Brain-Dead Sex: Tantricism vs. Autoerotic Asphyxiation

In this recent round-up of entertainment stories, The Huffington Post teaches its generally liberal-minded readers an important lesson in sexual experimentation. Creating an exotic sandwich around the comparatively pedestrian sex appeal of an oily, tight-butted Gwyneth Paltrow, Huffpo provides links to two celebrities looking eastward for sexual enlightenment.

As has now been widely reported, former Kung Fu star David Carradine was recently discovered dead in the closet of a Bangkok hotel room, an apparent victim of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Here we are promised that even more lurid details of a "rope around the genitals" are but a click away, all the better to enjoy the delicious titillation of a genre grounded in everyone's primal adolescent fear of private masturbation made public knowledge. Given the spate of high-profile deaths from this practice, one would think those who enjoy this kink would have recruited spotters or a buddy-system of some kind by now. Then again, that probably defeats the entire purpose of hanging oneself in a closet for sexual gratification. Mechanically it may be about the intensities of oxygen deprivation--but no doubt the possibility of taking it too far and winding up dead (and on TMZ) is part of the thrill as well.

Below Carradine's embarassingly lurid plight, meanwhile, Huffpo teases its readers with the "news" that actress Heather Graham has apparently followed Sting into the esoteric practice of "tantric sex." Says Graham: What most people know about tantric sex is that Sting does it and it lasts eight hours. But he's not having sex continually. You can take a bath, massage your partner, listen to music. The idea is that you let the whole thing build very slowly until finally you merge with your partner. It works for me. Like Yoga, apparently, the once deeply spiritual tradition of the tantric has now been appropriated by idle westerners as a means of maximizing their hedonistic pleasures of leisure and lifestyle (a hardcore Marxist might point out the class privilege here--how many people have eight continuous hours to set aside for sex, even if they were capable of it?). No doubt she goes out for some Frogurt afterwards.

The lesson? When it comes to sexual experimentation, it's better to be a hot young blonde looking for tasteful ways to expand your sensual array than it is to be an elderly C-list celebrity found dead in a closet with a rope around his junk. Hardly a surprising truth--but a revealing one nonetheless.

But in the end, it's hard not to admire Carradine at some level. Any 72 year-old still that interested in sex has to be championed, especially if he found a way to realize the hydraulics of his desire without our era's ubiquitous boner pills. Sure--he'll always be remembered now as one of those guys who died from auto-erotic asphyxiation, but is that necessarily any worse than only being remembered as the Kung Fu dude? And who knows--twenty years from now when the asphyxiators have found a safer way to indulge their tastes, Carradine and his brethern may be regarded as pioneers of some kind, men who were willing to take their sexual quest to the very edge of death (and, tragically, sometimes beyond).

In that same future, one can only hope that Heather Graham and Sting will be seen for the posers they are. At least Carradine was discrete in his sexual pursuits. No doubt this silence was rooted in a certain shame, which is regrettable, but I'd also like to think Carradine's modesty serves as a counter-weight to those A-listers who are a little too comfortable telling us how groovy their sex lives are. If there were any justice in the world, Carradine would have cut the rope just in time, his secret in tact so that he might continue making odd cameos in a series of low-budget movies for the next decade or so. In this same more perfect world, Sting and Graham would be crushed to death by a freak avalanche of designer tantric fuck-mats in the Barney's health and fitness section, hopefully with the paparazzi there to record every excruciating detail.