Sex After Death
a love story...
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
The old khaki jacket is frayed around the collar. One of its straps is hanging loose. The metal buttons that closed the front are tarnished and the wool lining is worn in places. The Field and Stream label is grey from years of rubbing against the back of a neck. Its various reporter’s pockets are empty now. It’s been around the world and back. It smells of London, Paris, Prague and Rome. It carries the scent of a hundred trips and a thousand memories. But mostly it smells like Rodger. The jacket made its last trip home in April. I keep it under my pillow and make the bed around it. I lay in the dark every night holding it to me. Lonely, shaky and scared, I smell his smell and breathe him in. I’m doubled over the jacket, holding on to this solid evidence that he was here. This piece of him that was left behind. Curled into a ball in the middle of the bed, I keen. Not mere crying, but wrenching sobs I pull deep from my chest, my legs, between my legs. Every part of me that loved him is aching with grief. I cannot stop. I went looking for a gun and found a vibrator. They’re both long, thin and end with a bang. I had decided that living alone I should have protection. Rodger had a pistol somewhere buried in a closet. We’d hidden it up and away when Katie was a baby. But where? I dug through the top shelves of my closet and found tons of old books, some photos and my first communion veil. No gun, but a bag of gag gifts way in the back. And lo and behold, what fell out but a long, narrow box. At first I wasn’t sure what it was, but I turned it over and there in living color, bright lime green, was a dildo. Given that the bag was filled with anti-aging pills, fake Viagra and the like, I figured this was a remnant of a birthday gift to be given or received. No clue. But there it was. I pulled the thing out of the box and turned it over. It felt weird, like, well, plastic. It was sort of clammy but that may have been my imagination, or the revolting green color. I touched the end and the damn thing started buzzing. I couldn’t stop laughing. Here I am, fifty years old, sitting alone in my bedroom, with the Hulk’s tool. What the hell now?
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
The old khaki jacket is frayed around the collar. One of its straps is hanging loose. The metal buttons that closed the front are tarnished and the wool lining is worn in places. The Field and Stream label is grey from years of rubbing against the back of a neck. Its various reporter’s pockets are empty now. It’s been around the world and back. It smells of London, Paris, Prague and Rome. It carries the scent of a hundred trips and a thousand memories. But mostly it smells like Rodger. The jacket made its last trip home in April. I keep it under my pillow and make the bed around it. I lay in the dark every night holding it to me. Lonely, shaky and scared, I smell his smell and breathe him in. I’m doubled over the jacket, holding on to this solid evidence that he was here. This piece of him that was left behind. Curled into a ball in the middle of the bed, I keen. Not mere crying, but wrenching sobs I pull deep from my chest, my legs, between my legs. Every part of me that loved him is aching with grief. I cannot stop. I went looking for a gun and found a vibrator. They’re both long, thin and end with a bang. I had decided that living alone I should have protection. Rodger had a pistol somewhere buried in a closet. We’d hidden it up and away when Katie was a baby. But where? I dug through the top shelves of my closet and found tons of old books, some photos and my first communion veil. No gun, but a bag of gag gifts way in the back. And lo and behold, what fell out but a long, narrow box. At first I wasn’t sure what it was, but I turned it over and there in living color, bright lime green, was a dildo. Given that the bag was filled with anti-aging pills, fake Viagra and the like, I figured this was a remnant of a birthday gift to be given or received. No clue. But there it was. I pulled the thing out of the box and turned it over. It felt weird, like, well, plastic. It was sort of clammy but that may have been my imagination, or the revolting green color. I touched the end and the damn thing started buzzing. I couldn’t stop laughing. Here I am, fifty years old, sitting alone in my bedroom, with the Hulk’s tool. What the hell now?
About the Author
Kathleen Sterling is an award winning journalist and publisher of three weekly newspaper in Los Angeles. She graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from USC and received a MBA from UCLA's Anderson School of Management. Sterling started her first newspaper at the age of twenty-two. She and her husband Rodger worked together for twenty-five years until his death in 2009. Sex After Death began as a journal she kept in the hospital at her husband's bedside. It evolved into a chronicle of her life as a young widow - true, tragic and often funny. Sterling lives and works in suburban Los Angeles. She is actively involved in the community as a publisher, and as a volunteer with many organizations, including several chambers of commerce, women's and children's charities. In her spare time - which she doesn't have a lot of! - she is an avid reader and traveler.