Dr Henry Lee is an amiable middle-aged man with a benign, avuncular smile. But when he talks to you, his long furry ears ? An advertisement for his trade - twitch in cadence and seem to be the exact reflection of his emotions.
Dr Lee started out in his native Hong Kong doing the nose and breasts jobs that are the bread and butter of plastic surgeons everywhere. He also "rounded" many Asian eyes to make them look more European. "Usually, people want improvements that will make them more popular in the society they live in", Dr Lee says, "Still, socially irrelevant self-perception can be the major motivation for a change. No matter how really big a nose is, some people want it smaller. Eventually, when the requirements are really extreme, they come to us".
Dr Lee's first "special" customers were Westerners who wanted to become Asians. "They thought that a Chinese doctor would be more sympathetic. For some, it was simply mission impossible. I had a 6.6-foot Afro-American ex-football player who wanted to look like a 5-foot Viet-Cong, to atone for his father's crimes in Vietnam. Others just wanted to be able to do kung-fu, as if surgery could replace training. But most of my clients were given the brand new Asian body-and-face combo of their dreams". Dr Lee claims that small colonies of pseudo Asians now live anonymously in mainland China. The word of mouth quickly brought other types of customers to consult with Dr Lee. "It was crazy for a while", he says, "Everybody who wanted to look like someone else came to Hong Kong. They had specific stereotypes in mind, like those wealthy Hutus who asked to be Tutsified by getting thinner lips, thinner noses and shorter bodies. Some requests where quite mystifying, like the couple from Brooklyn who wanted to resemble Manhattan residents." But Dr Lee's trade suddenly skyrocketed when he was contacted by furries.
"Of course most furries are just happy to have fantasies about being a fox or a horse, and then to go to parties or have sex dressed like their favourite animal. But for some of them this isn't just fulfilling enough, so they ring me up." There are some historical precedents: French actress Sarah Bernhardt wanted to have a leopard's tail grafted to her lovely bottom. In the past years, a few people had had their faces altered to look like a feline or a lizard. Dr Lee, of course, dismisses these previous attempts by other surgeons as botched jobs. "These people just look like monsters. Having filed teeth, tattooed stripes and a split upper lip doesn't make you a tiger", Dr Lee says. "But if you come to me with a serious project, I can turn you into something beautiful." Dr Lee's ears twitch wildly now, a telltale sign of excitement in an otherwise extremely composed man. Just as on cue the door opens, and enters a very feline secretary sporting Sarah Bernhardt's spotted tail. She serves us coffee and when she leaves the room, I can't help noticing that her cat-like gait is nowhere freaky but actually sexy. I compliment Dr Lee about this. He politely nods and replies, "This is art".
It turns out, however, that the furry fad has somehow abated and that most of the animal jobs Dr Lee presently does are simple updates for previous patients.
But because people are just weird, another crowd has filled the void.
In the waiting room, a male voice can be heard, singing "This is my handle, this is my spout". "Another teapot wannabe, just what we needed", Dr Lee sighs, and his ears seem a