Day 10

Andaw

I wake up three hours later. Gilligan's masks don't seem to knock me out as strongly as ones I've had in the past. It must be because she does things a bit at a time. Spot a line? Send it off. Liver spot? Send it off. Most of my clients in previous incarnations have saved up their blips and sent them to me in concentrated masks, each marked with a red cross. I used to absolutely dread those. Three hours? More like three days at a time. I would wake up feeling like I'd swallowed a tub of butter and washed it down with sour milk. My limbs would ache constantly and the only activity I could muster would be to roll around in bed, trying to find the numbest position. Any food I tried to consume bounced back up as if a spring sat coiled in my gullet, and my strength, had I been a computer sprite, would have been down to the last bar. And yet a month or two later, I would do it all again in a blink. Money really is a great healer.

First thing is to have a look at the damage. Usually with Gilligan, as I say, it's little by little, so it's unlikely to be a case of "can I still walk? A quick once over in the bathroom with a hand mirror reveals a couple more crows' feet, the odd slack patch around the mouth and a grey hair sprouting from my crown. Easy peasy. I pencil in the changes on a cartoon wall chart, next to previous entries. Sometimes I wonder why she bothers shelling out so much for what a splash of dye and some good concealer could mask, but that's hardly the point anymore, is it?

After a transfer session, I like to treat myself. Many people do this through trips to spas, facials etc., but when your body is a regular motel for everybody's grim, grey and sagging parts, such activities lose their purpose. I don't often go outside for extended periods, not so much because of the open staring of children and the covert of their parents, as to save time. The most visible thing becomes suddenly invisible to shopkeepers, taxi cabs, even the street fundraisers who conspire to form a gauntlet for normal people. Occasionally it would be nice to be pestered. Instead of wishing after that, I stay home and stretch out my web from there.

This is amazingly easy to keep up in terms of essentials. Anything from food to music to clothing can be bought online, and since my size shifts at such a rapid and unpredictable pace, new clothes are always a must. I can get off anytime I like, simply by typing in the exact spec of porn that will do it for me at this precise time and place. When they finally digitalise Zoom magazine, I wonder if I will ever leave the house again.