The commonest serious form of fantasy into reality that I have run across is auto-erotic asyphxia (most familiar to the lay public from the movie "The Ruling Class" with Peter O'Toole). This kink, which peaked in the gay and male bisexual community in early 80's, just before the onslaught of the AIDS epidermic, involved suspension with a noose around the neck. The participants in this solitary exercise often dressed up in women's clothing and generally masturbated while they hung. Obviously, on occassions, something slipped up and the individual failed to extricate himself before becoming unconscious.

I became aware of it because at the time I was in training as an anatomic pathologist during the late 70's and practiced autopsy pathology in the early 80's. The epidemic started in the five big cities with very large gay populations (NY, SF, LA, Chicago and Houston) and eventually spread even to moderately sized cities. Eventually, the word spread that this was not a good idea and the epidemic subsided. I had the impression that extreme BDSM decreased significantly in the gay community as the AIDS epidemic grew during the 80's. However, this was the time when the milder forms of BDSM spread out into the heterosexual and lesbian communities. Of course there are no PHS numbers. Now-a-days, the homosexual community gets studied in great detail. We actually have some fairly good numbers on things like fisting, footing, numbers of different sexual partners per year because of things like the 'San Francisco Cohort Study'. However, we have virtually no solid numbers on practices in the lesbian and heterosexual communities (including things as simple as how many folks are out there that practice BDSM).

To bring this to an end, I don't think that crucifixion is being practiced out there to any significant extent. If it was, Murphy's law would decree that a certain percentage would sooner or later come to the attention of the medical profession. And physicians love nothing more than to write articles describing interesting things they have encountered in their medical practices. Part of writing these things up is searching around to find out how common (or how rare) a certain practice really is. Just how many penile lacerations were caused by insertion into running vacuum cleaners in London last year? How many cases of mercurey poisoning are caused by insertion of laboratory thermometers into the male urethra followed by shattering of the thermometer. How common was the piercing of the female nipple in the 1970's? The Reverend Norcod's vanilla brother DOC RON once determined how many granulomatous reactions there were to penile silicone implants during the bi-decade 1970-1989. Trust me. there are not that many really serious attempts at crucification going on out there.

Sleep securely little children, God is watching out for you.