Muscle

by Samuel Wilson Fussell

  Judging by the mirror, I was a bodybuilder from the 1950s. I was light-years beyond Sandow at the turn of the century. I was even better than the first great builders, John Grimek and Clancy Ross from the 1940s. But by the fifties, bodybuilding had caught up with me. Steve Reeves had me on symmetry and aesthetics, Bill Pearl on size. I was no match for Schwarz­enegger and the other bodybuilding greats of the sixties, Sergio­ Oliva and Larry Scott, much less the giants, like Lee Haney, who had evolved since then.

  No, to be considered one of the best bodies in the world, I would have to go back thirty years. Back then, 18-inch arms like mine were halfway between Charles Atlas and Arnold. But it was 1988, not 1958, and now I would be hard-pressed to win even a local contest like Mr. San Gabriel Valley.

  Still, if I didn’t win, it wouldn’t be for lack of effort. I didn’t play catch-up only in the gym, I did it even in my own bedroom. Every other night, I woke up, reached under my bed, and pulled out a 25-pound dumbbell. Lying as still as possible, I did ten sets of lateral raises for each shoulder (in the hope that the bigger my deltoids grew the smaller my waist would look). After 15 sweaty minutes, I had just enough energy to drop the weight and, exhausted, fall asleep.

  I was gripped by a kind of muscle madness, both in the gym and out. On the sidewalks outside Shangri-La, I couldn’t see my shadow without gagging. It looked so elongated as it stretched out before me. Did I really look like that? Like ET with a gym bag? And the suspicions raised by my shadow were confirmed by my clothes. As the weeks before the contest passed and I continued to shrink, my clothes took on increasingly Brobdingnagian proportions. I understood at last those bodybuilders who announced their miraculous “muscle gains” as they weighed themselves fully clothed in hooded sweatshirts, lifting belts, and construction boots.

  Often, I checked in the mirror to make sure I was still all there, that the “real” me, the puffery and muscles, was still me. The more I trained to keep that “real” me, that Michelin Man me, the more I realized the cruel nature of bodybuilding. At any given moment, some of your muscles are growing, yes. But the obverse is also true: At any given moment, some of your muscles are atrophying. According to sports physiologists, a muscle left dormant for 72 hours is a muscle that, unused, unneeded, begins to vanish.

  In order to obtain “maximum growth,” as they say in the gym, I had to store in my mind a perpetual mental timetable of just what muscle I’d worked when, in order to keep from drying up and blowing away. In effect, I was caught up in a solipsistic game of tag with my own muscles.

  But this catch-up game wasn’t just about my lagging body parts. It was also about my age.

  “You like the music this loud?” I’d said to Vinnie that first day I trained with him two years earlier. I’d had to shout to be heard above the din of his Walkman.

  “Sam,” he responded, shouting himself, “if it’s too loud, you’re too old.”

  It all seemed easy enough for Arnold, who had started lifting at fifteen. But I had started at twenty-six, and no matter how often I brought up Chuck Sipes, Ed Corney, and others who had made it late, I was concerned enough about my age to lie about it constantly. No great bodybuilder had ever started as late as I had. My age was one part of me I couldn’t control, couldn’t reinvent. What if all this was for nought? Not just these contests, but beyond. The logical sequence dictated that after Mr. Golden Valley, I would progress to Mr. Los Angeles; from Mr. LA, I’d move on to Mr. California, then to the Nationals, and finally to the Pros.

  The time I didn’t spend training or worrying about my shadow, my shoulders, my diminution, or my age, I worried about the actual competition.

  According to Vinnie, a bodybuilding show consisted of: the morning Prejudging, which included Round One—the preliminary line-up; Round Two—mandatory or compulsory poses; and Round Three—free posing (60 seconds, without music), and, then, “The Evening Show”; the line-up once more; the posing routine (90 seconds to music); the pose-down; and, for the winners of each particular weight class, the pose-down for the overall title.

  Vinnie didn’t bother me with the details concerning each element of the show. Instead, he wholeheartedly helped me with my posing, which I practiced every afternoon before the critical eyes of all three of my roommates.

  First, there were the mandatories to learn, those eight standards I’d aped from the magazines long ago in front of the lavatory’s mirror at work. The judges would call for these poses for comparison shots. We took them one at a time, with Vinnie and Nimrod twisting and plying my limbs into the appropriate flexed postures. I learned how to contort my body into (1) the front-lat spread; (2) the side chest; (3) the side triceps; (4) the front double-biceps; (5) the back double-biceps; (6) the back-lat spread; (7) the leg extended, hands behind head, abdominal pose; and (8) the most muscular.

