Sunday Sign Off: What Do We Do with the Sex Toys of the Deceased?

It’s easy to get sucked into a vortex of self pity around the holidays, but thanks to the internet, you can rest assured that someone else is having a far more depraved and horrifying holiday season than you. Take, for instance, this gentleman, one of the best (or worst) “Dear Prudence” letters of 2013:

In the summer of 2011 my wife and I purchased a top-of-the-line Jopen vibrator. We used it a few times and were just beginning to really integrate it into our sex lives when my wife died suddenly of a heart attack. (The vibrator had nothing to do with that.) Now, more than a year later, I’ve begun to date again. I’ve met a woman with an open mind, and I’m thinking she might be interested in using the vibrator. But I’m not sure how, or whether, to suggest it. Is it creepy to offer a dead woman’s vibrator to someone else? And if so what else can I do with it? Sell it on Craigslist? It’s an expensive piece of equipment, barely used, and it should be employed (and loved) once again. All of my wife’s other major possessions found wonderful new homes with dear friends of hers. But then again, a vibrator’s got a different—well, vibe about it. Sell it, toss it, or share it?

I don’t even want to know to whom that vibrator has been re-gifted. Incidentally, Brian DePalma’s next movie should be called Dead Woman’s Vibrator. His oeuvre has really been building to kind of climax.