The Pain Journal

by Bob Flanagan

Flanagan's last finished work, is an extraordinary chronicle of the final year of his life before his death from cystic fibrosis at the age of forty-three. Los Angeles writer and artist Bob Flanagan created performances with Sheree Rose that shocked and inspired audiences. He combined text, video, and live performance to create a highly personal but universal exploration of childhood, sex, illness, and mortality. The Pain Journal, Flanagan's last finished work, is an extraordinary chronicle of the final year of his life before his death from cystic fibrosis at the age of forty-three.

Genres: Memoir, Poetry, Nonfiction, Biography, Disability

205 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2000

About the author

Bob Flanagan was a performance artist and writer. He was best known for his work on sadomasochism and living with cystic fibrosis.

Flanagan was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in childhood. He graduated from Costa Mesa High School, and studied literature at California State University Long Beach and the University of California, Irvine.

In the 1970s, Flanagan began reading his poems in public and was part of the poetry community at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center. His first book, "The Kid is the Man," was published in 1978.

In the 1980s, Flanagan became active in the BDSM community with his wife, and he was a founding member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Janus. In 1989 he and his wife collaborated on their first work of performance art with a piece called "Nailed."

Reviews

[Ariel]

A bitchy, boring, angry, mundane, affectionate, and perverse artifact. Loved it

[Curtis Westman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know what kind of prose one should expect from a dying man -- least of all when they're dying slowly and painfully. But while you and I take for granted our innate biological abilities, that of breath and unencumbered thought, Bob Flanagan struggled every day in a vicious battle with his own lungs, heart, and body.

His journal isn't as I had expected it to be, a story typical of the man who sardonically described himself as "the guy who nailed his dick to a board." It isn't at all a failing of the writing, but I think more so a failing of my own judgement. This isn't a book about a dying masochist, a sideshow artist whose fascination with harming himself and being hurt makes his pain seem less real in comparison. This is a journal by an ordinary person at the end of his short life, in constant, uncontrollable pain, and whose bravery perhaps masks the gravity of the fact that his inevitable death comes suddenly and without warning.

It is, perhaps, apt that I finished the book just shy of the fifteenth anniversary of his death.

[ra]

— “Pain pain pain. Odd that what was once the fuel that ignited my soul has become the very thing that dampens my spirit. It just ain’t fun no more. And for christ-sake it’s all I talk about isn’t it?”

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

He was a friend of mine, and I am in the journal in a minor way - but Bob Flanagan I think was one of the greatest guys on this planet. Fantastic artist who used his medical condition as a canvaas to express himself. For those who are sensitive to S&M practices or body issues may want to stay away - but I suggest you just check in to see wht its about. I am not sure if this book is still in print or not - but if not it really needs to be back in print. Beautiful book.

[Arielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

made me both cry and vomit. almost simultaneously.

[Iain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sexually charged mucous drowned performance artist Bob Flanagan takes account of his final days in the year before cystic fibrosis took his life. He is constantly run down, sapped of vitality and the sexual energy that coloured his art. There are some great observations and it's a great insight into the documentary that was made as he was dying. Fundamentally though the greatest take away is that dying is no grand departure, its the same things you usually do just but for the final time. It's very moving in parts but when his humour shines through its painful to see his personality smothered by his pain. He says how everyone misses the old him and he does too.

I'd put this up there with "Mortality" by Christopher Hitchens as a piece that can actually convey to us what dying will be like if sickness takes us. Both feature addendums from the writers other half and both speak to the tedium of dying. How you have so much left to do but you're out of runway. Both men wrestle with laptops in hospital rooms trying to finish something, anything, before the curtain call. Both collections end piecemeal, emphasising how we slowly leave this reality.

Bob Flanagan has inspired me since I discovered him last year from his role in the music video for "Happiness In Slavery", a video from the never officially released "Broken" Nine Inch Nails film. While that is the way in which many will have discovered Bob he was so much more in his own right and even at 43 years old his death came much too soon.

