Though I once pretended to be a sadomasochist to get out of dating a man who looked like a snaggletoothed George Costanza, I am not really a sadist or a masochist. Still, I have occasional insights into those mindsets, most notably in the bathroom. Yes, it’s what you think:

Flossing.

My guilty secret is that I tend to go months or even years without flossing, not because I dislike it, but because I like it too much. The searing pain of the floss cutting into my gums is exquisite and accompanied by geysers of hot, sticky blood. When I finish, my mouth feels raw but immaculate: through suffering comes redemption. Because I don’t subscribe to a religion, I can’t get it any other way . . . and yet, I crave it. (Hairshirts and self-flagellation actually start making sense in the CVS dental care aisle.) At first, flossing once a day does the trick, but as my gums get tougher, I need more and more to get the same high. Two, three, four times or more; once I did it six times in one afternoon.

Pressing the floss deeper and deeper into the soft tissue between my teeth reminds me of a side stairway in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. There, on display, is a corpse encased in glass, sliced into one-inch segments so perfect, it might have been done by a laser beam. Gawkers who stumble upon this macabre exhibition can see everything, inside and out, of this poor, unsuspecting creature. I have recently begun to imagine, however, that the slices are less uniform, that they taper as they move up from the feet, toward the dead man’s jaw, and terminate between his teeth. I used to be horrified by this dead man, cut up like a salami. He haunted my dreams. But now I see that he is just me, preoccupied with flossing, with digging, cutting, slicing, bleeding, cleansing . . .

. . . oh yes, yes, YES!

(I recently purchased a vibrating flossing machine. Y'all may not be hearing from me for a while.)