RE: (no subject)
To: amylouise@outlook.com
From: johnnysundancekid@gmail.com
Sent: 03:34am | 1 image attached
Look look look look — Amy. I wanted a m o u s t a c h e. There that’s all so now you know. But you always knew, didn’t you. Because you know how I get whenever I see Robert Redford or someone who looks like him from when he had his in the 70s. You said darling you know you really do look just like him and although that warmed me up every single time we both know that no, I am really close to looking like him: fair blonde hair strong jaw deep blue eyes fine. But never the real deal because I have no capacity to grow. You might as well have said that yourself then rather than wait for me to admit it for you here, Amy. Why??? Because that’s the whole reason I got into all that clean living shit in the first place, why I started running 5k two times a week then four times a week then five times 10k a week, getting my time under one hour remember that one day and why I also started eating clean and incorporating carrots, bananas, avocados, natural fats and garlic and kale into my diet as well as organic balsamic and wholegrain mustards and olive oil to mix really good French dressing in the bowls from ur mum I KNOW I’m not meant to use and I don’t anymore because yeah I scratched the bottom making all those lovely and delicious salads for you. And that’s why I started moisturising my face with all ur yummy oils and pastes that smell of caramel, you know the ones you had wondered were going missing, and why I also bought that rolly wheel thing online with the tiny spikes, so I could mow and prick the barren strip of skin under my nostrils cos apparently piercing little holes opens up the pores, and also why I smothered my face in that meringuey foam that expands to triple the size when you put it on your hand, the stuff which I said to you come look at the first time and I told you this was shaving cream but was actually minoxidil, a violent chemical Americans call RoGain, you know that stuff for bald guys and which hurts when you have eczema? I know it was weird, that sudden change, sure. But that was me trying to change, Amy. And I thought it would work but hey ho ALL TO NO FUCKING AVAIL because clean living clean eating stabbing urself in the face and slapping on minoxidil DOESN’T DO SHIT to put so much as a thistle on my face!! Six months I tried that remember? Trust me those were the good days, but already u were pissed. Why? I was just trying to get the thing to grow!!!!
And that’s why I then tried biohacking. Yeh, I figured if Jason can grow a beard all I needed to do was get myself the body of an 18 year old. And I’m sorry Jason and I bonded through this period, by the way. But it was our little project together, which is why I bought him a place on that online course led by Dr Pidginsky as well. And alongside doing all the modules and contributing to the webinars he took excellent notes for me when I did things like shave my eyebrows so I could study the way in which they grew in order to emulate the same on my mouth because if there why not here? U know I came to resent my eyebrows, Amy – do u know what that actually feels like? I bet u don’t, but I do, and those feelings are also relayed in Jason’s excellent notes. You know Jason kept me grounded. He said to me when I discarded the minoxidil and quit puncturing my flesh with that weird wheel you don’t need to feel dumb dad, really, this is a process – one we went about together. So I swapped volume and intensity out for precision and form. My muscles were only allowed to measure to around 11 inches on my arms; 17 inches around my thighs; 34 around the chest etc. I restricted sleep to only four hours per night. Regarding consumption I kept the carrots and eating like a rabbit but got specific about intake instead and Jason did too: no more than 800kcals a day we said; 20 minutes sunlight max; 5,000 ml water; 10 cups of seeds and pulses and black beans and kidney beans only raw broccoli and asparagus because that’s what Dr Pidginsky recommends and so we became bloody birds together, pecking away at wheat and shit no sugar, no salt, no jam and hell no to alcohol while you carried on eating your pasta with your fork opposite us at the table. We asked if you wanted to join us and you said no fucking way, but all we were doing was turning ourselves into perfect forms, Amy. We were shaving our age, trimming years off every week first by five then by ten then fifteen. Until that one day you were back from work late and Jason had organised that surprise party with the neighbours and you said what the hell? It’s not your birthday John, and Jason stepped in and said mum, yes it is, it’s been re-decided: Dad’s date of birth now, according to the Kellman-Brief calendar combined with his new BMI, means he’s just turned 21! Yay, everyone! You were having none of it, remember how when they finished clapping you poured a bucket of sauvignon blanc into your glass and went toward the stairs without saying anything, and I said honey, you know one glass of that adds three years to your age according to the Kellman-Brief Longevity Tracker, and you said fuck you, John – right in front of all our friends – before heading straight up to bed without dinner. Sure, after that Jason and I decided Get Real, Dad, and we concluded I would probably never make it back to his age BUT 21 was pretty good going, and maybe if he stayed with me in my routine for a while longer he could stay and maintain where he was at 18, and that you know my own quest could lead by example to his own specific one. You stay that way I said to him, never get old I said, promise me. And he said I will, dad – I mean, I wont, dad, and then we hugged. It was Jason’s attitude in this time that got me through all of our shit you know, and it meant not once did I ever come to resent that gorgeous red and gold brush of hair he himself could prune and trim away at in the morning. I never meant for him to cut that thing off, you know, I never asked and I do hope he has now got it back. But for me six months of this hacking stuff again and again and again I tried and every day nothing. None of Pidginsky’s modules worked, and the only visible results I got were the image of me arriving at 3am into our bathroom alone, putting on the light and seeing myself standing at the edge of my his sink of our his and hers sinks, swaying and exhausted, looking scared, with you in the spare room sleeping on your own at this point and your toothbrush and oils no longer there and me looking dead ahead at nothing, not a fur, not a fucking whisker, just my waxed, bare, purple-grey lips and my fluorescent cling-film wrapped face, all gaunt with sharp protruding lines of dry bone pushing out the oily layer, looking yellow and shiny, oily, because I’d bought and kept using that OkayOil! brand you use that smells like chocolate even after you’d gone – the effect of which was I was shiny, like my face was cling-filmed, and still, still without that long-sought after moustache.
