An Arab and a Jew enter a bar…
Yes, I know that sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it was actually the beginning of my life.
It was 1995, an Irish bar in Madison Square Garden, and a more innocent time when the most important geopolitical question facing the world was who is your favorite spice girl?
But enough autobiography. In reality, it was was the first of many jarring juxtapositions that define the world’s attitude to me:
…people don’t really like me
…I make them uncomfortable
…I don’t fit into the narratives they need to maintain their coherence.
Maybe it was the long hours fantasizing about revenge on the bullies that made me so cruel. Maybe I was just born like this. The irony is not lost on me that they spat on me and called me whore.
Sadistic Personality Disorder was taken out of the DSM in 1987 as part of that disease known as modernity and it’s most pernicious symptom, liberalism. It was thought that it might ‘stigmatize’ the diagnosed and so the category was absorbed into trait psychology, particularly under the umbrella of narcissism.
I object to this erasure of my identity. A sadist who receives a correct emotional moral and academic education can be a positive force in society and possess rare qualities which allow them to achieve things which others can’t.
I, unfortunately, did not receive such an education…