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Howdy Cactus Crew! Hope you’ve been well :] I’ve been busy melting from the horrible heat wave tearing through London. The only good part is that Steve can use my sweat puddles as a birdbath, but the rest gets a 0% rating on Rotten Phil-Matoes 👎🥵
My hair is starting to get dog levels long again, and I can’t exactly say I learned my lesson from last time as every day when I’m shuffling around in the bathroom cabinets I eye those clippers and just barely hold back. “Not today” I whisper. But what if one day I don’t? Guess you’ll know when I upload a video with a giant bald head.
Speaking of videos (how’s that for a transition? I’m a professional) I’m going to be filming one in the next few days, but I want your help for it. You might have noticed I’m on a real roll of gay content lately, like all the years of keeping it shoved down so hard just has me spewing it out now (ew, sorry) and I’m actually really enjoying it. But in my million-year youtube career, I did have so many videos go up where the whole story maybe wasn’t mentioned because of that huge secret, so go ahead and comment below which videos you’d like me to react to and give some gay background on or whatever. I’ll probably have it up soon if the sun doesn’t fully obliterate me.
☀️asweatyphil
—
When Phil sits down to record his video, he sees many videos suggested that don’t surprise him. The first pinof, the Hearthrob video on the gaming channel. Two people even comment about the Valentines video, which surprises him only because this is a members post and that means two different people contain the multitudes to troll him and to pay him £5 a month.
There are also some videos suggested that he just doesn’t think would come out interesting, mostly because he’d be reacting to his own reaction of things, like when he reacted to his old or deleted videos. Reacting to his reactions is a little too meta; he doesn’t think he’ll go down that road today.
But there are many that will work, he thinks. Many titles he hasn’t thought about in years.
Phil opens each one on a separate tab, then goes to his wardrobe to pick something that isn’t the new merch he’s been living in.
He decides to just go in chronological order. That means “Phil the Viking” comes first, an actual vlog-type video about a day he spent on the Faintheart set. After giving an intro and smacking himself in the face with his laptop once he brought it into view, Phil presses play. And after an obligatory squeal over how horrible his hair is, he suddenly gets why this one was chosen.
“Okay, so I think an alternate title to this video could have just been People on set I thought were fit,” he smiles.
He laughs so hard he cries a little when past-Phil asks someone apropos of nothing to show off their six-pack. “I wasn’t very subtle there was I?” He can feel his face turning red; he’s got the same tightening in his stomach whenever he talks about being gay to the camera now. Something which is reminding him of the instinctual urge not to do what he’s about to do, even though he’s going to do it anyway. He imagines that’s what daredevil skydivers feel. “I think I would’ve happily eaten some smooshed Jaffa cakes off of that stomach, just sayin,” he winks. Attempts to wink. Almost winks.
Next, he gets to “Robot Death Machine” and shakes his head as past-him brings up the Big Brother audition. “And I already told you how that went,” he laughs. “Self spon, check out that video if you haven’t.” He cringes a little at how he described the other people auditioning. Especially that blink-and-you-miss-it moment where he clearly thinks he’s the right kind of gay, if one has to be gay, as opposed to those campy gay people he mentions.
Phil thinks about getting into it for the video he’s currently filming. He doesn’t think he’d do a good job talking about it on the fly, though. Like he’s recognized old behaviours he isn’t proud of, but he isn’t confident on speaking about it yet.
He watches towards the end of the video where he begins a tarot card reading. He knows what’s coming. He’s seen a gifset or two. He doesn’t think he’ll comment on this part, certainly not in a version of the video he’s filming that actually gets uploaded. But he does want to watch.
“I smell like a girl..” is next, and he is amazed for a moment at the difference between the previous video and this. Two and a half years, he’d graduated from uni and moved out of his parents then into Manchester. He’d met and fallen in love with Dan. The Phil in this 2011 video is almost an entirely different person, for better or for worse.
“I think I’ve always been, er, keenly aware of ways in which I’m not like, traditionally manly,” Phil says while giving his best flex in a denim jacket while balancing a laptop. “And so at this time in my life it was clearly important for me to have that manly gruff scent, like any gender roles I could control I felt like I needed to, so something stupid like getting a sweet-smelling shower gel just felt like the universe pointing a finger at me and saying You don’t deserve to smell like cars, football player sweat, and sharks, Philip! You’re more of a raspberry kiss kinda guy and well… I am, it turns out! Not always so sugary sweet a shower gel as that, there’s too much of a risk that I would actually bite my arm off one of these days. But I’ve always had nice smelling ones in recent years and it makes me happy. That’s what shower gel is all about right? And all scented things? Just getting what makes you happy.”
