Reasons Why Sex & Suffering Don't Belong Together

But I guess statements like that just make me an old fuddy-duddy. From October 11, 2007 Associated Press:

LYNN, Mass (AP) - Adrian Exley was wrapped tightly in heavy plastic, then bound with duct tape. A leather hood was put over his head with a thin plastic straw inserted so that he could breathe, and he was shut up in a closet.

That, apparently, was the way Exley liked it. But the way it ended - with Exley suffocating - was not what he had in mind when he traveled from Britain for a bondage session with a man he had met through a sadomasochism Web site.

Exley's body was discovered in the woods last year, two months after he was bound up in the bondage "playroom" Gary LeBlanc had built in the basement of his suburban Boston home. LeBlanc, a 48-year-old Gulf Oil sales executive, detailed his responsibility in the fatal bondage session in a five-page suicide note, just before he put a gun to his head and killed himself.

Now the question is: Since Exley consented to the sex play, can LeBlanc be held responsible for his death?

Exley's family is suing LeBlanc's estate for unspecified damages, claiming wrongful death. Many bondage enthusiasts are watching the case closely, seeing it as lesson in where to draw the line of responsibility on consensual but dangerous sex.

"There's definitely the whole spectrum of thought on what really happened - whether it was a consent issue, or negligence or misunderstanding," said Vivienne Kramer, a board member of the New England Leather Alliance. "Everybody has their own ideas on what should have happened."

Exley and LeBlanc met through an online forum for gay men into rubber, leather and bondage. Exley, a 32-year-old stripper, used the screen name "Studpup," while LeBlanc called himself "Rubrman" and built a chamber with rubber mats on the floors and walls, chains, leather restraints, rubber suits and a hospital gurney.

Aside from Vice President Rockefeller's famous "death in the saddle" with his mistress--how often does any die from having consensual, heterosexual sex? It is something of an argument against confusing sex, pain, and humiliation, isn't it?