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48 Noon Tony Hoagland Noon at the gym, and work-ethic Nichole is giving a class called Tight Butt for women who fear their husbands are losing interest, and others who are part of the Husband Recycling Program. Fifty serious minutes of sweat, repetitive step and thigh burn, a techno & trance drill sergeant— There will always be some who motivate by flattery, but Nichole is a punisher. I am watching the guy on the rowing machine who is stroking across a cardiovascular ocean while watching the backside of a redheaded woman who is using her lunch break to catch up on furniture catalogues. Did he who made the lamb make the three or four of us? and what was he thinking, when he fastened our pieces together? snapped on the plastic back and set us in motion? I myself am not a pretty sight, with my red face and little belly running through a mirror toward my grave but perhaps I am an advertisement for not trying to improve; 49 49 Tony Hoagland or an advertisement for trying in spite of certain failure, or an advertisement for joining the conspiracy that seems to exist between us to never, ever stop craving. ...

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