The piece after the main journal written by his wife Sheree does a good job at portraying what Bob feared, the pain experienced by those left behind after we die. While we move on in some ways we will always carry those who are gone with us. While this brings pain the alternative of forgetting them would be much worse.

[Scampi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cried during this read. An old roommate of mine couldn't even get through half of it. It's sad and can sometimes put you in a place you don't want to be.

[Elliot Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye-opening reflection of terminal illness from one of the most fascinating guys ever. The book consists of diary entries from the last year of Bob’s life. From the beginning you know he will die at the end but it still hurts all the same. Not for the weak stomached.

[baruch]

great book for holding in the hand or putting in a back pocket & otherwise

[jane bro]

one of the most meaningful things i’ve read in my life.

[Anna Lancry]

"1/4/95 Another dinner another night of people. If Sheree says “the internet” one more time I’m going to wish her into a corn field."

[Finn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I have ever read. As someone with a disability, though not as severe as Bob’s, this book means so much to me. Something I will be recommending to everyone I meet and passing down to my children. Thanks Bob.

[E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read I my 20s, cataloguing now

[Joe Olipo · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I'm not satisfied with the shit eating i did do." — Bob Flanagan (47)

On Being Selected For an Anthology

There's a humorous moment in most works of De Sade that accompanies the movement in which we dismiss the shit-eating (e.g. the "delicious turd") as too hardcore/vulgar/repulsive to be taken literally. Moving from the declaration, "such a thing is happening," to the spacing of the subjunctive, "imagine if such a thing were happening," produces a zone of safety that permits the entry of humor — a spacing perhaps also responsible for the edgy humor favored by tween boys. It's also a false movement. Gershom Scholem is remarking in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism on four readings of the Talmud: (1) Historical, (2) Tropological (as moral allegory), (3) Halakhic (as juridical law), (4) Mystical, (and (5) Lyrical). Though this may open up the text to a reading of humor in De Sade and of lyricism in the Midrash, we are always returning to Kierkegaard's notion that it really all depends on veracity of the historical fact of the incarnation — that the eternal came to exist in time. That's another way of saying, "let the shit eating begin." (45)

The text/journal is already a kind of Bob Flanagan contraption. I'm thinking precisely of the masochistic apparatus in which our chief character places himself in a cage, in handcuffs, and tied up such that he can't escape until he eats through a pile of his own shit and sucks through the Lifesavers hidden inside, which are rigged by strings to a mechanism that releases a key to his cuffs. The tension lies precisely in the notion that the author is outsmarting himself into a position in which he will have to eat shit (against his own proclivities) for a masochistic release. He does not suffer fools eat shit gladly. A different Bob Flanagan has been reborn to life-after-death (bad connotation - from undeath) following the selection of The Pain Journal for publication in Eileen Myles's pathetic (good connotation - from Pathos), Pathetic Literature (2022). We get to the shit eating right away. Kierkegaard remarks that the upbuilding to be had in the biblical binding of Isaac lies precisely in emphasizing the difficulties. The anthology is re-inscribing this internal movement such that we might consider it a different work entirely.

The phrase, "My brain's the weak heart / and my heart's the long stairs," from Modest Mouse is a bit of a howler for abusing a metaphor within a metaphor, but it kind of works. If we take the same approach to Flanagan's contraption, considering what the anthology is trying to get out of it, we can trouble the metaphor a little bit: The key is the shit (since it lets you eat shit); and the shit is the cage (in its trapping function); and the strings are the text (since they're an impediment tying you up but also attached to the releasing function of the key i.e. shit); and the handcuffs are the anthology (since they function as key-hole, and therefore a means to use the key i.e. shit). All this to say that we're getting strung up into a weird position, for which nothing could be better than Flanagan's (anticlimactic) assessment: "Tastes like [bitter] mud." (46).

On Heterosexual Punk

Kathy Acker's opus is a reminder that perhaps the only thing more perverse than turning something into nothing is the possibility of turning nothing into something. Wanting a "permanent abortion" (Acker, 30) is really very cool, but not as punk as the picture of heterosexual domesticity in The Pain Journal. 'What is to be done' after nailing your penis to a wooden plank. Kierkegaard remarks that the Aesthetic does not exist in time — it darts between moments of happily-ever-after (i.e. the moment of orgasm). Flanagan is always coming down from a masochistic high to be really tortured by his wife's nocturnal snoring 'like a two-man saw' (misery whip). This is the other kind of "Rolling in the shit of time," (Eileen Myles, For Now, 12) that Myles had inscribed with a good (poetic) connotation.

