Rob's
Necrophilia Fantasy
SECTION 6C
LIVING THE REALITY: FOR MORTICIANS ONLY
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Dealing with the Dead and the Feelings Within
Funeral Directors  (an article)
Dealing With The Dead And The Feelings Within


Morticians Are Human Too
When we explore the realities or fantasies of necrophilia and related fetishes there is always the admiration and respect.. and of course, envy... of those who are in the funeral industry because they have ready access to carry out their own desires.  Well, quite obviously that is only true if a mortician really has a desire to diddle sexually with the dead.  While there are no ready facts or research common sense would suggest that not every single mortician has necrophilic desires to the point where they actually do it.  Some of you may have read that Hustler magazine article (Section 18) where a spokesperson for the National Funeral Director's Association proudly proclaims when asked about the frequency of necrophilia in the embalming room, "I do not know of any cases of funeral homes involved in that sort of activity."  Well, that could be correct.. in his case.  At least it was the proper 'political' answer for his organization.  But the bottom line is that morticians, male and female, are human too and are subject to the same human instincts, and sexual interests, as the rest of us.  What makes them different is that they have pursued an occupation few of us would care to explore... and in some cases, their desire to enter this occupation was sexually motivated.

Why Would Anyone Want To Be A Mortician Anyway? 
I suppose if someone cared to research that data through the mortuary schools around the country I think we would see basically the same answer; something like, "I want to be a mortician because I want to help people in their time of grief and torestore their deceased loved ones."  But from what I've heard many reasons go deeper than that.  For some it's sexual, for others it's simply an affinity to being around death, and some actually do have a basic level of compassion to aid in grief.. and still others feel all of the above (I have noticed what seems to be a higher than normal propensity for gay men to be morticians... perhaps because they can engage in sexual activities without society judging them?).  But going through mortuary school and getting the licensure can sometimes hide the reality of the job.  The mortality rate (pardon the obvious pun) for graduated morticians abandoning the career is fairly high in some places.  Hence the procedural design of apprenticeship being a part of the educational and experiencial process.  More often than not the reason for leaving the field is because of the conditon of some bodies (mutilating accidents), the age of many of the dead (dead babies I have heard is understandably a major distraction), and the irregular hours (24/7).  In the end it takes quite a dedicated person to stick with this career.  Even as a source of income the average embalmer doesn't make all that much (depending on the area of the country and whether they might get paid a straight salary or per body) unless he or she owns a funeral home and is a basically assertive marketer and business person.
 
Feature Segment - Funeral Directors
Funeral Directors
They do their best to comfort grieving families, but they often feel like pariahs. Next time you meet one at a cocktail party, give him a break.
By David Tuller

William Counce loves football. He also loves parties. He particularly loves chatting about football at parties. That's why he was so upset at one social gathering when the woman with whom he was having a lively discussion about the University of Tennessee football team asked him what he did for a living. 

He told her he was a funeral director. 

"There was dead silence," recalls Counce, who is also the director of the funeral-service program at Jefferson State Community College in Birmingham, Alabama. "Then the lady said, 'Oh, my mother died six months ago. How did they get that smile on her face?' Now that's the last thing I want to talk about when we're connecting about football. It was unpleasant. It made me have to assume a posture with her to reassure her that I wasn't what she thought -- some sort of ghoul. If you let the stigma bother you, it's stressful." 

Few people would be surprised to learn that those working in funeral services may be at risk for exposure to infectious diseases and to toxic embalming substances, but they probably don't realize that, for many funeral directors, stress may poses a greater danger to their health and well-being. 

Licensed funeral directors -- a great many of whom are also licensed as embalmers -- are acutely aware of the public's negative image of them. They know that people assume they have an unnatural interest in corpses or are out to rip off the customer at a time of emotional vulnerability. And that awareness takes an enormous psychological and emotional toll, which -- if not addressed -- can easily result in burnout. 

"They feel like pariahs sometimes, and it really bothers them," says Sherry Williams, president of Accord Grief Management Services, a consulting firm in Louisville, Kentucky, that works extensively with funeral service professionals. "They all talk about that, about the remarks people make. Some tell me they can't even go to the hospital to visit friends because they'll get comments like, 'I'm not dying yet, don't come and measure me.'" 

Funeral directors -- the term is preferred to the more archaic 'mortician' and 'undertaker' -- say the notion that they are obsessed with death and corpses represents a deep misunderstanding of the nature of their work. They note that they spend only about 15 percent of their time with the bodies; the rest is spent with the living, either counseling the bereaved, organizing the funeral, or performing administrative duties. 

