I have a confession to make.

It’s pretty much an embarrassment, as I’ve always thought of myself as a red – green – yellow - purple sort of a gal. I never liked pointillist paintings, blurry lines, or great, ghastly palettes of pastels.

But lately – well, in the past year or so – I’ve been noticing a slight, barely perceptible and nothing to get excited about but somewhat worrisome … shift in my color preferences toward …

Pink.

I know. I know. What kind of a thing is that for a veteran private detective / arson investigator / gun-toting human of the female persuasion to confess? Mickey Spillane would never have had a pink whiskey bottle in his P.I. office desk drawer. Sherlock Holmes would not have smoked a pink meerschaum pipe. Columbo would never have worn a pink raincoat.

I bow my head in shame.

And yet … and yet …Let me tell you about my basement.

But first, I should admit that I love my home. It’s a Leave it to Beaver sort of a house in a Norman Rockell sort of a neighborhood. I have a gorgeous garden filled with masses of roses, stargazer lilies, azaleas, and winter camellias. Best of all, I have a big bay window and a wood paneled office; in both of which places I write my newspaper columns and my books.

Everything about my house was borderline perfect when I moved in, except for the aforementioned basement. It was dark, damp, and depressing. Ground water seeped through brown-blotched peeling walls. Huge metal vents crisscrossed the wide plank-wood ceiling. And all of it was lighted only with three dangling 60-watt bulbs.

File cabinets in the basement contained drafts of my books, research, publicity, photos, and reviews, as well as my idea files, albums, short stories, cartons of books, and everything else relevant to my literary life to date. Which meant that I went down the basement on a regular basis, even though I hated to do it. Every time I had to creep down those cellar stairs, I thought about Dr. Steward descending to the lower level of his insane asylum, where Dracula’s buddy Reinfeld was snacking on birds, spiders, and flies.

Ugh.

Needing (desperately) to exorcise my household demons, I asked myself what would be the opposite of Dracula? And the answer that came to me – swift and indisputable – was: the color pink.

Or, as my old pal Merriam-Webster defines it: “Any of a group of colors bluish red to red in hue, of medium to high lightness, and of low to moderate saturation.”

I rolled up my sleeves (actually, I rolled out my checkbook), and I determined to make some changes. First, I hired an electrician and installed four banks of bright white fluorescent lights. Then I had all of the walls in the basement scraped and painted with waterproof white paint.

Although the results were encouraging, the basement was still pretty gloomy. So, I went to a home improvement store, studied (it took me over an hour) color charts, and – going against a lifetime of visceral pigment prejudice – I purchased a huge (five-gallon) container of pink – yes. Pink, Pink. Pink. – cement floor paint.

It took my handman three days to cover the basement’s floors, staircase, water pipes, bookcases, and storage shelves. But when he was done – and after I added a few oriental-style rugs for pizzazz – my vampire crypt had been transformed into a warm and welcoming second office.

Everyone who saw it loved it. The burly, tough and tattooed men who installed my new water heater and sump pump, as well as the guy who replaced the pilot light on my furnace. To a man, they exclaimed, “Great idea. It cheers everything up. I think I’ll do that in my basement, too.”

To protect their masculine sensibilities, though, when asked the color of the paint, I answered, “Salmon.”

But it was pink.

Just plain old pink. The color that looks so terrible on bows and balloons when it is used to celebrate the birth of a girl child … but looks just wonderful on a basement floor.

In the stylish and sweetly silly movie “Funny Face” starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, there is a musical sequence where the editor of a fashion magazine exults about the newest trend in women’s clothes by singing: “Red is dead. Blue is through. Green is obscene. Brown is Taboo … Think Pink! Feels so gay. Feels so bright. Makes a day. Makes your night. Pink is new the color to which you gotta switch.”

And I did.

Of course, I wouldn’t be caught dead appareled in pink. Neither hat nor gloves nor dress nor shirt nor slacks, nor shoes have ever or will ever touch the skin on my body. Uh. Uh. Oh, no. Not for me. My wardrobe consists only of red, purple, lavender, black, and dark blue.

But … don’t tell anyone. I also painted my bedroom pink. I call it “dark coral,” but we know what it really is. Lately, too, I’ve found myself staring into the abyss of my garage. At its dingy brown walls, the stained panels of the overhead door, the grubby gray floor, and …

Oh, well.

Returning to the editor from “Funny Face” who sang about lightening and brightening “Everything on the great horizon … and that includes the kitchen sink…” – I’m sure that when it comes to making a decision about the surface areas of my garage, like that great fashionista, I will continue to…

“Think Pink!”


Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2024. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com.