The naked human seeks out their trainer. Some find this person in their family. Some in friends. Others never find them. Others don’t believe they need to.

I began with a small body. Late to mature, I measured myself against my thicker, hairier peers. I sought advice from the magazines that displayed the bodies I desired. I needed muscle, a good layer of it, to make up for my lack of pubic hair. My maturity was beyond my control, but to some extent the form of my body could be manipulated. I found an old bench and rusted weights out the back of the pottery shed at school.

With the routines from magazines memorised, and backdropped by spiderweb-ridden sclerophyll, I set to work on myself, twenty minutes an afternoon, two afternoons a week. Tuesdays, Thursdays. Wavering under the weight of steel: one, two, three, four. The smell of rusted metal mixed with sweat was evidence of my improvement.

I debuted my updated body some six months later in the school gym, with its forgiving wooden boards and black rubber mats, louvres, dust and radio. Benches in all variety of angles, some forcing the body into a beggar’s posture, others like a breaking wheel, cages of steel, winches and pulleys isolated from any purpose other than to isolate muscle and put it under duress.

My routine grew more elaborate and my muscles more bulky. Half-known gym regulars clustered in surprise, my buddies came to watch, and soon, in the mirrors, thick seams of muscle emerged where before there’d been only bone.

We’d smoke cigarettes in the bush after working out. A congregation of fringe dwellers supposedly improving their prospects, manipulating blood flow one minute, sending smoke inwards the next, bound by a shared perversity in motive. The bush always there to look on as we began these first experiments in bodily stimulation.