Fame, Ho!

After you dance all weekend, after you gambol in the pulsing heat on a makeshift paper stage, after your pants soak through like a thing swum in and the duct tape holding your sleeves together gives way beneath the sweat's assault—only then can you commence with the cremes and heatpads.

Stretched out on a couchlet like the supreme martyr diva, you summon water glasses of wine from the next room, ply backrubs out of the odd passing visitor, and loudly lament your loss—this grand sacrifice you make of your body for joy alone, friends, for sheer, unbridled joy. 

After the visitors leave, you pull a dog-eared wad of bills from between the pillows of the couchlet—the true spoils of your sacrifice—and as you count them once again, their rustle takes on a kind of beat, and you smile down at your crumbled-in arches and your battered calves, humming along to that terrible beat, that godawful insistent and seductive beat.