You’re never supposed to tell, but the secret to a bed of nails is that it hurts. It hurts a lot. But generally speaking, you’re on your back for fewer than 90 seconds, and by the time the tender flesh of your back meets the cold, sharp tines of the nails, your brain has downshifted into pure animal machismo, since your showmanship is on the line, and you just keep talking. You have to, you’re committed now — you’re wearing a ton of makeup and some frilly underwear, and you’ve already explained to a room full of people what you’re doing there with a medieval torture device (which, per your particular style, is painted pink-and-black and shaped like a corset), and that what they are about to see is 100 percent the genuine article, not unlike those used by the very fakirs of India… In industry parlance, this is known as spieling.

Even if you had wanted to back out and spare yourself the pain before, you certainly can’t quit now, because there’s some rather large gentleman (or perhaps two smaller individuals, if you’re feeling especially showy this evening) hovering over you with one foot placed gingerly on your pelvis, and trying to gather the momentum to step up and put his other foot on your sternum.

In the middle of all of this, there’s a moment, a small moment that can’t last more than a second, when you’re staring past the looming giant standing on your heart, past the pain of the spikes in your skin and into the glare of the lights and you think to yourself, “y’know, I have a graduate degree and, yet, here is where I’ve chosen to be.” This thought lasts no longer than the blink of an eye.

Then, in the space of another infinitesimal moment … squish. A perfect stranger is standing astride your torso, and the soft, vulnerable tissues of your stomach are pressed down toward the earth, while the muscles stretched over the boniness of your back scream silently skyward. You are now securely pinned to 1,000 five-inch aluminum nails.

Now, if your volunteer (or “mark”) is a good choice on your part, they’ll remain stock still for a moment and then step gracefully off. If you’ve read them wrong and chosen poorly, they’ll wobble indecisively or plant themselves arrogantly, endlessly, as if they’ve just taken San Juan Hill.

Also, since we’re revealing trade secrets, a high pain threshold and a cavernous need for approval is probably why you have voluntarily crab-walked onto this contraption to begin with. Furthermore, you’ve taken that psychic gash and turned all around, so you’re able to sell a room full of strangers on the idea that this act of mild self-mutilation is actually a great feat of charm and skill. Your thoughts linger there for a moment, your mind managing to peel away — if only momentarily — from the physical sensation of your body being trapped and your skin being skewered. In another moment that's really no more than a few seconds but feels like an eternity … sweet release … you’re free of your volunteer/oppressor’s weight and … thunderous applause! You pull yourself off of the points of the nails and take your bows, blood coursing with adrenaline and adoration. Your ass looks like Braille, but otherwise no harm done.

At this moment I am unafraid and self-assured. I could live through anything.

I will need to call on this feeling when I wake up one particular night in a sweat. Violently rocked into a delirious sleep in the arms of morphine, I awake certain that just a moment before I was being pursued by the thought police and now all I really, really want is for them to remove the imaginary forks from my eyes and turn down the thermostat. How can I make this torture stop and why is it so hot? I hate being hot. Perhaps I can mention it to someone.

I’m about to say something about the unfairness of my inclusion in Clockwork Orange-style experiments and my ignorance of Beethoven when I notice that I’m intubated and stuck. Literally stuck: my body is a patchwork of tubes and needles — in my hands, my arms, even in my neck.

Now I remember: I checked into the hospital the day before for some routine surgery to remove a benign uterine tumor. Something went wrong and I started to bleed. And bleed. And bleed. This is not dystopian England, this is the ICU.

In the end, my little procedure required six hours in the OR, took more than 20 blood transfusions and extracted a nearly two pound tumor, which (to my disappointment) was not a parasitic twin, ossified fetus, or anything else I could jar up and roll into my act. I have come to consciousness to find I am now trapped in a dumb luck configuration of flesh, pain, and the slip of a knife. I am now agonizingly, frighteningly aware that I am, as sideshow banners promise, “Alive on the Inside.”

Now that I’m stuck here thinking back on the history of my body, it’s not as if I had ever achieved any kind of perfection or peace with it. Even if I had come from one of those plastic Visible Women kits, I reasoned, you’d find there were pieces missing, mismatched or that didn’t easily snap into place. Everything on the inside and the outside of my physical shell, if you asked me, was a crappy, ugly factory second that I was constantly at war with. That is, until I had discovered I was pain-proof, which you do quickly when faced with the prospect of lying on 1,000 aluminum nails or walking across broken glass as a form of public performance. From that perspective, my body was an asset and a rarity. The inconvenience of system failure was cutting into my business and I was mad.

