Think about it! Every superlative in the world - the strongest, the most aggressive, the biggest, the most refined, the most dedicated, the most successful, the most extreme, the most feared, the most admired, the most sought-after, the most imitated, the most EVERYTHING -- can be summed up by a young guy, at the peak of his strength and potency, curling his arms up over his head and squeezing his muscles into a triumphant, grunting flex. There's nothing that says "winner" like a guy showing off the rippling meat that he, through grueling effort and incredible dedication, called into being on his own limbs. It says, "I am the peak of existence. Follow me; fear me; or fuck me; but no matter what, I control you." No wonder I made muscle the center of my art; it's the allegorical center of the universe. That, and it's fucking hot.

I didn't do all this speculation then, of course, I just saw MUSCLE and followed - like a zombie after brains. Nature or my DNA or some shit was clearly tapping me, cluing me in, initiating me into the muscle secret. Hell - maybe some of you reading this know what I'm talking about. Maybe some of you remember being tapped like this, too. If so, then you also know the next part, mon frere: In return for giving us this knowledge, Nature commands us to make muscle our god and worship only IT. If this sounds familiar to you -- a high-five and a shout out to you, my brother.

When I asked Jeff about it years later, he confirmed in so many years what I had been feeling. "Absolutely, Mikey, I understand. The science is a little complicated, but it comes down to this," he says in this patronizing-as-shit tone of his. "Look at other guys around us: there's this tiny minority of guys whose balls pump a shitload of hormones, positively drenching their developing bodies with testosterone - like (polite cough) yours truly, and yeah, even you Mikey - and we become the Olympic athletes, or the underwear models, or the 6-foot Tom of Finland leather daddies with the massive cocks, the big hard muscles, the thick wavy hair, the husky voice, the lantern jaws…and the insatiable, almost crippling, libido. Straight or gay, whatever we do for the rest of our lives, we're primed to be strong, good-looking, sex-machines. But then there's everybody else -- the vast majority of ordinary guys who get like, just a tiny dribble from the faucet at puberty, and they become the pear-shaped, balding faggoty-ass looking dudes who sell insurance." He actually said that - "faggoty-ass looking dudes who sell insurance." I laughed my head off at that.

So my balls were clearly gushing something fierce. I started to get the fuckin' sexiest hair pattern on my chest - just enough on my beefy pecs, then a treasure trail plunging dagger-like down my tum to my cock, though the sides of my abs, upper arms, and back are smooth. My legs got leaner but didn't lose any of their thickness, and they stayed smooth-looking, just fine soft hair that turns a glinting gold and almost disappears in the sun.

Over Christmas break, I became like a fucking robot: all I wanted was to lift weights. Of course my asshole parents wouldn't buy me a weight set - they said Joe's had been expensive enough, I should use his. Well of course, I knew better than to touch Joe's shit, he would kick the crap out of me if I messed anything up. My bro was a big, mean motherfuckering senior, I thought, and I was still just a dweeby freshman. But I was smart; and creative. I found all this shit on the internet - isometrics, pliometrics, and what not. I fuckin' KICKED ASS in my room every night, focusing intensely on every slow rep. I started to discover that for me, exercising is a real turn-on. To this day, I can zone out for hours lifting heavier and heavier. For three weeks, I spent hours forcing rep after rep -- push-ups, squats, sit-ups, you name it. I got addicted to the "pump" I would feel after doing, say, ten sets of 30 slow squats. My thighs got killer big in no time, which thrilled the hell out of me. All vacation long I ws up in my cool, air-conditioned room, listening to this heavy trance music I favored at the time, and working out late into the night. God knows what my parents thought I was doing up there. •