Hello. My name is Ryan and I am a geek.
Honestly, I've tried to make myself look cooler with pierced ears, tattoos, and bling, but I'm afraid all of that only emphasizes how desperately I'm trying not to look like the short, skinny white boy I am.
In high school, I did have a few girls who liked me and told me I was cute, but it's not like they were ever gonna date me. No, they wanted to date the jocks, then call me on the phone afterwards and dish, weeping about what a jerk the jock had been. To them, I was the "gay best friend" that every romantic comedy and sitcom told them they needed as an accessory.
Never mind that I wasn't actually gay.
I suppose I couldn't blame them for making the assumption. It's not like I was doing anything that would prove them wrong. Like, say, having sex with a girl.
I'm only five-seven and I've always had, like, zero muscle-mass. My folks knew how much it bugged me to be so puny, so Dad bought me a set of weights, but sweating and straining just to curl a fifteen-pound dumbbell was not my idea of a fun time. Besides, all that exertion never seemed to add an ounce to my lanky-ass body. The weights sat in a corner of my bedroom, growing cobwebbier by the day.
I started college with the naive hope that it would be a less superficial environment than goddamn high school and people would put more value on intelligence than appearance. As my parents were wishing me goodbye, Mom couldn't stop crying and calling me "my baby", right there in my dorm room, right in front of my dick of a roommate, who was barely stifling his laughter. I just knew he would be mocking me and calling me "Baby" from then on.
Fortunately, Dad didn't cause that kind of embarrassing scene, but he did slip me a parting gift as we walked back to the car. It was a new digital camera that they were working on at the tech company where he works. "It's a prototype, kid, so be extremely careful with it. Don't leave it lying around and, for god's sake, don't let anybody else use it." I assured him I wouldn't, and he smiled back, "I know you won't, son. Hey, snap a selfie once in a while and send it to me, so your sad old parents can see how you're adjusting to your new life." I got a lump in the pit of my gut. I thought I would be happy to finally be off on my own, but I think it was just as hard for me to watch my folks drive away as it was for them to leave me behind.
Dad rolled down the window as he drove past and said, seemingly as an afterthought, "There's some pretty sweet software on that camera. You should fiddle around with it." Then he winked. My dad was a brilliant scientist, but he could be kind of a doofus. (Like father, like son, right?) I had never seen him fuckin' wink in my life. Glad my roommate wasn't around to see that.
As the car disappeared in the distance, I heard my roommate yelling at me. "Hey, Baby, we're gonna go eat at the commons. You wanna come with us, Baby?" I looked over and saw him give me an exaggerated wink. He was surrounded by a group of similar bros, all testosterone and stupidity in their muscle shirts and backwards baseball caps. The other dudes followed my roommate's lead, cracking up and calling me "Baby" without even knowing why. What a barrel full of douchebags.
I already hated college.
The actual school part was fine, but all the social skills I never learned in high school might have come in handy here. By the first Saturday night, while everyone else in the dorm was out getting shit-faced, laid or both, I was sitting in my room, alone and depressed. On my desk, I noticed the camera Dad had given me and decided I ought to let the 'rents see how their son was coping...or wasn't.
I stood in front of the mirror in my small-size t-shirt and my skinny jeans and attempted to smile, but a smile would have been false advertising. Better to show how I was actually feeling. With a frown on my lips and sadness in my eyes, I snapped the shutter and the photo filled the digital screen on the back of the camera. Christ, I looked about twelve. No wonder I didn't fit in here.
I
touched the screen with my thumb, intending to delete this grim photo,
when a menu of options popped onto the screen. Great, just what I
needed, fuckin' Instagram. The only thing
that could make me look more
pathetic would be looking pathetic in sepia tone.
But I noticed that the options extended beyond the usual filters, color, brightness, contrast and cropping. Like, for interest, "BACKGROUND". I could edit the background? When I clicked on that, a circle popped up onscreen with the word "DORM" at the top. Damn, photo recognition software is getting advanced if it can tell just from the picture that I'm in a dorm. I figured it must use GPS or something to figure that out.
I grazed my thumb over the circle and, like the click-wheel on my dad's ancient iPod, it allowed me to cycle through other options. The first one I stopped on was "CHURCH". Amazingly, the software immediately replaced the postered walls behind me in the photo with a massive stained-glass window. I had never seen any design software that could so swiftly and seamlessly alter an element of a photo like that. It would have taken me ten minutes of clipping and erasing in Photoshop to accomplish what the camera had done in an instant.
As I scrolled through other options, there was my sorry ass standing in a restaurant, on a beach, on a boat, in front of the Eiffel Tower. When I landed on "LOCKER ROOM" -- just a blue-green wall and some kind of door -- I must have accidentally clicked the "ACCEPT" button in the middle of the circle, because an hourglass appeared and animated sand fell through it as the background rendered in high resolution.
From out of nowhere, I started to feel very claustrophobic. The air around me seemed to be thickening, like an invisible layer of warm Jell-O wrapping itself around my body. I couldn't move as this sensation enveloped me. And then, BOOM, it was over. It felt like I had passed through a gooey membrane and come out clean on the other side. I dropped to my knees, gasping for air, happy to still be alive.
A voice echoed from above me, "You okay, little dude?"
I looked up and discovered I was no longer in my dorm room but in a locker room. I was sprawled on the hard tile floor, and a massively pumped weightlifter was looming over me.
