Now, my tongue, the mystery telling
Of the glorious Body sing—Thomas Aquinas, Pange Lingua Gloriosi
We walked the earth as gods, heroes, monsters, true anomalies who existed in an underground culture of iron and anabolic drugs, of mammoth protein dishes and a shared understanding that we were Übermenschen, superior to the unmuscled rabble of the world. Our ways were alien, extreme, unholy, hellbent. We puked and bled and broke laws in search of massive, striated muscle, in search of stares and whistles from strangers. I see now that we shunned the wimpy Christian ideal that places a beautiful soul above the perfection of physical form. Instead, we were magnificent Greeks, idolizing male beauty and believing that the exterior was a reflection or embodiment of the interior. Achilles, Adonis, Atlas, Hercules: look at them. And, my Lord, we were arrogant, solipsistic bastards. We were New Jersey bodybuilders, and, for a brief time, singing the body electric, I lived in triumph.
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