Have you ever experienced this pain before? It’s a specific pain that I have in my arm. You have never felt it? That does not make you better or somehow more impervious to pain.

I learned this while my woman was in pain. I learned that I too can be in pain. It takes some time but I learned the night my woman was in pain and I was not, as I’d assumed I was, impervious to pain.

To briefly rehash: I had thought I was impervious, then turns out I was not.

She had said she had an ankle pain, and she was hobbled. She needed to steady herself on me. I said, are you sure that you have pain? I feel nothing, in my ankle. How can you be in pain if I feel so fine?

She remained steadfast.

Helping her up the stairs, I felt a knee give under her slight weight propped against me and I fell forcefully to the bottom of the stairs. They were made of wood. The pain was intense. My woman was fine. She’d held tightly to the banister and had not come tumbling after.

Which alerted me to a funny thing, pain, sensuous pain, is our first teacher. It is always the stick. It tells us what not to do.

That was the night I decided to use pain against every enemy I’d ever had, and even those who weren’t my enemies but might decide to stand in my way.