And now for something completely different...

I don't usually talk about my work here on the Gameblog, mainly because I want all my readers to think I'm an awesome dude and not the blackhearted villain I play during work hours. You see, I handle residential foreclosures for a bank. I could try to smooth over this hard fact by telling you all about the ridiculous lengths I go to in order to not take someone's home away. But that won't erase this brutal truth: somedays it's my job to take people's homes away. Based on past experience that last sentence will no doubt drive at least one of my regular readers away. Some people will never believe that I can do the job I do and not be an unrepentant bastard.

The above paragraph is meant to set-up today's weird work story. This afternoon I was in an abandoned home with my friend, Tom. He's a great, talented guy and a true friend. Tom was with me because he's my go-to guy for a lot of dirty work a desk jocky like me farms out to others. He inspects properties I may have to foreclose, changes locks, repairs damage, mows lawns, and pretty much anything else I need done to a house. He also repossesses cars for my organization. If I'm the guy that pulls the trigger, that makes him the bullet I guess.

Anyway, we bust into this abandoned house that my customer had rented to a relative. The relative stopped paying rent and rather than sell the house or work something out with me the customer decides to just let the property go back to the bank. The inside of the place was about average for an abandoned property: filthy and smelly, with a mish-mash of bric-a-brac strewn about. The smell was so powerful I had to go outside and spit a couple times to get the taste out of my mouth. And I used to have a job cleaning pig pens. (Note to self: Maybe I should try getting a nice job for a change.) So we're looking over the place and we see the usual collection of filthy old couches, broken cabinets, and miscellaneous trash. As I move into the back bedroom, I see a dildo laying on the floor. I'm hip to the existence of such things, having an internet connection and all, but I don't see sex toys laying around as part of my everyday experience. So I call Tom's attention to it. He seems completely unphased, which I found a bit strange.

Tom's a straight shooter of the old school variety. He doesn't drink. He doesn't smoke. He spends a lot of time over at his crazy fundy church. (I call it that to his face and we both have a bit of a laugh, so I'm not speaking behind his back here.) We spend a lot of time talking about politics. Somewhere along the way he got the idea that I was one of the few good liberals, probably because I think the right to bear arms is as important as the rest of the Bill of Rights. Meanwhile I tell him regularly that he's one of those wrongheaded conservatives, so he's probably a better man than I in this regards. Either way, if I'm the kind of guy who doesn't see sex toys very often, I figured that made Tom the kind of feller who I could almost believe didn't know such things existed.

But later back at the office we get talking about the incident with my co-worker Laurie. She posts in the comments section from time to time and will probably get a kick out of this story. Laurie points out the strangeness of abandoning a dildo in a house you were leaving. I totally see her point. If you're going to own a sex toy, wouldn't you value it? It's not like the broken printer or ripped mattress across the room. As far as I could tell (not that I inspected it closely, mind you) the phallus in question looked intact and functional. Why leave it behind? I wouldn't leave my game collection if I was leaving my house for good and while I enjoy the hobby I wouldn't exactly call orc-smashing an orgasmic experience. I would guess that a dildo owner would have a greater sense of attachment than I would to some books and dice.

As I'm pondering the deep psychological ramifications of discarded faux weeners, Tom pipes up. "You'd be surprised how many abandoned homes contain such things." He reminds me of a house he had a while back where he literally had to shovel a pile of dildos into a dumpster. Tom deadpans "Apparently women treat them just like they treat their men. When they're finished they just discard the things." Tom's single. Can you tell? Given his political and religious allegiances, I didn't have the heart to point out that not every plastic wang he's encountered in his career necessarily belonged to a woman.