state. I became so fanatical that even when I spent a semester abroad in Robertsau, France, Iâd travel over an hour a day each way just to get to a gym. The extent of my cross-cultural experience was converting pounds into kilograms.
During the last seven or eight weeks before the competition, I wrote down everything I ate in a notebook and would add up each dayâs caloric intake. Banana: 100; Orange: 65; Can of tuna in water: 175; Milk shake: 1,650. Abnormally large banana: 130 (estimated). I would pace myself for a minimum of 6,000 calories a day. But as the competition drew closer, I had to gradually taper off, to whittle away every ounce of fat. And the last week was killer: 800 calories a day. Total. While still working out for two hours. And taking sixteen college credits.
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The big day finally arrived. The Huntington, Long Island, auditorium was packed with five hundred fans who had eagerly paid $10 to see striations in menâs quads. I was glad Iâd told my friends not to come. I didnât need the extra pressure, although there was nobody around anyway. They were all in Fort Lauderdale on spring break like normal college sophomores.
I felt like shit. My muscles were exhausted. My brain was fried. My stomach was the size of a walnut (38 calories). I looked better than I ever had, but was probably less healthy at that moment than the fat guy dry-mopping the stage.
The other bodybuilders were all in the back room, doing push-ups to inflate their muscles and having their pals coat their bodies with baby oilâas you can imagine, an intense and not particularly friendly group of people. But I was too caught up in myself to really care. Besides, I was one of them.
Even under optimum circumstances, there usually wasnât a lot of chatter between bodybuilders. Occasionally, Iâd run into a friend from the gym on the street and, no matter who it was, this is pretty much the entire conversation:
âWhat are you training today?â
âBack and shoulders.â
âIâm doing tris and quads.â
âWellâ¦lemme know if you need a spot.â
ââKay.â
They called my group out onto the stage and the flashbulbs in the audience flickered. I was standing in my red Speedo with the number 13 safety-pinned to my hip, sandwiched between some guy named Jordan, who probably weighed close to forty pounds more than me, and someone named Dan who had killer abs but no discernible chest.
The judges bleated out poses and all of us simultaneously flexed the appropriate muscles. The double-biceps flex. The left quad flex. The right triceps flex. Applause erupted for each pose.
While onstage battling hunger and guys with better tans, it hit me. Other men were judging my body. And I was letting them. And I had that dumb âThis is effortlessâ smile on my face the whole time and I thought, âI am so fucking gay right now I cannot stand it.â
But I had worked too hard to walk away and I wasnât going to wilt under those 3,000-watt klieg lights. Besides, I had just noticed that both Jordan and Dan were starting to tire. I thought I had a chance. I decided to put all my pain and discomfort on pause. I had worked too hard to get to this point, and I could always go to therapy later to figure out why I was doing this. Right now, it was time to kick some bodybuilding ass. I unleashed my phony smile as I displayed as many veins as possible while simultaneously squeezing my pecs together and expanding my back.
As the judges prepared to announce the winners, I assumed I had finished third or fourth. I thought I had dieted a little too much and had become too lean for my own good. Plus, I didnât have throngs of worshippers with signs shouting out my name and quite possibly bribing the judges with amino acids and protein shakes. The results poured in over a very loud loudspeaker. In third placeâ¦I canât rememberâ¦it was a long time ago. In
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