I inherited my Uncle Leroy’s collection of erotic shoehorns when he passed at the age of 83 in a tobogganing accident in Dieppe. Being his favourite nephew, it turned out, was something of a double-edged sword. Love can be expressed through a phallus, but not in a subtle way, and certainly never between uncle and nephew, and yet such a non-flaccid image was emblazoned on many of the heirlooms that arrived by crate in my hallway last week, a testament to that old man’s fondness for me.
The storage of the shoehorns hadn’t really been a major issue for Uncle Leroy who had been a bachelor his entire life, except for a brief moment during the 80s when he’d been married to one of the Collins sisters, though no one could ever be quite sure which. Unburdened by the prying eyes of a judgmental spouse or innocent offsprog, Uncle Leroy was able to display his idiosyncratic collection in glass display cabinets in several rooms throughout his house.
I do not have this luxury.
Some of the more tasteful items amongst his collection, such as Leda and the Swan where it’s pretty much all feathers and there’s nothing to make a sensitive soul blush except the knowledge of what they’re actually up to beneath the beautiful plumage, are easily dealt with and can be left on a mantelpiece without fear of upsetting a vicar.
The set of phallus handled ones based on the members of the members of ‘The
Bay City Rollers’ were a little trickier to explain away at dinner parties. I never met Les McKeown and certainly not on as intimate a footing that would be needed to confirm the representation, but the shoehorn based on his caber could have been used to successfully shod Sasquatch.
The whereabouts of the eroticism on the shoehorns made a difference too. I fear that Uncle Leroy had rubbed off a turgid minotaur from its position on the inner blade through vigorous usage. You really had to squint and catch it in a certain light if you were to see it poking through ill-fitting pteruges now. Which of course brings about the question of whether the collection was purely for observing or whether any of the shoehorns should be pressed in to service, and if so, which?
I only have one pair of feet. I only have three pairs of shoes/trainers that have a heel and therefore would require a shoehorn (the image of a grown man trying to use a shoehorn to put on flip-flops is the very definition of the word ‘tragedy’). For most of my life I have been quite content in putting shoes on without the aid of a horn. As my limbs begin to stiffen and rigor pre-mortis sets in, perhaps my need for a shoehorn will change. However, I still will only ever have at best one pair of feet, and so anything more than a brace of active shoehorns would seem somewhat extraneous.
So, if two working shoehorns are the optimum, which of the five hundred and eighty seven in the collection should be pressed into service? Should it be those of a less graphic nature as they are more than likely to be the ones most often seen by innocent eyes? The size, shape and sturdiness in relation to being suited to my foot size and the rigour of allowing my foot ingress to a shoe on a regular basis, are also keen considerations.
Given those criteria, a tasteful teak one depicting Rasputin the lover of the Russian Queen, carrying out his most licentious of habits beneath his habit, seemed appropriate and could simply be passed off as a primitive bear to the casual onlooker. Secondly, a coquettish one of the Duchess of Kent in cartoon form presiding over the medal ceremony at Wimbledon during a strong cross-court breeze, could be excused away as racy seaside postcard-esque humour as favoured in the 1970s by ill-informed misogynists with only a rudimentary knowledge of human anatomy, seemed to be another good choice. The image was laminated onto white plastic that had faded to a yellow reminiscent of jaundice, and therefore was probably of very little resale value. No one wants their minor royals on faded plastic.
There are members of my household who believe that the solution to the problem is a very simple one and that the correct storage of erotic shoehorns is in the crate they arrived in, in the darkest corner of the attic, or preferably at the bottom of the North Sea. This seemed to me to be ungrateful and was more than likely to cause a furore in my extended family who had come to see Uncle Leroy’s collection as something of a status symbol for the family name. Who are we? We are the family with the largest collection of erotic shoehorns in Western Europe. It was the kind of boast that opened doors. Not doors you necessarily wanted to go through, but doors nevertheless.
The best solution that I could devise which didn’t involve either upsetting the extended family or leading to severe psychological damage to the minors in my house was to develop a system which correlated height and explicitness. Those shoehorns whose images were merely whimsical, displayed no reproductive organ engorged or otherwise (or to put it into the language of heraldry, ‘organ rampant’) could be placed on a shelf at eye level or below. ‘The Bay City Rollers’, the cast of TV’s ‘Boon’ (I will never be able to watch Michael Elphick again without wincing), and the ones of the LA Dodgers hand-painted by Kris Kristofferson which, quite frankly, should be burnt, and put an entirely new complexion on his hits “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night”, will all be behind frosted glass at eight feet or above for the sake of humanity.
Is this a viable long-term solution? Well, in reality, no, for several reasons. I fear that the shoehorns will consume my public identity and that I will, in perpetuity, be known as ‘the man with the erotic shoehorns’. Are five hundred and eighty seven erotic shoehorns what you want associated with your name for the rest of your earthly existence? And let’s be honest, post-death too people would be saying ‘you know, thingy, the one with all those erotic shoehorns’, when trying to remind a friend or colleague of your existence. You’d have to achieve something pretty spectacular to overshadow the looming presence of five hundred and eighty seven erotic shoehorns. Uncle Leroy invented the spork and even that feat of culinary engineering pales into insignificance alongside an artist’s impression of ‘The Golden Girls’ with their golden girls out, carved into mahogany on the shaft of four shoehorns.
Furthermore, such a vast horde of carnally-themed shoeing equipment takes up a lot of space. It becomes quite oppressive en-masse, not being able to move without being stared at by Regis Philbin winking suggestively, or the judging, and somewhat hypocritical, look of a nude Florence Nightingale. And so, after a brief sojourn in our humble abode, the correct storage of erotic shoehorns has to be back in the packing crates and alongside the Ark of the Covenant in Hanger 51 in the Nevada Desert. But I think we all knew that deep down anyway.
Treatises of Gloria 