There is no common manual informing autoerotic axphyxiants what strange, kinky adornments to use during their ritualistic dances with death.
Yet somehow the fantasies of these unrelated men coalesce, as if all involved were possessed by the same external spirit that captures the psyche and compels the act. It is nearly always done in secret, but discovered in an awful, morbid way: a roommate or family member walks in to find a loved one dead, accidentally strangled while jacking off.
Autoerotic asphyxiation is based on the understanding that oxygen deprivation in the brain enhances the orgasm.
For that reason many BDSM players enjoy being choked during sex, but that is hardly similar to the way men commonly asphyxiate themselves alone.
The central feature is a belt or string constricting blood flow through the neck, but other common features seem unrelated. Their cases are known by the way their bodies are found when they accidentally kill themselves in the act: naked or nearly so, bound by the neck with a rope, and often bound at the genitals or hands. Surrounded by pornographic images or texts. Sometimes wearing a piece of womens’ clothing; stockings, or a bra. Often surrounded by mirrors, so that the practitioner can watch himself in his dangerous ecstasy.
The issue that has stumped sociologists and psychologists alike is that it is not a learned activity; somehow a guy figures on his own to combine all these seemingly unrelated sexual behaviors, through solitary experimentation or whim.
Autoerotic asphyxiation is so strange and taboo that few talk about it openly — practitioners are usually studied by the way they die — yet its most common among healthy, successful and well-adjusted young men, and the cause of, on average, one death in the United States per day.
That list of accidental deaths may now include the actor David Carradine, who played the mysterious “Bill” in Kill Bill, found dead in a hotel room closet in Bangkok on June 3 with a shoelace tied around his neck and genitals and his hands bound.
The incident was first broadcast as suicide, but later explained, by a Bangkok police press agent, to be that “we cannot be sure that he committed suicide but he may have died from masturbation.” Carradine was 72. (more…)