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		WARNING! THE FOLLOWING IS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL 
	AND MAY NOT BE REPRINTED OR REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION .
	     COPYRIGHT 1991. SHELLY ROBERTS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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			Cleaning Out My Closet
			  by Shelly Roberts



			WE'RE ON A ROLE HERE.


	"Oooh."  Judi said.  "You look so adorable today.  You just look so 
butch."  And, I admit it, my shoulders got a little squarer and I purred.  
Just a little.  And for a very short time. 

	Now, she has a tone.  Everybody's honey has a tone.  At least I hope 
everybody's honey has a particular tone, that when they use it on us, they 
could call any one of us a loaf of pumpernickel raisin bread, or a doorknob, 
and it would make us feel eleven and a half feet tall and extraordinary.  
That's probably one of the things that makes them our honeys.  And that was 
her tone.  

	And, of course, I did look adorable that day.  But wait a minute here!
Butch?  Me?  Butch?  This was clearly something I had to spend some time
thinking about.

	After all, I'm the one of us who has in her personal and private 
possession eleven shades of nail polish.  An entire array from Rosebud's 
First Blush right on through Cinnamon Splendor, with the ever-popular Coral 
Dawn right in the middle.  

	I'm the one who shrieked at the sight of Alexis, the five-toed feline,
assisting a defenseless lizard to its ultimate karma by flinging it in her 
teeth, and catching me by surprise.  

	I'm the one with all the skirts and, at last count, four, count 'em 
four, actual dresses in my side of the closet.  While she has merely one.  
For special occasions like weddings, bar mitzvahs, and the imminent arrival 
of relatives who might write her into or out of their wills. 

	Hey, I'm the one who had the baby.  Granted, it was a decade or two 
ago.  But "butch?"  What did she mean by that? 

	Of course, at that particular minute I was standing knee deep in fire
ants, holding a long-handled tree pruner aggressively, defending us from the 
burgeoning invasion of hyperthyroid mango buds atop our twenty foot backyard 
tree.  And random spots on my anatomy were freckled with Benjamin Moore's 
best interior semi-gloss.  Maybe it was the needle nosed pliers sticking out 
of the pocket of my cut off 501's?     

	And I was the one who did replace the ceiling fan.  After all, 
somebody had to.  Twice, in fact.  Once to get over the terror, and prove 
that I really could do it without turning myself into a hard-boiled egg by 
touching anything that had more electricity than I did.  Sure, I went to the
fuse box and turned off the current.  But did that make any difference?  Of 
course not.  Some tiny, feminine part of my female soul secretly feared that
maybe the wiring just might not like me today.  Maybe it was playing a game.
Maybe some sneaky little snippet of current was hiding there in the wire, 
like water in the tub spout after a shower, with my name on it.  Seemed kind 
of irrational and feminine to me.  But what did I know?  Butch types would 
know these sorts of things.  Wouldn't they?  I had to call Home Depot to find
out.  Butch types would know that if you pop the main off,the current's 
disconnected, and all you have to do is heft the fifty pounds of machined 
metal parts into place, screw on the wire nuts, white to white, black to 
black and green to ground, reattach the fan blades, and voila!  High school 
shop teachers all over the country would be sending cards and letters of 
congratulations and appreciation.  

	So I did it.  I replaced the ceiling fan.  And lived to tell about 
it.  Of course, I had to do it over again to get it right. To get the top of
the fan to actually touch the ceiling like it was supposed to.  So.  Once to
do it.  Then once more to do it right.  Gee.  How butch could that make me?

	Just because my favorite new toy is this incredible cordless electric
screwdriver that lets me change all twenty-nine kitchen cabinet pulls in less
than an hour.  And light switch plates in mere seconds.  And that I carry 
with me from room to room just in case anything needs some screwing.  Or 
unscrewing.  Is that any reason to call me butch? 	

You see, we bought this house that fooled our inspector, and us, into 
believing we could actually just move in and unpack the puppy and live 
happily ever after.  Hah! 

	Now, not to sell Judi short, she has repaired, replaced, replastered,
refinished or repainted nearly every vertical and horizontal surface in the 
place.  Several of her t-shirts could be donated to the art museum as
sculptures.  She mixes paint like a wizard.  And lugs and tugs and remodels 
with the best of 'em. 
 
	And the house has to be done.  There are cracks, and bumps and 
unevens, and mismatcheds everywhere.  So we do it. Endlessly.  It's just that
she's more afraid of heights than I am.  And don't tell her I said this, but 
I think she holds a screw driver "like a girl."  So there are some things 
that she's better at doing.  And some I am.  So that's how we divide the 
tasks.  We each do whatever job we're more able at.  Or less bad.

	The conclusion I have to come to is inescapable.  It's not me that's 
butch, it's this house that causes it.  And I did feel an enormous sense of
accomplishment when the ceiling fan not only worked, but didn't need any 
chewing gum on the blades to keep it from wobbling.  Amazonian, in fact.  

	It occurred to me that the only place sexism ever seems to work is 
when you buy yourself a house.  At least a house that's less than perfect.  
There were a couple of minutes in the process of claiming the house, I have 
to tell you, up there balanced precariously on the ladder, or hauling two 
hundred feet of chopped arallia bushes to the front yard for disposal, that I
did wonder where my ex-husband was now that I really needed him. Where was 
the possessor of all those major muscle groups to do the "manly things" that 
needed doing.  Like, wrestling the mirrored bi-fold door to the ground in the
bathroom with the aid of a borrowed hacksaw.  Or hooking up the stereo 
system.  But the thought passed quickly.  That was when I remembered that he 
was the one who always hung the cabinet doors crooked.  And, come to think of
it, he also held a screwdriver "like a girl."

	I think I'll wait till I catch Judi adding the fabric softener to
the laundry at just that proper moment before the rinse cycle is over, and
call her "femme" and see how she likes it. 

	I'll be very glad when this house is finished and I can get back to 
my needlepoint, and get my nails done.

_____________________________________________
      
Copyright 1991.  Shelly Roberts.  All rights reserved.  May be reprinted only
in its entirety with written permission.
Shelly Roberts is a nationally syndicated columnist and author or The Dyke 
Detector, Hey, Mom, Guess What! 150 Ways To Tell Your Mother