That Neighborhood Party: Houses

These people are all so comfortable. That's what I kept thinking Saturday night at the progressive dinner on our street. For those who don't know, a progressive dinner is like a potluck, only you move to a different house for each course of the meal. Three stops is a good number. It's kind of a hassle if you have to drive from place to place, but if you're just walking in your neighborhood, it's great, even in 20 degree weather.

So this meant going into three different big houses with three different finished basements. And I'm not talking about some paneling-and-carpet-remnant basements. These were big, fully-tricked out spaces with kitchens, bars, gyms, pool tables, you name it. Our basement is unfinished, so having another kitchen in your basement is still a novelty to me. And to a woman, every hostess told me some variant of, "We never come down here." I was like, this is a 1000 or 1500 square-foot space that you never use? It's bigger than anywhere Matt and I ever lived before we moved here. Like a little house underneath your house. Amazing, really.

I mean, we live in this place now, but I don't feel that we're really of this place, you know? I have fresh memories of living in small apartment after small apartment, and especially of raising a baby and then a small child in something under a thousand square feet. Of never, never having a washing machine actually in my living space. Of no storage. Of never having a dishwasher or more than one small bathroom. Our first apartment in California had the bathroom in the kitchen, which was itself the converted back porch of a hundred year-old house. Oy, that apartment deserves its own post someday.

Three and a half years after moving into our big-but-not-huge house, I still enjoy the space we have and am thankful for it everyday. If we were to finish our basement, this place would be huge, maybe too much for just the four of us. Anyway, what struck me about our neighbors and their places was that this is all normal for them. Nothing special. Normal and expected to have 4,000 square feet of living space, plus an actual room in your house that you can park your car in. I know, the garage thing still seems amazing. California real estate did this to me. I digress.

The other thing that struck me about the three houses we visited was that they all look basically the same inside. Like everyone shops for furniture and decorations at the same place, or put their rooms together with the same idea in mind. Not all of my neighbors adhere to this decorating philosophy, but it seems to be the majority. A while ago, I tried to characterize this style of interior decorating, and the best I could come up with was: "extreme matching, a reverence for a quasi-Tuscan look, and safe, idea-free interiors. Think burgundy and hotel art." That's pretty much it, though I would add that the overall effect is absolutely ponderous--dark colors, dark wood. Remember the whole red or maroon dining room fad? I don't remember when that was, but my neighborhood is still firmly in its grip. When not carried off competently, this look goes from bland to outright depressing. "Hotel art" isn't quite right either, because hotel paintings are usually representations of something--beaches, landscapes, people, places, you know, nouns.

Not one of my actual neighbors' houses.

What goes as artwork in my neighbors' houses is not, for the most part, pictures, or figural, representational images but more like other things stuck on the wall. Like geometric things or wrought iron bits of stuff. I would call them "wall sculptures" but that would suggest that they have more of a point of view than they really do. Pardon me if I sound like a total snob right now. But don't you know what I mean? I swear it's that, in their calculations, an actual picture of something is too risky. It might not be right or someone might not like it. There are no books on view either, so truly, an idea-free interior. It's a shame, because these are fun, smart, busy people. I don't want them to be so afraid. At this point we could reference Paul Fussell's essential and totally fun book, Class, and his claim that the middle class is the anxious class. They don't want to put themselves out there--their likes, habits, and obsessions in full view, because it might not be right, like is it really okay to have a shelf full of paperback novels in the living room? And, if I hang this drawing of a horse in my dining room, then that amounts to my aesthetic endorsement of it, does it not, and what if my judgement is not correct?

This explains what was going on the time Frenemy Neighbor came into my house and saw a portrait that a friend's mother gave us when we got married. She's an outsider/naïve painter, and she painted us a picture of a bride and groom. They're kinda funny-looking but we've had them with us a long time. Anyway, Frenemy saw it and said, "That is really. . .personal." Yes, it is, I suppose. But what she meant by "personal" was "wrong and not appropriate." A different day, she saw a little picture of a duck on my mantel, painted by the same lady. Frenemy said, as I think I've reported here before, "Did someone you really love give you that?" She herself collects porcelain roses and also any piece of artwork that depicts roses, which she can hang over the porcelain roses to reinforce, you know, the whole rose concept.

Meow.

But you know where this rule of artistic safety does not apply for my neighbors? In their basements! That's where you see kids' artwork, pub signs, sports pennants, all the stuff that the people are really into. It is really funny. Down there their obsessions and pastimes are on display. I'm like, "Dude, get that autographed picture of you wearing a kilt and standing next to Jack Nicklaus upstairs where it can breathe!" Upstairs I'm like, "Where is your stack of Us Weeklies and your Nora Roberts books?" Downstairs, there they are, thank God! And it's a double shame if they really never go down there!

Was I raving?

If you are one of the people still reading, i.e., one of my blood relations, I appreciate your scrolling. In order to not make this post even longer, I will tell you about the actual people at the party tomorrow. xoxox--B