"Linda is attracted to planes-not as a hobbyist, but she does display an enthusiast's ardor and knowledge. While she has a flight-tracking app on her phone and can identify the type and number of an aircraft by sight, for Linda, the 30-year-old protagonist of Kate Folk's novel Sky Daddy, these flying hunks of metal are erotic objects. She maps the language of human romantic relationships onto her attraction, giving all the planes male pronouns and admiring their "ankles" and "rear ends.""
"There's a good deal of talk about thrust. Vastly preferring the company of aluminum and steel to people, Linda claims that planes are sentient and respond to her in turn. She saves up her meager pay as a low-level employee at a tech company so that once a month she can take a cheap flight from SFO to a crappy regional hub. The destination doesn't matter; Linda gets on the plane to get off-secretly masturbating during each flight, or "date," as she puts it."
"But mere dating isn't enough for Linda. She also wants to get married-i.e., die in a plane crash. There's an ostensible basis for Linda's objectophilia: a shared love of planes with her now-deceased father and a very turbulent flight she took with her family when she was 13. Sky Daddy, however, is not much concerned with so-called sexual deviancy or even how specific fetishes are born."
Linda experiences airplanes as erotic partners and treats them as sentient beings, preferring their company to people. She tracks flights, identifies aircraft, and maps romantic language onto planes, using male pronouns and attributing physical features and personalities. She saves money to take monthly cheap flights, masturbates secretly during each flight, and calls these outings "dates." She desires to die in a plane crash as a form of marriage or ultimate union. Her attachment connects to a shared love of planes with her deceased father and a traumatic turbulent childhood flight. The obsession operates as a way to examine difficulties in forming intimate human connections.
Read at The Nation
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