And this work, too, is highly stressful; like doctors, funeral directors are on call 24 hours a day. "You get calls in the middle of the night, then you have to meet with the families first thing in the morning," says Jacquie Taylor, president of the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science and funeral director at the affiliated College Chapel Mortuary. "We always say this would be a great job if we could get people to die Monday through Friday from 9 to 5, but we can't seem to get them to do that." 

While some people take a year or more to plan weddings, funeral directors usually have just a couple of days to pull off one of the biggest and most important rituals in people's lives. And they often do it 100 or 200 times a year while having to be sensitive to the needs of people in the throes of intense emotional distress. "In an attempt to gain control, grieving people will often lash out at the professionals who are working with them," says Williams. "We tell funeral directors that the anger is not directed at them, but at the situation." 

Despite the stress levels, funeral directors generally echo Jacquie Taylor's sentiment that helping families cope with their grief is where they find their greatest sense of accomplishment. "Even though you're dealing with a lot of sorrow, it's a very rewarding industry and profession," says Mark Kuhn, funeral director of three small mortuaries in California's Central Valley. "You help them through the process, and a few weeks later you get a letter or see them on the street, and they are really grateful for how we've helped them. It's very gratifying." 

But even those who find fulfillment in the business say the stress can overwhelm them at times. Many professional conferences now include sessions on relaxation techniques and coping with what Sherry Williams calls "compassion fatigue." In her seminars with funeral directors, Williams suggests various approaches to deal with the problem, including physical activity, such as running, playing tennis, or working in the garden; breathing exercises to calm the body; making sure to schedule time for recreation and hobbies as well as work; creating an "applause box" full of thank-you cards and notes to review on a bad day; and keeping a journal, or writing down feelings no matter how outlandish or unreasonable they may seem. 

The seminars also include strategies for releasing excess anger or other bottled-up emotions. "We give them rubber bricks to throw," says Williams. "We do some drum-pounding and throwing pillows and marshmallows at 50 paces. We tell them, 'What you have to do is put some motion to the emotion.' " 

In the area of physical health, regulations from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) guide funeral homes in their practices; some states, like California, have promulgated standards stricter than the federal ones. In general, the laws to prevent transmission of blood-borne pathogens, such as HIV or the various hepatitis viruses, require anyone potentially exposed to blood or body fluids to follow what are called "universal precautions." 

"The OSHA standards are not profession-specific," explains Baltimore attorney Ed Ranier, who represents the National Funeral Directors Association on OSHA-related issues. "Universal precautions means treating all blood and body fluids as if they contain a blood-borne pathogen and acting accordingly." 

When handling the body, embalmers and funeral directors must wear a head cover, a shield to protect the eyes, a nose-and-mouth mask to screen out particles, a gown impervious to fluids, surgical gloves and shoe covers. Funeral service professionals say that cases of transmission of infectious diseases are extremely rare. They do happen occasionally, however, if someone jabs himself with a suturing needle, a scalpel, or the wires used to close the mouth. 

William Counce says he recently spoke with an embalmer who stuck himself while working on the body of a man who died of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, a human cousin of mad cow disease. "It can have a 20-year incubation period, so he will worry," says Counce. "His state of mind is not good. He'll require some counseling for this." 

OSHA also requires workplaces using formaldehyde to conduct air sampling and ensure that levels of the gas -- the key substance needed for the embalming process -- do not exceed legal limits. Formaldehyde is a carcinogen at high levels of exposure. It can exacerbate respiratory problems and chronic conditions like asthma and allergies; in liquid form, it can cause skin irritation. 

Many funeral homes test the air every six months to make sure they have enough ventilation to meet federal and state standards for allowable concentrations of formaldehyde. "Most formaldehyde overexposure is in the plastics industry, not the funeral industry," says attorney Ranier. 

A final problem -- and an often overlooked one -- is injury to muscles and joints. It is a problem, says Jacquie Taylor of the San Francisco mortuary college, that stems from a macho ethos. "There are a lot of funeral directors and embalmers out there with bad backs and knees because they don't lift the bodies and the caskets right," she says. "I've seen that more among men. They try to lift more and they say, 'I can lift this, I don't need to wait for help.'"

 David Tuller, a former staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, has written for The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Salon.com. He is also the author of "Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia" (Faber & Faber 1996).

