Top Twenty Decadents of Western Civilization

There's a Hall of Fame for everything it seems—baseball, chess, radio, cowboys, aviation, inventors, country music. But I've never seen one for decadence. If one is ever started, here's my Top Twenty list of potential inductees:

20. Aristippus. First philosopher to give intellectual mooring to hedonism, teaching that wisdom lies in the pursuit of pleasure. After criticized for living with a courtesan, he replied he had no objection to sailing a ship that other men had used before him.

19. Alexander the Great. He makes list because many can identify with him: He died of a hangover.

18. Julius Caesar. Wrote first-person essay celebrating masturbation, calling it a gentle art and saying sometimes he prefers it to sodomy.

17. Jim Morrison. Entered rock-n-roll with a lithe figure, but within a few years excessive drinking had made him fat. Voluminous drinking might have been triggered by inability to smoke marijuana—smoked so much one night that he envisioned his own death, freaked out, and swore it off. Died of a heroin overdose, a cocaine overdose, or a heart attack; all are reasonable possibilities.

16. Oscar Wilde. Talked the decadent talk and walked the decadent walk—in Victorian England (no small task). Contracted syphilis from a prostitute as a young man and had black teeth the rest of his life from the mercury treatments. Jailed for homosexual activity with men and boys.

15. Thomas De Quincey. Writer of the best-titled book in the English language: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, an autobiographical account that includes his dreams and visions while stoned. Life-long opium eater (or drinker, in the form of laudanum). London prostitutes introduced him to it.

14. Wilt Chamberlain. Claimed to have sex with 20,000 women, equaling approximately 1.37 women a day for forty years (assuming he started his sexual prowling at age 14). Got enough action to catalyze a Saturday Night Live skit.

13. Pope Alexander VI. Not as decadent as others listed here, but given his station in life, he makes the list: Fathered seven illegitimate children as a Cardinal; threatened a married girl with excommunication if she refused to give him sex; abused Church funds. Catholics are quick to point out that he was too busy with decadence to pay any attention to theology.

12. Aleister Crowley. Pursued deviancy to honor his motto: “Do what thou wilt.” Liked pornography, built monastery of sexual magic, engaged in lots of sex of every kind, took heavy doses of cocaine, experimented with mescaline. Exerted influence on Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, and the Beatles.

11. Keith Richards. Has so many drugs in his system, they say he wants to be cremated when he dies so his friends can smoke his ashes. Might be apocryphal, but anyone who gets a rumor like that started deserves to be on this list.

10. Jeffrey Dahmer. This serial murderer didn’t just kill his prey. He played with it, killed it, had sex with it, and later masturbated in front of it. Also a cannibal and heavy boozer.

9. Chuck Negron. Lead singer from Three Dog Night. Notorious partier. Stayed up all night partying before Rose Bowl Parade one year. Got so trashed that he had to be duct-taped to the band's float in order to perform. It's also rumored that his penis exploded from over use.

8. Tiberius. Pornography-loving, boy-sodomizing, woman-torturing third emperor of Rome. Said of him in Robert Graves' I Claudius: "No women or boys were safe in his presence and if [women] valued their own lives or those of their husbands and fathers they willingly did what he expected of them." One woman, in order to save her daughter from him, was forced to "such abominable acts of filthiness" that she committed suicide rather than live with the memory.

7. Stubbe Peeter. Took lust to a new level: the lycanthropic. Official court documents say he switched into wolf form when hitting the sixteenth-century German streets to get his kicks, which included rape, incest with his sister and daughter, murder, and cannibalism. Also killed his son and ate his brains.

6. Jack Kerouac. Drank massive quantities of alcohol; used Benzedrine, morphine, marijuana, hashish, LSD, opium; slept with a lot of girls and a lot of guys. And tried to make it all look like a religious act.

5. Larry Flynt. Hugh Heffner without the discretion.

4. Catherine the Great. Nympho Empress of Russia. Loved sex so much that peasants knew about it. Within two weeks after her death, it was widely believed that she died from a horse falling on her during bestiality. The story’s apocryphal, but anyone who gets a story like that started . . . (see Keith Richards entry).

3. Nero. Liked to disguise himself to visit brothels, roam streets, rob shops, molest boys, attack and murder people—all for fun. Killed his wife and mother in order to obtain the sexual favors of a beautiful woman. Didn’t fiddle while Rome burned, but three Roman historians say he started the fire so he could have the honor of re-building.

2. Caligula. A name that’s come down over the course of nearly 2,000 years as synonymous with decadence. Partial list of exploits: Multitude of hetero- and homosexual affairs, forced divorces so he could sleep with the wife (including a bride on her wedding day and a pregnant wife), frequently committed incest with sisters, scattered gold coins into streets to see people trample each other to death in the resulting scramble, mortally tortured people with glee.

1. Marquis de Sade. Decadent theorist and practitioner. A few tenets: Man's (not woman's) enjoyment is the test of all things, corrupting young children is a delight, few things are better than beating a pretty girl. Wrote pornography, was jailed for sexual activity, used early form of date rape drug, arranged and participated in orgies, seduced young girls (the younger the better), kidnapped teenage boys and girls for sex, beat and raped women.

Of course, a list like this would better belong in the Hall of Shame. Underneath these lives, lies much suffering—spiritual, emotional, and physical. Because I wrote these descriptions to humor the reader, I kept them brief. Any detailed analysis of such withered lives would be sad.