Many, many years ago I was trying my hand at stand-up comedy. Though I had always found it easy to be the funniest guy in the room, I often had trouble transferring that skill to behind the mic.
In the late 90’s I tried a skit out – ‘Big Angry Trev the Feminist’. In it I would berate the men in the audience at length in satirical ways, one of which was to physically attack them. For this I used Toby.
Toby, procured at a sex shop for about sixty bucks, was a 1 foot long, huge rubber cock. Where the name Toby came from I can’t remember, but I called it that once and the name stuck. In my skit I would run out into the audience and hit men over the head with Toby, yelling random arguments about how men in society are always metaphorically beating women over the head with their phallus’s at any given moment, so now it was their turn.
The humour was supposed to work via the men nervously laughing or getting embarrassed by my actions, which would then lead me into more tirades while the rest of the audience would laugh at my victim’s obvious discomfort. It didn’t work. I was playing to Uni crowds after all, and more often than not the guys I would attack Toby with would take Toby out of my hands with zero discomfort and pretend to fellate him (note by now Toby had become a ‘him’ rather than an ‘it’). Between this and actual feminists in the audience being somewhat unimpressed by my portrayal of being one of their number, the act soon died and Toby was retired from showbiz after only half a dozen outings.
Retired from Showbiz? Yes. Retired from life? Absolutely not! Toby had become something of a mascot of the household and, given my propensity to constantly have mates over as well as throw a big party every few months, Toby gained something of a cult following amongst my frequent visitors.
Toby also came to live in the fridge, my thinking being that ‘who wants a big sweaty cock sitting around in the heat?’. It was amazing just how many housemates over the years were perfectly fine with this! So, unless busy with his social obligations entertaining guests, Toby always had a prime position on the top shelf of the fridge, which he inhabited for well over a decade. This went on for so many years across so many share-houses that it became normalized practice. If someone new to the social group expressed surprise or puzzlement about there being a giant rubber cock in the fridge, they would be treated by others with bemusement. ‘That’s Toby’ they would be informed matter-of-factly, as if it was perfectly natural for a foot-long rubber dick to live in the fridge next to the cheese and margarine.
In 2003 I travelled overseas to do Stand Up Comedy and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland – a dream come true! As I was staying on to backpack around Europe for an extra year after the festival concluded, all my worldly possessions here in Australia went into storage. But a couple of friends volunteered to babysit Toby while I was away. Toby enjoyed his time there, especially when they started making little costumes for him to wear and photoshopped albums of him!
Sadly Toby has since met his end. When my fiancé and I got pets circa 2008, poor Toby was no longer the cute baby of the household and was carried around and coddled much less, though still got a bit of attention.
When we had children of our own several years later I didn’t think appropriate to store Toby in the fridge next to our infants milk bottles, so he lost his longtime home and got stored in the farm shed instead. A year after that when I randomly unearthed him, rats had obviously been at him and the rubber was gnawed in a dozen places up and down his shaft (ouch!). Thus, after 15 years, Toby was put to his final rest.
But the legend of Toby lives on! And it would be nice to think that there is, like his original purpose called for, a bit of Toby deep up inside each and every one of us.
Got something to say about this post? Or perhaps you are a friend of Toby’s from the old days? Pop it in the comments section below!
The greatest invention in the world happened – and nobody told you!
