The Athlete

Everybody said he looked great. The trim figure, the sharp haircut, all those hours in the gym had paid off. He'd been sure it would, enforcing a regimen of free weights, diet, running and supplements. All done without hormones or steroids, just sheer hard work. He'd turned himself into a tanned, fit god with hair to die for, a washboard gut and every muscle defined enough to make him look like a movie star.
He even had makeup on, although it wasn't much. Just enough to give him a healthy glow.
All his Aunts and his Grandmother flocked around him, asking people to take photos and remarking on his fine appearance. They were the old fashioned type, caked with powder and cheap perfume, the last of their kind. You could tell. Only old people take pictures of their relatives in a casket.


"The abdomen is the reason why man does not easily take himself for a god." Friedrich Nietzsche