Thirteen Shades Of Masochism.

"Why are you sitting alone in this room and smiling?" He asks, walking into our bedroom, startling me out of my reverie.

"My thighs hurt from my workout," I tell him, still smiling, "They hurt so much I cannot form cogent sentences in my head."

A few years ago he would have lovingly ribbed me, called me a little freak and kissed me on the nose, giggling about my ever-so-lovable need for the pain, but the thing about addicts is that in time, you stop finding their behaviour endearing. I am pellucid to him now, almost completely visible, he doesn't just see what I am doing, he can see inside me, behind my actions, so far past the contrivance of normalcy and functionality I constantly carry with me like papers that justify my existence and ratify my right to walk the corridors of civilised society. I am ashamed of the papers, but I feel safer for having them so each time I am questioned about my addiction, I can point to them and claim sanity. Does it really matter what insanity I harbour if I pay my taxes, raise a child and contribute to society? *Does it?*

"Come here," he says, pointing to the wall on his right, "Move fast."

I try to slide forward and onto my feet, but the movement is much less fluid than it seemed in my head. As I get on my feet my muscles violently cramp, forcing me to bend forward at the hip and laugh my expression of the pain into my hand. He vacillates between amusement and desire as I inch towards him, hunched over like an old woman. I understand the amusement but this is the method I have chosen to palliate my addiction. If I hadn't, I would have died at the hands of some stranger in a bunker. It is safer that I get my daily fix on the field, pushing my body until something hurts enough to take it home with me. It is inviolate, its only danger to me is psychological, and I appear unperturbed by the fact that I am happier when in pain. I don't want to know what it means that unless I feel a constant baseline of pain, my body seems numb and empty. I am, now, choosing to actively ignore that I feel unsubstantiated, like my existence has no meaning, unless something hurts. I ignore it, because by choosing exercise, I have given myself the healthiest possible mechanism to keep myself in pain. Physically, it can only help and it does, I am doing great. I ought to feel less pride at the dubious honour of taking something as healthy as excercise and turning it into a questionable pursuit, but the joy of corrupting the peace of yoga into the chaos of arousal, addiction and need pleases me.

"Move faster," he snarls at me, "Or are you too broken to take it?"

I used to be terrible at making this assessment. It's a phase we all go through, I think. At least those of us who have chosen to or been relegated to conflating sexual gratification with pain, we wonder at some point whether we will know to stop before broken. At first you fear this thought, and then, as if like clockwork, it begins to enamor you, you begin to be enthralled by this idea of yourself that has stepped past self-preservation. You want to hand that over to a person who can be trusted to stop more than you can be trusted to say when you cannot take anymore without lingering consequence, but always to someone you trust. Always, of course. Then your barometer for trust starts shifting, loosening, and you find yourself in riskier and riskier situations with more and more unlikely candidates. They are situations it may even have been okay to put yourself into, if you had actually made the effort to mitigate the risks but you know better so you don't feel like you need to do better. Knowing is half the battle, so long as you know the term RACK, you couldn't possibly need to actually practise it. Then, inevitably, you get hurt. It's the kind of hurt that causes long-term effects, physical or emotional, the consequence is that more parts of you have to be removed from the playing field. And then you realise the real risk of being the person who doesn't know what to stop, in the long-run, it diminishes your ability to withstand and maximize the pain you so desperately need. If you turn yourself into a minefield, you're going to have to stop taking walks in the pastures of your pleasure to keep yourself alive. I want to walk for a long time, not a short, brilliant while. I walk on barren lands, there is nothing to destroy there, no explosives buried in the dead of the night.

"I am not too broken to take it," I say, but it isn't a retort, I am stating the truth, if I had been too broken, I would have said that, too.

It's not possible to goad me anymore, my ego has left the building on this subject, I have been through that part of my life where the masochism was the fulgurant speck in my identity. The kind that ensorcelled me and thrilled me, the kind that shone like a ray of dazzling magic across the night sky. That's the process right? First you hate it about yourself, then you love it about yourself, and now, I am ambivalent to it. For the most part, It's something I do, not someone I am. I am sated with describing it as my flavour of an adrenaline-delivery mechanism clubbed with the thrill of endless literary exploration. Maybe, if not pain, I would be riding roller-coasters every day. I just prefer to microdose everything — thrill, pleasure, pain, happiness — it's the most sustainable form of addiction.

"Are you really going to beat me now?" I asked, finally leaning against the wall, attempting to wring the pain out of my muscles, "You can see how much pain I am in, right?"

I don't want him to feel sympathy for me, I say this because I know it thrills him to realise he doesn't feel any sympathy. It's like flicking your tongue over the head of a cock because you know that's exactly what it takes to push it over the edge, because you've sucked the same cock thousands of times before. His need to hurt me, when he senses vulnerability in me, seduces me. This too-particular-to-be-innocent fixation is his own vulnerability, because he is pellucid too. I see much more than he intends to show in the moment. I see his helplessness before my state of pain. It's the same helplessness that makes him beat me harder when I cry, makes him hurt me more when he sees me dressed up in bruises, makes him go from tending to my wounds to digging into them, makes him double-down on pain. I see his need, I touch it, I mould it in my fingers. That's the joy of interplay between sadist and masochist, because really, to sate my need for pain, I don't actually need another person right? Masochism is the sexuality that lends itself most to masturbation. I do a spectacular job at hurting myself and I never even need to pick up a whip. So if I can hurt myself, why do I need another person?

Essentially it's the same reason why you may still want a partner even if you own a vibrator. I want to see what he does with my pleasure, I want to see how his pleasure mingles with mine. I want the thrill of being controlled, diminished, threatened and attacked. In the court of pain, I am a recidivist, but in the court of sex, I could be the judge. I am not brought to my knees by desire, i thrive in it. His desire bathes me in a spotlight that hides all the beautiful lies and reveals the dazzling truth of need. I need to be hurt, because I am an addict, but I need *him* to hurt me, because this is love. It doesn't even matter how much he hurts me, I need him to touch me in the ways only he can. I need to feel the rush of saving every last bit of my sanity so I can bring it to him, and he can snap it in half like an ungrateful child. I need him to hurt me, not to satisfy my masochism, I can do that, but to satisfy my attraction to his sadism.

"I will destroy you," he says, holding my throat to the wall.

"Destroy me," I say, choking with a rush that passes as emotion.

A perfidious promise I make with confidence because I know there is nothing left to destroy. I bring barren lands to plunder, because they can take it.