2000ft Above Worry Level

Acknowledgements

1

Dog Farm, Food Game

I used to spend a lot of time on the sad part of the internet. Most people don’t realise there is a sad part of the internet. Some people think the whole internet is sad and that only sad people spend all their time on the internet. They’re wrong – while sad people do spend a lot of time on the internet, it isn’t a prerequisite. The sad part of the internet is a special place that only sad people can access. It’s full of content made by sad people for sad people. Jokes that make sad people laugh, but would make not-sad people worried. Photos of people crying, but sexy. Mundane descriptions of household objects and everyday activities made special by the knowledge that whoever wrote it felt absolutely terrible at the time. It’s easy to fall in love on the sad part of the internet. You have an instant connection because you share the same feeling at all times: sadness. First, you favourite each other’s depression jokes, then you message casually, then obsessively, and then you have cam sex.

The first time I had cam sex with Abby it was fast and silent. We didn’t want to speak out loud to each other, in case anyone in our homes overheard. We turned on our webcams, and soon her top was off and I typed ‘wow’ on my keyboard. I pulled my pants down around my knees and got my cock out of my underwear. I tried to find a position for my laptop where my cam would show both my cock and my face, but I couldn’t make the angles work.

‘Do you want to see my cock or my face?’ I typed.

‘Are you going to feel bad about whatever I don’t say?’ she typed back.

‘No.’

‘Cock then.’

I tipped my laptop screen forward to focus on that, then further forward again so my chest wouldn’t be in shot. ‘Can I see your . . .’ I said.

‘No, not today,’ she said.

She played with her nipples and put her fingers in her mouth, then it was over and I came into my hand and I showed her my handful of cum.

‘Was that good for you?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. It was great,’ she said.

I went and got myself cleaned up, and when I got back to the computer she was still there. She was still beautiful after I came. She had put her clothes back on and was sitting in a pile of messy sheets, waiting for me.

‘You’re beautiful,’ I said.

‘I am not,’ she said.

‘You are honestly one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever met,’ I said.

‘You’re just saying that because I made you come,’ she said.

‘I am not,’ I said. ‘Girls as pretty as you don’t usually like guys like me.’

‘What are you talking about,’ she said. ‘You’re like a big handsome dog. I’m a hairless cat.’

‘Let’s agree to disagree,’ I said.

She looked at the camera and tipped her head to the side, like she was trying to get water out of her ear. I smiled. She poked her tongue out at me.

‘I’ve been reading,’ she said. ‘To make someone like you, you’re meant to tell them a secret the first day you meet them.’

‘What if I already like you?’ I said.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘We should do it anyway to make sure we keep liking each other. Just in case.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What’s your secret?’

‘You first,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Because I know you already like me.’

‘Okay. I have to think.’

‘Take your time,’ she said. As I was thinking, she sent me a photo of her lying on the ground, covered in puppies. Six little brown ones with big floppy ears. She was pushing one away who was determined to lick her face. She was laughing and looked so good.

‘Cute,’ I said.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘It’s the photo I send when I want to impress someone.’

‘Where did you get all those puppies?’

‘My parents breed them,’ she said. ‘But in a good way. It’s not a puppy mill.’

‘That is really cool. Are there any puppies around now?’

‘No, we got rid of them all. We’ve got seven dogs though. Three breeding pairs and my one.’

‘Okay, I’ve thought of one,’ I said. ‘I’ll type it out in one go, so it might take a while.’

As I typed, I noticed her eyes moving around and back and forward. I realised she had minimised the chat window and was checking other websites.

‘Here it comes,’ I said. ‘I went to an all-boys high school, and when I was sixteen it had been three or four years since I had really talked with a girl. So when I started going to parties, there would be these girls there and everyone was acting like it was no big deal. And eventually everyone would get drunk and then people would start making out, and I wanted to be the one to make out with a girl but I had no idea how to do it. I didn’t even talk to them, so I’d hover around the people kissing because I thought maybe she would stop kissing whoever she was kissing and start kissing the next closest guy, which was me. It was like I was queueing up for a pash.’

