Muscle

by Samuel Wilson Fussell

As I was to learn, Vinnie’s truck was, in fact, stolen. Or rather, parts of it were. He had a Toyota hood, Ford doors, and a CMC engine. The vehicle was a “chop-shop special.”

  When he saw me heading in the direction of the Maverick, he screeched his monstrous amalgam to a halt. “Hey, Sam, are you residin’ uh, chez Macon and Lamar this evenin’?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll see what I can cook up fo’ you, New York,” he said, putting his car back in gear, a determined glint in his eye. I watched the Chevy roar down the street. There was a vanity license plate on the back. In bold letters, it said: POWER. Around it, Vinnie had attached a chrome frame, which read “You be the six, I’ll be the nine.”

  “Come on over, Sam. Take a load off!” I heard Macon’s voice from behind the Maverick. He opened the truck and stuffed my bags in. Among the gym attire, the straps, the belts, the arm blasters and neck harnesses, there was very little room. Lamar shyly shook my hand and introduced me to his pit bull Cuddles, who bared his fangs in greeting.

  We retired to the lawn chairs Macon had set up on the sidewalk by the barbecue, a few feet from the Maverick. Macon rose to offer me a full plate full of hot chicken breasts, some vegetables, and a container of nonfat milk mixed with high-grade protein powder and carbohydrate concentrate. I took the plate, thanked them kindly, and settled into the chair Lamar gently slid my way.

  As I eased into the lawn chair, Macon spoke of his hopes and physique aspirations for his son. Lamar was eating well, he said, his lifts were in order, his supplementation was of a consistently high dosage. Macon had even purchased Cuddles for him, since he had read in a physique monthly that pets reduce stress (and stress, of course, causes mental and physical depletion).

  While I listened to Macon, I set about ripping the trapezius sections out of all of my new Gold’s Gym sweatshirts with the aid of my commando knife He was still talking as we cooled down with the protein coladas Lamar made with the blender.

  “Do you think bodybuilding is in a healthy phase right now, Sam?” Macon asked, testing me while he bit into a carob power-explosion bar.

  “How do you mean?” I asked, chewing a desiccated beef-liver tablet.

  “Let me put it to you this way, son. Who is your favorite bodybuilder?”

  “No contest,” I said. “Arnold.”

  Lamar and his father exchanged delighted glances.

  “And after him, Sam, who do you think you’d like to be?”

  I thought to myself, this time for a good fifteen silent seconds. No one else came to mind, myself least of all.

  “Arnold,” I said again.

  “Right on, Sam!” Macon cried, slapping his hand against his knee. “See, goshdarn it, that’s just what I mean! Now, you look at these shrunken poodles that pass for Mr. Universe these days,” he said, showing me a well-thumbed magazine with a particularly emaciated specimen in green posing trunks on its cover. Lamar smiled and nodded his head vigorously from his chair. I knew the builder and the magazine. I had a subscription. “For God’s sake,” Macon said, exasperated, “I’ll tell you something. You jus’ give me one of them starvin’ Biafrans, and I’ll show you muscle striations. I mean have you seen the abs and intercostals on some of them guys? But my God, how come human ropes like, like … Raoul are tryin’ to pass themselves off as lifters, I ask you?

  “Now dagnabit, Sam, it don’t take no genius to know that Lamar ain’t never gonna pass for one of them clipped poodles, but, in God’s name, why the hell (pardon my French, Lamar) should he?

  “I mean, take one look at the man. He’s paid his dues! Doggone it, he’s a Clydesdale in a world of Shetland ponies!” Macon spat out a chicken bone to emphasize the point.

  Looking over at Lamar, I saw a thirty-year-old, 325-pound man with an arrowhead haircut pretending to read a magazine called Four Wheeler. I say pretending, because he was rocking in his chair, holding Cuddles to him with all his might, basking in his father’s approbation.

  Macon pointed a long, loving finger at his son. “That’s it in a nutshell, Sam,” he said. “I mean, strike me blind if Lamar’s off-season weight ain’t a biscuit away from 350, if he’s a pound! It just ain’t healthy these days. It’s like you got to carry ’round one a them diuretics manuals just to take to the posin’ dais!

  “I mean you can have your Mohamed Makkawys, your Samir Bannouts, your Pierre Vandensteens,” Macon said, with a dismissive wave of his hand at foreign builders in general. “Pile ’em all together on the Medco, and they still don’t add up to one Lamar!”

