Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Masochism and Sunburns

After a few lovely hours at the beach with visiting family, I discovered that I had acquired an epic sunburn, despite my 60 SPF attempts to avoid such.

This has, shall we say, not been pleasant.

Mazzikin and I were chatting, and I would, from time to time, flinch as the shirt that I was wearing rubbed over my burn. This inspired some interesting thoughts, apparently, involving things like Wartenburg wheels and sunburns, in combination.

I winced.

Mazzikin stated that he had rarely met pain that he could not somehow eroticize. How odd, I thought. This idea had never occurred to me, despite my love of sensation play. I pointed out that the erotization of pain is, for me, a mater of context. But it got me thinking.

As an avowed masochist, (sometimes in jest, and often in seriousness), why was this pain any different than pain which had, in the past, been eroticized? And why did my sunburn bother me less after Mazzikin advanced the idea of eroticizing it?

Well, if the context of pain is what makes the shift from discomfort to erotic possible, then one could shift the context of the pain, and thus change the mind's perception of the feeling.

But the limit to this, at least for me, is the inability to stop the pain. If, in a scene, a sensation starts to push the limits of my ability to process it, I have the option of making it stop. With this sunburn, on the other hand, I cannot stop the pain. Eventually, I hit a wall in my ability to eroticize it, and it just plain hurts.

However! Somewhere, a more masochistic person than I may get something out of the experience I had today. To recreate, follow the steps listed below:

Step One: acquire a nicely painful sunburn, primarily on one's shoulders and back.
Step Two: have a job, or other obligation, which requires one to wear a specific uniform. This uniform should include a bra, blouse, and jacket.
Step Three: Enjoy!

1 comment:

Story Boyle said...

It's not so far off from the way I learned to deprogram ticklishness-- by linking the unpleasant ticking sensation with erotic pleasure, and then from there, simply bottle the outward response. An intriguing notion.