Pain Journal Entries

4/26/95 - Itchy eyes. Can't focus. Tired... again. On the couch... again. Drugs... again. And I'm still into this alligator clip thing. Last night, after I finally went down to bed, I put seven of them on my dick - along the shaft, on the corona and the tip of the head - and I keep them there - and I came (well, it's a pathetic form of coming, but I came). Now I'm ready for Sheree ready to go at me with even more clips for a longer period of time, and then hot wax afterwards. We would have done it tonight but she had to go to school and I had to go to Debbie's, then there's the stupid drugs to do - we're exhausted, as usual. I'll probably dabble with a few of them again tonight, just to stay in shape: alligator clip training.

4/27/95 - Last night for antibiotics. This time around. Last call for Demerol (I wish). Don't need painkillers now. I'm a masochist again! Thirteen alligator clips after last nights entry. Wasn't turned on as I was the previous night, but the discipline is still there. The obsessiveness, which I've missed. Tomorrow Sheree leaves for Oregon for a few days. I have it in my head to do a few things to myself, if I don't chicken out or tire out or crap out. The world is blowing up around me, but I shall be entertained.

4/28/95 - No more drugs. But I'm still here on the couch, naked, TV on, coffee table full of junk, headache. Sheree in Oregon. She just called, stoned, talking about art again, mad at me again cause I didn't like whatever idea she was going on about. Trapped. I went for the cheese once again. Rats. All's well otherwise. Still in the mood for torture. I always get it into my head to eat shit when Sheree is out of town and I'm here alone left to my own devices. I never have been able to go through with it. I haven't tried it in years. But, I've got some new energy now, and I'm in a good mood, and it's still a cherry I haven't plucked. But it's also so disgusting. Auto-humiliation. The plan is to handcuff myself with my hand behind my back in a cage with a plate full of my own shit in front of me. Embedded throughout the shit is a string of five candy Lifesavers tied together with fishing line and fed through a hole in the plate, down and out of the cage, up and over and back down suspended over my back. On the end of the line is the handcuff key and the cage key. When I finally get my nerve up and eat through the shit I find the Lifesavers and suck then until they melt, one by one, freeing the fishing line so it pulls through the hole in the plate, allowing the handcuff key to drop down behind my back to my waiting hands where I then unlock myself and let myself out of the cage, feeling thoroughly disgusted with myself, but at the same time turned on and strangely filled with an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. But talk is cheap.

4/29/95 - Can hardly keep my eyes open. It's not real late, but I'm still tired. No shit eating tonight. Lots to do. Video is set up. Have to take my time and not get too tired. Can't even write I'm so tired.

4/30/95 - Let the shit eating begin. I'm downstairs, in bed, watching TV. TV keeps me grounded and keeps my mood up. Setting up these elaborate auto-erotic SM scenarios is by nature isolating and lonely. TV, and its window on "normal" helps keep the depression at bay. Shit is disgusting. It's supposed to be. That's why all the need for the padlocks, keys, handcuffs, fishing line, ropes, etc. Once I cross that line and snap those locks, there's no way out but to eat shit. Literally, "eat shit or die". No matter how much the fantasize about this ultimate degradation, no matter how much the thought of it gets me hard, I always chicken out at the moment of truth. The couple times in the past when I've done the hidden keys and padlock thing, I very Houdini-like, managed to escape without a bite, feeling very stupid, very humiliated - as humiliated by what I almost did as I was for not having the guts to do it. But tonight is different. I think I've completely outsmarted myself. I'll be in bondage from head to toe, no way out until I eat through through this big pile of my own shit, find the hidden Lifesavers, which are tied to the fishing line and suck the Lifesavers until they melt, freeing the lines and allowing the keys to drop down behind my back, where I can unlock my handcuffs, ankle restraints and nose pierce. Assuming I don't chicken out. I've been assembling this copropheliac contraption for three days. I can't back out now. That would make me a failure. It's hard enough being a weirdo, I don't want to be a failed weirdo.
All that for a lousy little bite. I'm only a partial failure. The best laid plans of perverts... First of all the bondage was a little too much. I was afraid that once I tied my nose down and locked my hands behind my back that I wouldn't be able to breathe. Very uncomfortable. But that was the idea, right? But the biggest flaws was the Lifesavers. They dissolved in the shit before I ever got to them. Why the keys didn't drop right away I don't know. I had to push the shit away with my face and nudge the line with my tongue. And that's another design problem. That's what tying my nose down was supposed to circumvent, but even after I tied it it came loose right away. I didn't have to eat the shit at all. All I had to do was push it aside with my face. Back to the drawing board. But I did get two good bites out of it. Tastes like mud. Bitter mud. Felt stupid at the sight of my own shit covered face in the mirror. But I'll try it again. Keep doing it until I get it right.

The Pain Journal was the last 408 days of Bob Flanagan's life, artists, Super-Masochist and the world's oldest sufferer of Cystic Fibrosis.