Closet fears.

Everyone has a fear that they keep locked up in a closet in the back compartment of their head. It's the kind of fear that you don't want to share with anyone else. It's a silly kind of fear, really. Usually, it's along the lines of the darkness or an animal. These are the fears you don't reveal when playing truth or dare.

Truth or dare.

Truth.

What are you afraid of? What's your biggest fear? What makes you piss your pants?

We all have an answer prepared ahead of time for this. It's the question that you can expect at every truth or dare game. It comes standard with purchase. The cost is your consent to play the game and a chunk of your dignity.

You never reveal the fear you keep locked inside that little closet in the back of your head. God forbid that you should, because everyone will point and laugh. Exploit you for it. Mock you for it. Closet fears can become your undoing.

Mine happens to be falling into the toilet. Head first.

Urine and feces are optional, at the cost of another chunk of my dignity.

It was a cleaning day today, because my mom was off from work and she knew that I've been doing nothing aruond the house. Outside world, bad. Inside, good. No suicidal squirrels running in front of your car. No carcinogenic ball of fire called the sun burning your flesh off.

"Do something!" she says.

I volunteer to clean. It was the trump card I'd been hoping to save until late August to get me out of going outside.

I could always mess my room up again.

My computer room happens to be a large mess of assorted papers and books. There's a doodle here, a note that says "IMPORTANT" there. A few Q-tips. Old tissues, thick with dried mucous. A homework assignment dated 10/2/02.

A make-up homework assignment comes standard at the cost of one lazy night at home.

Useless blank CDs that failed burning. Useless wrinkled blank printer paper. Useless scribbled handwriting of videogame cheats.

It was fun going through them. I came across a couple of my books from Junior year, too. Turns out, there were three of them that my class paid to get but never read. Some people didn't read any of the books. They're the smart ones.

The bathroom was the scariest place I had to clean, though. My bathroom happens to be a shrine. Everything is in its place. Perfect. There is no need to clean it.

Let the urine stains remain.

Let the crap smell reign free.

Mold had coagulated at the base of my electric toothbrush charger. There was some black mildew forming on my faucet. The mirror was soiled by months and months of evaporated water and Neutrogena.

Virulent pathogens running rampant in my toilet comes at the additional cost of three more months' neglect.

Next thing I know, I'm stripped down to my boxers (a green-and-white cream color today) and I'm on my hands and knees before the toilet, scrubbing it down with latex gloves and a sponge filled with a name-brand cleaning fluid. The kind that's advertised by a model wearing "house mom" clothes that doesn't even do her own cleaning.

Which brings me back to my closet fear.

I'm on my knees above my toilet bowl. Before me sits a wretced pool of bacterial doom.

Right in front of my face is a villanous hive of unknown diseases if ever this world has seen one.

This is where my head doesn't belong. This is where I don't want to be when I sneeze real hard. This was the center of all my childhood nightmares before coming to high school. You've seen the shows. A kid gets picked on by a couple of bullies, and then he's suspended over a toilet held at the ankles while his head is in the sun around which the galaxy of toilet water and feces orbit in the flushing cycle. Those shows scared me to death.

I don't go to the school bathroom anymore.

Closet fears can take you over and control you.

Cost of seeing my hair in a swirly doo after getting my head flushed down a toilet?

Priceless.