Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
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:11:02
and I hear my parents wake up,
walk down the hall

:11:05
to the kitchen and walk back--
what are you gonna say?

:11:08
"A burglar was in here."
:11:11
So I ruined almost every door
at my parents' house

:11:14
by tying belts to my wrists
:11:16
and suspending myself from the door
as I was lifting my feet off.

:11:19
So the hinges would just pull--
:11:21
nobody could understand
why the doors never closed.

:11:25
I used to draw blood.
I used to put pins in a belt,

:11:28
and whip myself with the belt.
This is in high school.

:11:31
I didn't realize--
I looked back,

:11:33
there was blood
all over the bathroom tiles.

:11:35
There's a knock on the door--
:11:38
"Bob, my cat just got hit by a car."
:11:41
Even then, in high school,
I had this Catholic guilt.

:11:44
I'm thinking, "See?
You do this and things go wrong.

:11:48
You do these things
and something happens.

:11:51
Put everything away,
don't ever do this again."

:11:54
And it lasted a month.
:11:56
To me he was the most normal,
the most--

:12:00
he had a weird sense of humor,
I knew that.

:12:03
But I didn't know
there was another side to him,

:12:07
that he kept very well hidden from us.
:12:08
- You had no idea?
- I had no--

:12:10
Absolutely not.
:12:12
And I'm still stunned by it,
because I sometimes

:12:15
go to bed at night thinking,
"Where was I?

:12:18
What was I doing that I did not know? "
:12:23
Because I thought I knew him.
I knew him better than anybody.

:12:27
And the strange part about it, is--
:12:30
we were probably the most
closely-knit family there could be.

:12:34
- And we didn't know--
- We always ate together,

:12:36
watched the same Tv shows together,
we were always very close.

:12:40
I started to read his book and I-
where was I?

:12:48
But he was very smart.
:12:51
And as I say, he is very disciplined.

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