“Sorry, like, no offense or anything,” she giggled, waving her fingers in front of her chest. “It’s just that one of them broke again, so, you know, like, bummer, I had to put it back on, and then, you know, why not paint the whole set again? My name is Xandra and my motto is ‘let’s party?’ And you are—?”
“That’s Sam,” Tara said, pointing her finger at me. “He’s a bodybuilder and a new male member.”
“Oh you are?” Xandra asked. “I’m so stoked! I mean, you’re definitely buff, and you can tell just so much about a person by their body. I hate fat people, like, to the max, don’t you? I mean they’re just so lazy and things. Like, if you don’t have respect for your body, guy, then what do you have? Like, whenever I pass some load, I don’t know whether to stick a finger down my throat or theirs,” she said, steadying a pocket mirror and calmly plucking at an eyebrow.
Health fascists and gym bunnies—it was my introduction to the major-league bodybuilding scene. And as soon as Tara and Xandra buzzed me through the chrome turnstile, I espied the rest of them. There seemed to be a California uniform code in effect. The men wore their standard issue: pastel-colored genie pants (oversize cotton bloomers with drawstrings at the waist and at each ankle), oversized Gold’s Gym sweatshirts (carefully ripped at the neck to expose the trapezius muscles), Gold’s Gym baseball caps decorated with small buttons (one said “Pray for War,” another “I’d rather be killing Communists in Central America”).
And as the men were dressed for building, the women were dressed for breeding. All of them favored the colorful, clinging tights, G-strings, tube tops, and other lingerie items modeled by Tara and Xandra. All of them, save G-spot, given name Dot, that is. She was the hirsute female builder I’d seen earlier whose construction boots, fatigues, and olive drab tank top signaled the Army/Navy store rather than Frederick’s of Hollywood.
One fashion accessory indispensable to both sexes was the heavy leather weight-lifting belt. It was available in the pro shop in sturdy brown or black leather or multicolored suede. Some lifters carried them over their shoulders like bandoliers, others buckled them so tightly around their waists that it looked like their upper bodies would pop from the pressure. The biggest men, though—Lamar and Moses included—wore theirs loosely, like a carpenter’s utility belt, between sets. The belts, for the most part, were unnecessary in the gym, only needed for back support for a few exercises. But they were vital for purposes of collective identity, which is why they were worn at all times. I’d worn mine on the plane ride out.
It certainly was different from what I had expected. My only previous experience with California gyms were the ones I had seen in the backgrounds of the muscle magazines. I had spent hundreds of hours back in the bunker hovering over these photographs, a bottle of rubber cement on my desk, pasting my head on different bodies. The gyms in these shots were cold, Spartan, undecorated, the kind where none of the lifters wore shirts, but most of them wore tattoos, the kind where you would expect to find a sign by the front door saying: “No rugs, no sauna, just iron.”
But Shangri-La looked like a cross between a cathedral and a singles bar. Every corner housed a fern. A series of Casablanca fans hummed from the 20-foot ceiling. Skylights in the roof created spotlights on the floor, illuminating iron worshipers in a fountain of fiery brilliance. Between the lifters, a score of neatly clad, pencil-necked employees in red uniforms officiously replaced the weights in the racks and cleaned the equipment. There were framed, signed photographs of bodybuilders and airbrushed lithographs of streamlined nudes by Patrick Nagel on the redbrick walls.
The dominating decorations of the gym, though, were a series of life-size blown-up photographs of the owner, Raoul, posing in his competition briefs. There were twenty of these, all black-and-white, slung from the wooden rafters like flags in a medieval banquet hall. He was the equal to just about anyone I’d seen in the magazines. I knew that to get that spectacular a body would take me at least six more years of three on, one off, double-split sessions, forced feeding combined with stringent dieting, and, of course, complete focus. At the very least, six years. It might well take thirty-five or forty years, as it had for the bodybuilder Albert Beckles, now still competing at the age of sixty.
