Too Helpful

by: Punchinello, Feb/06/05

I'm not exactly independently wealthy, but I have a cleaning lady that comes in twice a month or so to keep stately Punch Manor tidy. This woman is barely known to me, since the event is coordinated by another party and I travel frequently. This morning, however, I discovered something disturbing. My porn stash had been... disturbed.

Being an imaginative guy with a healthy adult interest in coochie, I have a substantial collection of girly magazines and videotapes, most of which (like most guys, I imagine), I haven't actually looked at in many months. Heck, with a broadband connection to the Web available at home and on the road, who needs VHS, let alone glossy paper?

But my señora de la limpieza came across it all and decided it needed reorganization. How she found it is a mystery to me. It was carefully hidden in three cardboard storage boxes under my bed, clearly a virtual fortress of security no one would ever think to search. I was quite sure that it would have been safe even from the police, should they have some reason to investigate me (which, I assure you, dear reader, they do not).

But why, oh why, would Maria—let's call her Maria... no, wait! Let's call her Speriolonza—why would Speriolonza decide to rearrange my whack kit? I mean, she could have chosen to rearrange the clothes in my closet alphabetically by color, right? That would have made sense. Why in God's name would she think, "Señor Punchinello will be pleased to find that all the revistas and libros are now in the box he has marked 'BOOKS,' and the videocasetes are in the box marked 'TAPES' instead of being mixed together"?

Worse, overloading the box of magazines caused Speriolonza to tear the handle out of the box. And she knocked the lids off and left them shoved under the bed behind the boxes. It was like having my stuff ransacked by an obsessive-compulsive burglar.

It's not so much the embarrassment of knowing that my cleaning lady is intimate with my taste for Penthouse Letters and Milo Manara. It's more that I'm creeped out that she would think that it's okay for a cleaning lady to rearrange stuff which is clearly not intended for anyone else to see, let alone browse thru, classify, and categorize. Did she consider for a moment arranging things by fetish? "Hmmm, Victorian discipline erotica should be separate from the lipstick lesbiana. Señor Punchinello will be very pleased indeed."

One of the only episodes of Sex in the City that I ever saw featured a strangely similar problem between the redhead, Cynthia Nixon, and her cleaning lady. As I recall, Miranda (I know what you're thinking, but I looked it up when I fetched the link, jackass) had a talk with the cleaning lady about messing around with her twiddle toys, and the whole thing was resolved when Miranda returned home after the next cleaning to find a platter of condoms and dildos at her bedside. This does not seem appropriate either. If Miranda didn't arrange a platter of McJohnsons and raincoats for herself, why should the cleaning lady think it was a good idea? Does the cleaning lady do this for herself? I bet not.

Likewise, if I didn't see fit to segregate my stroke videos from my stroke mags, what would make it alright for Speriolonza to do it? She didn't segregate my financial statements from my insurance papers in my study, did she? No, I checked. She didn't even box up my stray computer cables. And, let me tell you, that's something that could use some thoughtful reorganization.

I don't have a neat resolution for my episode of Sex in the City. My first thought was to label the boxes "NO MOLESTE." But maybe I'll just toss out my stash—the old stuff anyway—and put the remainder in a lockbox. Do dudes buy lockboxes for their pussy mags and hentai DVDs? That seems like a chick thing. I imagine chicks with padded and patterned lockboxes, where their pocket rockets and Hello Kitty vibrators nestle gently, awaiting their precious calling one lonely night. Dudes need quick access to their ammo at a moment's notice. Besides, where do you keep the key?

Update: After finding my stuff slightly out of order later, I've come to the conclusion that my nephew was over while I was out of town (not unusual) and went thru my stash when he got a chance and left it scattered in a panic. Then, so goes my theory, Speriolonza found the porn in a mess and arranged it neatly by media type. That was even more disturbing than my original theory, so I moved it all to the basement utility room. I still haven't invested in a lockbox, but I probably should.

Punch Editor, Collector, Lord of the Manor

All Pulp Erotica Editorials:

On Forced Entry (Sep/17/03)

One Year and Counting (Oct/18/03)

Hitch's Cock (Dec/13/03)

Too Helpful (Feb/06/05)

Year Two in Review (Mar/01/05)

Punchinello's Inspiration (May/17/05)

Year Three: Holy Shit Time Flies (Jan/04/06)

Noir and Pulp (May/07/06)

Also check out How to Write Pulp Erotica.