Is there sex after death? Yes, sort of. Love and Death — or Eros and Thanatos, as the Greeks would have it — have always been linked, long before Woody Allen thought of it. After all, sex is how we get here and death is how we leave. Sigmund Freud thought that we are driven by two basic instincts: the sex drive (the desire to love and create) and the death drive (the desire to destroy). Eros and Thanatos are in constant battle for our psyches. The connection between sex and death is strong: that’s why people often feel amorous at wakes, or why you often hear stories about people having sex in graveyards, or why one Polish coffinmaker did a roaring trade with a calendar featuring scantily-clad models leaning against coffins. Now one artist has used the link between sex and death to create the perfect erotic toy for the discerning widow: a dildo filled with the ashes of the deceased.
Mark Sturkenboom’s 21 Grams “is a memory-box that allows a widow to go back to the intimate memories of a lost beloved one.” Along with the scent of the deceased, their favorite music, the dildo … ahem … the urn “offers the possibility to conserve 21 grams of ashes of the deceased and displays an immortal desire” allowing a grieving widow “to have an intimate night with her sweetheart again.” Take that, Thanatos! It also comes with a lock and key, ensuring that the ashes cannot be, er, dispersed among all and sundry.
