Pretty in Pink (Times Three)

In literature there are all kinds of curses. A girl is cursed with the inability to contradict a command and must go through life doing everything people tell her to. A man is cursed at birth to kill his father and marry his mother. My curse was bestowed upon my marriage. I thought I was rid of it when I moved, but it followed me even here, the albatross around my neck.

I am plagued with pink bathrooms.

I'm not really big on pink. I was, when I was little. A "girly" girl, I wore pink through junior high when it wasn't popular. Esprit was putting out coordinates in bold blocks and stripes. Guess jeans were stonewashed gray. Everyone wanted a U-Men sweatshirt in primary red, yellow, and blue. In the midst of all this, my fluffy pink sweatshirt with puff painted kittycats screamed "geek". At my junior high, the biggest insult paid was the ungrammatical but scathing "Your momma dresses you funny." I got that one daily.

In high school, I changed. I don't remember if my more stylish friends staged an intervention. Maybe I looked in the mirror one morning and decided it was time for a makeover. I laced up Timberland hiking boots and buttoned my forest green thermal henley. I bought cargo pants in three different earth tones. I stripped my pink wallpaper off the walls and bought a burgundy and blue plaid bedspread. Never again will I actually like pink, I thought.

Ironically, pink is now a very popular color, even for junior high. Many of my Modesto students styled themselves "hardcore", a relative of punk and gothic whose members wear black and pink together. Another example is Happy Bunny, a brand which may feature a cheery hot pink t-shirt with a cute white bunny on the front and an unexpectedly rude caption, like "You're stupid and that's sad," or "It's funny how you think I'm listening." Even Victoria's Secret has a huge line called Pink, though how a pair of ratty sweats with P-I-N-K appliqued across the butt in big letters is supposed to be sexy escapes me.

Seven years later, pink caught up to me. Craig and I came home from our honeymoon to a thousand square foot rental house with a 50’s style pink tub, so vivid it practically glowed in the dark. I don't own it, I thought. There's nothing I can do about it. I shrugged and added pink curtains. I ignorantly left them hanging when we bought a house. Things went from bad to worse. We traded a pink tub for a master bathroom with standing shower, sink and even floor impossibly tiled in the same peach-rose-petal. Pink.

It would have cost about four thousand dollars to retile our small bathroom. Coating the tile with white epoxy was risky; the new surface was prone to chip, scratch, and stain. Like the pink tub, the pink tile was there to stay. After months of deliberating how best to downplay the rather feminine color scheme, I settled on a complementary wall color: a waxy, sepal green that shifted the focus from the overwhelming pink confection of the tile. A wallpaper border of bright Icelandic poppies with healthy green stems tied the two colors into a harmonious whole. I spent another morning stripping layers of grime off the pink floor with chemicals so strong that smelling them made my nose hairs vibrate. The clean floor became obscured by the largest off-white bathroom rug I could find, and beige towels added neutrality to the colorful atmosphere.

I was proud of that bathroom, and when my father-in-law came by to drop off some produce from the garden, I invited him in to see it. “No,” he declined, “that’s all right. I know what the bathroom looks like.”

“But I just redecorated it!” I said brightly.

“Well, I know what it looked like before,” he reasoned. I then realized that most men I know care considerably less than most women I know about home décor. Craig is no exception. Six months into our marriage, I brought home a standing lamp, positioned it above a living room chair, and waited to see what Craig would think about my new addition to the nest. He sat down on the chair, picked up the book, and turned on the lamp so he could see it better.

“Well, what do you think?” I trilled proudly, spreading my arms wide in the universal “ta-DAHHH” gesture.

“Of what?” He didn’t know. He looked around the room, then closely at me. He ran through the usual suspects, starting at “You got a new haircut?” and ending with “You rearranged the furniture?” Eventually I took pity on him and informed him that the lamp whose rays illuminated his page had never been there before.

“Oh. Really?” he said. My mom, my best friend, my neighbor, any woman I know would have noticed the lamp and commented on its effect immediately upon entering the room. Men may notice the absence of light, but when it is present the source is not a cause for concern. It matters not if the lamp is made out of the same metal as the other lamps in the room (which is a must for me) or if it is pleasingly “in style.” Fiat lux, not fiat luxury. Go figure.

As we left our Ripon house behind, I was even somewhat nostalgic about leaving my pink bathroom. Not enough to want to repeat it, understand. When the realtor showed us a trim, cute brick house, I had a feeling it would be ours almost as soon as we walked in the door. It had all the features I wanted. Cozy nine-foot ceilings, no sweeping cathedral rooms that are a nightmare to paint and heat. Lots of windows, a big change from our tiny, dark house that sported a grand total of four. Best of all, three spacious bathrooms. One sandstone, one puce, and one milk chocolate. All brown. Not one of them pink.

The three bathrooms didn't all stay brown. Our master suite is a light blue, and I've bought white paint for the downstairs bathroom, though I haven't painted that yet. Last week, I took advantage of some time off work to paint the upstairs bathroom. I'm very picky about my bathrooms. That old rental with the pink tub also developed a case of toxic mildew due to a badly ventilated bathroom. Ever since, I demand that the walls be coated with mildew resistant low sheen paint. I was slightly annoyed at having to paint the upstairs bathroom the same color, but I didn't want the walls to soften up from repeated water use.

I donned my painting clothes, put on my Les Miserables CD, and let myself lapse into a meditative state as I stroked up and down the walls. Bathrooms are deceptively hard to paint; the sharp corners and numerous obstacles make it hard to use a roller. The worst part is the area behind the commode. To really cover it, you need to straddle the toilet with your upper body while wrapping both arms around it. It's closer than I ever am to the great white throne, even when throwing up. Bathrooms have one advantage, though. They have great acoustics, and with nobody listening you can sing whatever part you want: Jean Valjean, Javert, Eponine, Fantine, Marius, or all in one! As I brushed the walls and bent my body into unusual positions, I sang:

I dreamed a dream in time gone by, when hope was high and life worth living...

Imagine my horror when Valspar New Penny, a nice, coppery brown we picked out, dried a cheery, warm color I am very familiar with. I couldn't believe my eyes. My bathroom was Congratulations-It's-A-Girl Pink.

How did this happen, I wailed inwardly. Even when my bathroom isn't pink, I have to paint it pink with my own hand? I held my cardboard sample of New Penny up to the wall. It didn't match. Not even close. I took the cans and samples back to Lowe's, and held them up to the technician at the paint counter.

"I've painted with this brand for five years and I've never had a color not be true. It's supposed to be brown," I explained.

"Ohhh, that's pink," pointed out the customer behind me in line. I felt vindicated.

Lowe's admitted the error nonchalantly. "Yeah, one of our mixers doesn't "do" browns very well," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

"I wish I had known that before I spent twelve hours painting my bathroom a brown that turned out to be pink," I retorted ironically. "What do I do about my garage? I bought enough to do both rooms. I can have a pink bathroom, but not a pink garage!"

He offered a refund, and I took it. I try to console my extremely cheap self with the free paint job. Strangely enough, having a pink bathroom again is actually starting to grow on me. Craig likes it. He says it's a cheerful color. It is, I suppose.

It could be MUCH worse. I could wake up one morning and find out I've been turned into a cockroach. As curses go, this is pretty lightweight.