illustration by Jameson Currier

HOW TO OBTAIN AN ALFRED HITCHCOCK PHYSIQUE
(AND BONUS DARK PSYCHE)

by Jameson Currier

1. Wait until you reach your late thirties when you are at the peak of your beauty. More handsome than you will ever be again. Fall in love with a married man. A decade older with a wife and two kids who live in the suburbs. Make sure he is wealthier than you, which could be any man in the city, since you are a fiction writer working as a temporary employee at a computer terminal in a corporate office making a sub-poverty wage. Overlook, at least for the moment, that you have a twenty-nine inch waist.
2. Make sure the married man is tall, attractive, and sought after by both men and women. Be sure he has a roving eye, which shouldn’t be difficult, since most men working or living in the city have a roving eye, whether they are secretly gay or openly out. Pretend, however, you do not see the wandering eye and it does not exist. Love does not come to you often and you don’t want to blow your chances that the older married man might love you as much as you will love him.
3. Accept all of his invitations for dinner, for plays and musicals, for movies, for trips to the Hamptons and Palm Springs and Fort Lauderdale. Feed into his narcissism and vanity. Compliment him on his new shirt, his new haircut, his new sports car. Wear the Speedo or briefs he likes you to wear. Do everything he wants to do in bed and then some. Make sure his desire to seek pleasure is exhausted.
4. Learn to appreciate fine cuisine and expensive cocktails, especially cocktails. Remember to smile and be non-confrontational. Pretend you are a character in a musical comedy, the one who sings the funny song and tap dances and the audience falls in love with.
5. Compare your shabby, west side rent-stabilized fifth-floor walk-up to his luxury east side duplex with a balcony and a doorman. This is a crucial step in developing your soon-to-be dark psyche. Spend as much time with him as he wants you to spend with him and then make him think about you when you are not there. Leave behind in his apartment your briefs, socks, T-shirts, razor, and toothbrush so you know there will always be a next time.
6. Make sure he is a goal you wish to achieve. Since you can’t afford to take him out to dinner, offer to cook for him in his kitchen. Make him Belgian waffles for breakfast. Cornish hens for dinner. Spice the coffee with bourbon and keep the wine flowing. After eating, have sex in front of the picture window of his balcony so that everyone in eyesight will see that you mean business. Smile when tells you he is filing for divorce. Wake him up in the middle of the night for more sex. And again before he gets up in the morning.
7. Ignore the comment your best friend makes: “If he cheats on his wife, he will cheat on you.”
8. Fake a smile when he tells you he loves money more than sex. Do not feel wounded when he says, “I wish you made more money.” Learning how to deflect your emotions will make you a more better and more bitter person.
9. Tell him he doesn’t have to do something special for your fortieth birthday so you know he will.
10. Agree to frequent flyer miles to Paris. Accept aging by candlelight.
11. Say yes when he asks you to move in with him. Explain to your friends you are giving up your rent-stabilized apartment because you are finally in love. Ignore their horrified stares. Do not hear their pleas, “Why not sublet?”
12. When, on moving day, he gives you a set of keys and tells you not to use this address for any mail because you are not on the lease, do not look fazed. Do not show your concern when he says you must have your own phone line installed because you cannot answer his phone. Overlook your fear of potential homelessness and danger. It will surface again later.
13. Rearrange your life to revolve around him. Cook. Clean. Engage in sex. Tell yourself cohabitation does not mean giving up your independence. Show up late at your temp job because you need time to spend alone at the gym. Breathe a sigh of relief when he unexpectedly goes out of town on business.
14. Ignore the crumbled yellow post-its you see in the trash can in the kitchen with names of men and their personal phone numbers. Do not listen to the message on his answering machine placed at the side table on his side of the bed from a man with a deep whispery voice asking if they can get together again. The message will nonetheless be burned into your memory.
15. Look through his daybook and convince yourself all the names and numbers are business associates, even though a few will match those on the post-its you have saved from the trash.
16. Consider your options. An open relationship. Experimentation. Three-ways. Orgies. Confrontation. Potential homelessness and danger.
17. Tilt your head with concern when he tells you his ex-wife wants half his money. Listen to him rant about her robbing him of his hard-earned cash. Silently imagine how she must feel. Him cheating on her for years and years and years, only discovering now that he is gay.
18. Feel worthless when he tells you one morning that you need to contribute more money to his lifestyle. Worry about helping him maintain this luxury. Develop your darkening psyche by practicing mumbling so you cannot be understood.
19. Work double shifts. Engage in less sex with him. Skip making him dinner. Show up late to the apartment one evening reeking of cigarette smoke and climb into bed without saying anything to him. When he asks you where you were, tell him you went out with friends. Make sure he doesn’t believe you by giving him the smirk you have secretly practiced for months.
20. Believe things get better. Have more fights about money. Refuse to fly to Las Vegas because you can’t afford your share of the fare. Forgive him when he says he is sorry. Have sex to feel happy again. Return to cooking for him, sneaking portions for yourself while he is out of the room. When he asks you one night why you didn’t make a salad and you cannot tell him because you had no money left for grocery shopping, stare at the knife in your hand a little too long for comfort. Realize that there are weapons all around the kitchen. Forks. Pans. The Belgian Waffle Maker.
21. Place the knife in the sink but continue thinking about it. Look for weapons to use in the dining room. The bathroom. And the bedroom. Imagine holding the weapons, making them levitate and spin like you possess the psychokinesis of a disturbed teenage girl. Wonder what mental link separates you from a murderer. What will it be that will finally make you snap? Make the weapons fly across the room to their target.
