Chapter 308: Our Bio-Gate Coup De Grâce: Going on Oprah

Sunday, May 7 to Wednesday, May 31, 2006 (Continued)

And then for the coup de grâce: the girls went on the Oprah Show.

Once the public believed how amazing Mark Anderson had been, Julia had sent an idea for a show and some supporting material to Oprah, who'd leaped at the chance; or as Julia thought of it, "swallowed the bait".

Julia, Carol, Donna, Ava, Alexis, Pat, Katelin and several other girls were flown to Chicago, where Oprah's show is recorded. None of the Target Girls went though, as Julia considered them too self-centered to do a good job of boosting me. [When the Target Girls discovered what they'd missed out on, they were LIVID and amazed that they'd not been included. After all, they were easily more beautiful than any of the girls who'd gone.]

The introduction included Oprah saying, "My guests today are Mark Anderson's - the Immortal Boy's! - two sisters and some of his girlfriends. SOME of them!"

The audience thought that this might be a good show.

Julia sat in the seat closest to Oprah, then Carol, Donna, Ava, Alexis, Pat and Katelin; with a row of elevated seats behind the front row for the rest of the girls. Julia was the main spokesgirl and she ran the show, with occasional help from Oprah.

[Julia, Carol, Vanessa and Mom had spent a couple of weeks preparing for this. They'd analyzed past Oprah shows: charted what the audiences had reacted to the best/worst, when Oprah let the guests have free rein and when not, what level of sexual explicitness worked best, studied Oprah's body language for cues for how the guests should behave, looked at timings, etc. Then the women had designed exactly how they wanted the show to go, and had prepared and rehearsed for it. This was Julia's big chance to let the world know how wonderful I was, and she was determined to do an exceptional job of it.]

After the introductions, Julia started with, "You've heard of how fantastically Mark's body and brain operated, but you don't know much about him as a person. Let us show you some family pictures and tell you some VERY personal stories."

It was definitely looking to be an excellent show, thought the audience.

The structure of most of the show was very simple: Julia would display a picture or set of pictures on the big screen at the back of the stage, and then the girls would talk about it. An early example was several short video clips of me playing soccer that Julia had hunted down from around town, mostly from my teammates' families. The clips all showed me very impressively running circles around my opposition (not literal "circles", as that'd be a silly thing to do in soccer). They repeatedly showed me moving like a dream, weaving through multiple defenders to score. Julia pulled out a piece of paper to read the scores for my last few games, adding how many goals I'd personally scored.

That spurred the planned conversation about my athleticism. Julia said, "About three weeks after I started dating Mark, I wanted to arrange a fun day one weekend for a group of my friends from school. I suggested an afternoon of bowling then pizza. Mark was very happy with the pizza part - he was VERY fond of pizza - but he looked uninterested in bowling. I asked him if he knew how to bowl, and he said he'd played half a dozen times, most recently about two years ago. I asked him why he was uninterested, and he told me there'd be no fun in it for him because it'd be too easy now.

^-- "One thing you need to know about Mark is that he was the most modest guy you'd ever meet. Some of us even called him 'Modest Mark' as a nickname. He was so self-effacing it used to annoy me sometimes, because I wanted to yell how wonderful he was from the rooftops. So when Mark told me it was too easy for him, that was a very unusual thing for him to say. I asked him what score he thought he'd get, and he apologetically said he'd get 300, because the game was too easy."

That wasn't how it had happened. Julia was LYING! On Oprah! Oh, the TRAVESTY of it all!

"Three hundred?" queried Oprah. "A perfect game?"

"Yes. Mark NEVER boasted." Julia turned to 'her' girls, "Did any of you ever hear Mark make a single boast about himself?"

"No," they all confirmed.

Julia continued, "He wasn't boasting, just apologizing for it not being a fun game for him. I went ahead with it anyway because I wanted my girlfriends to see Mark bowl 300. Just like he said he would, Mark bowled a perfect game. Didn't he girls?"

"Yes," they all chorused, expressed in a variety of ways, to avoid sounding like the chorus they were.

Ava added, "And the next time too, Julia, when I asked him to show me."

^-- Ava turned to Oprah, "I couldn't make it that day, Oprah, so I missed seeing him bowl a 300 game. One lunchtime not long after, I was with Carol and Mark and I asked him if he'd show me a 300 game, so the three of us went to the alley and he bowled another one."

Julia said, "I understand the perfect games bowling record is three in a row. Most of you won't believe me, but Mark could've bowled THIRTY perfect games in a row! You've heard what an intellectual genius he was at OSU and how fantastic his body worked internally. His body also worked fantastically externally. Physical activities which are very hard for other people were very easy for Mark, like bowling any number of 300-point games."