End of Feature Segment -

If A Mortician "Plays" With A Dead Person Is It Really Necrophilia?
I've found it rather interesting that many of the morticians I have chatted with over the years that have admitted to some sexual contact with the dead have not really expressed a sincere interest in necrophilia as either a fantasy or real life interest.  So that led me to explore in more detail why they did what they did to a dead person.  It turns out that there are a number of levels in which a mortician, male or female, might take sexual liberties with a corpse.  I've tried to label some below.

I'm A Little Bored -  This is a popular reason and even at that there's different sub-levels.  When you think of how many bodies a mortician handles in a career, literally thousands in some cases, common sense suggests some 'innocent' touchy feely, sucky-licky might go on.  A mortician might get a dead female that looks quite attractive and squeeze a breast or kiss her or even suck a nipple... or maybe a dead male might get special fondling attention as well.  It's human to 'play' with your work a little and sometimes goof off.  Sometimes just talking to the corpse satisfies an urge... either talking compassionate or being vulgar.  It helps to relieve some stress and in the case of morticians it helps to cope with all the death around them.

I'm Very Bored -  There have been a number of morticians that I have chatted with (real life and Internet) who kind of fall into this category.  They may actually go so far as to have full sex.. oral, anal, vaginal... with a dead person on many occassions yet don't see themselves as having a true necrophilic interest.  Some are married and have completely different sexual fantasies with their spouses.  So why do they have have sex with dead people when it's not an overriding interest?  Again, a number of contributing reasons.  But the main one seems to be that of stress relief and coping.  So many bodies fall across their embalming tables in a lifetime that it does tend to make the process less sensitive, more routine, and sometimes mundane... all in an environment of death and sadness.  To presume a mortician is somehow elevated to some higher level of humanity like the Pope is rediculous.  All morticians have different stress and boredom thresholds like any of us... and some release or express this in many different ways.  I think some eventually look at a dead body as truly a 'job' to perform.  While they still may pride themselves on their restorative arts and body preservation.. and providing a meaningful funeral service.. it does not mean in all cases that they 'see' the body as anything other than a dead organic vessel.  Having sex with it can simply mean fantasy.  Consider this, in more than one case the mortician was imagining the dead female (or male) as being alive (actually referring to the contact as 'going on a date').  How's that for a contradiction!

I Love Them -  Some morticians are compassionate to a point where they really find some combined element of sexual interest with the dead as reflecting lust and sadness.  Obviously each mortician may have a preferred appearence and/or age with their deceased sexual contacts but by and large the feelings they have when performing the act can be sympathetic and heartfelt.  It's more akin to an emotional sharing with the dead person.  One female mortician I recently chatted with said that she feels closer to the deceased when there's physical sexual contact.  In one case she shared with me she had made love to a dead suicide victim.. a father and husband when alive.  During the wake she was chatting with the dead man's wife and she felt a level of increased understanding of the wife's feelings because she herself felt she shared the same feelings from being intimate with his body.  Was she any less 'professional' because of what she did?  Ironically, she probably was able to relate better to the wife and family in her own way.  In real life she has typically 'normal' sexual desires that includes some element of bondage and vigorous sex.

I Need Them - This is an area of a kind of symbionic need, both emotionally and physically, to be around dead people.  There are some morticians who simply cannot relate intimately to the living, whether it be from a life trauma, gradual exposure to all the forms of death, or a personal mental history.  The dead completes their lives.. makes them who they are.  Sometimes male gays overlap into this area while trying to isolate themselves from a society that tends to pursecute them.  Sometimes female morticians fall into this category perhaps as a result of their own mental anxieties of coping with real life because of low self-esteem in appearence or, again, some life trauma and/or mental depression.  For many death becomes life... or they find a life being around death.  That's why you may find some morticians dabbling in cannibalism.

I Want Them -  These are the pure necrophiles.. if there is such a definition.  While similar to the 'I Need Them' category in that they 'need' dead bodies to function sexually, it's more out of a level of pure sexual lust rather than emotional need.

Epilog
The thing to remember is that a mortician can be just as talented in restoration and professional in delivering his/her services as anyone can be and still fall into any one or more of these categories.  But the real idea here is that people in the funeral business are just as human as any of us.  What I am doing by including this section on my site is not trying to justify what a mortician chooses to do as being right or wrong.  What I am trying to do is convey to the reader, be they a mortician or not, that we are all humans and subject to our environments and personal passions. 

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