God Bless Masochism

Now before you flag my blog for pornographic references, this isn’t a how-to guide or an article for Penthouse Forum (do these things still exist?) Sorry to disappoint you.

Anyway…

I have a hazy memory of a sign in my mother’s kitchen (seems like everything is hazy these days; life as seen through a fogged mirror of medication and one unemployed day melting into the next…cripes, I feel like something out of a barenaked ladies song)

The sign read: The best substitute for brains is silence.

Which is why I haven’t posted anything for a bit. In the last few days I’ve gone from curmudgeonly to grouchy to just sitting around alternating between staring at the piles of crap in my kitchen and staring at the piles of crap in my living room. A curmudgeonly blog might be entertaining, maybe something cute and snappy about clutter and the difference between how men and women see dirt, but I couldn’t even muster the p&v necessary to get that far. It’s been like the little writer in my head has been in the corner in a fetal curl, wrapped in an afghan, eating Cherry Garcia out of the carton while watching reruns of The Gilmore Girls.

And I almost joined her with a second spoon. But thanks to a couple of unseasonably beautiful days and some time on my physical therapist’s S&M table, I’m back on my knees if not my feet (please, no Monica jokes, I beg you).

Which frightens me a little.

If I feel better after being harnessed by the ankles and chest and stretched like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, does that mean…I’m…one of…those people? The ones with rubber masks and whips (not that I know what any of this stuff is…I just read copiously as a child).

Anyway, at least I know what a corset might have felt like. And I thank fate not to have been born into that time in history. No wonder all the women got the vapors.

Hopefully this era of good feeling will continue. Or else it’s back on the table. I don’t know, I think the guy enjoys his job a little too much.