The only thing worse than walking past a building site and being jeered and catcalled at is walking past a building site and being ignored. In a world where the rules about men and women are so blurred and confusing, it's hardly surprising that the strong, silent construction worker remains such a popular fantasy figure.

The girl who told me the following tale thought that her crush on a mysterious builder was an idle day-dream. But a casual fantasy grew into a sexual obsession that dominated her thoughts night and day. And then, one evening, she crossed the line from fantasy to reality. He turned out to be all she'd imagined and more-and he allowed her to be the woman she'd always dreamed of being, too. I walked past him every day for nearly six months. At first he was just another hard hat on the construction site, another man working early hours in all kinds of weather, surrounded by overweight oafs who made jeers about the length of my skirt or the size of my tits. But there was something different about this one. Lean, not fat, he would simply watch while the others wolf-whistled. He would just stand there and look. That's all. That's all it took. His eyes would lock onto mine, and although he would continue to hold my gaze rather than check out my cleavage, I could feel his eyes burn into my back, taking in my whole body as I walked past. In the evening, when I was on my way home, he would be long gone.

I started out just hoping that he would simply be there; the two or three seconds of sexy, unsmiling eye contact he awarded me each morning brightened my day. I put him at around thirty-five, with a smooth, square jawline and curly, light brown hair that I sometimes saw if he was working without his hard yellow hat. Eventually I started to slow my walk down and added a little sashay, for his benefit as well as my own, to buy myself another few seconds in his presence. The hot summer day I first saw him working with his top off I went out and picked up a stranger who vaguely resembled him, took him home, and fucked him.