Cleaning Out My Closet by Shelly Roberts Knowledge Is Power. Judi and I just put our house on the market. And as a result, I've discovered another vast, unknown secret of the known universe: why it is that perfectly normal, non-gay men are so incredibly, amazingly, overwhelmingly threatened by mere lesbians. No, no, Dr. Freud, all due respects and all, but it has nothing to do with missing certain appendages borne to man, or with the apparently overwhelming fear that women might find out that they don't actually have to put up with smelly blokes who can't tell the dirty clothes hamper from a hole on the floor, just to get some satisfying sex. All good reasons and true, I grant you. But not, I now understand, at the real heart of the matter. About selling the house: It's a great market, see, what with interest rates hovering slightly below knee-sock level. There are still some German tourists willing to risk life, limb and the Miami International Airport to wave fistfuls of top-dollar Deutchmarks at home owners within walking distance of the beach. (Especially if said-same comes with ogling rights to nearby hot dog vendors in thong bikinis.) So we thought we would take advantage. For once in our lives, we actually had cash at the bottom of a market. We bought low. Do the words "Sell High!" ring a bell? Unfortunately, though, no matter how much you've done to recover the house from untidy prior deed holders, there's always at least one or two more things you have to do to make it picture perfect for potential purchasers. (That's one of Robert's Rules of the Universe.) Now, if you who have followed my column, you know that I believe that I have become butch by default. Judi just out-femme's me, especially when it comes to housely things. And, since I left Whatsisname behind me in an Illinois divorce court, there's no convenient he-man to take over some of the necessary, but bulkier tasks a house demands. Like pressure cleaning the roof. A big, strong, handsome job if ever there was one. And that's where I made my all-important discovery of the secret we have been oh, so carefully protected from us all these years: MEN'S TOYS ARE MORE FUN! They're also more efficient. And a darn fine excuse to get out of doing boring chores like dishes, waxing floors, or spending perfectly good weekend days in the company of annoying in-laws, while appearing to do hard, unpleasant work. Hah! Now who, exactly, do you think would tell this secret? Nice suburban hetero-homemakers whose fortunes rest in the hands of burly beasties? Na-uh. No way are you going to find Hilda Housefrau yanking the chain on the donkey engine, then climbing a ladder over her head to scrub the housetop with a boy's idea of the way-most-cool Hoover on the planet. John Wayne wouldn't let her. And besides, how else is she going to make the lug feel manly and appreciated so he'll stick around and keep contributing to the kids' Christmas club? But us. Right! Lesbians don't keep hulks around for our own amusement. But our roofs still need power cleaning. So we're the ones most likely to discover that there really is something to the theory of "P-envy." Only the "P" stands for power-tools! It's lesbians without husbands who could conceivably discover that belt sanders are slightly less complicated and dangerous than your average garbage disposal. And a thousand times more efficient than SOS. Now, soaking wet, (which I certainly was) I probably couldn't qualify much past bantam weight for golden gloves. But there I stood, on the roof, aiming the first 1500 pounds per square inch at tiles that, when I got through with them, couldn't have come cleaner if I'd been on my hands and knees with a brillo pad. What satisfaction! What a great way to get a tan! What an extraordinary way to get out of doing inside housedrudge on a Sunday afternoon. What a guy thing! Think about it. We only got the microwave because a bunch of guys were going to shoot each other to the moon on an excellent adventure, and they couldn't take a women along to cook meals. "Hey," one of them had to have said, "Who's gonna cook while we're busy doing guy stuff?" And voilla! Instant popcorn! And how about self-cleaning ovens? Don't you think they happened because some poor engineer dude had to take out the garbage and wrestle with the Easy-Off as a condition of getting laid regularly? Com'on! I'm surprised he didn't invent self-carrying garbage. Hey, what if straight guys were required to do all the housework for a minimum of five years. Before they could, oh, say, vote, or buy a TransAm? You know what would happen, don't you? When you wanted to sell your house to some unsuspecting foreign visitor, which means you have to live in a place where even everything under the kitchen sink has to pass white glove muster, no problemo! A snap. To get a clean house, you'd just leave. Go to the front door, pull a really big lever till the house sealed, set a timer, and head for the beach for a couple of hours to leer at the Oscar Mayer Maidens while the house did all its own dirty work. Do you have any idea what you can accomplish with your own table saw and router? Do you know how little actual work goes into running a riding mower over dichondra? (Oh, sure, maybe a calorie or two burned having to change sides on your book tape, pour your own brewski, or shout for your sweetie to fetch.) Let's not even mention chain saws. So, it's not surprising that we scare them. Our real threat to straight men is not now, nor has it ever been, about sex, like they keep trying to scare us into thinking. That's a ruse. What they're truly afraid of is that we'll spill the beans about what B and D really stands for: Black and Decker. No wonder straight men are so threatened by lesbians. We do endanger their entire way of life. Now that's enormous power! ________________________ ©1993. Shelly Roberts. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted only in its entirety with written permission. Shelly Roberts is a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of The Dyke Detector, Paradigm Publishing. Look for her new book, Hey, Mom, Guess What...? 150 Ways To Tell Your Mother, coming in November. Cleaning Out My Closet