Author’s Note: One thing you should know about me is that I despise all forms of exercise. Leave me alone on the sofa with books and snacks—please and thank you.
They clan a corner like Greek scholars, swapping recipes and personal bests. As January sheds its rotisserie, they cage their birds from the fleet of fancies. Between useless avocado bites, they swap their soap boxes for kettlebells. A flock of taut calves hail themselves a merry monument. They eschew polite conversation like fondant on fruit cake. This Bullingdon club recruits the living dead, the insanely occupied cannon fodder shaking their paper weights at the masses. To enter the machine you must have a lust for perceived strength. These commandeered soldiers are the magpies you salute on foggy afternoons. We living dolls run from rabid foxes and turn deaf ears to the grass we use as a printing press. Our friends will never know how we were electrified. There in the middle, a kaleidoscope perches on the fringe of a squat rack