My brother, the one sorting the financials after my father’s passing, is digging around in the closet for any last banker boxes or notes. He comes across a bag.

We all have one. A stash. A personal collective of things too intimate to share with family. Some people keep old emails, or digital photos of themselves in compromising positions. Others hide away pee stained Richie Rich comics. Some people keep illicit underwear. Some people can only manage to hoard the ads for illicit underwear. On one episode of Intervention, I recall a woman who would hide Ziplock bags of vomit from her husband in her walk in closet. For whatever reason we all have secrets.

When we pass, these secrets come into the light, and usually by loved ones.

The bag is a 70s style Puma gym bag (Hi StevieB!), silver vinyl, a pristine monument from my father’s days as a shoe salesman. It is stuffed to the brim.

My brother unzips the bag and is greeted by a glass dildo, thankfully still inside it’s original packaging. “Dildo” would probably be putting it mildly. More like glass billy-club truncheon, complete with cop-style grip guard and ribbed handle. It’s classy and foreboding at the same time, like a Yorkville retail shopworker.

Further in, a smaller, realistic clear gel dildo, of natural proportions, still in it’s packaging. I could describe it as “cute” as it is not at full erection, nor is it comically droopy. Since it’s not quite as threatening as the truncheon, I speculate that it’s for more causal instances, like a pic-nic, not a spring cotillion.

There are other toys, mostly out of their packages (I think the first two were joke gifts or contest prizes for the gay group my dad belonged to). Stuff I’ve seen before, nothing really shocking to a gay man, but nothing more outrageous than the glass club. If you are gay, these things are pretty much commonplace. These toys are infused into the gay culture either by joke gifts between campy friends or purchased to create a serious ritual of sexual adventure.

My brother stops at the cute dildo. He reseals the bag and hands it to his wife who enters the room shortly after – she’s been helping making a list of all the valuables in the apartment. “Can you please include this with the content catalogue?”

She unzips the gym bag and digs in, retrieving the truncheon. After it registers what she is holding, she screams.