I watched her as she read it. I was hoping she would smile or at least look directly into the webcam, which is as close as we could get to eye contact, but she didn’t. It was like she had forgotten she was being watched. It took minutes for her to respond. It felt like she had read it at least twice but finally she responded. ‘Did it work?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Is that really a secret?’ she asked.

‘Yeah – well, I’ve never told anyone that before.’

‘You should. It’s cute and funny.’

I sent her a picture of me at sixteen. I had hair down past my shoulders, which I hadn’t learned to brush, and an oily face that I hadn’t learned to wash. I was wearing an oversized suit jacket over the top of a Ramones T-shirt, because I hadn’t learned how to dress. ‘Would you have kissed this?’ I asked.

‘Probably. I kissed almost anything,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’

‘When did you have your first kiss?’ she asked.

‘Only like a year ago. A year and a half ago.’

‘Really?’

‘Well. My first real proper kiss. I had like a few meaningless kisses before then.’ That was a lie. I hadn’t had any meaningless kisses. Every kiss I had ever received I had savoured.

‘Cute.’

‘What about you?’

‘I don’t remember. When I was fourteen or fifteen I’d get drunk at parties and kiss everyone. I would have kissed you if you were lining up for it.’

‘Damn. I was queueing in the wrong place then.’

‘Maybe.’

‘What’s your secret?’

‘I don’t think I had one. I was just available.’

‘No, your secret for me.’

Three flashing dots appeared on the screen that showed she was typing. Then they disappeared. ‘Can I let you know tomorrow?’ she said.

‘That’s not how it works. You have to tell someone the first day you meet.’

‘But you already like me,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’

I let her get away with it, because it was the first time tomorrow had been mentioned. It was a promise that this was going to keep going, and that was more important than a secret.

That night, after eleven hours of talking, we recorded a video of ourselves brushing our teeth. We were both exhausted and desperately needed to sleep, but we felt like we had to commemorate this day with something special. We each set a timer for two and a half minutes. I brushed with my right hand, and held my phone to my chest with my left hand to record my reflection in the mirror. She was left-handed, so she did the opposite. She sent me her video and I edited the videos together side by side. I wore a green T-shirt that was the same colour as her bathroom wall. She wore a red jersey that was the same colour as my bathroom wall. It was unintentional, but felt like a sign. Some sort of aesthetic connection. It ended with us spitting into the sink at exactly the same time. I smiled through my bleeding gums, which matched my walls and her jersey.

I uploaded the video to YouTube and marked it as unlisted so no one could find it by searching and then I sent her the link. I never watched it on YouTube, only ever from the file on my computer, so I could check the play count and see how many times she had watched it, assuming she never sent it to anyone else. By the next day it had been played seven times.

Before I met Abby, I had a coping strategy to get through the days. I would wake up sometime between 11am and 2pm and lie in bed thinking of all the things I needed to do to get my life in order, which would all stack up on top of my chest and it would feel like I was anchored to my bed until I managed to push them all off, promising myself I would deal with them the next day. I would make my way to the lounge, where I would binge-watch a TV series on the television. It had to be something with long episodes and eight or nine seasons, so that it would feel like it went on forever and once I finally finished watching them all it would feel like an achievement. While watching the TV show I would play a game on my phone. It had to be something mindless but that required concentration. The type of game where you have to match coloured gems to make them disappear. And while I was doing that I would browse the sad part of the internet on my computer. My attention would be so spread out that I wouldn’t have the time or ability to actually think. Because when I started to think, I had dangerous thoughts. I would do these three things every day for as long as I possibly could, staying up as late as possible so I would fall asleep as soon as I was in bed, because if I was alone in bed without distractions I would have dangerous thoughts. I hadn’t answered my phone in a month. I hadn’t checked my emails in a month. I hadn’t gone to university in a month. I was going to keep doing this until things made sense again. Which they did, when I met Abby.

