Confession: I have pleasures that really shouldn't be pleasures

Am I the only one who derives pleasure from things that I really don’t have any business enjoying?

On these very pages I have shared the incredible joy I experience each time I take a shower with a brand-new cake of soap, fresh from the wrapper. I wrote about the fact that the intensity of happiness that this experience brings me is totally disproportionate to the significance of new soap. Many of you emailed me and sheepishly confessed to extracting a lot of pleasure from similarly seemingly mundane experiences.

Today I will share with you some pleasures that fall in the “you really shouldn’t enjoy that” category; pleasures similar to the one I once shared about the ecstatic feelings I acquire from going into other people’s bathroom. No one should be happy that they are busy crapping all over someone else’s porcelain bowl — but I do. I have even been known to whisper the words to myself: “This is someone else’s crapper, all praise to the highest.”

1. Animals killing humans
I know, I know. And I’d hang my head in shame if my head wasn’t so huge I’d topple over.

But I confess my sin. I’m a sucker for any story with the headline “Bull tramples matador to death”. I’ve actually been known to make a cut-out of such articles, folding them neatly into my pocket and taking them out to cheer myself up during long meetings. Especially if it’s an animal kept in captivity. You know, like a zoo.

Not that I minded too terribly when that crocodile dude got jabbed by a stingray either. I know, I know — I’m a horrible person. I mean, the guy had a family and everything. And I’m not even too sure why these things titillate my senses so much. I’m a flesh-eating whatever-the-hell is the opposite of a bunny hugger. But there’s just something about a horse flipping a jockey over its shoulder and performing an equestrian haka on his chest.

I know. It’s a deeply embarrassing thing to admit.

2. Getting lost
I was born with many defects such as a lack of class, fashion sense, integrity and common sense. But my favourite flaw is my lack of a sense of direction. I wouldn’t say that it’s a complete lack of a compass. I just have a malfunctioning compass that sends me in the wrong direction practically every time I try to get anywhere.

For instance, I can never find my way out of any building, even if I only entered it five minutes before. The last time I was at the SABC in Auckland Park I wandered the corridors for a full 20 minutes trying to find my way out. I finally stumbled into some basement dungeon where a bunch of expressionless people who looked like they hadn’t seen the light since the last millennium were performing what looked like some kind of satanic ritual. Or maybe they were just having a meeting.

But I get lost so often I feel uncomfortable when I’m not lost. I almost feel like I’m driving into some kind of trap. When I moved back to Jo’burg after first living here for a decade and a half ago, I never left my townhouse without first filling up my tank to the brim. I remember once driving from Bruma to see a friend in Meredale in the south and the trip taking me just less than three hours. Via Midrand. And I never panicked even once. As a matter of fact, it was quite a pleasant trip. I was having fun trying to imagine just how badly lost I was. I even cranked up the volume and had a mini soul classics concert.

3. Upsetting people
This is one of my special pleasures. I do not have to update this blog. But I sure as hell rob myself of many moments of sheer exhilaration by not writing. And I’m not even what you would call a provocative writer. Most of what I write falls in the “I could have said that” category. OK, sometimes I get attacks of mischief and become disagreeable.

But that’s an exception to the rule. And this is what gives me the greatest pleasure: reading the rant of a self-righteous individual who has been wound up to a near heart attack by some innocuous remark I threw in there as an afterthought.

My wife finds me and my antics quite boring. But it was not always that way. I used to have great fun with her when we first started dating before she figured out my strange fetish for upset people. She’d tell me she was feeling a little peckish, she was going to boil an egg, did I want one? I’d say yes. Twenty minutes later she’d return with three eggs, one for her and two for me.

Her: Baby, here are your eggs.

Me: Tennis balls.

Her: What’s that?

Me: These are not eggs, these are tennis balls. They could use them at Wimbledon. Jeez, how long did you boil these?

Her: B-b-but that’s not fair. You never said how you like them. OK, let me have those eggs back then …

Me: I thought we had agreed they’re tennis balls.

You get the gist. By the end of that exchange, she’d be close to tears and I’d be giggling my arse off. I know, I know.

4. Inhaling foul odours
Bad smells do not have the same effect on me as they do on other people. As a matter of fact, I find some odours that people can’t stand quite lovely. Some of them are everyday, innocent things such as raw eggs, raw onions, uncooked garlic and boiled cabbage.

Some of them are not so innocuous. Have you ever smelled anything so foul you just had to keep smelling it? And if you’re anything like me, keep smelling it until you realise, “I’m starting to enjoy this”? No? Granted, some smells are just too putrid for words, such as the rotting carcass of a wild animal in the bush.

I’m talking about absent-mindedly picking at the tender flesh between one’s athlete’s-foot-infested toes while curled up on a couch, reading a book. And then smelling the fingers and going: “Damn, that’s foul!” Two minutes later the fingers are back up again. Of course what you should be doing is going straight to the nearest sink and washing those fingers. But then you realise that if you did that your fingers will smell of soap, so you just keep sitting there enjoying the stench every once in a while.

But then again, maybe I’m the only one.

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