My favorite night is therapy night.

Pain swells, smarts, sneaks and slaps its way into my life. It’s nothing if it isn’t strong. When something causes pain, be it physical or otherwise, there is a ricochet of pure vitality on its tail. While the pain is sudden, the consequent realization that I am very much alive comes as even more of a surprise.

This action-reaction sequence takes its various forms in much the same way that pain, itself, can be many things. When someone winds up and slugs me in the shoulder or lands a fist on my thigh, the resultant sensation makes me giggle uncontrollably. Through some trick of reflex neurology, my fight or flight response takes the form of laughter.

As for emotional pain, all the phrases I read in books that describe a person’s reaction to gross injustice or offense are completely applicable to my own experience. When someone deeply insults me, I feel as though I’ve been slapped in the face, as though the wind has been knocked out of me, as though my lungs are tightening or as though numbers of other clichéd expressions of inner pain are playing themselves out in my body.

But I laugh when I'm slapped. I giggle when I'm punched. As an emotional corrolary, when the pain comes from within, I'm secretly delighted.

It’s what I do with those clichés which makes me feel like less of a participant in the world of those with normal relationships to pain. I feel that sting in my cheeks, let it flow into my body like a syrup rife with shrapnel and then, then I savor it. I treasure it privately and fuel its licking flames with my own material. I make it worse and deeper and sharper until it is the worst emotional tar pit you can imagine, until so many tears caterwaul between my eyes that I just can’t help but think, “Holy shit, this is fucking amazing."

"Holy, shit. I love this."

Being turned on by physical pain is a common enough racket. Being turned on by humiliation and demoralization isn't much more rare. So why do I feel like there's something so wrong with being exultant by these things. Yes, they hurt. Being kicked hurts. Being insulted hurts. But the more they hurt, the more joyously they demonstrate the limitations of the human body, heart and mind.