  Lamar smiled at his father, and slowly rose from his chair. So far he hadn’t said a word. He trusted Macon with Cuddles and grabbed two more chicken breasts from the barbecue.

  Back in his seat, Lamar spoke in a slow, sorrowful tone. “I have faith, Sam, strong faith,” he said. “And you know, I see things this way: Since the beginning of time, human beings have crucified our lord Jesus Christ and plagued the land with all kinds of pestilences and wars. Now, if people can do that to whole civilizations through the course of time, then just imagine the world of hurt they can put on me, unless I watch my six. I put my trust in no one, no one but Cuddles, Dad, and heavy lifters. Heavy lifters like you, Sam. My motto is ‘If you hear me growlin’, man, don’t come rattle my cage.’”

  “Now, now, Lamar, don’t get all agitated,” Macon said. “Don’t you remember what I told you ’bout stress? Here, quick, take Cuddles.”

  Lamar nodded silently, and retreated to his lawn chair.

  “Anyway,” Macon continued. “It’s just like I told you yesterday, son, these things go in cycles. All you got to do is open a book and examine history. Now, son, the late sixties and early seventies were a time when size ruled, with them Arnolds and Sergio Olivas and Lou Ferrignos. Then—kind of like what the good book says—a darkness fell over the land, ’cause the mid-seventies came and those Frank Zanes and sunken-cheeked foreigners ruled the stage. I mean, why would anybody in their right mind pay to see some guy with a Chippendale’s physique? But now, thanks to Lee Haney, we might be coming back to good times, Arnold times, Lamar times.”

  “I’d rather be Bertil Fox and never win an Olympia, than be Frank Zane, and win three,” Lamar recited by rote, clutching Cuddles to him. I recognized the names. They represented two physique extremes: Bertil Fox looked like a refrigerator with veins, Frank Zane like a prisoner of war. Each had been popular in his day.

  That first starry California night I spent with Lamar, Macon, and Cuddles in the Maverick. Lamar retired with Cuddles to the back seat. Macon took the passenger side, and I made the best of it with the wheel and the pedals of the driver’s side.

  From my vantage point behind the wheel, I stared at the air freshener which hung from the rear view mirror. It smelled like a Vermont forest, but it was shaped like a dumbbell. On it were the words: “Bodybuilders do it … until it hurts.”

  Amid the silence, I heard Lamar stir in the back seat. Making sure his father was asleep, he pressed forward and rested a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt on my shoulder. A confession was coming up, I could feel it. I braced myself for the worst. What would it be? Homicide, genocide, or, casting a glance at Macon snoozing beside me, patricide?

  “Sam,” Lamar whispered in his doomsday voice. “I think of myself as a chocolate popsicle in creation. You know, at first in the factory, you just have the popsicle stick. That’s like, the way we were born, what the good Lord gave us. Then, you dip the stick into a hotbed of chocolate, and you get a coating. See, more coatings mean more muscles. The gym is the hotbed of chocolate, Sam, and we’re the popsicles. After ten or fifteen years of repeated applications, you got yourself one humongous chocolate popsicle.”

  “Lamar,” I said, relieved, “you’re a natural born poet.”

  “Ain’t every bodybuilder?” Lamar asked, settling into comfort with Cuddles.

  “Right on, Lamar!” Macon shoute
d, a tear falling from his eye. He hadn’t been asleep after all.

  I loosened my weight-lifting belt, slumped back in my seat, and tried to get some sleep. Shangri-La, Open 24 Hours, was our night-light that evening, and Macon and Lamar fell fast asleep to the lullaby of iron clinking across the street. Mercifully, I slipped into unconsciousness soon after.

  7. THE JUICE

  IN THE QUEST FOR THAT WINNING EDGE, THE ADVANTAGE OVER ONE’S OPPONENT, MANY ATHLETES HAVE OPTED TO DIG DEEPER INTO THEIR PHARMACEUTICAL GRAB-BAG.

  —FRED HATFIELD

  The next morning, I waited at the juice bar for Vinnie. We were to train legs at nine A.M. From my position on the stool by the counter, I sipped my Blueberry Force Primeval Shake and listened to the noises indigenous to the California gym.