Then of course came the last attempt. I needed to eat and sleep because the real doctors insisted I was malnourished, as you will also remember because my ringing them was your recommendation, remember when you called me from your mum’s. Well in the third six months I’d collected deficiencies that could lead to diseases and ailments and conditions that I could now see emerging right there in the mirror, conditions like, as they had predicted, diabetes, or, septicaemia, cysts, or – and I was really surprised to hear – syphilis? And so I listened to them because I do listen, and I took a break in my quest for my moustache and remember you moved back in for a while after that and it was all good. For a time I forgot all about it and I got back to good health I wasn’t shiny anymore and we held hands again for the first time after that talk on the bridge when we decided to move on from all this and I made that promise, and for a month or so we really did, remember, until I broke that promise when we watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to remind ourselves of the old days and I panicked on seeing Robbie and I rushed over to my computer and clicked on that special offer I received after the course ended and I arranged to meet up with Doctor Pidginsky in the flesh following an immediate exchange of emails, flying to Prague without a minute to lose the next weekend where he told me exactly what I needed to do and that he had all the parts and materials he needed ready to operate but that it will cost me twenty five thousand euros. So yeah, I kept quiet about this for a while, and during when I started to sell everything you me and Jason own behind your back. My wedding ring first and then yours, and I’m sorry for starting with those I didn’t mean anything by doing it in that order. And yeah the shares from my dad Jason was meant to access at 25 we were getting ready to surprise him about, but at the time I still thought there was a chance he would never make it to that age because of his earlier promise. Then I sold my own, I sold the Saab then your Astra, and I sold your dad’s Gucci and Hermes and Zeno ties, my watches and your jewellery and the china, and gave up going behind your back eventually because I needed you to sign on the sale of our house and that’s when you went fuck it and left me for good. Of course we still have it, by the way, I’m in it now, but you can tell Jason not to worry and that it’s yours, because turns out I had WAY more than enough from before to go to Dr Pidginsky for his procedure by then, more than enough, to go pay. Which I did last month ☹ But u wouldn’t know, because you won’t pick up my calls. And now I’m augmented, Amy. When I got to his clinic in Prague it was all dusty and black and there were splatters of blood and he said to me when I laid down on his plastic wrapped bed ok, Mr John, we will start with your neck first. And then without asking he pumped me with morphine and removed my spine while I was awake. He drilled and drilled and then laid down his tools and then he pulled on the end of it and held it above me from the tail and it looked like a fish that was wiggling having just been removed from saltwater. Then he set it down and picked up his drills and replaced my old spine with this heavy metal zip that you can see now on the outside of my back, it bends down from the bottom of my skull to my ass. That will help your posture, Dr Pidginsky said once that was done, and now Mr John we move onto your mind. Yes, yes, patience Mr John, moustache comes at the end, he said, but next this, and he cut out this rectangular incision above my ear and slotted in this stick like you put in a computer to save files and now I have this implant that feeds data into my brain and shows up as these numbers and code like 0000011102020 all the time and says loading… whenever I think I’m going to fart. So now I’m seeing reams and reams of code – but please Dr Pidginsky, I asked then, what about my facial hair? He says patience, patience Mr John, you can have one but only with the other, and not the other way round. Then he smiles and says yes next its your arms and he puts me under, and then I wake up after I don’t know how long and he says look, see, and so I look down and see now they’re plated with ceramic – I don’t know what he’s done with them but I can move them just fine but they’re now hard like I’m a mannequin and when I clench they produce blades from my wrists, two massive cutting knives from these metal circles that when pressed down like those old cigarette lighters in cars. Finally for my eyes, he said, which he took from me and changed out for these glass balls that now spin when I’m tired though I can still see and apparently it’s so I can analyse things around me that also show code. I was awake for the so much of the procedure, Amy, and I saw how he threaded my new glass eyes in with thin fibre wire, the strands dangling from his pinched fingers he held up above me, and now all I see is code in front of what’s there. Then I went out, apparently for a few days, and then woke again and blinked and I said Dr Pidginsky is it done? And Dr Pidginsky said All good, Mr John, you are awake. Yes, it is done. I sat up and asked if I could look in the mirror and the first thing I see is there was no moustache. How long do I have to wait? I asked and he said just give it time Mr John, go home, give it time. I went home and gave it time Amy, and I kept going again and again into the bathroom, up to your hers sink of our his and hers sinks, the first few days around 6am because that’s when I usually woke up, then the next days around 8am, then 11am, then 2pm, then 4pm and now midnight because I can’t sleep anymore and I can’t go outside because I am a monster, Amy, because I’m a fucking cyborg. And now I look nothing like Robert Redford. Not even close. I don’t have eyes. My skull is bare, I need RoGain. My jaw is plated with metal that connects around the back of my neck to the top of my new spine where another button I don’t know what does is and I’m no longer shiny because what was my once skin is now replaced with blackish-silver metal like a fucking gun.
Anyway, that was the last six months. Still no moustache, not a thistle, and no you. Obviously we never had that other talk we planned. I have now accepted the fact I have no capacity to grow facial hair. Isn’t that exactly what you wanted? Why did you go Amy. I promise you I’ve changed, I swear, since we last spoke. And I promise I will change again if you need me to. If you will have me back, obviously.
Johnny xxx
