Monday 23 May 2016

Pay-Per-View

It's Friday, almost five, you clocked out of work in your head sometime just after lunch, a cheese and pickle baguette from the supermarket, some crisps you picked up to just try and fill the hole, a smoothie, a coffee, and a chocolate bar, you've gotta treat yourself, haven't you, and now you're listlessly scouring the internet for some form of distraction, because nobody can see your monitor, nobody knows whether you're actually doing any work or not, and - most likely - they're not doing any work either, so wouldn't grass you up if they saw you window shopping the internet for fear of retribution, I mean, who knows what you know about them.

There. Your eyes are drawn to an advert in the bottom right corner of a social media site, its dark black background giving way to a well lit photograph of a thin, emaciated body, translucent flesh bathed in an amber light that moves to teal, perhaps - you think - suggesting the passage from health to death, and you look into their eyes, cartoonishly weak and sunken, thick dark outline, might just be make-up to make the show look more attractive, they always dress up this premium stuff.

You check the listing, they're going in for an operation at 8pm, good slot, wonder who the surgeon is, hope it's Clementine, he knows how to work the insides for the camera, likes to step back, give you a moment to savour it, really drink up what's working on their innards, makes you itchy, like it's happening to you too, and he makes little observations, quips, you've got a t-shirt at home with "I've never seen that INSIDE a person before!" written on it, that was a funny one, just a stomach tightening but there was a miniature toy horse drifting around in there, maybe it had been there for years or maybe they just swallowed it for the broadcast, funny shit though, made you spit out your beer.

So, you think, looks like a last ditch operation, it's this one and then they're fucked, it's always nice booking a subscription to the post-op deterioration, and you get offered a cheaper rate if you watch to the end of the surgery, but this looks like a premium gig, might be costly and there's always a bunch of cheap streams of similar stuff, might not be as well produced but, y'know, ticks the boxes, right? Though that brain surgery you paid to watch last month, the stupid doctor kept moving right in front of the shot and nobody seemed to be monitoring the feed or the chat room, you were all-capsing your frustration, shit, everyone was and nobody did a damn thing. Still, was only a couple of quid, you pay for bronze you get bronze.

You click on the advert, proceed to the payment page and weigh it up, £70 for the night, that includes any pre and post operation stuff, broadcast beginning at 6pm, maybe you can convince some friends to come round and watch with you, split the cost or they can bring the beers, seems a bit cheeky charging so much if this might be their last operation, I mean, it's not like they're going to need the money to pay for future operations, right? In a way it feels more worthwhile to you to go and fund the smaller, grubbier streams because then at least you're helping them financially to go ahead and get more of the care they need, although they can always go to a bargain basement backstreet place, and you can watch pre-recorded uploads of that at Surgery Store, though there's something a bit tingly about watching it live.

Fuck it, you fill in your details, you pay for the night's stream and you resolve to yourself that you'll subscribe to the post-op stuff as well, because, chances are with this kind of condition they're not going to make it, and you've never watched anyone die on the stream before, that'd be something, and it's kind of nice to think that whatever comforts they might have, a nice bed and the like, they've got that thanks to your subscription fees, like you're looking out for them a bit.

It's pretty much half five now, might as well shut down and head home, get some snacks and text some people, your computer fades to black and you stand up, there's a pain in your stomach, but you don't want to think about it, this job doesn't pay so well and there's no health insurance, surgery costs are always rising, and you really don't want to have people watching some quack cut you up online, it's probably nothing, you'd know if it was something right, probably something you ate, that baguette seemed a bit stale, you hope it's just indigestion.

You hope it's just indigestion.

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