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Bob Flanagan
Pain Journal

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April

Hotel performance done. The audience gathered together in one hotel room and peered through telescopes and binoculars while I performed supposedly auto-erotic activities in my own room, across the courtyard, all alone. Don't know who saw what, or what anyone thought, or what it all meant. I'm just glad it's over. Wine enema, butt plug, alligator clips, ball whacking, piss drinking, masturbating, bondage-they wanted a show, I gave them a show. Felt disoriented and depressed through most of it, as I feel disoriented and depressed through most everything these days.

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The hospital-finally. Seems like I've been talking about coming here ever since the last time I left. Haven't been breathing or feeling well the whole time and will probably never breathe well or feel well again. I'm not being pessimistic when I say it's only going to get worse. That's the reality. My blood gasses are much worse: PO2 81, PCO2 57. Don't know if that's forever, but it's fucked.

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Here I am tippy-de-typing on the couch cause I'm still on drugs, nothing interesting, just antibiotics. Lately I've been longing for Demerol. Flashbacks to those days of post-op-sinus surgery, pericarditus, pneumothorax-when I got it when I wanted it and I liked it-perhaps a little too much. But, ho hum, nothing tonight but Tobramycin, Piperacillin and Ceftazidime in my veins and a couple of Vicodin in my mouth, but that doesn't do much anymore beyond dulling the headache, which is fine I suppose. Sheree's here on the couch too. Not sleeping cause she slept till noon today. She's out on stress leave so she has no schedule. She's waving her naked legs in the air. She's reading about gardening, her new hobby. I want her to put dozens of alligator clips on my dick and balls, but I don't know if I'd freak out or not. I can put a couple on myself. It hurts like hell but most of the time I can hold on until the pain subsides and I get kind of a rush. But can I take it when she's in control? The ultimate question.

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Getting hard to breathe again. Thought I was doing much better, but it never lasts. My mood has been improving, though. And I've got a renewed interest in sex, mostly fantasizing about this alligator clip thing, and trying it out a little bit with a couple of clips here and there, those jagged little teeth biting into my tender spots as I grab hold of something like the bed rail and squeeze until the pain floats off a little, turns sweet almost, until it's time for another clip. It's almost like eating hot chili peppers, except that the taste buds for this delicacy are in my balls, not my mouth.

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