Letter Writing Campaign

Having returned from my interpretive dance motion capture session in Brussels, and with an extra free week on my hands still, I have decided to spend my time on a new campaign to urge the medical community to perform a new kind of cosmetic surgery. This is the text of my letter.

To whom it may concern,

Lately the phrase that’s been going through my mind is “bellybutton transplant.” Can you imagine it? How intimate! How sensual. What if it became the new fad of the rich? Forget the gold band—let’s swap navels.

Romantics have emblazoned their flesh with the names of their lovers forever. Blood brothers have pledged their eternal bond with the intermingling of bloodied digits. Is cosmetic swapping so farfetched? Can it be long before elective Siamese surgery becomes the norm? And how about genetic recombination? “Now you both can be both of you! Live together, die together. Forget the fly’s plaintive ‘Help meee!’ Now it’s ‘Hug meee!’ And our cellular bonding process ensures a permanent hug - on the inside.”

My only reservation is that people who are essentially bored become obsessive. We have all this time on our hands because we no longer have to hunt for our food, and so begin to starve in other ways. Now we pluck pluck pluck at our eyebrow hairs, always plucking the longest one because it stands out—even sacrificing some of the shorter ones just to get at that long one. Martyrs to the cause.

As a policy this doesn’t work because there is always a longest one. There will always be a longest one, and any determination to even things off by targeting the exception is just not sustainable ecology.

Still, there is hope that we can handle the inevitable promise of corrective mutation. I have a friend who leaves his longest eyebrow hairs alone. I think he cultivates them, one on either side. They’re like twin antennae. If he wore stripes he’d be positively Seussian. He’s a perfect candidate for bellybutton transplant, and I’ve started writing to surgeons and scientists to find someone willing to immortalize their name. Will you be that person? This is only the beginning. My mind is full of innovative vulgarity.

My contact information is below.

Related Tales

» “Being You” (01 of Jan, 2005)
» “A Hero's Lament” (09 of Dec, 2004)
» “Failure” (14 of Jun, 2004)