The century of the maxxer - Numb at the Lodge

Numb at the Lodge

SubscribeSign in

The century of the maxxer<br>Incredible things are happening in America<br>Feb 09, 2026

257

Share

How many apricots do you think you can fit in your mouth?<br>Five? That’s how many apricots the average person can fit in their mouth. One stuffed in each cheek, plus three in the middle. If the average person tries to shove a sixth apricot in there, they start to gag. Eyes water, nose runs, eventually a thin dribble of orange pap escapes from between the teeth. Too many apricots feels like burning. Before long they’re gasping and retching and puking up great slimy globs of apricot flesh. That’s the average person. Are you an average person?<br>Before you answer, you should know what it’s like out there for the average person. They’ve started putting up positive messages in my local privately-owned public space. Big free-standing billboards that say things like YOU’RE NEVER TOO MUCH and IT’S OK NOT TO BE OK and HAVE YOU LOVED YOURSELF TODAY? and WE’RE ALL A BIT MESSY SOMETIMES. One of them contains, in smaller letters, a sort of poem about ADHD. ‘Lateness as a creative act. Splicing a little chaotic obsession into the world’s mind-numbing order. Loving us for how intensely, sincerely—inconveniently—we show up.’ Supposedly these are all about being different and unique, but really this is just how the powers of the world now address the average person. Once, before anyone can really remember, they spoke in the hysterical register of duty and sacrifice and law; now it’s this. Come on, let’s all have a bloody great chat about our mental health. You will be interpellated as small sad bean, who needs help from some shadowy consortium of private interests to help manage all the sad feelings floating around in their head. You are assumed to be in a state of ambient unwellness. You’re suffering from a mental distress that’s bad enough to require some kind of outside help, but not so bad that the outside help has to consist of anything other than a big yellow sign that says TAKE A DEEP BREATH. YOU’RE DOING GREAT. That’s the average person. That’s what they think you are. So I’ll ask again. How many apricots do you think you can fit in your mouth?<br>You need to be apricotmaxxing. You need to be cramming upwards of ten or twelve apricots in your mouth at a time.<br>Apricotmaxxing isn’t difficult. The techniques are well established; they’re just not very pleasant. With willpower and meditation you can suppress the pharyngeal reflex and get another apricot in there, maybe even two, but all that mental bullshit will only get you so far. Are you serious about this? Do you want to spend your life dithering in the fat central slice of the standard distribution, like every other loser? Don’t you know that when the great bifurcation comes, all the ordinary people will be rendered down into biofuel to power Elon Musk’s infinite child porn generator? Want to avoid that? Then you need to expand your jaw. If you’re trying to fit more apricots in there the only way is to expand your jaw. The procedure is called Surgically Assisted Rapid Palatal Expansion, or SARPE. As you might know, there are two bones above the roof of your mouth, which slowly come together and fuse during adolescence. In a SARPE procedure, the surgeon cuts through the palate and pries them open again. Then, orthodontics are fitted with a spring across the width of the mouth to gently push the bones apart. If you can get a surgeon to perform SARPE, that’s great. If not, there are other options. You can do it yourself. You can put a butter knife in your mouth, gently find the line where the maxillary bones meet, and in one smooth motion push it upwards into your skull.<br>Self-SARPEing is only the beginning. Serious apricotmaxxers know that you need to loosen your cheeks. You can achieve a little extra slack by injecting medically inadvisable doses of corticosteroids, which inhibit the production of collagen and lead to baggier, wrinklier skin across the entire body. But eventually you’ll have to resort to cheek-slashing. Good deep cuts; really slice through the buccinator muscle, so when it heals it heals scarred and weak. After three rounds of cheek-slashing your cheeks will be so loose and jowly you can fit three apricots in each with room to spare. Having thirteen apricots in your mouth will be completely doable. You are beginning to apricotmog the taut.<br>Of course, as a successful apricotmaxxer, you will not look normal. You will have the face of a dying bloodhound. Cheeks dangling like huge scrotums against your head. The skin will hang off your body everywhere, covered in fine wrinkles like an unironed shirt or an ancient banknote, and there’ll be dense scribbles of scar tissue where you’ve mutilated yourself. If something went wrong during the self-SARPE, and it probably did, you’ll also have damaged the trigeminal nerve, which means it’s now agony for you to attempt to eat, drink, or speak,...