Actually the pink bathroom isn’t pink at all. It’s peach. My fantasy is that it was inspired by some issue of Architectural Digest circa 1945. Peach wall tiles with black trim. Small peach and white tiles in a checkerboard pattern on the floor. A peach ceramic countertop with two small vanity sinks in opposite corners, complete with vintage American Standard faucets. Separate hot and cold faucets though.
When we moved into the house, there were these stenciled patterns on the bathroom walls. In the pink bathroom, where a crown molding might go, there were intertwined painted ribbons, white and a kind of spring green. The panels beneath the sink, again primarily peach, had white roses and green leaves painted on them. Two sink mirrors with etched glass finished it all off.
Now I suppose my parents figured this was the feminine bathroom, because the one immediately next door was essentially the same, but in green. Even though it too had the stenciled flowers on the drawers in a vanity and on the wall, it was, after all, green. The other strange thing about these bathrooms was that they have identical windows, double-hung, non-tinted, regular glass, that look out on the front yard. Which means that anyone in the yard, or in the street for that matter, can look into the bathroom and see you. The venetian blinds are supposed to help with that small issue of modesty, but that means shutting out all natural light, which enhances the somewhat depressed feeling now present in these one-time repainted, but not re-stenciled bathrooms.
I’m thinking that master bedroom suites weren’t yet invented in the forties. So since my parents’ bedroom did not have its own bathroom, the four of us shared these two bathrooms. Mom, Dad, my sister and me.
The strange thing I never quite have figured out was that until I was well into puberty, I was relegated to use the pink bathroom with my mother and sister. I must have been thirteen or so before I graduated to the green one, with its walk-in shower instead of a tub. And I had to share a sink with my father, who had some very distinctly different paraphernalia which adorned the white porcelain shelf. And there I stayed until I left to go to college.
By the time I was coming home on breaks, Dad had “remodeled” the third bathroom in the walk-out basement. Ceramic brick tile adorned the floor, and it appeared my dad had gone around to various construction sites to get the tile for the shower.
But in the past year Dad started using the green bathroom again. I cleaned up the one in the basement, which meant going through the drawers of a dresser which was in my childhood bedroom and getting rid of most of the accumulated crap. Ancient used tubes of Brylcream, bottles of Old Spice, rusty metal Band-Aid boxes, and some really old washcloths mysteriously disappeared into the trash.
When Mom died and we moved in, it didn’t make sense on any level to be back in the masculine bathroom. So, perhaps appropriately, Dan and I took over the pink one. I mean the peach one. Thank God for my sister who was able to clean that one out. What a trooper. There was stuff in there neither one of us wanted to know about. Forty years worth. Expired bottles of things were a no-brainer. Angela managed to fill up a couple of garbage bags with most of the rest.
So now every morning I’m showering in an ancient bathtub. Most people have the regular prerequisites in their tubs – soap, shampoo, a cloth or lufa of some sort. Me, I add to that collection abrasive cleanser and a sponge, which I stand on as I take my shower and try to work off some of the residue from the years. The walls to the best of my knowledge were last painted in about 1975, and probably haven’t been cleaned since, so in the moisture and dirt mixture on the wall high above the tile that you face while you shower, I’ve been able to write “Hi Dan!” much like you see tractor-trailer trucks going down the highway and some kid has written “Wash Me” on the back doors with their fingers. So far Dan hasn’t said anything, which doesn’t surprise me. Details like that don’t often catch his attention. He had three older brothers.
Me – I’ve spent way too much time looking at these walls and trying to figure out what color could complement peach and black. I just haven’t been able to come up with anything that didn’t make me think of Baskin’s Robbins’. So when the local hardware store put Laura Ashley paint on sale at 70% off, I jumped at the opportunity to save a buck, took one of the wooden peach shelves
in to get a color match, and came home with cheap designer paint. Peach.
Looking back, I can see that those early years in that bathroom are probably what turned me gay. I would lay there in the tub, gaze upon those peach walls and the white roses, and marvel at the work that went into creating this tribute to post-war interior decorating. Of course, although I don’t remember, other things probably happened in that tub as well. I was, after all, thirteen. This leaves me with a fascination with bathroom design. The really frightening things I have to admit is that many years later, when we were rehabbing our century-old Victorian in Connecticut, there was a small half-bath right outside our bedroom door. Since there really was no tile on the walls in this bathroom, we decided to put in wainscoting. We then picked out a wall paper – surprisingly yet stereotypically feminine – little primroses in vertical vines growing up the wall. I took a piece of the paper to the paint store, and in serious consultation with the guy who worked there, came home with two quarts of hot pink paint for the wainscoting. Neon. Cotton Candy pink. Or, since it was a bathroom, perhaps I should say Pepto-Bismol pink.
It’s nice to be back in the “peach” bathroom.
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