a housewife’s revenge
by Douglas Messerli
Chris Housman (composer and performer), Ford Fairchild (director) Hidin’ Somethin’ / 2025 [4 minutes] [music video]
This recent music video by country-style gay composer and singer Chris Housman consists of a simple revenge story right out of Alfred Hitchcock’s famed TV series, although perhaps this is a bit more perverse than even the master of murder and mayhem might have imagined.
In bed together after spending the night love-making are too heavily tatted men, Housman and Gable LaDuke, the later playing the lying husband of preacher’s daughter Brauwyn Spinner. Housman wonders where, suddenly his night-time lover is on his way to. LaDuke simply mumbles something about the fact he has to do something that day, even though supposedly it’s his day off from work. However, he accidently leaves behind his wallet, and Housman discovers, picture by picture, the real truth through a picture and a hidden wedding ring.
She cooks up a special pot pie which quickly puts him in a hidden grave, dug by hand, making her another person is now is “hidin’ somethin’.”
But the whole story told in the lyrics about how many years she has put up with his “beatings and the cheating that…put her through hell,” reveals her fury and supposedly justifies her culinary murder.
The heavily inflected voice and instrumentation on the chorus which repeats “hidin’ somethin’” is a powerful reminder of what is truly at issue in this musical narrative, again directed by Housman’s usual partner, Ford Fairchild.
Grew up at the crossroads of a preacher's daughter and a farmer’s wife
She thought she found a one woman man to love her ‘til the day she dies
But 30 years in, done raising his kids, and keeping his front porch swept
She found a box full of letters, he shoulda been better at hiding those secrets he kept
He finally found one hole that he can’t get out
‘Cause she’s got a shovel and a whole lotta ground
She goes way out where the lord can’t see
She ain’t weeping under those willow trees now
He’s getting what he had coming
She’s serving that backwoods justice
By the time that the sun comes up
He won’t be the only one hidin’ somethin’
She could take the beatings and the cheating hell that he put her through
But everything hit different when she read ‘bout the other folks he left black and blue
So on Sunday night, made his chicken pot pie, and she threw a little something else in
By the time it got dark she was rolling up a tarp, his cold heart won’t be beating again
‘Cause he’s found one hole that he can’t get out
‘Cause she’s got a shovel and a whole lotta ground
She goes way out where the lord can’t see
She ain’t weeping under those willow trees now
He’s getting what he had coming
She’s serving that backwoods justice
By the time that the sun comes up
He won’t be the only one hidin’ somethin’
Clearly Housman has no sympathy whatsoever for the millions of men whose gay sexuality is kept a secret from their wives, family, and, at moments, even themselves.
Los Angeles, July 24, 2026
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).