From somewhere fuzzy, I remember my surgeon said to remove the breathing tube. With no voice, I’m left trying to indicate this by shuffling around in my bed. This gambit finally raises the attention and the ire of the snotty second-year intern in charge of my care.

“What?” she barks.

I point out the tube.

"What?” Her tone is not soothing. I suspect she may be one of the thought police, or at least an arrogant bitch. She finally picks up the clue and gives me a pen and paper.

“Dr. N. said remove the tube,” I scrawl. At least I think that’s what I wrote; it’s hard to get a grip on these things when your brain is swimming in medical-grade narcotics. I’ve dredged up my surgeon’s instructions from somewhere in the depths of my mind.

At this time my few memories of the past 24 hours come to me in small, brilliant flashes ... Being awakened in the recovery and told I’m bleeding and that I’m going back in to surgery for a possible hysterectomy… Waking up in the ICU, being told I was still “intact,” then somehow tears. Then something about the present … that it’s very early in the morning and that no one is coming to see me for several hours, so until then I am at this intern’s mercy.

“What is this? I can’t read this.” She turns to go back to her computer, unimpressed.

She’s leaving me. I’m frustrated, scared, and I want this thing out of my body, but it’s becoming frighteningly clear that I can’t talk, write, or charm my way out of this. These are my only defenses. All my life, I’ve depended on words for everything, and now they’re taken from me. I shuffle and point again, hold up the clipboard as if I have a point there.

“I tried a couple of hours ago,” she adds. “You weren't awake enough.”

"Well, I’m plenty awake now, asshole,” I think as loudly as I can.

Mute and powerless, my brain is scrambling around like a wounded animal searching for a hiding place. This is worse than pain, worse than delirium — this is actual torture. I’m trapped, and I’m flying on pure fear. I did not sign up for this.

I do not want it. It has not taken me long to learn to hate morphine. I do not want to sleep anymore, I do not want the wander the hallways of my subconscious searching for scraps of old movie subplots, I do not want to have my breathing done for me by a machine. I will free myself, I will start with the breathing tube.

Dr. Stupid Bitch, M.D. clearly doesn't know who she’s dealing with. I am the pain-proof girl and escape artiste. I have gone through two different straitjackets, 100 feet of rope and chain, and a miserable childhood without blinking an eye. I will formulate a plan and be out of this, as well. I’ll show her!

By the time I start pulling at everything it’s too late and I suddenly have everyone’s full attention.

“That’s it. Restrain her,” she orders and before I know it a pair of nurses are lashing me down and prepping more needles.

Inside, I’m frantically scraping the archives of my brain trying to remember the trick that a friend once showed me with a two-point restraint. I can’t remember ... I’m pulling up nothing. My arms have been taken from me and my thought process has been seized by a screaming animal terror about having my legs restrained as well.

Finally, I remember it … It’s slack! The secret to escape is slack. You just need to find the smallest amount of room to move and the rest is just mechanics. Giving yourself room to move, I recall, is the first step to escaping anything. I am trying to calm down enough to formulate a escape plan. I can do this, I can handle this, I can work any room, I can handle the needles and the nurses, if I can just find a way to get out of this gracefully. I’m thinking, formulating, finding the weak spots.

It’s no use. I’m stuck. Even as I scheme, my heart is pounding the drugs through my system, and I’m sinking back into the dark. This can’t be happening to me. I am the Lady Aye, Sweetheart of the Sideshow. I am the eater of fire, swallower of swords, and pain-proof girl. A pickled punk, Cardiff Giant and Feejee Mermaid stitched together from the scraps of everything funny, tragic and fabulous I’ve found along the way: a self-made freak able to withstand inhuman pain — at least for a little while.

The Lady Aye is a professional sideshow performer (rare double blockhead, fire eater, escapist, pain-proof girl, sword swallower, and grinder girl) and MC, and has worked with everyone from Rob Zombie to Cirque du Soleil.

Photo courtesy Ted D'Ottavio