Besides masochism, the other important thing in his life is cystic fibrosis, a disease he was born with and suffered with all his life. He believed that his masochism was a way to dealing with the disease. It was a way he found to control his body and the pain it experienced. But we are all sick. We all suffer from a chronic, life-long disease. The disease is mortality. Because we are mortal, we are all subject to sickness, pain, humiliation, death and decay. As a mortal, I can identify with Bob Flanagan even though I don't have cystic fibrosis.

In the film, Bob Flanagan exhibits sense of humor and an openness, an honesty that amounts to transparancy. He sings and talks about details of his mortality that most of us would hide in embarassment. Such transparancy is rarely encountered and it is always liberating. Finding it makes one all-too-aware of its absence elsewhere. It's strange how seldom in the alternative culture one encounters true transparancy. Most "cool" people are highly guarded, protective of their image. In their presence, we are all likely to feel a similar need to be guarded. It makes any real communication difficult at best. It keeps us isolated and alone. Bob Flanagan shows awesome courage in many ways. But, perhaps, it is here that he has showed his most courageous side. Just being himself, warts and sickness and phlegm and all, requires the highest courage anyone can achieve.

In conjunction with V. Vale and Andrea Juno with ReSearch Magazine, he has written a book called "Bob Flanagan: Super Masochist." In the film, he appears in his "Super Masochist" persona, wearing a cape, his tit-rings, color, wrist and ankle cuffs, hands on hips, adopting a "superman" pose. It's an irony not lost on those of us raised on "Superman" comics. That "superman" was almost invincible because he wasn't really human. He came from another planet and "could leap tall buildings in a single bound." Bob Flanagan is flesh and blood like all of us. His heroism is that he achieved transcendence of mortality's limitations, not by fleeing into the realms of pure spirit, but by delving ever more deeply into the pit of worms and death and decay. The body is perishible and we are all it's prisoners. We have been shown one way to deal with that reality by a master shaman.