But I didn’t stop for even a moment to consider the effort or, for that matter, the absurdity of the quest. Instead, displaying again the symptoms of the diseased, I rushed off to the locker room to pursue my career choice by shaving a few nubs off my legs with my Lady Bic. While I was exchanging the tank top I wore on the street for the one I wore in the gym, I saw a near-naked figure at the mirror.
“Seven percent,” he said smugly.
He was “standing relaxed” in his underwear, with his shirt in one hand and his pants rolled down around his ankles.
He turned his head to me. “I’m seven percent,” he said again. “Body fat,” he added, proffering his hand.
With his free hand, he dug his fingers into my side, using his thumb and index finger as makeshift calipers. “You’re about twelve percent,” he said grimacing, “probably even more.”
There was something about his face—he looked familiar. Suddenly it hit me. The posters outside. This was Raoul, Mr. America.
“You … you … you look so different,” I stammered.
Raoul smiled, revealing a latticework of metal in his mouth. “It’s the braces,” he said firmly. But it wasn’t the braces. It was the body. In the pictures, he looked enormous, a Master of the Universe. In person, he looked like a malnourished accountant.
Raoul saw the look of confusion on my face. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I’m a little old for braces. Well, maybe, but it’s a marketing decision. It will help my overall presentation.”
I nodded my head and donned my sneakers. Raoul, glimpsing himself in the mirror again, couldn’t contain his excitement. “Hey buddy, look and learn,” he said. “Watch me expose my rectus abdominus!”
He shifted on his feet, offered his right side to the mirror, and, in a deliberate motion, lifted his right arm above his head before tilting his right hip in the direction of the mirror. He nodded rigorously at the sight. His abdominal muscles looked like an ice-cube tray. He had but one more word to say, “Quality.” With a little smirk, he pulled his clothes back on and strutted out the door.
As soon as he left, I tried the move myself. The rectus abdominus was nowhere to be found. My body-fat percentage was simply too high. Where Raoul had a deeply gouged grid of rectangular brown muscles, I had a pasty blanket of white flesh.
I might have despaired had I not heard the thundering steps of Lamar behind me. His wild dash didn’t stop until he had emptied his guts into the toilet right by my posing mirror.
“Lamar! Son!” his father (and training partner) cried, waving a towel before him, as he rushed in a few seconds afterwards. The old man fell to his knees to cradle his son’s head in his arms, then helped his massive offspring right himself from the messy bowl.
My response was automatic and a little too loud. “The muscles gained are worth the price of the pain,” I said, covering my love handles with my tank top and the iron shibboleth.
Lamar’s father broke into a grin at my words and introduced himself.
“I’m Lamar’s dad, Macon’s the name.” He was the first person I’d seen who didn’t look like he modeled for Muscle Digest or Penthouse. “Say, weren’t you in the heavies last year at Mr. Ironman?” Macon asked, biting his fingernails and knitting his brow in an effort to remember.
“No, I’m filling out before I compete. I’ll compete in a city show next year,” I revealed. I knew that much; start off with a city show, take it to the state, then the nationals. …
Lamar peeked out from his stall and came to join us. His father carefully swabbed the corners of his mouth, as Lamar held both hands to his head and moaned in pain.
“Lamar, we got us a new bu
ilder,” Macon said.
Lamar looked up and brightened visibly. When he discovered I was from New York, like his idol Lou Ferrigno, he asked me all about the legendary New York gyms, like Tom Minichiello’s Mid-City in Manhattan, and Julie Levine’s R & J in Brooklyn. I’d heard of both but hadn’t dared to work out at either. I admitted no such thing, though, instead trumpeting my workouts in them and the good times I’d shared with the owners.
Suddenly, Lamar looked at himself in the mirror in a panic. He turned to Macon and said: “Oh no, Dad, look! Oh no! I’ve lost some size!” They both glanced back at the toilet in misery.
I dashed to my locker and brought back a pack of BIG Chewables. As luck would have it, Lamar and I used the same brand, and he popped a handful of these into his mouth, along with a multivitamin pack I gave him, as though they were candy. The effect on Lamar was immediate. He did “the Walk” all over the locker room.
