Ryan Dull | 9
it up as they went along. They were used to simple targets—“I want to lose 190 pounds,” “I want to grow four inches,” “I want one side of my body to be huge and one side to be tiny so that people believe me when I tell them that I am a professional tennis player”—and this project was so complex and precise that no one was quite sure how to approach it. “Raw beef, and lots of it,” said one, and instructed the man with the song in his heart to run up and down library stairs. “Grass,” said another. “Steamed. Not too much,” and he locked the man with the rapidly swelling physique in a sauna with a set of kettlebells. The man with the plan and the improbable cholesterol count gave up tailored formalwear for sweat pants, unable to guess what size or shape he would be at the end of the day when he drove, exhausted, to his telescope.
It was working, sort of. Certainly the musculature was improving, and the modeling counselor was making great strides with his posture. But the face was all wrong and the hands weren’t quite the right size and his back didn’t curve in quite the right way. The physical consultant gave his client the number of a plastic surgeon whose team had, in the last year alone, consulted on a sitting Senator’s sex-reassignment operation and performed a full face replacement on an owl trainer who had lost control of his act on live television. Both had been stirring successes. That was impressive. More importantly, neither had become a media circus. That was very nearly miraculous.
The doctor was a forever-labcoated man with a fake German accent. He believed that his patients would expect an experimental surgeon to be German and he was right—on average, he booked 17% more appointments than similarly-qualified colleagues per annum. He took his new patient’s photograph and smiled broadly and began scheduling procedures with names like “Bone Filing” and “Throat Masculation” and “Jaw Refragmentation.” The man with the sensitive jaw furrowed his brow and suggested that fragmentation sounded like a step in the wrong direction. The doctor gave a hearty, fake German laugh and patted his patient on the head and said, “All in good time, child.”