How in the hell did anybody ever discover that you could achieve orgasm through suffocation? I have an idea this came about years before anybody ever understood the biological function of the brain, and how it is dependent on a steady oxygen supply. For that matter, probably way before anybody had a clue what oxygen really was. I have an idea some of the old sex and fertility cults, such as Aphrodite's, would have made considerable use of this discovery. It might have even been used as a kind of baptismal rite, what with the obvious tie-ins of death, sex, and euphoria, probably in many cases accompanied by hallucinatory visions. Ages ago, the idle rich would have paid enormous sums for such a ritual initiation, for this rite of union with the Goddess herself.
I would imagine there were a few people who ended up much like Mr. David Carradine-dead. At some point upon the creeping advances of old age, and all the anxieties it brings, many might well have paid for this final service, the prospect of dying and permanently joining the entourage ofAphrodite, or some similar goddess.
The question would be, why would anybody today even start out doing something like this? Who out there wants to take the chance of ending up like Carradine, dead in a hotel closet, hung by a nylon cord (according to some accounts, a curtain draw-string), with a shoe-string tied around your genitals? I think I'll take a pass on that one.
On the other hand, this is evidently a form of bizarre sexual addiction. I guess once you've been "initiated" once, you find yourself hooked, in a bad way.
Still, the mystery persists in Carradine's case. One coroner declared that he died as a result of asphyxiation during masturbation. He was completely alone. The security cameras of the hotel in which he was staying in Bangkok, Thailand (he was there to film a movie), seems to verify this report. No one was noted entering or leaving Carradine's room, supposedly.
Yet, according to other reports, his hands were tied behind his back. Well, I suppose this is possible. He could have rigged the ropes in such a way as to back into them, inserting his hands through the loop as to maneuver it in such a way as to draw it closed. The question then becomes, why?
The answer might well be that Carradine was by all accounts something of a freak, with evidently little self-control in such matters as his sexual proclivities, or his prodigious spending habits. The same ex-wife who in documented court papers declared years ago that he engaged in sexual habits that were "potentially deadly", also claimed that he had a seemingly on-going incestuous relationship with an unnamed close family member, and refused to stop or seek therapy.
He was a freak, but he seems to have been a happy freak, albeit with somewhat of a violent nature. He once destroyed a hotel door in Canada, and according to the same ex-wife enjoyed the company of individuals of dubious character.
Now, the man that starred in three television series (Shane, Kung Fu, and Kung Fu-The Legend Continues)and over one hundred movies, including recently the Quentin Tarantino series Kill Bill, and who won numerous awards and nominations, a man who came from a an established acting family, and who was himself unarguably the most successful of the entire clan, is dead, for what seems like a pretty stupid reason.
He was seventy-two years old. I have an idea at least one person won a bundle on one of the Hollywood death pools.
He was without a doubt the most famous person known to have perished in this fashion. There was however at least one other, a former member of the band INXS, who is said to have died the same way.
Sexual addiction is a sad state of affairs. I would imagine its killed more than a few people, and certainly contributed to the demise of many. But to die alone, if he really was alone, through an act of what amounts to masturbation, assuming all the reports are accurate-that has got to be unique. Sad, but unique.