  Xandra, on the phone with a girlfriend, was shocked. “You’re kidding!” she squealed. “My God, that’s, like, such a coincidence! I can’t believe Cerise! Did you know that I see my channeler once every two weeks too! Last time, she got these really neat tapes of Jock—that’s my spiritual contact, you know—talking through her voice. I mean I’m so into that I just can’t decide what I should pursue in the long run. Like, metaphysics, or hand modeling?” She stretched her nails, dry now, out before her.

  From the weight room, I heard Macon forcing another rep out of Lamar on the bench press.

  “Work it, son, work it!” Macon yelled. “Feel the hardness of it, watch it grow!”

  Beside me, a beefy man lifted his head from his Strawberry Carbo Fuel Supreme Shake (with extra protein powder and nonfat yogurt) at the sound of his girlfriend at the door.

  “Tony, I’m going to the salon, do you want me to pick you up some gel?” she queried. She brushed a spritz-soaked lock of hair from her eyes, and adjusted her halter top.

  Tony grunted his response. His calves had the girth of my thigh. Arnold, in his Encyclopedia, mentioned that calves like those cost at least 500 hours of straining, tortuous calf sessions. “Great calves,” I said in admiration. “You must have paid a heavy price.”

  “You got that right,” Tony said, flexing them for our mutual benefit. “3,500 bucks. Implants. Dr. Rebus over in Woodland Hills did them. You’ve heard of him, right?—he does a lot of builders. He just inserts a little sheath in each, and presto, instant calves.” He looked down at my legs. “I’ll give you his card,” he said in sympathy, and then whispered mysteriously, “He can cut out your gyno, too,” before heading off for his workout.

  There I sat, dressed in my new genie pants, Reeboks, oversized Gold’s Gym sweatshirt and cap, mentally preparing for the onslaught of Vinnie’s arrival. It was different from New York, but not that different. Minutes earlier I had suffered another painful bout of diarrhea. This time it wasn’t skells or the urban inferno, it was legs with Vinnie. I feared I might not be able to hang with him, as they say in the gym, matching him pound for pound, exercise for exercise.

  Macon had told me over breakfast that Vinnie believed in “intensity or insanity,” a training method popularized by Vinnie’s mentor, the onetime Mr. America, Steve Michalik. Most bodybuilders adhere to the theory that four or five exercises per body part, with four or five sets per exercise, is more than enough for any one workout, and that anything more than twenty-five total sets per 90 minutes or two hours is overtraining. But not Michalik or his disciples. They often did as many as fifty sets per body part, using a full two hours just to train one muscle. This necessitated a few adjustments, using less weight and more reps, for instance, with little rest between sets. It also involved a muscle principle known as “continuous tension,” in which the builder shortens his range of motion from four-fourths of a movement to three-fourths. By eliminating the pause at the top of the movement (that last fourth), the lifter ensures that the muscles are constantly, continually at work.

  From what I gathered from Macon, Vinnie alternated his training style, some days bombing his muscles with this “intensity or insanity,” other days slowing down the workouts and permitting pauses, doing fewer sets and reps in the hope that the heavier weights he used would help him pack on more size. I knew that I would have to experience both methods if I were to break my plateau and continue growing, but I was apprehensive and, most of all, scared. After all, I didn’t know which to prepare myself for: the blinding pace of high reps or the slow, deliberate, numbing pain of strength training.

  At last, I heard the voice of my partner. “Oh yeah! Let’s rock ’n’ roll, Sam!” Vinnie screamed, as he strode in and spotted me at the juice bar.

  “Two hundred forty-two pounds and hard!” Vinnie announced with his arms outspread, referring to his own muscular condition.

  He pointed one hand in the direction of the squat rack and the other at me. “Sam, prepare to meet thy doom!” he shouted, throwing down the gauntlet.

  Vinnie wore the same outfit as the day before; the only variant was the do-rag. I asked him about his clothes. He said he never washed them. The laundromat had nothing to do with the gym, so why waste the energy? I gave him a little fist salute of iron man solidarity, breathing through my mouth rather than my nose to keep from gagging at the stench.

  That morning, when Vinnie took his knee wraps, his belt, and his ammonia capsules out of his Gold’s Gym bag, I realized that it would not be an “intensity or insanity” day. It would be a strength day.

