By Glory Fink
Sex can be a beautiful and meaningful act. For some couples sex can even help to strengthen and deepen the shared emotional bonds. But sex can also maim and kill when common sense is ignored.
The first time I realized that people could die while having consensual sex I was watching the movie Rising Sun starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. The two stars are investigating the strangulation of a young woman at the party of a new Japanese business. Eventually, the two uncover the woman’s fetish for autoerotic asphyxiation, a dirty little secret some people would like to keep hidden.
The movie was thought provoking and I talked about autoerotic asphyxiation or AeA with some of my friends. I learned that some very nice girls like to hold their breath right before they orgasm to heighten the sensation. I was surprised at the creativity but I didn’t think much of it until I watched Life as a House years later. Here I am watching a Kevin Kline movie and there is Hayden Christensen masturbating while strangling himself. I guess Anakin wants to make sure we know this is a serious Kevin Kline movie.
I found myself disturbed by this scene and I mentioned it to my guy friends to see if anyone knew any guys who pretended to hang themselves while masturbating. Every guy seemed to know of a friend from his youth who did it but no one owned up to doing it. After that, I started paying attention to unexplained hanging suicides of young men especially those in their underwear who didn’t leave a note.
I did a little research and uncovered a big taboo. Hundreds of years ago, people observed that hanged criminals had erections after death. People put two and two together and got bigger orgasms. During Victorian times London even had a “Hanged Men’s Club” that aided its members through the autoerotic asphyxiation process safely.
While 250 to 1000 deaths are attributed to AeA each year in America most parents are too ashamed to admit that their son was an accidental suicide and would rather clean up the scene before calling the cops and say he killed himself on purpose rather than he was trying to heighten his masturbation. Death by autoerotic asphyxia is almost entirely a 12-25 year old male problem and usually happened when the person was alone. Since many AeA accidents are caused by heart attacks before the person even loses consciousness the only benefit to having another person around is 911 is called.
These days young males are teaching each other to play “chocking games” by filming it and posting to YouTube and other sites. Unfortunately, these hormone driven youth are without the common sense God gave them and think nothing bad will happen while getting a sexual thrill though strangling.
Speaking of a lack of common sense, a friend of mine who works in an ER told me about another kind of AeA. Auto(mobile) Erotic Asphyxia caused one night by a young woman giving a BJ to the guy while he was driving. He hit a deer, and she accidentally bite through his penis. The car then crashed down a ravine where the couple was knocked unconscious. The woman suffocated due to the penis getting lodged deep in her throat and the man died from bleeding because no one saw the crashed car until dawn. If you want to get a hummer in your Hummer, pull over or do it in the back seat. Orgasms aren’t worth dying over.
Comments and suggestions are always appreciated. Send your emails to glory@askglory.com or printz@usm.edu with “Attention: Glory” in the subject line.
Originally published April 11, 2007 in the
Student Printz
This article was written at the request of a reader who had just lost a beloved uncle due to an autoerotic asphyxiation gone bad. I sincerely hope that this article opens the door for others to more openly discuss this subject matter and therefore prevent other senseless deaths.
About the Author:
Glory Fink is a writer, a housewife, a purveyor of euphemistically romantic materials, a photographer, a mystery wrapped in an enigma covered in cashmere. She can be found playing with Shrodinger’s cat, traipsing through the back roads of the Mississippi Delta or concocting experiments in her lab/kitchen. Glory does not suffer fools gladly but will gladly suffer endless tours at the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory as long as the samples keep coming. She does her best writing in her pajamas and her best sleeping out of them. Glory’s cat is suspicious, her dog obliging and her husband humored by her many antics and efforts to become in reality what she is in her imagination.
Glory can be found living it up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in a quaint (read: 19th Century era dilapidated) house in a newly historic district but still less reputable side of town with her husband/best friend, a miniature dachshund, and one cat who isn’t. The the outside cat came with the house; he is not a pet as much as ninja. Please feel free to email or call on Glory any time, her life could do with a few more interesting people.
Copyright © 2007, Glory Fink
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