Donna told her story about my missing out on spending quality time with my little sister, so I'd volunteered to go on morning runs with her, "Even though Mark's never liked running. He just wanted to goof around with me. He was so good at running I entered him in a national-level, ten kilometer, open men's road race. He won! Mark easily beat the state champion and the third fastest 10k runner in America, even though he only had two casual training runs with me."

Julia had obtained video of the end of the race, showing me burning past the last guy I'd passed and then crossing the finish line, and that was played during Donna's story.

When the girls had been planning this, Ava had suggested making a comment about how graceful I looked when I ran, but Julia had rejected it. Ron moved gracefully, so it wasn't a good thing to draw attention to.

Ava said, "Look how fresh Mark is. He just beat some of the fastest guys in America and he's not even sweating or breathing hard. The sore losers accused Mark of cheating, so he had to give blood and urine, but he was cleared..."

Alexis interrupted, "They just had to ask any of us. We coulda told them how AMAZING his endurance was!"

Oprah picked up the insinuation, raising her eyebrow; surprising me, because I hadn't thought she was a mother.

Julia replied to the eyebrow motion, "When I said all of us were Mark's 'girlfriends', I was using a euphemism. We can talk about that later, if you wish."

It was obvious that the audience wished. A room full of middle-aged women had seen pictures of a very handsome boy, including home movies of him moving like a dream, and a dozen, pretty girls were on stage implying there was a story about him that was MUCH more interesting than sports.

Julia said, "I'll save time by jumping to the point I'm trying to make. Just as Mark was an intellectual genius, he was equally a physical genius. He could bowl as many 300 games as he wanted even though he hadn't bowled for two years. He easily won a national-level 10k race after two fun-runs with his little sister. By the way, Mark was being modest only coming first; he could've easily beaten the world record for 10k. Ava and his sister Donna measured out a marathon course for him one afternoon and he ran it ten minutes under the world record."

The next couple of minutes were spent with Oprah double-checking that Mark was REALLY capable of doing several physical feats that no one could do. All the girls insisting that Mark certainly could.

Carol said something that we'd discussed the pros and cons for, and had decided to go ahead with. She said, "My brother was a miracle. A walking, breathing, miracle, until the Government killed him."

Julia said, "It's true, Oprah. Mark was a miracle. I've got twin brothers ten years older than me. They grew up playing 8-ball against each other on a table we had at home, and they're VERY good at it. They challenged Mark to a game the first time he visited my family. They had to show him how to play because he'd never played it before. My father bet my brothers $10 each that Mark would beat them on his first best-of-three match. Andrew and Robert thought Dad was crazy, but Mark beat them easily.

^-- "I saw him play a few demonstration games in the nine months he was my boyfriend, and they were all the same: Mark NEVER needed more than one turn to win a game. If he broke, then his opponent never got a turn. Mark was the greatest athlete the world has ever had, as well as the greatest genius. He truly was a miracle. Maybe we should show the picture of him at the swimming pool? The last one in the list I gave your producer."

This was Julia's "Big cannon" - the weapon she'd been intending to save for the end so it'd be the last thing seen, and therefore what would be best remembered. Julia had decided to display it now because she could see the audience was too skeptical. So a 40-foot high, very carefully chosen, highly flattering picture of me in my bright yellow Speedos appeared in front of an auditorium full of middle-aged, easily excited women. Julia and the other girls joked afterward that they could see the wave of lust sweep through the room, and smell the result a few minutes later.

Julia had told the girls who'd been at the Aquatic Center to email their photos of me to her. Julia had picked the sexiest one to bring to Oprah. The Aquatic Center date had been right after the exams at the end of the previous school year, so less than two weeks after I'd been discharged from the Seattle Hospital. My body was the most muscled-up it'd ever been, I had suntan lotion and the damn bright yellow Speedos on, and the photo had caught me side-on to the afternoon sun, so the shadows accentuated my muscles very effectively. I even had a very nice smile on my face, although it took quite a while before any of the audience noticed that.

It took the best part of a minute for the audience to quiet down. Then Oprah asked, "That has to be a fake?"

All my girls assured Oprah it was real. Julia explained to Oprah, "All of us saw Mark naked many times, and there were dozens of girls at the Aquatic Center that day who were snapping pictures of Mark. Especially when his back was turned. I'm sure you can see why."

In my experience, when seeing my body for the first time, almost every woman says, "I'd KILL for your waist," or, "Your waist is to DIE FOR!" Not Oprah though; mentioning death would have been an embarrassing faux pas even though it had no negative intent. Being a consummate professional, she said instead, "That's the best looking body I've ever seen on a man."

Julia responded, "I know you're very knowledgeable about keeping fit and healthy, Oprah. Guess how many hours a week Mark spent exercising to look like that?"

