Inspecting the foundations...

Well this building inspector was a horse of a different color! A super gay-friendly building inspector! - it almost makes up for all the things he found wrong with my house. Here's the thing: it makes such a huge difference to be on the same page about what's getting built and lived in. Its hard enough to make sure everyone's clear about which way the tiles are supposed to lined up, which direction the drain is supposed to flow (that should be easy but it isn't), what's really or not really needed to keep the house warm and the roof from leaking. All of that usually takes place against the assumption, so basic that it never needs to be stated, about what a house is, to say the least of a home. A house is a thing that involves a whole host of gender relations. It stakes out the private domain, the domain of women - and yet things are pretty well organized so that a woman needs men to build it for her, maintain it for her, and get it locked up tight so other men can't get in. The house, built by man, is then transsubstantiated into a home by woman. Women are then enagaged in the maintenance of the home and everything that is supposed to go on in it; private activities. So when I invite a man into my house to help me get the house itself into working order, I invite in all these assumptions about what the house is and what kind of home it will become, who I am and what I will do in it. And the first and most important piece of information that anyone learns when they come to help improve my house is that I'm hiring them and know where the wires are, i.e., where's my husband? Women, straight, gay, young, old, are familiar with the need to work extra hard not to get ripped off by mechanics, plumbers, etc. Men who don't know diddly in this department may also fear for their wallets and their masculinity in such situations. But my worry here is about much more than getting overcharged or shoddy work. Its hard even to know the difference until you see it.

Which brings me back to the building inspector. How did I find out he was gay friendly? I hung some rainbow dangly thing out of my back pocket. I just got it recently 'cause I'm so darn tired of being an invisible lesbian, and guess what? It works like a charm. He saw it, mentioned his queer kid, and before you know it we were onto gay politics and gossip between rotting beams and open sewage lines. Two things: I was with my mother during the inspection, whereas I'm usually alone when people come to work on the house, so I felt comfortable being much more out. Still, the rainbow is on my cell phone, so pretty much everyone who's been here has had the chance to see it. I guess unless you've got a queer eye open, this thing is not enough to disuade the average heterosexual from assuming that its just a fashion accessory to go with my jewelry and pedicure. On the contrary! Its a untility item, I wish with all the design savvy in this community we could get a better looking signifier. (Problem is, if it looks too good the straights get in on it and it doesn't do its job anymore - single earing, nice hankie anyone?) The thing is if this doesn't do the trick, I don't really want to go the extra mile to out myself and attract interest in my private, read *home*, life when I'm staring down a broken skylight with some dude. I don't want him to get distracted trying reconfigure our cultural gender norms and my place in them, especially vis a vis him. Unless its really going to be homoimprovement, I just want him to fix the skylight. So I guess the rainbow also acts as a sorting device: something to notice for those who care (hopefully not the god fearing homophobes), and nothing to those whose interest wouldn't interest me. Perhaps I'm being to conservative... I've got plenty more chances to test out my gender performance on the home improvement scene.

...because the house has lead pipes bringing in that delicious NYC drinking water. It doesn't have flues in the chimney, which is why it reeks of burning oil all winter long as the smoke seeps out between the bricks of the chimney, instead of up out of it. The basement floods and needs pumps installed to keep it dry(er). The beams that the bird brained contractor cut all need to be reinforced with steel plates, and all the new apartment's pipes rerouted. And the open drain pipe problem remains. Tonight we'll bust up some more walls to look for the stinking culprits.

I didn't get much done on the Danish chair yesterday, I wasn't mad enough. Lesson of the day: the politics of this rennovation are what really get my panties in a bunch. When they're straightened out - or queered as the case maybe - I can think about the house like the inert object it pretends to be and focus on fixing it up. Then, finally, I'll get to decorate it.