Viv asked me to pull the rotten old carpet off the staircase to the basement today and I’m about a quarter of the way done, after about two hours. I’m finding it utterly dreadful, which is interesting. At one of the parties we attended over the weekend, some friends were volunteering to help with one another’s demolition jobs on each other’s houses, fairly rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect.

My father tried to teach me how to take pride in physical labor well performed, and I did learn how to really throw myself into a task. Yet for me the physical and emotional sensations are very much akin to the physical and emotional sensations I recall from the numerous involuntary physical attacks that were directed toward me as an adolescent by peers, of a sort. I dread the flow of adrenaline and feel only a seething resentment, mixed with regret and a kind of detached curiosity, as I feel my body fail in my demands upon it. Afterward, just as in my many beatings, I will rerun the tasks over and over in my mind in a kind of loathesome savor, dwelling with extreme detail on each way that I failed to perform an action that would have made the experience more successful.

The only way I ever have noted that I can overcome this sense of dread and alienation in physical activity is to fly into a rage, which of course leads to undesirable results and further compounds the negative reinforcement. I find it quite curious that until now I’ve never made the connection between my experiences of American violence and my own deep-seated hatred and fear of certain kinds of physical activity.