"ALL of them! He'd have to live in a gym to look like that."

"He played soccer roughly every second week, and that was the only exercise he did, so about one hour per week, Oprah."

Oprah and every member of her audience expressed their disbelief to Julia.

Julia gave them a few seconds to have their say, then she said, "You've seen the doctors and professors raving about how incredibly well the insides of Mark's body worked. His body worked so well on the inside, that what you're looking at is his NATURAL SHAPE! He didn't need to exercise to look like that.

It took a couple more minutes to stress that enough for the objections to die down, whereupon Julia said, "If the Government hadn't killed Mark, he would have learned how to make EVERYBODY look that good without exercise! All of us," Julia waved her hand to include Oprah and the audience, "could have been healthier than ever before in our lives and looked better than the world's most gorgeous supermodels."

The predominately overweight and middle-aged audience were somewhat disappointed that they'd missed out on looking like gorgeous supermodels. There was some angry muttering and a few back and forth comments. Amusingly, increasing human beauty would just raise the bar on what it took to be a supermodel - assuming the improvement was made to virtually everyone, as Julia had implied. People would adapt to the new standards of beauty and that there had been an old one would have been forgotten. Increased health was the only real benefit of the two that Julia had mentioned, but the audience didn't value that as much.

This wasn't the setting to get political, so after agreeing and sympathizing with the audience, Julia got the show back on track by saying, "We've got some more pictures and stories for you. Mark was superhumanly intelligent, superhumanly healthy and superhumanly athletic, but he was also superhumanly NICE. We'll tell you more about Mark the person."

There was still two-thirds of the time left and there was much more to say. Julia got each of the girls to tell a personal story about Mark.

Carol was first. Carol had a picture for her story: of her, Julia and me when we were going out on a fancy date, Carol wearing the extremely sexy special occasion dress that I'd bought her (in this dimension). Oprah immediately recognized the designer, which amused me. More important for Carol's story, everyone recognized how sexy she looked in it, the photo having been chosen to make that point.

Carol said, "Thank you for your compliments. What will surprise you is that Mark bought me that dress. And I ASSURE you that the first thought you all had is very wrong. Mark also bought the necklace I was wearing, the pins in my hair, he told me how to wear my hair, and he told me what style of shoe I should wear with that dress too. By now some of you are probably thinking another wrong thought, but these are Mark's girlfriends around me. Mark was definitely not homosexual. Homosexuality is part of the reason why I'm wearing that dress though. From when I started maturing, I always wore clothes that completely covered my figure. Sacks, really. I was never comfortable exposing myself. As you can see from that photo, something in my life changed, haha.

^-- "Julia was that change. I met Julia when Mark started dating her, and I started developing feelings for her. Mark saw that my confusion about myself was starting to clear and that I was starting to gain confidence in myself. He bought me that dress when he knew I was emotionally ready to come out of my shell and be who I really was, and it was the perfect choice for me at that time of my life, giving me exactly the boost I needed. Mark encouraged me to come out as a lesbian at school, which was very good for me too, but it caused dozens of immature boys to make terrible nuisances of themselves by swarming all over me. Mark was a very modest, unassuming, quiet guy, but he got very upset when those boys started troubling me. He was also very gentle, so he'd never defend me by threatening to beat up the troublemakers the way boys normally do. He hated being the center of attention, but what he did was visit several classes around our high school making a speech..." Carol went on to describe my "I Love My Sister Carol" speech. Following on the heels of Carol's saying she came out as a lesbian, it created an absolutely perfect "Oprah Moment".

Donna talked about her betting all her money on my 10k race, and giving the winnings to me to buy a car with, and my using it to buy a different form of transport for her. Brother-sister love was flowing all over the stage very poignantly.

Ava talked about her initial approach to me and how that'd rapidly led to the support she was getting from my two families because her parents were both dying from cancer. She gave me 100% of the credit for all the support, which was totally undeserved praise. Ava showed genuine grief over the state of her parents' ill health, and it was another absolutely perfect Oprah Moment.

Alexis (dressed in black jeans and T-shirt) was in the next seat. "I'm rough. I swear a lot, I run wild, I do whatever I want. I won't tell you WHAT I do, but it's stuff none of you'd want your daughters doing. So most of the kids at school think I'm trash and look down their noses at me, especially the 'In Crowd' girls. But I'm one of Mark's favorites - NOT because I'm easy." Alexis improvised, "Can you put the photo of Mark in his swimsuit back ... That was quick; thanks. Look at that photo. EVERY girl was easy for him. I was one of Mark's favorites because he didn't care about appearances, about the 'In Crowd', or any of that shit. He liked me because he liked me. There was no bullshit about Mark. He had the A-list girls panting after him, but he turned down having sex with them to be my friend. He was a VERY special human being."