“People are so wrapped up in being people that they forget they can be so many other things. Being human doesn’t mean anything. Think of how much more interesting it would be if people sometimes saw themselves as unicorns,” says Fleeky Flanco who makes a living transforming himself into other shapes. Literally.

Fleeky is a professional contortionist. He first fell in love with the art of contorting when he was 16, living near D.C., and his name was still Paul Flink. Fleeky saw a picture of a contortionist on his friend’s wall.

“It was love at first sight,” says Fleeky. “I just thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. You could change yourself so much. You could look so much not like a human anymore,” he says.

For the next year he trained on his own in contortion and adopted the name Fleekyafter a musician commented that he sounded like a Fleeky.

“It took me by surprise because no one had ever said I sounded like something. It really stuck with me. Basically, it’s an anamanapia name,” he says.

His self-taught training included practicing yoga to try to learn more about stretching. He admits trying to learn contortion on his own was risky.

“I had no idea what I was doing,” says Fleeky. “Its dangerous if you do it wrong. If you do it right you can still get hurt,” he explains.

He eventually enrolled in contortion classes at the San Francisco Circus Center, although building strength was difficult at the beginning.

“They called me noodle boy for the first 5 years because I was just so disconnected in my body, and I would just flop around like a noodle,” he remembers.

Some people are naturally built for contortion, but Fleeky says he is not one of them.

“A body with looser connected tissue is good. I wasn’t particularly flexible. I really had to work for what I have,” says Fleeky who presently trains 5 days a week for 4-5 hours per day.

And despite his professional instruction, Fleeky has sustained many injuries in his 12 years of training, including busting his knee and dislodging his Adam’s apple to the point where he couldn’t swallow for two minutes.

But his most severe injury was breaking his back after he twisted 180 degrees and snapped his vertebrae. He had to stop practicing for a year.

“I definitely enjoy pain, but at the same time, you have to really listen to your pain because there’s all different types of pain. And you have to be able to relax while you’re in pain,” Fleeky explains.

Fleeky currently performs in Germany, Canada, and America. He also works with his San Francisco-based group Circus Flim Flam.

“We’re trying to create our own thing. We want to do rated R circus shows. We want to make something we haven’t seen before–something a little more dark,” he says.

And as for the future of this 29-year-old, he plans to practice until his body gives out.  He says he admires contortionists like Natalia Vasylyuk who have tested the limits of physical transformation.

“In a lot of ways you get very addicted to performing. Its something you’ll just keep dong compulsively until you can’t. My act is always as hard as possible because I want the audience to feel something really intense. If I’m not sweating after my act I’ve done something wrong,” says Fleeky.

And he believes staying alive in contortion takes a lot more than physical strength.

“There’s so many days that I’m like, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ Basically, in the circus, if you can just survive, you’ll do great.”