Sex, Death and Daughterhood

by Kayla Jessop

My father died with a dildo in his pocket.

When the police officer called to tell me about his death, she spoke in soft tones and worried whispers.

“Ma’am, I have to warn you about his belongings,” the police officer said into the phone. I almost wanted to laugh. My father had no belongings: as a willing homeless man, he never cared about materialistic things. Even when I was a child, years before he sauntered off to California for drugs and conspiracy theories, he never carried much with him: a pack of cigarettes close to their lucky, a lighter he bummed from a stranger with no intent to return, and a change of clothes. Maybe. If his small backpack had space for them.

#

I searched for my mother's vibrator the day after she died.

I found myself sneaking off into her bedroom, excusing myself to find a jacket to wear from her closet. It was still chilly, late March in Maryland, a long way away from the warmth of South Carolina where I flew in earlier that day. It was true; I did need a jacket, but on the flight here, I recalled Tessa Fontaine’s retelling of discovering her recently deceased mother’s sex toys in her memoir The Electric Woman.

On my flight, perched between two strangers, one who was sitting behind someone he knew, putting his hand between the window and the seat to sneak mini-bottles, I thought back to Tessa’s words repeatedly. Had my mother kept vibrators? Where would they be? The nightstand by her bed? Beneath the underwear in her top dresser drawer?

#

“How did you find the courage to write so vulnerably about your mom?” I asked Tessa when she visited my university to do a reading of The Electric Woman during my time in my graduate program.

“Well, it makes it easier that she’s dead,” Tessa responded.

People in the room laughed, but it was true, or I imagined it was, at least. Her mother would never read it, and for those that did read it, we didn’t know her mother. Tessa, in her conversation about finding her mother’s things, noted that she found out about a different side of her mother. A mother who enjoyed time to herself, finding her own pleasure. A mother she could relate to. She also found herself thinking about her aunt who was also in the house, finding these things with her.

I often wondered after the Q&A if Tessa was embarrassed talking about it. I wondered what it would be like to write about my own mother’s belongings in such a public way. I cringed at the thought.

#

And still, no amount of paperwork or hushed warnings from the coroner’s office and pardon my profanity, Ms. Jessop's whispers from funeral home directors prepared me for my father’s belongings, placed on the doorstep of my porch. The package came six weeks later than it was meant to, shipped after dozens of excuses from the funeral home as to why it hadn’t come yet—lost paperwork, forgetful interns, a miscommunication here and there. I had known, mostly, what was expected to be in the box: a wallet, a skateboard, a “female pleasure item,” miscellaneous belongings such as a pocket knife, a container for THC resin, and a wrench.

What I didn’t expect was the actual item: a wide, bright pink toy. It looked expensive, very much unlike anything my father could afford. It only led to more questions that kept my mind awake at night, deepening my grief for the man I had hardly known. Why did he have this? Who else would it belong to, if not him? Was it used? Why keep it in his pocket?

#

I found my mother’s vibrator in her nightstand.

It was a small, discreet bullet. I tucked into a pile of tissues that I used to pick it up, and discarded it into her almost-full, nearby bathroom trash can. I piled more toilet paper over it, worried my sisters would find it when they came to help me clean her stuff out, dividing her stuff between the number of us.

After washing my hands, I found myself staring into her closet. She had been a shopaholic her whole life, loving the feel of new clothes and plucking off price tags. I searched for my favorite jacket of hers first, an oversized, black Adidas hoodie. When I didn’t see it right away, tucked between a number of Baltimore Ravens jackets, I knew she must have worn it the day before, wanting to be comfortable as she ran errands. I supposed the funeral home must have had it then. So, I clung to a Ravens zip-up, smelling her subtle perfume. I laid on her bed and cried, snuggling into her jacket, hoping she would walk into the door and tell me to stop shopping in her closet. She didn't, though. I cried more.

#

The first time I masturbated with my grief was four days after my mother’s funeral, eight days after her death.

I didn’t cum. Though it was past midnight, somewhere between the fear of getting caught in a busy house filled with a grieving family and the realization that my mother was actually dead, my climax didn’t happen.

Instead, I laid in a foreign-to-me bed and cried. I thought about the Christmas that had just passed, and how, during our gift-wrapping session, she had joked about buying my sex-shy aunt a vibrator. My mom wouldn’t tell me for sure if she had, though I imagine she didn’t purchase one because she would have shown me. We both laughed about her possible reaction anyway. My aunt would have been embarrassed: cheeks hot, eyes wide, and skin pale. My mother, on the other hand, would have been too full of belly laughter to breathe, wiping her teary-eyed lashes of their humor.

#

Weeks before my father’s belongings came, my two sisters and I discussed in abundance about who would keep what. One sister wanted the skateboard, the other wanted his pocket knife. I didn’t know what I wanted out of his small inheritance, mostly I just wanted a father. I wanted memories of laughter, songs that I could sing to remember him, a sentimental gift given by him to snuggle up to in my years of grief. But I didn’t have much of those things, at least not of anything in the last ten years since he left to be a full-time vagabond. My sisters wanted these things, too.

No one wanted the dildo. That was for certain. We laughed about the absurdity of our father’s dildoupon his death. To make light of our grief, we took turns saying one sister wanted it or should have it. We joked that it could be the new family heirloom. I told my sisters about throwing out our mother’s toys eight months prior to our father’s death. They laughed about that, too.

When it came time to really decide about dividing belongings, we even offered the toy to my father’s long-time girlfriend. I told her I would ship it to her. She insisted it wasn’t hers to keep, which only led to more questions.

Knowing we would never get our answers, I carefully threw the dildo, thankfully still held in the evidence bag from the police department, in the trash. I buried it under leftover take away boxes and paper towels. I didn’t keep anything of his for myself, and I placed what little belongings were left in a box in the garage to collect dust.

#

My boyfriend and I fucked for hours when I came back from cremating my mother.

Maybe not literal hours, but between the sheen of sweat coating our bodies, our labored heavy breathing, and soreness of our legs and torsos, it felt as if it was. We hadn’t seen each other in over two weeks, and although we talked frequently throughout the days, we rarely spent so much time apart.

After, when our heart rates slowed and our eyes grew heavy, we laid there, skin to skin. The only sounds that filled the room were my sobs, deep, puddle tears smacked his chest as he held me tight. The crying happened so suddenly, as it had continually done in the last two weeks. I don’t know what caused it, maybe the exhaustion, maybe the notion that I was half an orphan, motherless and semi-fatherless. I cried myself to sleep in his arms, afraid for one second of being left alone with the reality of my situation.

We didn’t have sex again for weeks..