Why I am a Sadist

Come along, my friend, come along
Get aboard and ride this train
Nothing on this train to lose
Everything to gain

One lesson I have learned over the past 15 years is that those with "nothing to lose and everything to gain" are the last people in the world who will board this train. In 1967 or 68 I saw the film of the Peter Weiss play, Marat/Sade. A while later I found that a nearby library had an LP recording of the performance and I listened to it over and over, taking to heart the Marquis de Sade's speech to Marat as Charlotte Corday was trying to gain entry to his apartment:

SADE: that's how it is Marat
That's how they see your Revolution
They have toothache
and need their teeth pulled
Their soup's burnt
They shout for better soup
A woman finds her husband too short she wants a taller one
A man's shoes pinch
he sees his neighbor's shoes fit comfortably
A poet runs out of poetry
and desperately gropes for new concepts
For hours an angler casts his line
Why aren't the fish biting
And so they join the revolution
thinking the revolution will give them everything
a fish
a new pair of shoes
a poem
a new husband
a new wife
So they storm all the citadels
and there they are
and everything is just the same
the soup burnt
verses botched
a worn and stinking partner in bed
and all that heroism
which drove us down to the sewers
well we can talk about it to our grandchildrem
if we have any grandchildren