Thanking me for my generous care for a fellow builder, Macon asked if I would be so kind as to join him and the elephantine Lamar after the workout at their Ford Maverick, which was parked across the street. They called the Maverick home, Macon confided. He was going to barbecue some chicken and vegetables, laced with protein powder—only bodybuilding foods, he assured me. I promised I would join them as soon as I finished my own workout.
It was while I was on the seated calf machine that day that I first heard the ruckus. My head was down, my face contorted in agony. I’d been at it for a full hour, painfully isolating my soleus and gastrocnemius muscles. To really “get into” them, I was, of course, using the usual visualization procedure, in this case seeing my calves as gigantic spinnakers close to bursting from the force of a raging sea squall. My concentration was broken by the roar of a deep voice.
“In the final arena, there will be no judges, only witnesses to my greatness!” proclaimed an immense figure in a New York accent, hopping over the turnstile at the front door. He proceeded to do “the Walk” over to the squat platform. And oh what a walk he did! I had never seen quads thrust so far apart in the eternal battle against chafing, or arms suspended at such a distance from the body. And the majestic motion—so slow it took him a good 45 seconds to travel 30 feet.
He wore a silk do-rag over his head, a kind of colorful kerchief popular among minority women and gang members in depressed urban pockets of the United States. Over his massive and heavily acned torso, he sported a Gold’s Gym tank top and sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was ripped just enough around the collar to reveal a jutting and greasy pair of trapezius muscles. On his legs he wore, direct from Marrakesh, billowing genie pants the color of orange sherbert. The outfit was completed by purple socks and black Reeboks.
“Oh yes!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, nodding his head up and down dramatically. “Oh yes, we have come to train today! May we say it?” Without waiting for an answer, he burst forth with “Yes, I think we may. This is serious business!” Most of the other lifters, especially the smaller ones, gave him wide clearance.
“Do the right thing, buddy, do the right thing!” the hulk bellowed to himself. He shook his head from side to side, revealing the feathered earring that reached down to tickle one of his traps. Tightening his belt and wrist straps, he strode to the mirror to arrange his do-rag. He lingered for a moment at the mirror before rushing to the deadlift bar to warm up with 225 pounds for 15 lighting-quick reps. On his last rep, with a great clatter, he threw the bar from him in disgust, and did “the Walk” to the water fountain. There he lollygagged to slowly lick his flexed bicep for Tara and Xandra.
Xandra shrieked and hid under the counter. Tara, bolt upright, mouth slightly open, hips pressed forward against the counter’s edge, didn’t take her eyes off him.
On his way back to the platform, the hulk caught a smaller man eyeing him with distaste. Walking right up to him, he sneered, “Yeah? Don’t break your pencil case, geek. Why don’t you go get Raoul, huh? I spit on the both of you, you little closet shits!”
The target of his vehemence turned completely red, and fled in fear to the locker room. Clearly, it made the hulk’s day. His heavily muscled arm was raised in triumph; he flourished his clenched fist. He did “the Walk” back to the squat platform, where for ten brutal repetitions he deadlifted 405 pounds.
“Make haste slowly,” I reminded myself, resisting the urge to run over and join him. His act was familiar to me. It reminded me of the free-weight section back at the Y. But it was clear that it didn’t go over well in this California gym.
No wonder. Back in New York, lifting had been about war. Here, judging from the conversations around me, it was about networking. The hard-core builders were there, true; the Axles, the Bulldozers, the Guses (the usual nerds were in attendance as well—the Norberts and Nestors). But they were all swamped by the crowd of Kips and Corkys and Alistaires who flooded through the door after five o’clock. And that went for the women, too. The Ramonas, Desirées, and Dulcies were now few; the Catherines, and Jennifers, and Victorias many. Back at the Y, “opportunities for advancement” had meant the squat rack and the bench press. Here, it seemed to mean vocational choices and personal investments. The air was heavy with speculation on the vagaries of CDs, IRAs, and prime rates.
The one throwback to an earlier era was this blustering bully. As I watched, he skipped from the water fountain to the deadlifting bar. He sang the following ditty at the top of his lungs, while he chalked his palms and fingers and adjusted his wrist straps in preparation for the lift:
One, two, three, four,
Every night I pray for war!
