I didn't mean it to turn out this way.




Pleasure and Unpleasure can be defined quite differently for different people.


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AnnaOne, Lowteck, and Lank peruse some torture props in the dungeons of kink.com.

I didn't realize, going into this, precisely how Pleasure and Unpleasure are defined for me.
I am personally a little shocked to discover exactly how specific and local my definition turned out to be.
After this little experiment, however, I must confront that my terms are backed up by SCIENCE!


It turns out:

Pleasure is burying your face in something

Pain is nose torture

Who knew?





Pleasure #1:




Beans.

My first thought of something Pleasurable that I would want to do for one minute:
Bury my face in a bowl of uncooked lentils. Mmm, so soft and slippy.
Such scrumptious texture. Mmm... All over my cheeks and eyelids.




God knows why.

But this thought occurred to me and persisted and it was something I'd never done before and would never do otherwise (often my motive behind tasking).
O.K. why not.

It was everything I hoped it would be, although next time I might want a snorkel. I would do it again. With a kiddie pool. Mmm... I swear, try it. Pleasure. Words may not properly convey my experience of this task, hopefully my pictures will do the job.









Unpleasure #1:
Nose hair.

Maybe there was a task somewhere or something (anyone remember it?) that made me realize the short-lived, yet excruciating Unpleasantness that comes from plucking a nose hair. The eye-watering, sneeze-inducing,
brain-imploding, yet temporary torture that is uprooting a sprouting schnoz strand.





Highly Unpleasureable. But not devastating.
You can see, that though upset, I am still able to crack a smile. Mild whining may have been heard, but nothing out of hand.







Pleasure #2:
Puddin' Head to The Face.


You want to resist the cuteness.




You cannot.





And neither can I. My immediate thought for solace and comfort
after my hair plucking pain, was to nuzzle up to my sweet kitteh,
Lunch. Soft, warm, vibrating belly hair on my cheeks, and exchange of
love and sweet sounds.





Mmmm, so pleasurable. One of my most reliable places to turn in
times of difficulty.
Which may speak volumes about my life because by
the end of the minute, my taskmate was mildly miffed about the whole
thing.





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But after a good nights sleep…





… we tried the whole thing again with more success.









Unpleasure #2 and #3:
Misuse of Neti Pot.


Well, one of my favorite Unpleasures is emotional self-flagellation. But the normal running commentary in my head (“Oh gawd Bex, you are the most awkward klutz ever to putz your way into someone’s company! How can anyone stand to be around you without safety gear?!”), is so constant that it hardly seems to count as 10 seconds of Unpleasure.
Turns out its no trouble at all to turn this into physical reality.
Especially when you’ve clumsily, and with all your best intentions, misguided someone dear to you:





to clear their own tortured, influenza-ridden nostrils by means of a neti pot (a means of flushing sinuses clean with warm saline solution poured in one nostril and out the other), which you have loaded with too much salt and then had to correct with no-salt. Oh the guilt. Where is my hairshirt? My lash?
To properly atone, I made the salt levels several times higher than those offered to my original victim. About two tablespoons to the cup of water (it turns out, you’re supposed to just use a pinch).





Recalling his stoic irritation, I opted not to make an audio recording of this, thinking I could handle it as quietly and graciously as he.





I was wrong.
I screamed and shrieked like a boiling lobster. The agony,
the sense of betrayal I felt, at myself, cannot be described, but may
perhaps visible here:




The no-salt mixture, was a slight improvement. It made my ears pop. It made my brain feel like it was boiling. It made me cross-eyed desperate and then sullen. But it was an improvement over the death mix of salty salty salt water.
And it lasted longer than 10 seconds.

I was glad to have another pleasure to think up after this.
Then my roommate, Borchid, came home. My immediate thought for my next pleasure:




Pleasure #3:
Bosom.






Boobies.
Sweet, soft, pillowy, warm tatas.
If I could get a mattress made of boobs.
Pillows made of boobs.
A winter coat lined in boobs.





Fortunately I have a curvaceous and agreeable roommate who has learned not to ask questions.




Boobies.

The ache in my sinuses began to subside in their suppleness. Mmmm…








But then! Oh noes!

Unpleasure #4:
Picking Paws.

YellowBear determined to exact his revenge for the nose torture he had been forced to endure earlier! My tender nose was again viciously attacked!




Big YellowBear paws are in fact less pleasant than they sound when they're inside your face.


.

Note the psychotic gleam in his eye.

With an imbalance of Unpleasure to Pleasure, I had another full minute of joy with which to set things right. Mwah ha ha ha!





Pleasure #4:
Nuzzling.

With a little gentle encouragement, YellowBear agreed. Everyone loves to nuzzle the nooks of a plush, sweet, docile, cooperative, yellow, and compliant bear.





After this series of tests, I must confess my confidence in my surprising yet irrefutable definition.
These are facts:



Pain is nose torture.

Pleasure is burying your face in something.




Final observations:

The pain of the 10 seconds of Unpleasure far outweighed and outlasted the minute of Pleasure every time.
And yet.
It may speak something of the dilemmas of human nature that in spite of this,
it was worth it.
Maybe it was the back-to-back pairing of pleasure and pain that brought to light the tendency to take for granted the humdrum mediocre moments of which my day is built. But I would still endure each Unpleasure again and again to receive the little Pleasures. The pains remind me that I'm alive and the pleasure remind me how much the minutes of my life are here to be enjoyed.