I strip.

How long as it been since I objectively inspected my body as a means to an end? I had achieved the end: Andy.

I could enumerate how many bags of unsold potpourri the gallery had the day I left, I gleefully catalog friends, yet I have woefully forsaken the Dewey Decimal of my own bits ‘n’ pieces. Could the mid-forties elasticity of my means snap back? To compete in events of the flesh, I need recertification. So how old was Miss Brodie, anyway, when she was in her damn prime?

I stare at myself in the three-quarter-length closet mirror. My eyes aren’t as blue, my temples are teased with gray and flecked with hyperpigmentation and my earlobes grow goatees if untended.

I tie a towel low around my hips. My people have an allergic reaction to the neglected physique. Backfat intolerance, it’s called. I gave up on Men’s Health magazine three years ago. Inguinal ligament close-ups especially sent me into a rage -- Hercules’s Girdle, or Apollo’s Belt, or what Potsy called cum gutters. As lean as I was in my twenties, I was never cut like that. Now I’m pleated. I could claim that an ill-prepared surgeon destroyed my abdominal muscles like Mom had always blamed Caesarean delivery on her midriff jiggle.

I retie the towel higher.

This doesn’t help. A few more pounds and I’ll be a backward S, a pygmy. With all the strides made, it seems someone should have a flesh lace-up along the backbone that I can tighten, like a corset. If I wear the sheerest Spanx available, will that count as nude at the workout? I knead my love handles (although I challenge anyone to actually carry me by them). Only when I inhale until it hurts do I locate my ribs, comfortably resting beneath pinchy folds.

My nipples used to be Hershey Kisses. Now they’re sun-dried tomatoes. Andy had a gym buddy whose nipples were like pepperoncini from his foray into tit-pigdom. It was way too much pulling for my liking, but they sure made a statement. My breasts have begun a doughy slide into my armpits. I can’t see, but I wonder if I have hot dog neck, overlapping pink bands plumping on the back of your neck. Add some baked beans and gnats, I’m a picnic.

I have old hands, my mother’s hands. All of those refinishing solvents, that’s what did it. Old and dirty hands. My shabby fingernails are in need of a good cuticle push.

“Well, you could stand to be thinner,” I announce to my reflection. I drop the towel and look down. “And you could be fatter.” Here’s where I’m supposed to swagger that “I ain’t had no complaints ...” All cockbluster aside, I wish it looked better in a communal gym shower, but it’s an average penis, not the serious sizemeat that lends itself to puppetry but also not the bite-size God saddled some with.

With my old, dirty hands I cup my stuf, not so high and tight, but they also aren’t trussworthy. I don’t yet have to completely hoist my sac to just cross my legs the way I watched my dad’s dad do. I also remind myself of the online profiles that idolize low-hangers and that one guy’s e-mail address: LOVE_THOSE_EGGS!

When did my legs get so puny? My calves were once sturdy from endless gallery walk-throughs. Why does a knee now look like a witch’s chin? I turn around. My ass looks like a baseball mitt. That was left out in the sun. After being run over by a car. I turn back around.

Skin tags. What are they? Why are they called that? Tag, you’re it, here’s another for your left inner thigh. I find a constellation of them near my collarbone. I’m turning into an anti-slip mat.

What is it Mom said about these, something about a string trick? Tie a bit around each, it cuts their blood supply, they’ll wither. Drawing attention to each dermal growth with a bow ... sounds like a winner. I stop feeling around. I don’t have enough curling ribbon.

I remember how Mom, when Olivia was always smelling like sour milk, tried to bolster her: “Look around. You’re cuter and have a nicer figure than ninety-eight percent of the people here, what’s the problem?” And Olivia’s monotone reply: “The two percent, Mom.”

I remember Captain Reg and the way he greeted complete strangers with his named penis.

WWAD? This seems to be the ticker symbol dashing along the bottom of my brain’s frame. I remember him quoting Wallace Stevens: “Sometimes you must go too far to see what would suffice.”

What the hell. I left my dignity at the legless man. What is clothing but armor? I am going to Nudercise.