Mini SCENEprofiles Interview 
with Master Alan, Writer 

masteralan50@yahoo.com 

MASTER ALAN: "I’m fifty-five years old. At the age of three, I was diagnosed with acute glomerulonephritis. My parents were told that I would not survive to adulthood. I spent three months in a hospital and went through a spinal tap. Over the course of the next ten years, I was in and out of hospitals. The doctors and nurses who cared for me did not intend any abuse, but there was also no recognition that the child was something more than an object of treatment. The child’s screams were ignored and no doctor or nurse ever talked to the child to explain what was coming or why he was suffering. There was nothing malicious about this neglect. The doctors and nurses were simply trying to distance themselves from my pain. They were acting professionally.

"The child was convinced that he suffered because he masturbated. So he promised G*d he would stop. But he couldn’t stop. It was the only path he had to relief from the nightmarish dread of hospital existence. Naturally, G*d continued to make him suffer.

"During one particularly painful event, the child had an out of body experience. In fact, the child no longer had a body at all. There was no pain… just extreme joy. He later came to realize that pain and pleasure were part of a connected continuum… extreme pain had led him to an intensely pleasurable spiritual experience. The extreme pain had obliterated his memory and his sense of existing in a body. There was more to life than his body and his name. He also realized that G*d was not punishing him for his sins. He had been freed from his guilt."

"SS: Was this related to or independent from your religious upbringing (or lack of it)? In what ways?

MA: "I was born in 1947. My grandfather had come to the New York from Bukovina (Ukraine today) in 1901. Between 1942 and 1944, our entire extended family was exterminated in a place called Transnistria. Just as the doctors could not discuss disease with the child, the parents could not discuss the Holocaust. But the child was aware that something was terribly wrong with the world he lived in. There was far too much pain around him. In every direction as far as the horizon there was pain. Others seemed able to ignore it, to pretend that somehow everything was all right. But this child could not ignore the pain. It stuck him down regularly. Watching over him was the Angel of Death."

As a child, I began putting things into my penis and into my rear while I masturbated. I especially liked the sensation of being filled up and then emptied out. And my dreams were nightmares from which there was no escape.

"I loved watching the early horror movies … Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein… I was drawn to the sexual subscript – especially the idea of falling in love and then with the rise of the full moon, discovering that your lover is a monster who will cause you terror and pain. The werewolf, is drawn to one he loves the most. And there was something I noticed that others seemed to miss – the monsters all had souls. They were tormented spiritual beings seeking love in a demented world. And their suffering was not due to any sin they had committed. They were innocent victims. I found myself drawn to tormented souls – wanting to bite and be bitten."

MA: "I’m attracted to survivors. The connections I make are not typical. There is something mystical about the connections. In Germany in 1978, I met a strange dark man with flat face in an SM bar and fell in love. It turned out, he was a Peruvian Indian. His entire family had been exterminated and he fled to Germany to escape the death squads. How had we found each other? It’s always like that. My lovers have been survivors of incest or rape or genocide. Survivors have a special connection to each other. But sometimes I wonder if we are not all survivors. And sometimes I wonder if any of us have actually survived. In the death camps they would have selections. It you survived one selection there was always another."

MA: "I grew up in New York and was privileged to study in an old fashioned European style yeshiva. Students lived in the school. Classes were six days a week from 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM. I learned to walk the streets of ancient Sura and Pumpidisa. Aramaic was my second tongue.

"To escape the anti-Semites and bullies, I went to study 'marshal arts' at the American Buddhist Academy. They tricked me. They weren’t teaching marshal arts… they were teaching Buddhism. My instructors were Japanese Buddhists… very very gentle souls. They taught me how to deal with pain and how to take a fall.

"I studied Yoga and Zen as well. I remember sitting in a full lotus, my body in pain… and hearing sensei call out to no one in particular, 'embrace the pain, for it is life.'"

MA: "Be careful. It’s dangerous out there. Safety does not come from trusting your feelings. It comes from following sensible rules."

MA: "These experiences are my life."

MA: "The two together have taught me tolerance."

MA: "I have no idea. I have been very lucky. I sometimes think an angel is watching over me."

MA: "Yes. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes: He who increases his wisdom, increases his pain."

Conversely, the acceptance and love of pain, increases ones wisdom by allowing one to experience life. As sensei said so long ago: 'embrace the pain, for it is life.'"

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Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene (http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html). She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn , Vermont 's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com  or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications