Rodney was by the Olympic barbells and looking like he was training for high intensity. He wore a black cut-out T-shirt that read Totally Awesome, a pair of bright-yellow cheetah-print mid-calf tights and a red-and-black silk bandanna like a skullcap. A guy called Payaso was spotting him as he bench-pressed three hundred pounds. I saw the veins in his arms popping, and he glistened with sweat. I stopped to watch. The spotter bent over him as though not convinced that Rodney could make the weight. Rodney pumped the weight three times and put it back in the rack as easily as taking a pie from the oven. He got up and wiped the sweat off the bench he had been lying on.

“Pecs today, am I right?” he grunted at me.

I nodded and took a pair of twenty-pound weights from a rack.

Rodney picked up a pair of twenty-five-pound ones. “Stress has to increase progressively,” he said, handing them to me and ignoring my doubtful look.

I lay back on the incline and bent my knees slightly to keep my back against the board. I pulled the weights into my armpits, then pushed up. Rodney made me do three sets of fifteen and had to help me with the last three of each set. I moved over to a decline bench and lay down, placing my knees over the elevated pad and securing my feet under the grips to do flyes. While the pectoralis major muscle has a single point of origin under the deltoid, it fans across the chest to insert at several points all down the sternum. You need to work the muscles from different angles for total development. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as Rodney handed me the weights. The first step in developing an incredible body is to create a strong image of the kind of body you want. I saw myself tall and lithe, with breasts like a Valkyrie’s. I opened my eyes, and the weights sagged toward the floor. I felt Rodney’s hands near my elbows and smelled the great sweat of him. A rough moan escaped my throat as I struggled with the weight.

“You’re an animal. Train through it!” he growled.

I would never let Rodney see me cry and I didn’t for the next hour.

Upstairs, after a shower, I pulled on a pair of white cotton slacks, a white tank top and a pair of teal blue Maude Frizon sandals, and set out for Hollywood hoping the air conditioner in the car was going to work for a change.