I went through a phase when I was 13 where I would only fall in love with people over the age of 19 or 20. I never had a real relationship with any of these people, but it was definitely the guy I wanted to hang out with and wanted to go on trips with. I would be like, ’But, Daddy, he’s a musician!’.

Wilde recalls an early-adolescent pattern of idealizing older men—especially those with artistic cachet—while emphasizing that these were crushes rather than actual relationships. The humor in the quoted plea to her father (“But, Daddy, he’s a musician!”) highlights how teenage desire can attach to a romanticized identity (the “musician” as symbol of freedom, glamour, and adulthood) more than to a real person. The anecdote also suggests a retrospective self-awareness: she frames the phase as a developmental moment in which longing, aspiration, and rebellion were expressed through imagined proximity—wanting to “hang out” and “go on trips”—rather than through mature intimacy.