Tasha Paul

A ROLE-PLAYING GAME
When I think about what I am most influenced by, it’s always the repulsive that
comes to mind. There’s no escaping it. It makes you look away - and then look
again. And again. And again. When there’s something off, that’s when it gets
interesting.

There’s the abject, which is the intellectual and safely distant version of the
abominable, and then there’s the instinctively tactile, the disgusting, the in your
face repulsive. It aggressively penetrates your eyes and ears and violates your
whole body until you struggle to breathe and everything inside you wants to get
out, wants to escape, but it won’t let you go, and you fight desperately to control
yourself while you just want to scream, gag, vomit & repeat.
When you can finally handle everything horrific that’s been thrown at you and
you’ve become obsessed by it, no longer can it be classified as repulsive, not by
you at least. You have turned into what they may describe as sadistic, filthy, a
creep, a pervert, a psychopath and, which is an added bonus, you may have
acquired a couple of new fetishes. Oh, how the taboo secretly lures you, seduces
you with the forbidden and fucks you over.

What is considered to be repulsive changes over time, depending on the context
and our cultural heritage. Covering each other with excrement is completely
hilarious when you’re a toddler, but if you’re a naked adult it will definitely be
frowned upon. Cutting open bodies is considered necessary when you’re a med
student under the watchful eye of your professor, but it is totally not accepted
under any other circumstance - unless you’re a doctor trying to save lives. And
yet these are examples of situations or actions some of us find overpoweringly
irresistible and totally hot. It turns you on no matter how much you are criticised,
condemned or even punished by law. It’s your kink.
So why does the repulsive attract? We are supposed to steer clear of things like
necrophilia, cannibalism and torture - isn’t empathy an acquired emotion? - and
feeling aroused by amputees is seen as totally shocking; how can it be seductive,
let alone cause arousal?

Probably because it touches you where and when you least expect it.
It makes you feel alive. Vibrantly glittering in the dirt.