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Authors: Craig Davidson
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to Olympic hopefuls and
women of a Certain Age. An old dude with a toxic tanning-bed tan—his skin the
diseased orange hue of a boiled tangerine—was rowing to Jehovah on an erg
machine. Paul glanced away, mildly revolted, and caught the proprietor making
a beeline for him.
Stacey Jamison
struck the casual observer as a man who'd been given a girl's name at birth and
had spent his life trying to outrun the association. At five-foot-four and
nearly three hundred pounds, there was nothing on the guy that wasn't
monstrous. His legs and arms and neck were like a telephone pole chainsawed
into five sections. His body was networked in thick veins pushed to the surface
of his skin by the sheer density of muscle tissue.
He was once a
professional bodybuilder, but three consecutive heart attacks had forced him
off the pro circuit. The cause of the attacks wasn't openly stated, but gym
scutdebutt had it that Stacey would pop anything that could be crammed into a
syringe, including powdered bull testicle. Once he'd loaded himself up on Lasix
before a show, leaching all the moisture from his body for that ultra-cut look;
unfortunately the racehorse diuretic left his organs so desiccated that his
kidneys tore like a tissue paper Valentine when he nailed a Double Crabbed
Biceps pose during a heated pose-off segment.
"Harris,
you pansy." Stacey wore a shirt with a snarling cartoon rottweiler over
the legend don't growl if
you can't bite. "You got a hollow
chest like a puffed-up paper bag. I seen ten-year-old girls with more
definition."
Stacey's shtick
was to stalk the gym belitding his customers' physiques: You got driftwood arms; A butcher wouldn't take those
stringy legs as stewing beef; I could fry an egg on that flat ass of yours. While
this initially struck Paul as an ideal way to alienate one's clientele, he'd
grossly underestimated the average gym member's tolerance for abasement. More
than a few appeared to crave Stacey's brutal assessment of their physiques, as
if he were a mirror that reflected the physical deficiencies they'd long ago
glimpsed in themselves. And though most of Stacey's assessments were of the
critical variety, he was infrequently known to deliver faint praise: You're not looking quite as sickly as I recall or You're less skeletal; I guess I'll have to tell those body
farmers to look elsewhere. Such backhanded
compliments were enough to lift Stacey's regulars to a state of mild euphoria.
When Stacey
wasn't berating his cowering clientele, he acted as spotter for some of the
more grotesque gym denizens. These juiced- up muscleheads could bench cart-oxen
weight, the bar bowed under a mass of steel plates as finger-thick veins stood
out on their corded necks. Einsteins of the Body, Paul dubbed them. Some were
so huge their heads looked comically small in relation. It amused him to
consider the possibility that they were, in fact, fantastically tiny men who
zippered into a hulking coat of meat and muscles each morning; at night they
unzipped and hung their muscles on a peg. Every few weeks they got their meat
coats dry-cleaned.
"Get your
ass under that bar," Stacey told Paul, adding a few extra ten-pound
plates. "It's go time." He slapped Paul's face, slapped his own. "Do this,
motherfucker."
Paul braced his
arms on the bar and jerked it off the pegs. His arms trembled; he entertained a
giddy vision of his forearms snapping and the bar crushing his windpipe. He
lowered the bar, felt it touch his chest, and pushed.
"You're in
it to WIN it, baby!"
Stacey jabbered. "Go hard or go HOME ! "
Muscles tore
across Paul's chest, fibers snapping like over-tuned piano wires. Stacey's
crotch hovered above Paul's face: stuffed into lime-green spandex shorts, his
package looked like a plantain and two walnuts jiggling in a grocery sack.
"Lift,
bitch! Be a MAN for once in your life!"
Paul's strength
ebbed as the bar locked inches above his chest. His muscles fluttered and bands
of white fire stretched across his eyes.
women of a Certain Age. An old dude with a toxic tanning-bed tan—his skin the
diseased orange hue of a boiled tangerine—was rowing to Jehovah on an erg
machine. Paul glanced away, mildly revolted, and caught the proprietor making
a beeline for him.
Stacey Jamison
struck the casual observer as a man who'd been given a girl's name at birth and
had spent his life trying to outrun the association. At five-foot-four and
nearly three hundred pounds, there was nothing on the guy that wasn't
monstrous. His legs and arms and neck were like a telephone pole chainsawed
into five sections. His body was networked in thick veins pushed to the surface
of his skin by the sheer density of muscle tissue.
He was once a
professional bodybuilder, but three consecutive heart attacks had forced him
off the pro circuit. The cause of the attacks wasn't openly stated, but gym
scutdebutt had it that Stacey would pop anything that could be crammed into a
syringe, including powdered bull testicle. Once he'd loaded himself up on Lasix
before a show, leaching all the moisture from his body for that ultra-cut look;
unfortunately the racehorse diuretic left his organs so desiccated that his
kidneys tore like a tissue paper Valentine when he nailed a Double Crabbed
Biceps pose during a heated pose-off segment.
"Harris,
you pansy." Stacey wore a shirt with a snarling cartoon rottweiler over
the legend don't growl if
you can't bite. "You got a hollow
chest like a puffed-up paper bag. I seen ten-year-old girls with more
definition."
Stacey's shtick
was to stalk the gym belitding his customers' physiques: You got driftwood arms; A butcher wouldn't take those
stringy legs as stewing beef; I could fry an egg on that flat ass of yours. While
this initially struck Paul as an ideal way to alienate one's clientele, he'd
grossly underestimated the average gym member's tolerance for abasement. More
than a few appeared to crave Stacey's brutal assessment of their physiques, as
if he were a mirror that reflected the physical deficiencies they'd long ago
glimpsed in themselves. And though most of Stacey's assessments were of the
critical variety, he was infrequently known to deliver faint praise: You're not looking quite as sickly as I recall or You're less skeletal; I guess I'll have to tell those body
farmers to look elsewhere. Such backhanded
compliments were enough to lift Stacey's regulars to a state of mild euphoria.
When Stacey
wasn't berating his cowering clientele, he acted as spotter for some of the
more grotesque gym denizens. These juiced- up muscleheads could bench cart-oxen
weight, the bar bowed under a mass of steel plates as finger-thick veins stood
out on their corded necks. Einsteins of the Body, Paul dubbed them. Some were
so huge their heads looked comically small in relation. It amused him to
consider the possibility that they were, in fact, fantastically tiny men who
zippered into a hulking coat of meat and muscles each morning; at night they
unzipped and hung their muscles on a peg. Every few weeks they got their meat
coats dry-cleaned.
"Get your
ass under that bar," Stacey told Paul, adding a few extra ten-pound
plates. "It's go time." He slapped Paul's face, slapped his own. "Do this,
motherfucker."
Paul braced his
arms on the bar and jerked it off the pegs. His arms trembled; he entertained a
giddy vision of his forearms snapping and the bar crushing his windpipe. He
lowered the bar, felt it touch his chest, and pushed.
"You're in
it to WIN it, baby!"
Stacey jabbered. "Go hard or go HOME ! "
Muscles tore
across Paul's chest, fibers snapping like over-tuned piano wires. Stacey's
crotch hovered above Paul's face: stuffed into lime-green spandex shorts, his
package looked like a plantain and two walnuts jiggling in a grocery sack.
"Lift,
bitch! Be a MAN for once in your life!"
Paul's strength
ebbed as the bar locked inches above his chest. His muscles fluttered and bands
of white fire stretched across his eyes.
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