Graffiti (with a personal slant?)

[princealbertofb]

Ok, I know I have mostly posted advice to people here and here I am asking you for what you think and what you would advise in such a situation.

You probably know that I live in France, that France is relatively safe for gay men (but there's always that off chance that you might not be, and that you might be targeted).
You probably also know that I am a teacher. What I am about to disclose has had previous instances at school which were duly dealt with. It's about possibly slanderous graffiti.

I've been mildly worrying for some time about some graffiti that I've seen on the inside of our lift (elevator to you North Americans) in our block of flats. Someone has deliberately carved into the sliding doors that close the lift cabin some graffiti that I find not only disgraceful (and ugly) but also potentially harmful (I don't know if I'm being paranoid about it or not).

I've found something that goes along the lines of my initials followed by an equal sign and after the equal sign the equivalent of the word ''faggot''.

So it looks like someone has carved in the metal sheet with a key or something like that a message that looks like
''PA = FAGGOT'' .There are other marks that have been carved into the metal but the initials of that message still stand out.

Some time later, more recently, someone had carved out the first four letters of the number FOUR which is the floor or storey on which we live. As there is no one else on my floor whose initials are the same as mine, I've wondered whether this was a not so subliminal message from someone inside my building who is telling the rest of the building that I am gay. I've never mentioned my being gay to ANYONE in my block of flats. There are about three flats on every floor of this building and the building is tall enough. I also happen to think that we are not the only gay couple in the building, actually. But that is neither here nor there.

First, I've wondered who could be inspired to write that graffiti into the door, and why they would feel that it was all right to carve any graffiti into our elevator / lift door at all. It's unseemly, it looks unclean and unkept, and yet our joint ownership of the building keeps things clean and tidy in all other respects. The hall was redecorated recently and I went to choose the new paint colours with other owners in the building. So the outer doors of the lift have all been freshly repainted, but inside there is still this graffiti, with this message which sticks out everytime I go up or down in it.

I have toyed with the idea of going in there with sandpaper and rubbing it all out (but it's metal and it might not work, or it might look even worse than it does now. Or maybe I should tell the co-ownership trustee to do something about it.

What would you do? What would you do if you felt, in some way, threatened by the presence of this message, even if some might not even give it a second thought. It feels to me as if I'm being singled out for some future mistreatment or abuse. Something akin to the pink triangle.

Am I reading too much into this?

I've told my partner about it, but he hasn't had any idea of how to handle it. I must say I do have an idea where this graffiti might have come from (let's say the perpetrator might be someone I'm thinking of in the building, but I can't see why he would have bothered). Could it be someone else's work? I can't possibly confront said person with this questions anyway. So, what would you suggest?

Looking forward to your ideas on handling the matter. Bear in mind that cleaning the inside door of the lift up would cost the whole community the money.