A-e-A-e....Ooooh!

I'm baaaack! Edits for my next novel are done and I have a June 11th release date. YAY!!  In honor of that I plan to start a contest within the next week or so that will allow a couple of lucky winners to get their own free digital copy, as well as a couple of print books of their choice. But more on that later. Now on to the sex.....

When I was seventeen I got a job at a local insurance company. Other than the fact that I saw dollar signs swirling around my head when I found out I would be making two dollars above minimum wage, I don't remember a whole lot about it. The little bit I do remember revolves around long afternoons spent flipping through life insurance policies that had been cashed in. Er...claimed? Er...whatever you choose to call it, these people had died and their family was looking to collect the benefits that they'd signed up for. Now, why they had a wet-behind-the-ears teenager perusing through death certificates and confidential financial information is beyond me. I'm thinking I was looking for something specific, but I no longer remember what that was. What I do remember is reading about my first acount of Auto-erotic Asphyxiation.

In fact, I remember it vividly. In the account of his death I read how he had been alone in his home one night, and his wife (I think) had come home to find him in the basement--rope around his neck, hanging from the ceiling. Ass just a few inches above the ground and legs stretched out before him, naked from the waist down...and with a layer of toilet paper laid out beneath him. Toilet paper that was, at that point of course, soiled with...a variety of bodily excretions.

Now I read this and was, to say the least, puzzled. Not to mention grodied-out to the MAX! (It was the 80's) And then I went to my supervisor and asked her what the fuck this was about? Well, maybe I didn't say it quite like that, but it was at that point that I had my first lesson in the pros--an cons--of auto-erotic asphyxiation.

I later remember reading a Michael Crichton novel in which AeA was featured prominently as part of a murder mystery plot. And since then I've heard of it off and on in the media. David Carradine and Michael Hutchence of INXS are two prime examples of "suspicious" deaths that just reeked of  AeA gone horribly wrong. I don't know if AeA was ever ruled as an official cause of death in those cases....I mean what family is going to want that permanently tacked to their loved one's record? But then again...is it really so horrific? Stupid perhaps.It's not suicidal, nor is it intended as a harmful, destructive, or even self-destructive habit.

At least that's what this ARTICLE that I came across yesterday finally pointed out for me. It's one of the most informative and non-judgmental pieces on the subject that I've ever read. Not that I've read many. Well...okay...I've never really read anything else on the subject. But I've often wondered about it, and this does a very good job of filling in the blanks.

Contrary to what many believe,  AeA is not about  masochism or seeking pain. It's about seeking heightened pleasure. And as this article so vividly points it does a very fine job of heightening that pleasure. Not that the means of it isn't disturbing. Especially when we start talking about school yard choking games. That is something I hadn't heard of before, and frankly I wish I hadn't heard of now. AeA and the addiction to it is certainly not a healthy past time, but it is certainly much less mysterious to me now than it was. And learning more about it, and educating our children about the very REAL hazards of pursuing it can only have a positive effect. Unfortunately, knowing the risks didn't help the subject of this article, who was already so addicted that he was past help. But perhaps it can play a part in preventing people from taking that first experimental step down that road.