Five, six, seven, eight,
Rape, kill, mutilate!
As if it were nothing, he picked up the 500 pounds on the deadlift bar and brought it up to his hips, repeating the movement for 10 strict reps. I was amazed. His face bore a rapt expression, as if nothing could please him more than being here and doing this. When I did it, for one pathetic rep, my whole body shuddered from the pain.
“We’re talkin’ big man muscles, goddamnit, I mean, serious muscles, I mean, we’re talkin’ big!” he yelled at the mirror again, his straining, screaming face one inch from the glass. His face and upper back bore the deep pits and craters of endless acne bombardments. His bulging traps were decorated with gigantic boils and cysts. He looked as happy as a pig in slop.
The workout as operatic drama, with all the peaks and sloughs known to each. In body and performance, he was light-years beyond Sweepea and Mousie. Here was joy. Here was fierceness.
I couldn’t restrain myself a second longer. I did “the Walk” over to the dumbbell rack, and imitated the master. As a sign of the extraordinary purity of my own muscle isolation, I wailed like a banshee through my reps to the astonished stares of even the biggest builders present. My shrieks simply recapitulated a gloss from the book Pumping Iron. Gaines and Butler observed Arnold during his workouts and noticed that he made a great deal more noise than his training partners during his exercises. They attributed it to the essential purity of Arnold’s lifting movements. Since his form was impeccable, his horrible cries and tortured looks were the result of really knowing how to isolate and exercise the muscles without resorting to the cowardice of cheating. The magazines called this “Muscle Integrity.” Accompanied by the sonic booms of the hulk’s deadlifting, I sang a little melody of my own while I did my arm curls.
“I saw a bird on the window sill,” I screamed, pausing in my lyrics until I had completed a 60-pound dumbbell rep with one arm.
“Singin’ fine and sittin’ still,” I continued, doing another rep, this time with the other arm.
“I coaxed him in with a piece of bread!” Another rep.
“Then I crushed his little head!” I sang, fortissimo, completing verse and set. A feeling of contentment spread through my body; I was at peace with myself, my pump, world.
The hulk had heard me singing from his side of the room. He came
striding over, his do-rag flowing in the wind.
“Hey, uh, yo, like uh, you from England or somethin’?” he asked, tilting his head and hiking up his pants.
“No, New York,” I said. It sounded more prudent than Princeton.
As soon as the words passed my lips, the hulk clutched me to his breast in friendship, repeating over and over again, the words “Semper Fi, Mac, Semper Fi.”
Of such moments are bonds made. On my very first day, I had found a training partner, and his name was Vinnie. As soon as he released me, he hiked up his pants again. Looking down, I saw beneath his weight-lifting belt what appeared to be a white plastic retaining liner partially hidden beneath the fabric of his genie pants.
It didn’t click then, but it should have. The hulk was wearing Huggies, the superabsorbent diaper built to contain any accident, no matter how extreme. I later learned that during the rigors of his deadlifting sessions, Vinnie had need of several per workout (he fastened two pairs together with, yes, safety pins). Thus equipped, he could concentrate solely on the lift at hand. No embarrassment, no failure. His record was a full box for one session—one record I didn’t want to break.
That afternoon, leaving the gym together, we vowed to meet for legs the next morning. Vinnie had eschewed a shower, since he believed it made him lose weight. I did the same, willing to try anything to break my plateau.
I gave him the soul shake by the door and, remembering Macon and Lamar’s offer of hospitality, struggled with my bags to the Maverick. In turn, Vinnie climbed up into his Chevy Luv pickup truck, which he had customized with a lift kit, sixteen raised shock absorbers and giant tires. The body of the car was so high off the ground it looked like something out of Dr. Seuss. He raised his hand and gave me a wave as he put it in gear.
“How do you like my wheels?” Vinnie shouted, above the roar of the engine.
“Hot, it’s hot!” I said.
Vinnie looked at me startled. “How did you know?”
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