Cleaning Out My Closet

Today, I decided to follow Eminem’s example and clean out my closet. The built-in wardrobe in my bedroom, to be exact. Over the years this has become a repository for all manner of junk and rubbish and I decided that something had to be done. I was quite surprised by what I found when I got dug in: my long-lost porn stash, for one thing. I really don’t know why I’ve kept – it isn’t as if there’s anything unusual about it, no copies of Janus, for instance, just a modest collection of regular adult jazz mags. Actually, there is something mildly interesting about the collection as a whole: I didn’t pay for a single one of those magazines. No, I didn’t shoplift them in my youth. I’m proud to say that I found them all abandoned in hedgerows and lay-bys. Yes folks, I can’t deny it any longer – I’m a Porn Hunter! However, a collection of tatty, dog-eared nudie magazines of dubious provenance weren’t all that I rediscovered lurking at the bottom of my closet.

I also stumbled across a long-forgotten cache of explosives dating back to my days as a revolutionary. Well OK, it was a load of old fireworks, well past their use-by dates and probably highly unstable. For a minute after finding them, I had visions of armed anti-terror police kicking in my door, evacuating my entire street and blowing up my house in a controlled explosion. But then it occurred to me that I’d been sleeping next to the bloody things for years, if they hadn’t gone off during all that time, it was unlikely to happen now. Besides, I didn’t notice any of the Roman candles ‘sweating’, (according to many westerns I’ve seen, this is a sure sign of instability in past their sell by date explosives). As I say, these dated back to the time when I fancied myself as a bit of an urban terrorist – OK then, vandal. Quite how firework rocket attacks on people’s garden sheds was going to bring the capitalist state to its knees, I’m not sure. But that was the plan. Also amongst the explosive ordnance was one of those bigger rockets you build from kits – as I recall, it failed its one and only flight test, thereby setting back my WMD scheme by years (a warhead containing dog shit, if you’re interested).

But most surprising amongst my closet finds was a box of chocolate nipples. Yes, nipples. They were labelled ‘After Dinner Nipples’ and, if memory serves me correctly were given to me as Christmas present at least fifteen years ago. Like many other dubious gifts, they ended up, forgotten, at the back of the closet. Except for some evidence of mice attempting to chew through the cardboard container, the contents seemed to be in good condition, still sealed in plastic. Perhaps foolishly, I decided to finally sample this pornographic confectionary. Obviously, after fifteen years, the chocolate had hardened and become a bit discoloured. However, apart from nearly damaging my fillings when I bit the first one, they seemed alright. Indeed, I found that if I sucked them to soften them up, they were quite enjoyable – they’ve got bits of that crunchy mint praline stuff embedded in them. Mind you, I’m beginning to doubt the wisdom of having eaten four of them - it is probably just hypochondria, but my stomach has subsequently been feeling a bit unsettled – have I been poisoned by some chocolate nipples which came out of the closet? What a way to go!