Sunday, December 13, 2009

On Houses and Homes

My partner and I are the only people in our department who do not have a house. I've always wanted a house. A house is a good thing. This is obvious. More poems need to say the obvious. They need to say a house is a good thing.

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My partner's mother had two houses. One of them burned to the ground. It was a weird thing when my partner received the phone call. It felt like one of those things that only happens in the movies. "My house burned down," he said. It wasn't his house. It was his mother's. But still. In a family, a house is a house. It was a good thing that his mother had a spare.

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My family never lived in a house. We lived in a trailer. I remember complaining even back then that we didn't have a house. "Shut up," my mother said, "You have a home. If you have a home, you don't need a house."

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I like when people tell me how much their house costs. It almost feels like we're trading social security numbers. It feel like they're sharing. Maybe they only tell me because they know I don't have a house.

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I like when people invite me into their house. Somehow I feel special.

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Until gay men can get married, it is impossible for them to have a home. They can only have houses.

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People who have houses or homes have almost all the time been nice to me.


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The patriarch of my department tell me that we need to have a house. That's how he says it: "You need a house. Professors need a house. Especially ones who are full-time. Or else everybody expects them to go on a job market. And move somewhere else where they'll buy a house."

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A lot of people in my department tell me they struggle a bit. But they have houses.

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It always seems the nicer the house the less it feels like a home.

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We buy a lot of books, DVDs. Do we not have a house because we buy those things? Or do we buy those things because we don't have a house?

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Houses seem to have less stuff than homes.

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You feel less guilty spilling wine on the couch in a home as opposed to house.

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It's home, sweet home. It's not house, sweet house.

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Houses are more silent than homes.

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Homes contain less ghosts than houses.

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I never know what to say when I enter a nice house. Most people in our departments who have houses say when they enter another house, "What a wonderful house!" That's the etiquette, I guess. It feels like a bad thing to say even though you have to say it. It feels like saying, You have a lot of money. In fact, what else can you really be saying? It's not like you're saying, I like the way you arrange the furniture. You're saying I'm impressed at how much you spent on this house. At the same time, if you're out for dinner with someone who has a house, you can't say, You have a lot of money, coded or not. You have to say you have a nice house when you're walking through the immediate thresh hold: the door to the house. The doors to a house seem less open than a home. But there are always more visitors in a house.

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Houses always contain more parties. Homes more get-togethers.

9 comments:

  1. I especially like: "It always seems the nicer the house the less it feels like a home." I feel that way too. Nice houses feel like showrooms to me. Our house is tiny. We think of it more as a tent. But these days (like today) when it's snowing outside, it's very cozy. Very much a home.
    I know you will have a home some day and it will be a place that people look forward to visiting.

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  2. Houses get remodeled. Hopefully, one can stop the remodeling eventually so it can start to become a home.

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  3. "A house can be mistaken for a home" -Michael Collier.

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  4. Speaking as Steve's partner, I like much of what he has to say here. But he's wrong, of course, when he says "until gay men can get married, it's impossible for them to have a home." Well-intentioned, but wrong.

    What motivates many of these anti-gay obsessives MORE than the fact that they live in cold houses constantly trying to pry into (and pry apart) other people's homes? Sometimes I think it's exactly this difference between house and home that drives these busybodies batsh*t insane. Some of them may own houses (and some may own cathedrals), but no one spends vast scads of time and energy trying to deny other people their fair shake in this world when they have their own home to go home to. What kind of fool would leave behind something so right for something so small and so awful? They may greedily dig their claws into the word "marriage" (and over 1100 federal rights that go with it), but they don't-- and can't-- control what can be a home.

    A house is a house (of course, of course). It's mere fact. A home is more like a breath or like an idea. It's where you burn the blueprints in the fireplace and make a place your own.

    In Steve's and my case, we may not have a house, but one of us, at least, already has a home. Here's hoping the other one gets here soon.

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  6. home is where the heart is, and no matter where you may live, that's home and it always will be. :)

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  7. Loved this one. HI STEVE'S PARTNER. Well-said!

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  8. The problem with houses, as opposed to other homey dwellings, would be the rather unromantic elements of home maintenance, repair, lawn care, etc. that accompany them. I've always thought that the burdens of shoveling snow, painting windows, pulling weeds, and repairing gutters would be a significant distraction from one's efforts to lead a beautiful and glamorous life. Don't you want to lead a beautiful, glamorous life, Steve? It's easier to do that in a townhouse (or is it called a townhome?) than in an actual house. Houses just add a whole new level of domestic drudgery (read: boredom) and obligation. Unless you're one of those strange people who really get into those things. (I confess, I get into those things.) But I still can't picture you mowing the lawn.

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  9. Insightful post, Steve. Wish I'd seen it before. I hope you and your partner had a wonderful Holiday.

    I personally feel that house/home ownership is somewhat romanticized, but of course that will vary from person to person. We've owned our house for a little over six years now, but in a lot of ways, I've never quite considered it a home. I didn't want to buy the place, and the few things about it that I liked have since become a major pain for me.

    For us, the only pluses to owning a home are:

    - In our particular case, we actually pay much less for our mortgage/taxes/city services than we would for a comparable place we'd rent in one of the suburbs. Granted we don't live in the best of neighborhoods, and I know that factors into it.

    - We aren't sharing a floor/ceiling/wall someone directly above/below/beside us. We have some inconsiderate neighbors who are occasionally loud at odd hours, but it's not like hearing someone stomp their feet across their floor/our ceiling.

    I guess if I knew we'd be staying in this house for much longer (we've already lived here for a few years longer than I wanted to) or that I knew I wanted to stay in the area - which I don't - I might have a different attitude towards the house, but as it is, I'm mainly ambivalent to it most of the time.

    As others have said, home is where you make it. Doesn't matter if your name is on the deed or not. And I don't care what anyone thinks, there is something to be said about having someone else shovel or plow the driveway rather than having to get up an hour earlier than normal in order to make sure Kristen and I can get to work/campus/wherever.

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