The Subjectivity of Torture

I spent the latter part of yesterday using my pain and suffering to get some laughs. I know, it sounds strange, but you'll soon understand...

The current, very melodramatic but undeniably comic description involves me getting hit by a car. Cuts and scrapes, bruises and overall soreness, and Mt. Kilimanjaro on the back of my head. Not that I have ever been hit by one, but I imagine that, if it were to happen in a civil manner (as opposed to being pulverized by a bus travelling at 100 km/h), meaning the car gently lifts you off your feet and places you neatly at curbside, the cuts and scrapes, bumps and bruises might be a plausible aftermath. But I'm rambling here, and on the wrong subject.

The fact is that my so-called torture occurred at sea, sailing in a small and apparently harmless sailboat. So now you're thinking: "What the hell?!"
Well folks, let me give you all of the variables so that you can fathom the totality of my misfortune.

First: I´ve been bitten by the sailing bug once before. It happened in my only summer spent in camp, and whatever free time I had was devoted to the sport. As a matter of fact, I actually became pretty good at it, if I may say so myself. Now here´s the big difference: The bug which bit a 15-year-old back then, bit an almost 30-year-old this time! To translate, it´s half the agility with twice the weight. You do the math.

Second: Yesterday was my fifth day at sea. The first four were pretty much devoid of wind. And much like the Lotto, when the accumulated money which nobody wins for days on end is finally given out all at once to one lucky winner, the wind, which had apparently been on vacation the first four days, reared its ugly head with a might vengeance yesterday. And I was the unlucky winner. To cut things short, I spent just about the same time in the boat, flying across Guanabara Bay, as I did IN Guanabara Bay, continuously overturning the capsized sailboat.

Third: Inexperienced and clumsy that I am, my blunders came in quantity and quality. If you could only imagine the sheer stupidity of some of the things I did... And the fact that I kept repeating them certainly didn´t improve my cause. The result? The skin on my hands is, well, no more. And the rest of the skin on my body has now been gloriously adorned in lovely shades of hot pink and crimson red (scrapes), and black, blue and purple (bruises). And the icing on the cake is the aforementioned african mountain on the back of my head, where the sailboat´s boom (for those of you who know EVEN LESS about the sport, it´s the horizontal beam which supports the sail) took batting practice.

I can only assume that you must be thinking: "This man is clearly a masochist".
My rebuttal:

The pain is secondary and temporary. It is outweighed by bliss and outlived by experience and savvy. Sailing is, for lack of a better word, adictive. For these reasons, I will continue to drink from this fountain as often as I can.

One last thing to be said:

If you ever have the chance to be on a sailboat, no matter the size, do not let it pass. It is, in essence, the privilege of sharing nature by means of wind.