Eva Bradley: A girl's best friend

For the past six weeks I have had a Kevin. This has been just long enough to realise that everyone needs a Kevin. Everyone.
My Kevin arrived on the scene eight years ago on a tropical island at sunset. I picked him up sight-unseen right before an ocean crossing on a small yacht travelling between Tonga and Fiji. He saved my bacon by taking over the helm after the skipper wasn't up to the job and he's been doing so in varying degrees off and on ever since.
Although the nature of a Kevin is that he can't be put in a box, if one were forced to, the box would be labelled something like this: "Extremely useful male who offers all the benefits of a male without any of the drawbacks normally associated with having one permanently attached."
He lives with me, he listens to me, he helps me unconditionally and he even cooks a good fish dinner every once in a while without being asked.
In short, he does all the things a man should do but seldom does, with the exception of things that can easily be done with a couple of AA batteries.
During a time when I'm not sure I really want a man in my life, he is the perfect man to have in my life. An American yachtie who arrived under sail and stays for a while each time before disappearing for several years, he has marked the passing of both husbands and boyfriends from my life with quiet repose.
In a curious combination of both the little brother and the father I never had, he has my back when times are tough and with an honest simplicity so often lacking in his gender, he doesn't just say it, he follows through and does it, regardless of what "it" is.
When Kevin spontaneously arrived back in my life a few weeks ago after a season of deep-sea fishing in Alaska, he found me at my lowest ebb ... alone, disappointed by life and somewhat disinclined towards his gender.
It took a brave man to walk through my front door at that point, but he did it with the sort of respectful grace and relaxed confidence that had seen him cross the Pacific Ocean single-handed in a boat most of us would consider too small for the bathtub.
As we shared our recent storm stories, both from the high seas and the heart, I slowly learned that all rough passages come to an end and that it is the people who haven't abandoned ship in stormy seas that matter most.
Kevin is a salty sea dog, a fourth-generation mariner with a proud history of earning a living from the bounty of the ocean.
In a line-up of eligible bachelors, his presentation in paint-stained trousers with last month's stubble might not win him any votes, but after many years wasted judging books by their covers and getting nothing but a short and uninspiring story as a result, my Kevin has taught me to look past the fancy dust jacket and even the slickly penned blurb on the back cover.
Tomorrow he leaves again on the next leg of his adventure, with a promise to return again at some unspecified time for an unspecified duration.
Some might consider such commitment from a friend to be frustratingly vague.
Time has taught me that attempts to garner specifics from Kevin are futile, but unlike others who drift in and out of our lives along with lofty but unfulfilled promises, his commitment, although hazy, remains permanent.
It's uncertain what men may feature in my life in the future, but what I know for sure is that one of them will always be Kevin.
In the absence of the perfect man, he remains the perfect man.