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glimpse   on the pitch by my house   the weekly game of football      there was one lad   already famous in our class for having snogged a girl and still my friend   despite the pull of the pack mentality I always felt outside of      I had no skill   could only put my body in front of someone else in hopes of slowing them for a moment and this time it caused my friend to fall and   in the split second it took for him to regain himself   I saw   slipped from shorts and briefs   his whole private self though he hadn’t noticed   still giggling at my sudden prowess at defence and after that   there were other times   crowding into a friend’s bedroom   me pretending not to look as someone showed himself to a girl      and the emptiness that followed nobody yet ready to do the things that come after      though it was still deliberate and so different from that earlier time the grass   that glimpse of something that seemed to be all potential   tiny sapling not yet seeding   just another part of our innocence      fear and lust and shame not yet ripened to full blush       what 16% of young men know   to get the body of their favourite sports star they must starve themselves      that the muscles are there already   if they could only get at them      that the thing to do is eat less and replace meals with water   so that they bloat and then feel their insides flushing out   that the stomach will expand and shrink back like a gas holder in a former industrial town      that once the body has burned off all its fat   it will start on muscle that more exercise just gives more energy for the body to eat itself alive   that they can forget what it’s like to stand without feeling dizzy   that their eyesight can fail   that their salad can be carried in smaller and smaller tupperware boxes that the doctor will be forced to ban the gym   will deliver his prognosis   that they will end up in the carpark of the doctors with their mum saying imagine   a child of mine   malnourished