Indoor Camping: Fixing Up the Fixer-Upper

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

House Hormones

“After shopping in Seattle with four females, I’m going to invite you on a man-date,” Dave says to Charlie. “I’ll get a copy of ‘Tombstone,’ we’ll get a keg, we’ll smoke cigars. We need to purge you of any residual estrogen.”

By the end of the conversation, I’ve invited myself over, too. I want to maintain my estrogen levels but if someone’s planning a good time, I’m not hormone-specific. Fun is fun.

Fun, for me, is enjoying other people’s houses. Living like I do, with what looks like a construction dump site crossed between a Home Depot warehouse, I like to be reminded of things like baseboards and light fixtures: the little things that make a house a home.

Please, please invite me over. I won’t judge your cleanliness. I’ll enjoy your couch as long as it isn’t coated with texture dust. I’ll be excited about anything you have in your living room not manufactured by Ridgid, Ryobi or DeWalt.

Come to think of it, maybe I’m the one who needs a hormone adjustment. Living amidst all this heavy construction and manly power tools, I might benefit from a little testosterone purging of my own.

Man-Date Dave has a wife, Sherry, who seems to enjoy her estrogen. She does girl things like dress nicely, wears make-up and looks like she knows the business end of a brush. However, she and Dave got married one day in Hawaii and the next morning woke up and did the Honolulu marathon. Prissy girls with too much estrogen probably wouldn’t start married life like that. The only training my prissy friends tend to do involves credit cards and malls with good shoe stores.

I couldn’t wait to see the inside of their house. Will it look like a Frat house? A Grandma house? A frilly Bed, Bath and Beyond display? I know not to assume. I’ve been told to turn off my HEPA air filters and relax a little by people assuming my house is compulsively clean. These people will never get invited over. One of the most masculine men I’ve met lives in a house with a pink bedroom. Do you think his boss knows this?

“Some houses feel like a hospital, sterile,” Charlie says. “Void of character. Some homes feel like a museum, like the furniture’s never been used. Other houses, you can tell who wears the pants in the family, or who won’t let anyone else wear pants.   Houses can be hormone-dominant.”

I’m excited people will still invite us over. We can’t return the favor, unless you want to eat sitting on our laps on the texture-covered Goodwill-reject loveseat. That’s the only approved eating place in the whole house.

And in my kitchen, the chances are a lot higher of accidentally chomping down on a sheetrock screw since the kitchen doubles as a Home Depot holding zone. No one’s who’s seen our little Kosovo has begged to be fed. I have a feeling normal people lose any sort of appetite by the end of our construction tour.

Both Charlie and I get quiet driving up Sherry and Man-Date Dave’s driveway. There’s nothing not to like and everything to want to copy. If you like an inviting house, you’d copy theirs. It looks like home, but not our home.

Sometimes when we visit houses like this, we get this thought of someday living like normal people. Then we realize we’d probably focus our energy on each other, instead of on the fixer and that’d be worse. It’s easier to fix up a house and get rid of it than to fix up a spouse or get rid of him or her.   Alone, I’d probably end up buy HEPA air filters and clean the cat compulsively. Charlie’d pick paint colors without me and soon the greater Metro area would be dotted with all-blue, DeWalt-decorated, unsold fixers.

Sherry and Dave and a large, typical man-pet dog greet us. The dog sits in front of the fire, very non-aggressively. A typical female-type pet, a cat, sits next to the dog. Being Sherry and Dave, this isn’t a typical cat. This one’s been shaved to look like a lion, complete with a mane and a pompom at the end of his tail.

“It takes four hours to do it,” Sherry says.

“He’s emasculated,” Man-Date Dave says. “He can’t walk around the neighborhood looking tough with a haircut like that.”

“Cool,” Charlie says. “Our cat kills birds and snakes and puts them on your pillow. He stands up to huge dogs. He could use some emasculation. I’m thinking of giving him a good shaving when I get home. See what I can come up with.”

Like the good wife I am, I ignore my husband and pay attention to the furniture. I notice the fabric, the carpet, the big fish tank. Are fish masculine or feminine? They’re pretty, but judging by all the manly men I know who live to fish, I’ll put them in the testosterone category. The word fish in Spanish is masculine. Then again, so is the word cat. Whoever decided that never saw Dave and Sherry’s cat.

Sherry puts my feet up when I sit on the big, black leather four-person recliner in their home theater. Why do they ever leave? There’d be no reason. I keep thinking of excuses to sit here. I could stay much longer than what is socially acceptable. I’ve already picked out a place for the HEPA air filter.

They have sparkly Christmas decorations everywhere. I don’t know a guy who has ever been excited about Christmas decorations. “Marrying you,” Charlie tells me around this time of year, “I was so happy. I knew I’d never have to put up Christmas lights again. We don’t live in a house you want to call attention to.”

As soon as I suspect things might be tipping in an estrogen direction, Sherry says “I’m known for smashing pop cans on my forehead.” She tells about visiting her husband’s family for the first time before they were married and forgetting to bend the pop can a little bit first. The pop can didn’t smash. Not your normal femmy first impression.

“Then she challenged me to an Indian leg-wrestle,” Dave says. “I knew she was strong, so I figured I’d better try hard. When we said ‘go,’ I ended up flipping her across the room, right in front of my parents. By the end of the visit, my parents whispered, ‘Don’t blow this one, Dave. We like her.’”

Sherry made lots of things for us for dinner, none of which contained a hidden sheetrock screw. I forgot about fixers, balance of hormones in house decorating, and my new-found envy of sparkly Christmas decorations as they entertained us, which they certainly did.

“You know how with some people,” Charlie says later, “you wait for the punch line and it never comes? You have to fake a smile? Sherry and Dave made up for those people. It was like, ‘This is funny,’ and Sherry’d tell the best story you heard all week.

“Then Dave would say, ‘I have another funny story,’ and we’d hear him tell about falling asleep with his hand over his head by his face. When he woke up, he didn’t feel his hand and thought someone was trying to grab him. Not many people admit that.”

If the General didn’t call and demand our attention, we’d still be there. We might be still gauging approximate house hormonal levels. Be wary of inviting over people who live in fixers. We’re happy to be indoors; in your indoors, preferably.

A little help? [] 2:24:17 PM