That feels like an uplifting moment for the video, and Phil’s going to hold onto that feeling because he’s still a little nervous about what’s coming up.
He starts “THE ATTIC” and insists to the camera that he really did think there was a wolf up there, for much longer than a child really should believe something like that. He reiterates that he should never have been given a toy that makes actual sparks. And he pauses when he finds the little coin purse his grandmother had given him.
“I mean this is just more toxic masculinity at play here, isn’t it.,” Phil shrugs, “One of those kids who called it a girl purse lived on my street and he was the coolest kid with great swoopy hair even before any of us knew what to do with hair, and I went twice into Manchester with him and other kids when someone’s parents all took us. I didn’t know if it was like an actual crush I had on him, or if I genuinely just didn’t know what the emotion was called at the time, but he definitely made my brain short circuit. Luckily for me, or unluckily or whatever, being teased by him squashed any almost-crush I might’ve had.”
Phil thinks about how many horrifically failed crushes he’s mentioned in recent videos. He thinks about how he can’t exactly make a video about the love stories gone right, that’s just… there seems to be a difference between monetizing past suffering, and monetizing present joy. Still, if someone only knew him from these gay storytimes, they’d think that Phil has had a pretty bleak love life.
He also laughs because in this video he’s found his copy of Faintheart, and “Robot Death Machine” had a quick moment where he actually received that DVD. “This is quickly becoming a spon for an obscure British comedy film I appeared in for 5 seconds isn’t it?” he smiles. “Three mentions in four videos, that was your secret agenda, wasn’t it Cac Gang?”
There’s another big jump in years, as the next video, “I Read A Letter From My Younger Self” is as recent as 2018. There had been suggestions of videos from the intervening years, but Phil is really trying to tell a specific kind of commentary.
“Okay, so this video,” he says, “I tried so hard to find this freaking letter, the one I printed out to read. I lost the email, I think it just expired or went into the ether, I don’t know. But the physical copy is winning hide and seek 2020. I tore the office apart, papers everywhere, none of them the one I needed!”
He doesn’t mention the fit Dan threw when he saw the mess. He doesn’t mention the conclusion he eventually came to that the letter must be tucked away in their storage unit.
“But there was a bit that I remember definitely leaving out while filming that, it was something like past-me asking Did you finally go on a date? Like a proper date? Like a REAL date? because even then I was paranoid about a document existing where I ask myself Have you gone on a gay date? Have you gay dated yet? Kissed any blokes? Any heavy petting??. Anyways, Phil from twelve years ago now, yes. Don’t worry. You’ve done a REAL date.”
There’s a warmth travelling from his neck to his cheeks. He’s pretty sure he’s blushing. He’s pretty sure they’ll see it on camera. He decides to worry about leaving it in or not during editing.
“Okay, I think I have enough ab endurance to do one more video’s worth of cringing,” Phil smiles. “This one’s kinda similar, actually, only my hair is better,” he says, clicking on “A Chat With Myself From 10 Years Ago” and shaking the nerves from his shoulders. “Oh, I love that jumper,” he says. “I can’t wait until it’s cold enough to wear jumpers again, without melting a slow fashionable death!”
He knows what part to comment on, and forwards the video until he gets there. “So in all this advice where I tell myself not to brag so hard to my flatmates about all the clubbing and partying and sex that I have, I just also would give the advice to long-haired Phil that these housemates are really good people, and they’re going to be great when you come out to them. For the most part. There’s going to be one guy who gets weird about being in a room alone with you, even if it’s just like the lounge, because he worries that you’ll like be overtaken by desire one day, but he’s not your type and a total jerk and everyone else stands up for you, so it ends up fine. It’s okay. You’re great, uni lets you swim around in some safe gay sea even though we don’t love the sea, and don’t be afraid of it.”
He closes his laptop and takes a deep breath to get ready for the outro. The last one is a little too recent, still hurts a little bit sometimes. So the deep breath is needed, but he can handle an outro. A simple little outro with a few jokes and a quick plug for his merch store. He gives a long, “Gooooooodbye,” and leans towards the camera with his hands out.