"I didn't even see you come in," he said, extending a hand, which I gratefully accepted. He practically dislocated my arm as he yanked me to my feet. I thanked him and he patted me on the back with his beefy palm, knocking the wind out of me again. As he walked out, I could hear the heavy clanging of weights in the next room.
I stared in the mirror and saw the same old me with a new background. The turquoise walls perfectly matched the photo. I looked back at the camera, still clutched in my palm, and wondered what other astonishing alterations it could make.
"CLOTHING" was the next option. The first click-wheel offered general categories ("SHIRT", "PANTS", etc.), which opened into sub-categories once you clicked them. When I chose "SHIRT", the display correctly identified that I was wearing a "T-SHIRT" in the photo. I then scrolled through the menu as my purple tee morphed onscreen into everything from an "ANGORA SWEATER" to a "ZEBRA-SKIN VEST". On the more revealing selections, the camera accurately recreated parts of my body, like my bony shoulders and my sunken chest, which you couldn't even see in the original photo. This whole experience was simultaneously creeping me out and making me hard.
When I selected "TANK TOP", it allowed me to choose from a huge array of colors, patterns, and logos. A Gold's Gym shirt seemed the most incongruous on my weakling's body, so I went the ironic route and hit "ACCEPT". I braced myself for the Jell-O feeling again, but it didn't strangulate my whole body this time, just my torso. My chest and arms felt shrink-wrapped as my purple shirt shifted through the color spectrum through blue and green before stopping at yellow, and the arm and neck holes grew wider and wider until an authentic Gold's Gym tank was draped limply over my gaunt frame.
Like a kid on Christmas morning, I searched frantically for what other unexpected gifts might be waiting inside the camera. "BODY TYPE" seemed too good to be true. As before, the dial had automatically set the baseline to correspond to my current state: in this case, "ECTOMORPH". One click to the left landed me on "ENDOMORPH" and I watched on the screen as my body ballooned to a level of obesity that looked comically implausible and dangerous for my health. I spun the dial in the other direction, which showed how I would look as a "MESOMORPH".
I'll be honest, I nearly came in my pants when I saw my head on the body of a well-built jock, with solid pecs that seemed ready to burst the straps of my tank top and bulging shoulders and biceps that looked ready to burst through my skin. I could have happily chosen "ACCEPT" immediately, but was curious what other options were available. "BEAST" amped the muscle enlargement further to that of a competition weightlifter, while "BEHEMOTH" pushed the limits of plausibility past the biggest steroid abuser alive into the realm of comic-book superheroes. I knew I would be more than satisfied as a simple toned mesomorph, but I bumped myself just slightly into don't-fuckin'-fuck-with-me "BEAST" mode.
My thumb pressed "ACCEPT" and I waited for the constricting feeling again, but this change went the opposite direction, as if my body was exploding from the inside. The cells under my skin were churning, multiplying, creating lumps of muscle on my weak arms and narrow chest, veins surging and surfacing with each heartbeat, inflating me into a slab of prime beef. My bones were aching, stretching, thickening, turning my fragile limbs into sturdy weapons. By the time the evolution stopped, I was closing in on six feet and over two hundred pounds.
Adding some final touches, I swapped out my ripped Levi's for shiny workout pants and chose a simple baseball cap from the "HEADWEAR" menu. I couldn't resist turning it backwards. Since I already looked like such a bro now, I might as well commit all the fuckin' way. When in Bro-land, do as the Bro-men do. Satisfied with my makeover, I hit "SAVE" and slid the camera into the pocket of my shorts.
I
stepped out of the locker room and discovered I was in the weight
facility used by the college's varsity athletes. I couldn't imagine a
more alien environment, but as I checked my reflection against the other
jocks around me, I now fit in perfectly. I walked straight toward the
free weights to see just how much this body could do. I grabbed two
sixty-pound dumbbells off the rack, lifting them as if they were
nothing. The massive guy who had found me on the locker-room floor
walked over to give me friendly tips on my form, giving no indication
that he recognized me as the "little dude" from our earlier meeting. I wondered how long he
had worked to become so ripped. I bet it was longer than the ten minutes
it had taken me.
I couldn't believe how cool it felt to be accepted by my fellow lifters, guys who would have looked at me with pity an hour ago. They didn't seem to get my geeky jokes, but I found that was easily fixed. I just opened up the camera, selected "IQ" and slid the dial down about twenty points. I immediately felt a whole lot more relaxed and shit. I figure when exam time comes, I'll just take another selfie and boost the old IQ back up again. Sure hope I remember to do that.
I also couldn't stop staring at the other guys' rock-solid arms and wide backs and firm asses. I hoped no one noticed that I was getting a major chubby that was tenting my workout pants. I clicked open the camera to see what options it offered for "ORIENTATION" and discovered that the dial had already set itself to indicate that I was "BISEXUAL". Well, shit. Maybe those chicks back in high school were half-right after all. I'm always the last to know anything.
Returning to my dorm room, I stripped off my shirt and admired my bitchin' new body in the mirror, exploring the crevices of my six pack with my fingertips. I was sure of at least one thing: my lame-ass roomie wouldn't be calling me "Baby" any more. Not unless he wanted to get his ass kicked. Or unless I wanted him to suck my dick.
I decided to text the photo to Dad, who would undoubtedly be curious to see what his gizmo had accomplished. I messaged him:
"Played around with the camera tonight. Thought you'd be impressed with how quickly I've adjusted. I think you're gonna sell a lot of these cameras. Thanx, Dad!!!"
I followed up with an afterthought:
"Please send money for new clothes. xo"
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