It's Like Porn for Me

I love home improvement shows. It started when I was small, watching "This Old House" with my dad, and has now progressed to me sneaking every chance I get to watch HGTV. Show me big old mansions carefully refurbished by impossibly wealthy middle-aged gay men. Or a modest dining room painted by a single mother in some delicate faux finish. Can I see what that living room would look like in green? Hmm. Okay. What about blue? Oh, yes, that's very nice. Explain to me in concerned, but knowledgeable, tones the difficulty of wrapping brass gutters around a corner like that. Show me your workmen working away. Give me a close up on that roof. Can I see you cut through shingles to install a skylight? How will you keep the greenhouse from leaking? What kinds of counters will you put in the kitchen? Can a bathroom sink really be shaped like a large lily and still be practical? I cannot stop watching. And dreaming about what I would do with infinite funds, what kind of house I would buy and all the ways I would make it homey. I turn those shows on and it's like my brain shuts off and something primal engages with what appears on the screen. I have a place to live. And it's fine. But I can't give the stairwell a coat of very light rose. I can't tear everything in the bathroom out and start over. I can't put a fence around the backyard so that Mrs. Wigglebottom and I can go out and play without fear of either one of us being decapitated by her leash. And so I watch these shows with a kind of furtive fascination, both wanting so much to have an opportunity to actually need shows like this, and afraid it's never going to happen. Which also means that whenever I check over at the Wayward Boy Scout's to see how his floor is coming, I'm really not much better than the perverts who come to Tiny Cat Pants looking for "big tit fucking."