What's in the wardrobe?

ADULT: Beware when ‘clearing up’ a former lover’s home before unsuspecting relatives arrive. You never know what you might find.

“It was just as well we were tidying up his home because his straight friends might have got a bit of a shock,” Stewart said. “We discovered all these nude photos of him on his laptop. That probably would have been startling enough, but there were other cocks in the photos with him. And they were hard.”

Stewart was talking about Sal whose home he’d headed north for the best part of a week to clear up with his mate Danny. Sal had been Danny’s first boyfriend and they’d kept in touch over the years after their relationship broke down, even though Sal lived in a caravan park on the north coast and Danny lived in Sydney.

“It was a lovely home,” Stewart added, “though very few people in the grounds knew Sal was gay. Or that he was a decorated Vietnam veteran.”

After the demise of a loved one, it’s the unenviable task of gay friends and family to clear up before unsuspecting relatives arrive, especially if the deceased has not been out to his blood family. Many years ago, I loaned a collection of my favourite porn videos to a mate who was fatally injured in a car accident. His family descended on his home having no awareness of his gay life.

They’d been horrified to discover a side of their son they’d not known about, and didn’t bother contacting any of his friends in case we were ‘like that.’ I only discovered his demise when I went knocking to get my videos back. I left the front doorstep, as far as I got, my ears ringing with ‘God’s truth’ as revealed by my mate’s parents who also informed me that my prized videos had been assigned to the ‘flames of hell’ where I would also be turned into human crackling at the end of my putrid physical existence.

Many gay men I know have a contingency brigade on stand-by to avoid such confrontations now. We swoop in like proverbial gay vultures, picking homes apart for traces of gay carrion such as porn DVDs, half empty bottles of ‘room deodoriser’ in the fridge, or sperm annotated copies of Men’s Health.

“We weren’t at Sal’s for anything like that,” Stewart said. “He’d been too ill toward the end with the disease that eventually claimed his life. He’d taken himself off medication so we weren’t expecting anything…um…untoward, so the pictures on his laptop came as a bit of a surprise. We were there to clean up to put his trailer on the market and to retrieve his medals from the war.”

Sal usually kept them boxed in a drawer beside the bed but when Stewart and Danny opened it, it was empty.

“We thought someone might have broken in and stolen them. We wanted to find them because they were of great sentimental value. We turned the place upside down as we searched for them and had just about given up hope when I opened the wardrobe and there was a box pushed to the back. We dragged it out and removed the lid.

“We got quite a shock. Almost as if the box was full of live snakes. Later we fell about. It was full of sex toys. Some of them still greasy.”

“I hope you donated them to Vinnie’s or the Salvation Army,” I said.

“Ewww. We binned them.”

They eventually found the medals tucked away in a drawer in the wardrobe.

“But we were a lot more cautious when we opened drawers and boxes after that experience, I can tell you.”

I’ll be in Adelaide this week for Feast/Bearstock, sharing the stage with singer/songwriter Steve Charles. He’ll be supplying the songs while I’ll be reading selections of bear erotica (not at the same time) at Bearcoustic, 4:30pm Saturday 24 November, Campsite Cinema @ Feast Hub, Light Square, Adelaide. $15/$12 bear members, $18/$15 non-members. Drop by and say hello.