The "Supermasochist" nails himself to a block of wood in jest, but the artist dies in earnest. Setting aside the complicated sado-masochistic psychological apparatus, we perceive that domestic squabbles are such noxious stimuli that our master of mortification can't manage. Flanagan writes: "You—whoever you are—must be sick to death of me in front of the TV in bed, every night, describing Sheree’s snoring and whining about how awful I feel," (37). Our narrator is mortified by the painful domestic event, and is then failing to achieve the inversion of pain into pleasure, and is then failing to restrain himself from writing about it in his journal against his own better judgment (a "Winchilsea phenomenon"). Going further, he appears to be such a glutton for punishment that, in a model movement of heterosexual-conformity-as-abnegation, he categorically refuses to sleep in separate beds. (Aside: The Anthology is a kind of reading-as-sleeping-in-separate-beds). This punk sensibility, with ostensibly unlimited tolerance for punishment/pain is producing, at it's apotheosis, a phantasy of invulnerability, which is simultaneously (by a process of convergent evolution) the model of heterosexual domesticity: "Mr. Adjustable. There’s a new super hero: Mr. Adjustable. Able to withstand anything because he adjusts to everything. By day he’s a whiner and complainer. But by night he’s Mr. Adjustable!" (88)

"an enormously liberated feeling which certainly abuts on this awesome space which is writing or art or rolling in the shit of time." — Eileen Myles, For Now

[arwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

everything that comes from the hands of bob flanagan is hard to chew on, but i think that is definitely a big part of the appeal for me. this book was difficult to read, in the sense that you are playing voyeur for a man on his death bad, deeply in pain, but i found it very compelling. and sad. but that is to be expected! has inspired me to write more than anything i’ve read i’ve read in recent times which is always appreciated. reading this after having seen the documentary was really enlightening, he is much more open about his pain and fear here, he writes not to an audience, but because what else can he do?? if the documentarians are like vultures sitting around waiting for him to die, the pain journal is like his tracks left in the dirt. this book was repetitive, angry, depressing, and inconclusive, but i loved it. rest in peace bob flanagan.

[wes. · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a genuinely fascinating, layered, honest, moving, disgusting, grueling, important text. discussing pain through the juxtaposition of the sadomasochistic desire for it against the depressing reality of its unavoidability when chronically ill was a very captivating angle. could probably have done without the vivid description of his exploration of coprophilia, on a personal level, but i also think the inclusion of the many depraved sexual aspects of his life was vitally integral to the success of this book as a whole.

[emmer jaysin · Rating 4 out of 5]

like most journals. it felt personal, but this felt way too personal since he was a supersadomasochistic. nonetheless i was very sad at the end and got sherees note at the end made me feel so sad. and damn such a creative fucking person in ‘95 like premiere and photoshop and scanning like wow.

anyways watch the banned NIN music video in honor of Bob. god bless

[Navah · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a beautiful glimpse into the most painful moments of flanagan’s life. i’m weirdly honored to have been able to be with him and read these words this many years later and to still feel him through the pages. my favorite journal i’ve read in a long time.

[Martyna · Rating 5 out of 5]

piękny, wściekły, perwersyjny, sfrustrowany, czuły dziennik artysty, performera, poety i masochisty z jego ostatniego roku życia, gdy powoli umierał na mukowiscydozę. o tym, jak ból z czegoś czego pragnie i co go ekscytuje stał się czymś przerażającym, zabierającym chęć do życia.

[r. fay]

diaries are art!!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ all my love to my favorite supermasochist—i hope your balls are getting stretched in heaven

[Io Kovach · Rating 4 out of 5]

candid and tedious and really really sad. well he decided to give us a complete window into his mind as he dies what do you expect