SQDC) for the dildo. I dubbed mine “Incognito” and then “Satan 2” when I realized to my horror that it looked like a Russian missile.
As my B says, “Calm your spasms!” “. The idea is not to compete with Erotim (nor with Putin), but serves as a pretext for me to learn how to handle a wood lathe. This strange rotating beast, super efficient at shoving sawdust everywhere, turbines at 3400 rpm, about as fast as my brain these days.
At Les Affûtés, 70% of women take all kinds of classes, and not just knitting. The one to fit out a van (grooooos success) is given by a mechanic girl. You learn bodywork, plumbing, carpentry, heavy stuff! For the dildo course, sorry, the wood lathe, I came across Diana Silva, a Colombian who completed her training in cabinetmaking in her country and who also did it again in Quebec to learn the exact terms in French. The idea for the dildo is hers: “It’s quite easy,” she says. I was down to do it, and I didn’t mind. It’s been incredibly successful. I wouldn’t have been able to give this lesson in Colombia…” Dildos and Latino machos don’t really stick, even with epoxy.
Les p’tites madames are implicitly associated with traditional values that feminists have sought to deconstruct in recent decades.
Pride on the program
Diana gives us the confidence to tackle this delicate project. Who would have thought that one day, I would make a sex toy out of a hardwood 2×12 inch (well yeah!), under the supervision of an eight-month-pregnant teacher, to escape the rumors of nuclear missiles…
What Anxiety Can Make Us Do! I admit that after three hours of gossiping with all kinds of gouges and seven kinds of sandpaper, I couldn’t think of anything and the result is surprising. Let’s say, believable. The softness of the wood, its reddish brown color, the regular veins, the oblong shape call for the caress.
It was necessary to seal the artisanal work with coconut oil; I anointed it with lube. But I got choked up when it came to sanding it between uses. Sand a foreskin? No way. It will be a “nice conversation piece” on my bedroom dresser, as the English say. “Handmade, in Quebec. »
On the other hand, tell you the pride and the confidence that I developed in a single evening alongside Diana. Well worth the $80 outlay. And I can now make a chair rung, a rattle or a feather duster handle. My manual skills are extensible.
Site foreman
But I still have scabs to eat. Going to dinner with Josée Robitaille, the well-known chef and food stylist, I was able to fully appreciate the renovations she carried out on her house for six months. Three years ago she bought a shoe box in Rosemont, added a floor, a terrace, redid the yard, sectioned the garage, re-dug the basement to solidify everything, in short, there was only the toilet left for the 13 guys on site to use. It was Josée who directed this large-scale work. “I was on the site from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. and I did everything I could to help. I learned alongside my joiner-carpenter. I wanted to salvage and recycle as much as possible. And I used the Shop-Vac sweeper every night. It’s more pleasant on a clean site. »
You should know that Josée is the kind of girl who whips up a cod in chowder with spinach in no time and who also goes to the neighborhood community workshop to fix her hair dryer. An octopus woman. A six-month construction site where only the four walls of the house remain, that didn’t stress her out any more than a show cooking on TV.
Josée has two workbenches, one inside, in her basement, for winter work, and the other in her garage. There are a hundred kinds of screws and all possible glues. Saws hang on the wall.
The war. And I who was still a virgin! What ? Getting your head ripped off for history’s sake before you even knew what a woman was?
The trickiest thing for this unfailingly amiable woman was perhaps managing to coordinate the 25 trades and dismissing the two who were giving her “My little lady” from the top of their stepladder.
“It was said ‘thank you’ and ‘please’ on my construction site! We had a great atmosphere, and we were on equal footing. We have stripped the whole house, leveled the floor. My retired nurse neighbor came to help me put up my recycled wood wall in the living room. »
Josée is able to make herself go on the circular saw, and when she wonders how to build a shelter for the wood at the family cabin, she watches a tutorial. “I learned by doing it. The compressor hammer is like a gun. It’s so effective. »
I take her at her word. With that, happy March 8, everyone. I can say today that making a cherry wood dildo is easier than going to war. But either way, it’s useless.
Instagram: josee.blanchette