A Year After My Mother Died, I Had an Orgasm in Public

“The heart wants what it wants,” my friend Shannon said. “And sometimes what the heart wants is to get finger-banged in the middle of Thompson Street.”

A few days earlier a man and I were in the park. We had reached that point of a nascent romance where I had forgotten what number date we were on. I hadn’t had sex since before my mother died almost a year prior, I told him. This was a particularly wild prospect because after her passing I became what I imagine is known in the medical field as “unspeakably horny.”

Interestingly, it’s a phenomenon typical of grief, this desire that emerges to fill the void, so to speak, of inexplicably painful loss. When we’re experiencing this kind of pain, as Nancy Lee, PhD, previously told Cosmo, our bodies seek out endorphins to heal. It can also be a life-affirming escape—only natural to crave upon the passing of a loved one.

My mother was funny about sex, but maybe not in the way most mothers are. Rather, she occasionally wished that I was, shall we say, more libertine than I was. I remember being home from college one time, looking for a fork in the kitchen, when she said “Yeah, you need a good fork.” So maybe it was not beyond explanation that I was currently feeling as I was. Maybe it was Mom’s message from the ether, urging in rest for me to get laid as she had in life.

But while I craved sex, I had no energy to date; my desires to both get fucked into oblivion and be left alone entirely were constantly at war with each other. I was horny because I was sad, which made me sadder, which made me hornier, a snake eating its own tail at the intersection of grief and eroticism—perhaps the unsexiest sentence ever written.

But at the same time, I was also lonely. I wished deeply to be held, but I didn’t want to explain my life to anyone. Wearing a gown made of a giant red flag to a date seemed easier than saying, “Hi, I’m Elyssa, nice to meet you. My mom just died.” I wished I had already been in a relationship with someone who’d understand. But we’re not yet in the age of time travel, and I became too exhausted with my own feelings to try dating. I gave up.

I’ve gone through phases like this regularly in my life, moments where I say to myself either, “I would like to go on a date, please!” or “I would not like to go on a date, thank you.” I knew one day I would swing back the other way, and in another six months, toward the end of summer, I did.

By that time this man and I were in the park. “I’m not sure how I’ll feel when I do have sex again,” I said. “I might cry.” It was something I wanted so desperately for so long, something so influenced by grief that I fully envisioned myself falling apart afterward. I was sidelined by the intensity of my own honesty. After my mother died, for better or worse, this became an even more pronounced part of my personality. My tolerance for bullshit, even my own, was totally in the toilet—my filter either removed or unhinged, depending on who was on its receiving end.

A few days later, on a weeknight date in August, we’d finished our cocktails and it was time to go our separate ways. Well, it was time to say we were going our separate ways but actually make out on a street corner before we peeled ourselves off each other and went home. We were sweaty and pawing at each other like angry cats. I loved running my hand down the length of his zipper and feeling his breath in my ear, I loved tasting the sweat on his neck, feeling his hands on my ass and my back pressed against the brick wall across the street from what I think was a church. Praise be.

With a boldness fueled by both that lack of fucks given after my mother’s passing and, lightweight that I am, at least one whole ounce of gin, I moved behind a column out of view from the street and lifted my dress. He, his hands, and his breath followed. “Yes, come for me, baby,” he said as his fingers glided across me, which I loved. I moaned into what was quite possibly someone’s window air conditioner, perhaps making their Thursday night a little more interesting. And I was breathing and trembling and clutching him tightly until I released and breathed and breathed…and then I burst into tears.

While it’s something I myself predicted, I later learned this phenomenon also has a name: it’s known as postcoital dysphoria (PCD), or postcoital tristesse (PCT), “when a person experiences feelings of sadness, depression, anxiety or agitation after consensual sex—even if that sex was loving, satisfying, or enjoyable,” Wendasha Jenkins Hall, PhD, told Cosmo. It can be brought on by a multitude of feelings, including stress and heartache. You know, the kinds of things you might also feel while grieving.

So there I was, sweating and crying and flushed in the middle of Thompson Street. But, as with the orgasm itself, bursting into tears also felt incredibly freeing. It was a relief to feel so out of control, to have the freedom to let go when I had been holding onto myself for so long, constantly trying not to fall apart. To learn it also had a name made me feel normal, not alone—another welcome respite from the effects of grief.

And the other part of all of this is that this man didn’t seem to mind at all. He just held me and said, “It’s okay, I’m here. It’s just you and me.” In some ways, he was right, and I value him for holding me close when he could have run screaming. But in other ways, he wasn’t. In all of their frightening complexity, my memories were there, too. Sadness and joy spilled from my eyes. I grieved my old life in the exact moments I was building my new one.