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Pain Booty Productions, LLC

©2009 David Boyne

"The pain body, when it has taken you over, will create a situation in your life that reflects back its own energy frequency for it to feed on. Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy."

Darth Vader Eckhart Tolle

This morning, rising from bed promptly at 4:30, I took a brisk walk.

Arriving at the bathroom, I peed. I then took another brisk walk, retracing the route to my bed. In hiker’s parlance, this is known as an “out and back,” as opposed to a “loop.” Back in bed by 4:32, I rolled onto my left side and performed breathing exercises while in a semi-conscious state. Eventually, I rolled onto my right side and performed breathing exercises while in a semi-unconscious state. An hour later, I rose from the dead. I mean, bed.

Invigorated after having performed my morning routine of calisthenics, it was my intention to work on my novel, the seed of which had been planted in my fertile imagination back in 1987, when I lived in Manhattan. I ain’t bragging, but anybody in grade school can do the math and validate the fact that I have been continuously working intermittently on my novel for 22 years.

However.

Before I could pass into the alternative reality of my novel, set—surprise!—in 1987 Manhattan, I would need to take a hot shower, as one’s personal hygiene is important when traveling, whether on a crowded flight from San Francisco to Sydney, or a mind-trip back to 1987 Manhattan.

Entering the shower, I got all wet.

And then, I began thinking of Eckhart Tollé’s concept of The Pain Body. According to Tollé, we all carry around inside of us a separate yet integrated living energy, which is made of and contains all of the pain from our past that we will not let go. To that living reservoir of past pain, we continually add the pain from our present that we will not let go.

And then, I lathered my right underarm with antibacterial and perfumed soap.

And then, I thought how Tollé says this Pain Body inside us, being made of pain, needs more pain, in forms ranging from sadness to anger to violence, in order to live. Just as we, made of stardust, need more stardust, in forms ranging from sunlight to cheeseburgers to micro-brewed beer, in order to live.

And then, I lathered my left underarm with antibacterial and perfumed soap.

And then, I thought how The Pain Body, being no different from any other Life form, follows the Prime Directive: Preserve Thyself, and—in a word favored by the obscure sage from America’s rough and tumble Gas Light era, Wallace Deloit Wattles—increase. All Life forms come with a wired-in need to increase, to grow, to live long and prosper. Nothing arrives on earth and just sits here. Everything moves, even the rocks and tectonic plates. This innate drive to increase that all Life has, explains why the Pain Body does not hesitate to seize control of us, whenever it needs to eat, and either revisit old pain, or create new pain.

And then, I rinsed the antibacterial and perfumed soap from my underarms.

And then, I thought how The Pain Body is addicted to pain for the same reason weight-lifters and designated hitters and high school footballers are addicted to steroids—to become bigger, stronger, faster. Some people have an Atlas-like Pain Body. Our society calls these people, depending on their sex, Dicks, or Bitches. Other people have a 98-pound weakling Pain Body. Our society calls these people, regardless of sex, Boring. Still, wherever we find ourselves on this continuum, we all have a Pain Body that is unique to us, and like a volcano, it can be big or small, dormant or active. But unlike a volcano, it is never ever extinct.

And then, I lathered my face with antibacterial and perfumed soap.

And then, I thought how, until two years ago, I had no awareness of Tollé’s amazing insight and metaphor of The Pain Body. And how different everything looked, the moment I viewed the jumbled and confusing experiences I had experienced during a half-century of roaming through the volcanic world of human emotions, through the prism of The Pain Body metaphor. The jumbled confusion of my emotional history fell into well-organized, cross-indexed, easily referenced order, as if a hyper-efficient librarian had applied the Dewey Decimal system to it. All this, simply from viewing my own emotions and the emotions of others, from the new perspective that everyone is traveling through Life with their Pain Body riding shotgun.

And then, I lathered my hair with anti-dandruff and perfumed shampoo.

And then, I said aloud, “What if as many people were fully aware of The Pain Body, as are fully aware of Angelina Jolie’s sexual history and preferences?

And then, I peed in the shower. (I always take advantage of the advantages of living alone, including drinking straight from the orange juice carton; invoking the 5-second rule when I notice the food on the floor, even if it fell there yesterday; and not having to look around to see who might be near before I fart.)

And then, I thought how Tollé had, by naming his great insight with such an accurate, but unattractive, off-putting name, made a big marketing mistake. I mean, who in her right mind wants to embrace an idea named The Pain Body?

And then, I forgot to close my eyes before rinsing the anti-dandruff and perfumed shampoo from my hair. My two outer eyes were blinded, but my third eye, known here in the West as my mind’s eye, was wide open and seeing things as sharply as Ted Williams seeing the seams on a 98 mile-per-hour fastball.

And then, I thought, what if Tollé’s concept of The Pain Body were given a Total Makeover? Starting by renaming it The Pain Booty?

And then, I turned off the water from the shower and began toweling off the water from my skin.

And then, I looked at the strange guy in my bathroom mirror and told him, “You should write about this.”

And then, I felt truly happy, truly excited, and truly relieved, as a heavy 22-year-old burden went away. (I speak not of a daughter or son finally moving out of the house, but of the novel I had been supporting since its accidental birth in the wild seeding of my Manhattan years.) I felt no guilt, no shame, and no blame, for having chosen to not work on my novel. I would be writing, after all; just on a different project. My novel could wait until tomorrow, which I had learned from someone else’s novel, “is another day!” But this day, I would follow my errant bliss, and work on Pain Booty Productions, LLC.

(A note to less highly evolved writers: With decades of practice, grasshoppers, you too can reach my exalted level and earn a black belt, ninth degree, in the subtle art of procrastination. Just be patient. And don’t keep at it.)

And then I spent, or wasted, depending on your point of view, 1.67 hours of my once-in-a-lifetime Life, happily and feverishly writing down how the makeover of Eckhart Tollé’s Pain Body into the world-wide commercial phenomenon, The Pain Booty, would be accomplished.

Wandering through the fresh new catacombs of this alternate world, I hired a top-flight, jargon generating Manhattan Public Relations-Advertising Agency-Image Consulting-Spin Doctoring firm. They took it from there, hiring James Earl Jones as the voice of The Pain Booty, and an obscure bunch of nubile cheerleaders turned porn stars turned dancers to be the Pain Booty Girls. The entire research staff of the Agency flew to France, dedicated to spending more of the wide-open expense account I had endowed them with. And there, they discovered a new dance craze, The Tectonik. They nipped that bud, persuading the copyright holder of the Tectonik dance, haircut, wardrobe, and plethora of merchandising products, to sign over all rights in an ironclad-bullet-proof contract. He then bought and retired to a small island in the Caribbean to begin developing multiple expensive addictions. And the Agency staff and 17 cases of champagne, flew back to Manhattan and rebranded it all, the dance, the haircut, the accessories, the record label, as Pain Booty Productions, LLC.

We unveiled it in not one, but three, Super Bowl commercials.

And then, I stopped writing, and I went to my job. The one that pays me with money.