Mark Borkowski (http://www.borkowski.co.uk/mark/) is the PR against whom I benchmark my thinking, AA Gill the journalist under whose pen I poise while Adonis is the Point Virgin Active demigod that incites my body beautiful.
I'm quite competitive by nature so I regularly Google potential competitors to see how we rate. Mark, for example, comes up with 4210 hits while I, achieve 370. AA Gill writes pithily about people, food and travel for Vanity Fair, GQ Worldwide and a bevy of adoring international titles while I for the The Cape Times and expect my first GQ piece in March. Adonis is beyond empirical comparison because, as yet, I don't have his measurements. I imagine them something like this: 6ft plus, 90kg, BMI 19, with less than 12% body fat. Unblemished skin, rippling abs, chiseled jaw, broad shoulders, neat thighs and, when the term "very well hung" is used, it is not in reference to his curtains. I, on the other hand, can report the following: 6ft (just, in heels) 145kg, BMI 45.2, with 46% body fat. As far as curtaining is concerned, although I'd prefer solid Californian shutters, I've got those wispy thin blinds that tangle in a breeze.
Over the last two days since joining Point Virgin Active gym, I've watched Adonis closely. Moving through the crowds with a certainty of godhood, parting the sea of patrons simply with his angular chin, he conducts the machinery and free weights like Von Karajan while I, ruddy-faced, sweaty, become entangled in my earphones trying to fit into an arm bike. The treadmill is easier to navigate. After a few moments at 4.5kl, already feeling my heart in my throat, I begin getting tiny shocks in my ears. The voltage increases suddenly and I rip them off my ears hoping others haven't noticed my panic. I felt a little like the chap in the opening sequence of Live and Let Die when Smurf, Smootch, Smerch or something electrocutes the guy through his headphones. Paranoia creeps in. Is Adonis trying to kill me? I wonder. Does he know that I plan to usurp his throne? I follow him to the change room for continued surveillance. Still fussing with my combination lock, he has ditched his kit and is parading to the showers. With a bounce more commanding than Mesmer's pendulum, transfixed, my neck follows my eyes and twists my spine into a painful click. As I recoil, I decide Adonis is simply too perfect to want to kill me. It must be Gill or Borkowski instead.
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