Depersonalizing

So here we are in our Massachusetts home, one block from the ocean, far enough in and high enough (although still in a flood plain) that probably the waves won't reach our front door until maybe the late decades of the twenty first century.  Not exactly my worry!  We have contacted a real estate agent who went through the house and grounds exceedingly carefully, oohed and aahed over the garden, seemed very much to admire the house and the disposition of its rooms, and finally in consultation with her colleagues who came along for the viewing, settled on a selling price which exceeded our wildest expectations.  It was then, when we had signed a contract, and she was setting out the schedule for the coming weeks of the showing, and hopefully the very immediate sale, that she sternly told us that it was necessary to "depersonalize."  I have been involved in the sale or purchase of at least twenty properties in my lifetime, and this was the first time I have been introduced to the concept.   To depersonalize is to rid the house and grounds of anything that suggests you.  This way the prospective buyers can fantasize themselves immediately in possession of the rooms, madly, wildly, and creatively decorating the spaces without any thought for the personality you had tried to impose on the place.  First thing, said the real estate agent, must be to get rid of all the art works that show nudity.  I understand that there are people out there who don't want to see two naked males kissing.  In fact, I do not have any depictions of that scene.  But Giorgione's "Fete Champetre," of which I have a large and truly beautiful sketch by the late Keith Boyle? Giorgione's nudes are as familiar to us as Whistler's mother, for god's sake.  No, said the agent, persons walking through the house will be deeply offended, and by a miniature copy of an ancient bronze of Apollo standing of course in the altogether not less than by a whimsical contemporary landscape in which the hills in the foreground actually from a different perspective resemble the ass and flanks of a sexually indeterminate human being.  Actually I guess I could understand.  We were not in Cambridge or Manhattan anymore, Toto.  But then all the framed photographs of my nearest and dearest, lots of them, maybe forty or fifty scattered about my study, on the walls, and on the counters.  The agent claimed that this profusion denied to the prospective buyer any chance of fantasizing him/herself in the place. After a time we were ready to remove a rather large and spectacular collection of art so as to make the place "accessible." I became increasingly balky as I realized that these pieces had to be covered with bubble wrap and stored in our neighbor's garage absolutely immediately so that we could proceed to the business of showing.  For the past three hours my once ever so nimble fingers have been cutting lengths of bubble wrap, wrapping framed photos, going through the torture of pulling sections of tape and getting them onto the folded bits without entirely destroying the integrity of the package.  Tomorrow I will reduce the books on display in my study,pack up the disks shelved in our living room, and most important put all my medicines into a weekend shoulder bag that I can hide away from the intrusive persons doing the open house in some not too distant future Sunday. Luckily all the sterling silver is already in Florida; the prospective buyers are welcome to our stainless!  It is Massachusetts so we don't anticipate that our obviously same-sex married status will offend prospective buyers; in Florida it would be a different story, and one would have to be prepared for obvious contempt or disdain.  Ah, well, warm winter weather compensates for a multitude of sins.