With her in America and me in New Zealand, we came to a problem. We were only awake at the same time for a small part of every day. So we came up with a solution. We developed our own time zone, one where we would never have to be awake without each other. It worked for both of us because I didn’t think my flatmates would notice if I disappeared, and Abby’s family left her alone. She didn’t eat with them because she had a special diet that completely baffled her parents. We set the clocks on our computers to our time zone. Our 9am was 7pm in New Zealand and 3am in America. We would talk for thirteen hours every day, until our 10pm, which was 8am in New Zealand and 4pm in America. That gave us eleven hours to sleep and do anything else we needed to get done. Every morning I would wake up at 8am (our time), try to look as good as possible for her, and check the count on the teeth-brushing video. By the end of the first week it already had over thirty views.

After a week of our new time zone, my flatmate knocked on my door. ‘We haven’t seen you for a week,’ she said. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Things are good,’ I said. ‘I’ve just got a fucked-up sleep schedule right now.’ And things were good. Abby was good for me. Before Abby, I would spend all day lying on the couch. Abby made me want to sit up, because I looked ugly lying down and I wanted to look good for her. She made me want to change my clothes every day. With her I actually talked to another person. My world opened up, even if it was just a little bit, but it felt like it was the beginning of something important.

We tried talking aloud once. It was midway through the second week. We whispered into our laptops so no one else could hear us and it was weird. We had to get right up close to the computers, and the webcams picked up our acne, which had been a blur until then. We both hated our voices, and talking caused too much anxiety to be worth it. She said she sounded like a little kid because her voice went up and down as if she was half-singing. I had the opposite problem. I could only talk in a monotone and would always sound bored. If I tried to add inflection or enthusiasm I would be overwhelmed with embarrassment.

So other than that one day, the only time I heard Abby’s voice was when she talked to her dog Daisy. Daisy was the only dog that I saw, because she was the only one who was allowed in Abby’s room. She knew how to get into Abby’s room by herself – she stood up on her hind legs, pushed the handle down and leaned on the door to open it.

‘Come here Daisy,’ Abby would say in her singsong voice whenever Daisy opened the door. Daisy would sit right on top of Abby and put her head on Abby’s shoulders. Whenever Daisy sat on Abby, Abby had to pull the computer closer to her and type with one hand. It made the conversation slower and it was harder to see Abby, but I tried not to hold it against Daisy.

‘You’re a good girl, aren’t you Daisy,’ Abby said. Daisy wasn’t a breeding dog like the others, and she was Abby’s responsibility. Abby got Daisy when she was a kid, so she was now getting old. She had grey hair around her mouth and couldn’t jump all the way up to Abby’s bed anymore. When she wanted to get up she’d put her front paws on the bed, and Abby would lean over and pull her up by her armpits.

‘When we got her, her name was Gretchen. So that had to change because Gretchen is a terrible name, and since she was mine I got to choose, and I was a kid so I called her Daisy.’

‘Do you not like the name Daisy anymore?’

‘It’s fine. It’s just, of course a ten-year-old would call a dog Daisy. It’s better than what Dad would have called her. He called the last dog we got Charisma. That’s a stupid name.’

We only turned off our webcams once a day, at 5pm (our time), because Abby didn’t want to eat in front of me. I ate baked beans on toast every day because they were fast and cheap. Before I went into the kitchen, I listened at the door so I could avoid my flatmates. I poured a can of baked beans into a big bowl and put it in the microwave for four minutes on high. Some of the beans at the top of the bowl exploded and stuck to the roof of the microwave, and I wiped them off with a paper towel. I ate the beans with four pieces of toast. The beans at the bottom of the bowl would always be cold. Once a week I went to the supermarket and bought seven cans of beans and three loaves of bread. I only ate once a day.

‘You never told me your secret,’ I said one night after our food break.

‘I didn’t have to,’ she said. ‘You already liked me.’

‘That’s not fair,’ I said.

‘I