  So began my education. Where Vinnie traveled, I followed. I couldn’t help it—we were tethered to the same Sony Walkman Vinnie wore in a black leather fanny pack around his waist. The machine housed a port for two headsets at a time, and my cord let me wander no more than 10 feet.

  Vinnie and I first did “I go/you go.” We started at the leg extension machine, 15 reps each. As soon as he finished his set, I hopped on; when I finished, he hopped on. The weights we used were abnormally light, just a warm-up before squats. My concentration was broken only by the sound of Vinnie’s encouragement: “That’s right, Big Man! Don’t you let up! Goddamnit, rip that door right off its fuckin’ hinges!”

  He told me we would do about ten sets of squats. This was unusual. Few lifters exceed five, and for good reason. After the sixth set (and fifteenth repetition) I took off the headset, staggered outside and vomited the half-dozen raw eggs Macon had given me for breakfast and the protein shake Tara had made for me at the juice bar.

  For a moment, I was ashamed. I felt I’d let down the side. As soon as I reentered the room, I attacked the weights with ferocity. It was the right thing to do. Get back on the horse and ride. Vinnie’s admiration was unbounded. He was inspired.

  “Like a freight train from hell, baby! Oh yes!” he screamed. “I got myself a real trainin’ partner!”

  From behind me, I heard Macon as well. “All day long, Sam!” he yelled. He told Vinnie that, in some ways, I reminded him of Lamar. We were dinosaurs, true, he said, but we weren’t extinct yet.

  Vinnie began to load up the squat rack with 400, then 500, then 600 pounds. I couldn’t lift this successfully on my own; I wasn’t strong enough. So with the bar bent over my back, Vinnie wrapped his arms around my waist and tugged me up from the floor at every rep. Forced squat reps. With 600 pounds. Even with my knees wrapped and my back secured with my belt, I couldn’t believe the pain.

  For his own set, Vinnie stopped communing with the other lifters. For him, the heavier weight necessitated a certain manner of preparation. He retreated to his own private world, reserved for all kinds of rituals, ceremonies, and ammonia capsules. He paced nervously around the squat bar for 90 long seconds. Then, a tightening of his weight belt, and a run over to my direction. He stopped a foot from me to point at his legs and scream: “Look at these fuckin’ gams, Sam! These are manly gams, goddamnit!” He quickly flexed them in the mirror and caressed them with a loving hand, before snatching an ammonia capsule from my open palm. Breaking it directly under his nose, he inhaled deeply, looked as if he’d just seen God, then rushed
to the squat bar, where he tightened his belt and settled in under it.

  At this point, he rocked on his feet, head-butting the steel bar several times in an effort to initiate an adrenal spurt. Finally, with his mind focused from the ammonia and his forehead gushing blood, he performed the exercise.

  On his heaviest set, 645 pounds even, he asked me, as his training partner, to “do the right thing.” From my acquaintance with Powerlifting USA magazine, I realized what he meant. After his knee wrap, his walk, his talk, his ammonia intake, and his belt ritual, I nailed him twice with a closed fist and clean shots to the face. The result was a bloody nose, a black eye, and a successful lift. In the world outside the gym, they call it assault and battery. Inside the gym and in the magazines, it’s called the “Heightened Arousal Mode” (“making your anger work for you!”). It’s what I’d seen Sweepea and Mousie doing in amateur fashion that first night back at the Y.

  But it wasn’t all just sound and fury. Above the roar of his Walkman, Vinnie taught me how to adjust the stance of my feet on every leg exercise in order to change the shape of my quadriceps. I learned to keep my ankles together, and my feet facing straight forward to build up the outside sweep of my thigh (for the vastus lateralis muscle). I learned to splay my feet in an open stance, like a duck, to add muscular layers on to my “teardrop” muscle (known as the vastus medialis) that in the biggest builders drapes over the knee.

  In fact, Vinnie had a positional variation, for every exercise and body part, which made the gym, for an advanced builder like himself, a kind of mail-order catalog. Instead of money, Vinnie expended energy and outfitted his body with muscles of his own design rather than clothes.

  And I was a quick study. Vinnie had never seen a pupil like me. I was the only training partner he’d ever had who barfed as a matter of course. During workouts, the only face more contorted in pain than his was mine. To my surprise, except for Macon and Lamar, we were the only ones who seemed even to be trying.