The endlessness of pain and pleasure

Some days, I love being bitten. Deep and hard, saliva coating my arm, neck, legs. I also love doing the biting—but that’s another story. On most days, I crave this pain, the type that starts off hurting and then slips into pleasure, moving effortlessly from one state into the other. I love being handled roughly; I love a firm touch. My desire stems from the fact that, while I might still be an amateur in the kink world, I’m constantly in pain.

I can’t say I always enjoy pain, the constant, sizzling, deep ache all over my body.  Having fibromyalgia, a chronic disorder that causes pain and tenderness, means that while I usually have a high pain tolerance, I also have tender points that are hypersensitive, aching, that sting when lightly touched, that burn when bitten. These spots are on my upper arms, my lower back, and plenty of other places. Sometimes they change. I usually can’t predict my pain; it’s a game of chance. So, while some days it’s just right, on others, the biting is too much, fingers digging into my skin, all agony, all on fire, the pain lasting long after a lover stops touching me, like a radar on a map, or a glowing ember. This pain is only ever something I want to avoid.

Still, I keep seeking out pain, often in search of pleasure. Sometimes, even more “vanilla” (for lack of a better word) sex can still cause pain, if my hips are in a position for too long while getting fucked, if I’m fucking someone else, hard and deep, my arm starting to ache, numb and swollen, fingers burning. But when I see satisfaction in a partner’s eyes, asking for more, I don’t particularly want to stop. I often try to push past it. I keep going. Sometimes the wave of pain can transform into pleasure for the pleasure I’m giving. Other times I sink deeper into the pain.

Pain is something I reach for while also trying to avoid it. It’s a relationship of contradictions. Many studies have been conducted in the past few years on the connections between pain and pleasure. One researcher writes that “the link between pleasure and pain is deeply rooted in our biology. For a start, all pain causes the central nervous system to release endorphins—proteins which act to block pain and work in a similar way to opiates such as morphine to induce feelings of euphoria.” Many researchers use the example of the runner who pushes past their physical limits, past the ache, to reach a euphoric state. Other examples include rough sex. One particular article includes an extremely cheesy picture of two white arms tied up at the wrists with rope, faceless, the rest of the body missing, completely unerotic. It’s not just that the image inspires an eye-roll; it fails, in its complete sterilization of the human body, in its unwillingness to showcase, for example, someone’s face wrinkled in pleasure, to capture the sensuality of seeking out pleasure and pain, the ways pain folds into pleasure folding into pain folding into pleasure. 

Sometimes having sex, whether purposefully painful or incidental, does eventually alleviate some pain, whether through orgasm or through the endorphins of physical labour. Other times, my pain isn’t euphoric, it’s constant and draining. But getting to choose when I experience pain, when I push my body to its limits, can be exhilarating. I keep choosing to seek out pleasure, to seek out play, to seek out intimacy. I refuse to let pain close me off from the experience of other people.

My constant pain may have actually taught me to seek pleasure. To allow myself to accept it. This doesn’t just apply to sex. I’ve learned to seek delight wherever I can: dark chocolate ice cream, swimming in a crystal-clear lake, lying in the sun, musky warm and spicy scents, making a friend laugh, a painless bike ride. I’ve started being interested in the idea of hedonism, of wondering why we don’t seek pleasure more often. As humans, part of the way we are able to create homoeostasis or bodily equilibrium is by experiencing pleasure. It’s actually more useful to us than capitalism makes it seem, if “usefulness” is your gauge for what’s important. It’s probably where the idea of “work hard, play hard,” came from, though we’ve deviated from “hard” to too much with the 40+-hour work week. On a small scale, re-prioritizing sex, pleasure, and the erotic can be a way to combat some of the pain of living in restrictive capitalist societies. 

On a larger scale, emphasizing the importance of pleasure and joy disrupts the very idea that only “hard working people,” and by this I mean people who produce capital, deserve good things. What if we decided that everyone deserves pleasure, deserves love, deserves care, no matter their ability to work? What if we decided, against the scarcity myth, that there is abundance in this world? Collective care would become a driving force for many more of us. Disabled people would be valued regardless of whether or not they could work. This is not a new idea. Adrienne Maree Brown’s Pleasure Activism and Ross Gay’s essay “Out of Time (Time: The Fourth Incitement)—On hanging out” have both been instrumental in teaching me to think through how even the ways we seek pleasure can be a force for disrupting capitalism. 

We’ve also been told that too much pleasure is selfish, and as such, immoral. Part of the incongruity of capitalism is being told to seek out individual success while not being selfish. But what if pleasure seeking can be a communal act? Whether through sex, community building, or taking on the fight against social injustices and working together toward change, what if pleasure actually requires that we resist the temptation to close ourselves off to each other, and come together?