22. After sex, revisit the image of the knife. Think about the consequences. The blood. The police. The repercussions with family, friends, co-workers. You imagine an alternate life. Behind bars. On trial. Wonder what a boyfriend in prison might be like. Wonder what kind of tattoos you might get. Spend time thinking of obscure Latin phrases to have your new boyfriend carve into your flesh.
23. Ignore the strain in your expression when you shave in the morning. Do not cry when he tells you at breakfast that he wants an open relationship. Do not disagree when he suggests during dinner you move out.
24. Find an apartment in midtown, west side, near the tunnel, rent-stabilized. Feel relief about regaining your independence, but fret about the paying higher rent. Practice fighting anger and depression in front of your new bathroom mirror. Try not to place blame but place blame everywhere, especially on him. Drink more, eat less, then eat more and drink more. This is an important step in developing your new physique.
25. Ignore his phone calls and messages until you can’t ignore them anymore. Meet for make-up sex and break-up sex several times. Spend a weekend in Key West with him. Make him pay for everything. Plane tickets, hotel, food and booze. Be sure to over eat and over drink. Then decide to never see him again.
26. Compare him to your other lovers, living and dead. Tricks. Boyfriends. Friends. Co-workers. Convince yourself he falls short in every category. Think about revenge. Imagine committing a crime without remorse. Practice psychokinesis. Wonder what the ex-wife must be feeling.
27. Cook yourself elaborate meals. Drink lots of cheap wine. Watch movies about serial killers. Criminals on the run. Become fascinated with sex crimes. The characters. The situation. The motive. The psychology.
28. Reboot your creative streak. Write a ghost story about a former lover. Write a novel about a recent crime. Learn more about how people think and tick. Double down deep on desire and what it makes people do. Never forget that you were once razor close to being a serial killer with psychokinesis.
29. Survive a terrorist attack, a hurricane, a bout with shingles, and your gym going out of business. Ignore your expanding waist, except when you need to shop for new pants.
30. Buy a contraption that electrocutes the rats in your apartment. Drop them in the garbage cans outside your building. When the pipes freeze and burst in your bathroom, watch your favorite books float in the ice cold water. Continue to blame him for all of this because of the apartment you had to give up. Some days, give into the rage. Send the knives flying into potatoes and bread and the chunks of ice that haunt your freezer.
31. Stop dating when it feels like work. Stop picking up men for sex when one steals your watch.
32. Accept a full time job with benefits and overtime and responsibility. Settle into your forties. Pay off your debt. Enroll in a 401(k) plan. Learn to go to bars to drink, not to cruise. Keep tabs on crimes committed by younger men. Especially gay-for-pay porn stars. And married men fooling around on their wives.
33. Ignore your receding hairline, ignore your hair turning gray. Ignore the loss of muscle tone and dryness of your skin.
34. Overlook the fact that you have become invisible to other gay men, because you have become more visible to your friends. They love your bitterness. They love your tales of imaginary revenge. Everyone wants to have dinner with you because you can make them laugh with stories about levitating knives.
35. Forget to weigh yourself in the mornings. Always order the fries instead of a salad. Never go to sleep on an empty stomach. Enjoy your crazy, far-out dreams.
36. Accept an invitation to attend a friend’s wedding. A few days before, realize you have had so many dinners you have no clothes that fit. Shop for a blue blazer then decide on a black one because it will match your black pants. Pick out a white shirt and a skinny black tie.
37. Smile when a friend snaps your photo with his cellphone at the wedding. Frown when he shows you the picture. Your waist is wide. The tie is too skinny. It makes your physique looks like a ski jump. Suppress your desire for revenge by remarking that you have turned into Alfred Hitchcock. It makes him laugh, so you laugh along with him, at yourself.
38. Fret about the photo during the reception. Drink too much so that your psychokinesis returns. Watch the happy, newly married couple cut the cake with an extraordinary large knife. Think about this knife. Tables full of weapons of cutlery and glass. Think about revenge and mayhem and lots of blood. Eat a second piece of cake.
39. Back in your apartment, fight off depression by looking at yourself in the mirror, convincing yourself that what you see is not what others do. Welcome in solitude. One day wake up and look in the mirror, pout your lips, and affect a British accent. You speak to your image: “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” It makes you laugh. Like the time when you were a kid and wore fat wax lips. Only now your imaginary monster is the real you.
40. Ignore time passing. Overlook the further expanding waist. Pretend the jowls make you look handsome.
41. Sometime in your early fifties, your ex-boyfriend writes you an email. On the morning you discover it, consider deleting it unread, but wait. Enjoy your bitterness.
42. Pace back and forth in your tiny apartment. Fret about the email. Worry that something has happened to him.
43. Contemplate your waist and the knife and the psychokinesis.
44. When you finally open his email, you see he sent it to you at four a.m. Imagine him drunk, lying in his bed in his uptown east side luxury apartment with his laptop open. Lonely. Stood up. Robbed. His message is only two words. “Any regrets?”
45. Spend the rest of the day crafting a response. Make sure you don’t delay, otherwise you would look dismissive. Unconcerned about him.
46. Fall asleep without responding because all of the bitterness and thinking leaves you exhausted.
47. Finally, wake up at four a.m. and type a response back to him, making sure it responds only to the two words he wrote that were followed with a question mark. “Any regrets?”
48. Type: “I regret losing my waist. But I had a lot of fun watching it disappear.”
49. Click send.
50. Go back to sleep.

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“How to Obtain an Alfred Hitchcock Physique (and Bonus Dark Psyche)” first appeared in The Flexible Persona, the Imagination Issue, Spring 2018 (Vol. 03 No. 01) pp. 16-25. It was also included in the author’s collection Why Didn’t Someone Warn You About Prince Charming? (Chelsea Station Editions, 2019).