Why, oh why, do we like to be abused?

What is it about human nature that when people treat us bad we like them more? That when we get abused, we go back slavishly looking for seconds? It seems we have been hardwired to like the hand that beats us. To run after the thing that rejects us. It’s like that old Groucho Marx joke: “I would not join any club that would have someone like me for a member.” Why do we do this to ourselves? What part of our brain is it satisfying?

I’ve got this little Italian restaurant on the corner from my house. It is best described as average. The food is nice. The wine is ok. The décor is run of the mill, typical Italian. Nothing special. But this place is an institution, an icon in my hood, people love it, the place is full every night. The reason? The owner. He is a real bastid. And that’s being polite. He never smiles, is always grumpy and treats you real bad. In theory his restaurant shouldn’t be a success, but it is.

The day we bought our house, the previous owners gave us a glowing review of the place. But warned us not get on the owner’s bad side because he’d ban us for life. These guys (they were a gay couple) spoke of this Italian dude and his trattoria like one of Pastor Ray’s converts speaks about the Jesus Dome. Lord have mercy, I thought, this restaurant is going to blow us away. And how could I not be excited? When it comes to restaurants, gay couples know their game. They are the original dinks. Loads of bucks, no kids, and a taste for la dolce vita. If there is a restaurant worth knowing, they’ve been there. Several times. And on top of that, these two bros own a high-end fashion mag, so they’ve got the class knob dialled right up to eleven. It was as if Epicurus himself had given us the nod. I was on my way to Italian nirvana.

This story should now end with me saying that we went there only once. The owner treated us like lepers so we decided never to go again. But that would make me a stronger man than I am. No, I go there all the time. I endure that insolent little man pointing me to the rubbish table in the entrance, while a good table sits empty waiting for that “right” person who never arrives. At least I got a table unlike the people waiting outside. I forgive the waiter his temporary amnesia on the nights that he decides that he no longer speaks English or Dutch. I smile timidly when the owner looks with disdain at the money I put on the counter. Like a six-year-old in a sweet shop trying to buy a R1 lolly with a 50c piece. I gush with pride when he decides that he will take our order personally, only to be let down when he gets mine wrong. And if someone asks where to go for Italian, this will always be my first suggestion. I have succumbed to this Italian gastropath. Where Seinfeld had his soup Nazi, I have the pepperoni Mussolini. But it is not just me who loves to be abused by this spaghetti cowboy. Every friend, every neighbour has a story from L’Angoletto — a name that means little lamb. The little lambs being us. Whistling and smiling and skipping all the way to the slaughterhouse. When did this happen? When did we lose our independence? When did we stop being free-thinking adults? Why do we give away our right to a dignified night for mediocre osso bucco served up by a bully?

Nils Bejerot called it the Stockholm Syndrome. The loyalty that a hostage begins to feel towards his or her captors. Like Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army. They kidnapped her and put her blindfolded in a closet. They abused her until she fell in love with them. Two months later she was robbing banks in the name of the SLA. Kicking down doors, machine gun in one hand and liberation pamphlet in the other. She even went to jail for them. From rich bird to jailbird, Patty is proof of the worst kind of that old adage: treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen.

Remember when your boys used to say that to you at school? That rugby jock mate or the surfer bro on North beach who got all the stink-finger that you never had. That dude who was a real asswipe, and treated his girls accordingly. But somehow they just kept coming back. When you left school, you thought things would change but they didn’t, the rugby jock and the surfer bro handed their batons onto the artist and his other buddy, the muso.

… He made you cry again? … No, it’s not like that, he’s an artist, he just feels things more intensely than you and me …

No, he’s just a c__t. A bastid who uses tantrums to hide his lack of talent. Another rat who has realised the easiest way to the top is using us as his stepping stones. But don’t worry we all fall for them. Girls, guys, men, women, kids and adults. We have all got that friend, that lover, that colleague or that place where we go to have our egos flogged. It is the reason The Crystals sung the song: He hit me and it felt like a kiss. Because it really does. We love to be abused.

So much so, we made it a religion. Back in the early days (like the cave days) we sat around a minging little fire, cold and wet, the sorriest excuse for a primate the world had ever seen, and we decided to invent ourselves a god. Did we make him a nice chap? A friendly old boy who liked a beer and a laugh on a Friday night? No, we made him a vengeful god, a god filled with wrath and anger. An omnipotent bully. A god who could smite us down in a second and often did. A god who would turn us into pillars of salt, sell us into slavery and give us up for jailbait at the drop of a hat. And to add insult to injury, we decided he would be eternally disappointed in us. It was that last bit that really did us in. If you belong to any one of the major Abrahamic faiths, you’ll know what I am talking about. And that includes the atheists, because there is no such thing as an atheist, just people pretending to not believe. From the day we exit planet womb, we’re on the run. Suspected of a whole range of metaphysical crimes. And no matter where we hide, no matter where we go, our god (oh, yes, he is one in-the-same dude) has his big beady eye on us, just shaking his head, waiting for us to screw up. I even get scared writing this down. I’ve unplugged the aerial. I’m sitting in the middle of the room away from the windows, wearing big rubber shoes. You know you’re scared when you resort to wearing Crocs (BTW. Crocs count as a cardinal sin or bestiality or some other dirty crime. Don’t do it.)

There’s probably a few Hindus and Buddhists out there, chuckling away, thinking you above all this silly religious masochism. Well, don’t. You invented this little thing called karma. You came up with the rule that somehow if something bad happens to you, it must be your fault. At some point in this life or another you did something to deserve it. A dog bites you on the bollocks, it’s your fault. A waiter gets your order wrong, it’s your fault. Doesn’t matter that the scabby little blighter did it on purpose, just to mess with your head, you got what was coming to you. That’s celestial bullying taken to the next level.

How did we land up here? Why do we do it to ourselves? How did I land up going back to L’Angoletto tonight? Even after I started writing this article! I guess me, you, us, we’re just suckers for abuse.