Is It In Yet? The Big Book of Sexual Failures. Mark Leigh

when she jumped out of the wardrobe, he fell backwards through the bedroom door and stumbled down the hallway before falling backwards out of a window. He sustained serious but not life-threatening injuries.

       WHATEVER TURNS YOU ON

       Breasts, legs, hairy chests, bottoms even toes… the conventional ‘turn ons’ are well documented but what’s far less well-known are actions that can also cause the same level of sexual arousal. Here, we’re talking about incidents where people have got off by crushing insects, painting toenails, vomiting, watching others sneeze and throwing lard…

      In July 2001 thirty-eight-year-old Richard Lee Sanders of Burnsville, Minnesota was charged with disorderly conduct after he approached three women on the street, complimented them on their fingernails and then, when the women proudly displayed their hands, grabbed them and began sucking on their fingers. The prosecuting attorney said that this was ‘his weirdest case in sixteen years on the job.’

      A survey conducted by Wisconsin researchers into the reason for nose-picking found that 0.4 per cent of those surveyed did it for sexual stimulation.

      Toe-sucking is a well-documented fetish that’s even practised by the criminal fraternity. In 1994 Italian police tried, unsuccessfully, to arrest a robber who would hold up shops in Pisa and then, before he left, force the female sales assistants to let him suck their toes.

      ‘Crushing’ is the sexual fetish whereby people become aroused by the sight of women’s feet smashing small creatures like insects, fish and mice. Between 1998 and 2000, statutes in the US were enacted to target the practice and those posting Internet videos of animal cruelty were tracked down and arrested, forcing the online crush scene underground.

      Ibrahim Gadzhiyev, thirty-five, of the Chechen Republic, was heavily into vampire sex, attacking and killing Lena Karaseva, a Miss Russia finalist, in 1996 before drinking her blood. After his arrest, the ex-mercenary confessed to thirteen other horrific murders and told detectives, ‘I am a vampire. I attack people because I want to suck warm blood.’ He told police he had sex with Lena while sinking his teeth into her neck and sucking her blood.

      A detective commented, ‘He cannot be human. He is like something out of a horror story.’ The officer added that, when police asked Gadzhiyev to drink a litre of cow’s blood to prove his twisted craving, he gulped it down in one go.

      A man in Tifton, Georgia was apprehended after a car chase and convicted of public indecency after a series of incidents in which he would drive around in the nude, throwing chunks of lard at female victims.

      It’s not often that the words ‘aroused’ and ‘vomit’ are used in the same sentence but emetophilia is the condition of being sexually aroused when vomiting, being vomited on or watching someone vomit. Stefan Luckham claimed he suffered from that condition when he was arrested in 2007. He’d made women drink drain cleaner so he could become sexually aroused when they were violently sick.

      Enough people are turned on by sneezing (either sneezing themselves or seeing someone else sneeze) that there’s a very active sneeze-fetish forum. A typical discussion concerns people posting about sneezes they’ve heard. For example, one member described a co-worker who has the ‘cutest sneeze ever. She gives a big “Ahhhh”, then makes the squeak sound of a pinched stifle, and then lets out a loud “Chooo”.’

      Responses to this sort of posting are both congratulatory and envious. One poster wrote, ‘What I wouldn’t do to work in a desk beside her.’ Another said, ‘That’s great! I wish I could make a certain someone allergic to me.’

      District Judge Andrew Duvall was a longstanding and upright member of the community of Bedford, Pennsylvania – until a twenty-one-year-old man appeared before him in 2001 on charges of public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. The judge offered the defendant a lighter sentence if he agreed to one thing… to let the judge shampoo his hair. Furthermore, he would reduce the sentence further if he could wash the hair of two of the accused’s friends. The man agreed but the two friends he brought back were state troopers. The judge admitted his hair-washing fetish and resigned from office.

      Most people know about necrophilia (getting turned on by dead bodies) or coprophilia (being aroused by faeces) but there are some equally bizarre (and disturbing) fetishes…

       Clowns (coulrophilia)

       Trees (dendrophilia)

       Burglary (harpaxophilia)

       Having insects crawl over your genitals (formicophilia)

       Sucking on someone’s nose (nasolingus)

       Armpit hair (hirsutophilia)

       Fog (nebulophilia)

       Sacred objects (hierophilia)

       Stuttering (psellismophilia)

       The deformed (teratophilia)

       Tears (dacryphilia)

       Falling downstairs (climacophilia)

       Hair (trichophilia)

       Alien creatures (exophilia)

       Stone or gravel (lithophilia)

       Old people (gerontophilia)

       Pinching (thlipsosis)

       Stabbing or piercing the skin of someone (piquerism)

       Electric shocks (electrophilia)

       Mucus (mucophilia)

       Amputees (acrotomophilia)

       Using your partner like a piece of furniture (forniphilia)

       Statues or mannequins (agalmatophilia)

       Teddy bears (ursusagalmatophilia)

       Smells (ozolagnia)

       Catheters (catheterophilia)

       Shoes (retifism)

       Mucus (mucophilia)

       Using food for sexual pleasures (sitophilia)

       Pulling out your sexual organs by the roots (enderacinism)

       Licking eyeballs (oculolinctus)

       Scratching and itching (acarophilia)

       Enemas (klismaphilia)

       Strong and muscular women (sthenolagnia)

       Vomiting or being vomited on (emetophilia)

       Being eaten alive or eating someone else (vorarephilia)

      An open verdict was recorded after a man’s body was found on his bed, having been strangled by a shoelace. At the inquest, the coroner stated that the death could be explained by one of three things: murder, suicide