WHEN IT HURTS A LITTLE

“You’re doing well,” they’ll say. “Most people need a break by now.”

            And so by accident I discovered I have a relatively high pain threshold. Being somewhat of a dullard, I had to be told. Also, it’s something I keep rediscovering – to my perpetual surprise – usually reclining in a chair while someone buzzes me with something pointy.

            Honestly, though, it’s hard to notice pain when you’re focused on not staring up at the breasts of the pretty Belorussian dentist whose lower-abdomen is pressed against the top of your head:

“Do you need me to stop for a bit?”

            “No, no, I’m fine – just keep doing what you’re doing.”

            My tattooist would rather spend a whole day under the gun than twenty minutes having his teeth scraped. Personally, I don’t see the difference. Except for the view. This would come as a surprise to the shrink who told me I’d become a junkie to avoid discomfort – before handing me a self-help manual and sending me home to meditate. She may have got it just about exactly wrong.

            “The aim of the Wise,” Aristotle said, “Is to seek out pleasure and avoid pain.” Not the first dangerously stupid idea Aristotle ever expressed. I prefer a little Huxley: “And as for the really spiritual people, look what they revert to. Not merely to silliness and stupidity, but finally to crass non-existence. The highest spiritual state is ecstasy, which is just not being there at all.”

            So, does pain turn me on? No. I’m not a whips and chains kind of guy – neither administering nor receiving. In my experience, most masochists are some variation or other of guilty control-freak. Even submitting, they rarely relinquish the final word. And your average sadist? Usually a garden-variety moral coward with a wounded ego and a grudge. That scene, like the spiritual one, is largely an elaborate illusion; there’s little about it all that’s real. Beyond any initial fascination, it quickly gets sordid – and rather boring.

Pain can elevate; degradation is only that. The most degrading pain is unnecessary pain; and the worst thing about unnecessary pain is the impulse to give it meaning. People end up defining themselves by their suffering to render it worthwhile – or make it seem to hurt less. Sometimes pain just is.

            It’s wrong, though, to say that it can’t be exciting – even stimulating. Pain fires the endorphins. It anchors you; reminds you that you exist. It throws into sharper relief any joy or ecstasy you may experience. And it moulds you just as effectively as pleasure.

            Me, do I like pain? No. Do I dislike it? Not necessarily. Do I just like to choose who gets to see me hurt? Almost certainly. In any event pain can test you, revealing the self to the self; you don’t seek it out for its own sake, but it’s often the price of something valuable; and you don’t know who you are until you know what you can take. It’s nice, occasionally, to surprise yourself.

            Anyway, I never know what I like until I’ve tried it.