Spring (Sex Toy) Cleanup

"Honey, are you ever going to use this prostate massager again? Or should we just throw it out?

I’ve been thinking about an extremely beautiful sex toy an old boyfriend got me — I think it is on my mind because he is having heart surgery this week. This is how it is at a certain age; when you hear about an old boyfriend it’s not because he got married or got a great job, it is because they’re threading tubes into his chest and doing an ablation on his heart.

This toy, which was silver and shaped like a stylized banana, was so complicated I never used it. Also, you had to charge it for a few hours. It wasn’t one of those things that charged with a discreet little light either; it blasted O-shaped strobe signals across a darkened room that could have been used to direct incoming flights at a small airport, ideally one catering to businessmen whose wives had lost interest in sex years ago. Well, that’s what they all say, isn’t it?

As I have a personal code that says you do not use a sex toy given to you by one man with another (yes, I do have a Puritan streak) and, disliking it anyway, I had stashed this thing in a big closet which is like deep space, things go there and disappear forever. The other day I heard Sandra Bullock in there, hollering.

But now, with the old beau’s surgery looming, the toy — rather its disposal — was on my mind. This was a problem. It was not one of those unused household items you can donate to Housing Works; they don’t even take sheets. I’m an environmentally conscious person, but I couldn’t see taking it to Old Electronics Day at Union Square. I could put it into the appropriate recycling bin on my floor, but then the neighbors might figure it out: It’s her. All day, all night, I hear buzzing coming out of that apartment. No wonder she’s always smiling. I might try to dispose of it with the kitchen garbage, hiding it with coffee grounds and dead things from the back of the refrigerator, as I do old tax reports, but then I’d be in violation of the recycling law.

I know, I know — I should have been one of those women who held out for diamonds.

But disposing of sex paraphernalia — actually all those embarrassing items you have stashed around the house — is something every boomer should be concerned about. The days are dwindling down to a precious few and some of you have a nasty cough. Do you want the people clearing out your house, particularly your children, to find those feathery, metallic, rubbery, polymer blend items you ordered one drunken night a few months after you’d been forced to take early retirement? Do you want them to know their big, tough construction worker dad liked to dress up in heels and a boa and sing “La La La” from “No Strings,” one of Richard Rodgers’s weaker efforts?

You may be thinking, “What do I care what my friends or children find in the house? I will be beyond embarrassment, I will be dead.” But you are wrong. Doctors now know that the human sense of embarrassment can last up to two weeks after the heart stops beating. Consider this statement from a boomer named Stanley: “I was lying on the operating table, then I had a feeling of leaving my body and looking down at myself and all I could think was, ‘Is my gut really that big?’ ” Look it up on the web.

I know no one likes to think about death. But just as the responsible person designates someone to make medical decisions in case he or she is incapacitated, we should all have designated, let’s call them Eradicators, to come over and clean the house after we expire. Remember Marilyn Monroe. Not that I can prove anything, just saying. Your Eradicator should be given house keys, a list of items to be destroyed and their hiding places — you don’t want to be in intensive care screaming, “Back of the sock drawer!” They’ll just increase your meds.

The truly considerate person will dispose of potentially humiliating or harmful items the moment he gets really sick, like a married man I knew who gave his love letters from the other woman to a male friend before he went into the hospital. Then he got better and got the love letters back. Then he died, which was a big mistake on his part, though I hear it made for an interesting moment at the memorial when the widow spotted the other woman. Think of this as a cautionary tale. Horrible things can happen when you leave romantic mementos around the house.

There is no excuse, however, for careless or improper disposal, such as my friend Herb and I were witness to many years ago in Greenwich Village when we spied a sex toy in the street — not on the sidewalk, in the street. I’d tell you what it was but I am trying to stay within newspaper guidelines: O.K., think adult seesaw.

Herb and I gaped long and hard at this thing, first debating the anatomical possibilities (and you wonder what friends have to talk about after 40 years) then, as in “Law & Order,” trying to recreate the scene:

Had there been a lovers’ quarrel, during which this humongous shillelagh had been tossed out of a cab? If that was the case, why did the couple have the thing in the cab in the first place — stealing a kiss in the back seat is one thing, but that? Had it slipped out of someone’s shopping bag and then, even in the Village, was they too embarrassed to pick it up?

Awful, right? And imagine how much worse it would have been if it had been spotted when I was walking with a child.

“What’s that thing in the street, Auntie Joyce?”

“It’s a grown-up thing, sweetie. People buy them when they love each other very much. Or maybe not enough. One day when you’re grown up a man will fall in love with you. When that happens, bring up diamonds.”

__________

This story originally appeared November 9, 2013, in The New York Times. Yeah, I was amazed I got it in, too.