  Second, there was the posing routine itself, in which these moves and more are incorporated into 90 seconds. Ninety seconds during which the builder makes one clockwise or counterclockwise full circle to music, stopping at certain points along the way to display his physique from the front, the side, the back, the other side, and the front again.

  For my music, I chose 90 seconds of “Theme from Shaft” by Isaac Hayes. It had everything I wanted: a slow, haunting beginning rising to a loud, energetic beat, finally triggering a violent, string crescendo for my crabs.

  Professional bodybuilders take as long as three minutes to show their physiques. With the added time, their routines are more intricate than one counterclockwise turn. But I didn’t have three minutes. I had half that, and I planned on fitting just ten major poses within that time; two each at six o’clock, three o’clock, twelve o’clock, nine o’clock, and six o’clock again.

  To begin, I chose (1) “Giant in Repose.” Down on one knee, I cast my head at my feet, and pushed my left bicep against my raised other knee to make my arm appear fuller.

  Then, as the music began, I rose. “Like the fuckin’ orchid, ya bloom!” this never failed to evoke from Vinnie.

  Standing in the six o’clock position, I expanded into (2) the front-lat spread. I kept my heels together, bent my knees slightly, and held my hands slightly above my obliques.

  One-quarter turn to my left, and I stood at three o’clock. Looking back over my right shoulder, I hit (3) the side chest, which displayed my tightened upper torso.

  Still at three o’clock, I pushed my arms out away from my body and kept them parallel to one another, at right angles to the rest of my torso. This was (4) the arms extended pose. When Arnold did it, his biceps looked like loaves of bread. Mine looked like two sausage links.

  One-quarter turn again to my left and I stood at twelve o’clock, with my back to the stage. The perfect position to raise my arms and display my shoulders, arms, and trapezius muscles in (5) the back double-biceps. Judges can detect the shape of a builder by the quality of his “Christmas tree,” the spinal erectors, from this position.

  Still at twelve o’clock, I flexed into (6) the back-lat spread. Instead of keeping my arms upraised and flexed, I held my hands at my hips, and stretched the wings of my latissimus dorsi, while simultaneously tightening my calf muscles.

  One more quarter turn to my left and I stood at nine o’clock. Since my right bicep had a higher peak and overall better size than my left, I shot two poses from this angle: (7) the one arm extended bicep pose and (8) “Hair.” The first involved keeping my left arm close to my body to make it look fuller. With a slight twist to the left to expose my upper chest, I raised my slightly crooked right arm almost to shoulder level, and, keeping it away from my body, flexed it. A singular loaf of bread, in theory.

  Then, still standing at nine o’clock, I moved my left arm upward, passed it over my hair, while simultaneously smiling and flexing my now fully raised right bicep. The pose called “Hair” necessitates a gleaming smile and an addiction to the life and gestures of bodybuilder Tom Platz.
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br />   One last turn, and I was back at six o’clock, completing the counterclockwise circle and facing the audience.

  With but 15 seconds left, there was just time for (9) the legs extended, hands overhead, ab shot (“Garbo”) and (10) the most muscular variation (“Crabs”). “Garbo” I performed by holding my head in my hands in Steichen fashion, and flexing my abdominal muscles and thighs. The “Crabs” were the perfect finale, bringing all my blood to the surface in a hideous display of beef bordering on spontaneous combustion.

  Diagrammed, the whole routine looked like this:

  In the free-posing round, there are two vital maneuvers to consider: first, the actual poses, and second, the transitional moves into and out of those poses. You need to twist on your feet without stumbling or windmilling your arms for balance. Up on the high wire, the trapeze artist frantically waves his arms to generate a feeling of danger. But on the dais, the goal is to generate safety, security. The bodybuilder projects a feeling of utter self-control. The winner in the free-posing round is not simply the man with the best body, but the builder most adept at selling the fantasy. And since these are muscle shows, it is power and brute force, along with grace and style, that rock the crowd.

  Aside from projecting pure emotive force, I had to learn tricks; what to accentuate, what to hide. Up on stage, every bodybuilder is an illusionist, always armed with artifice to cast his spell. By never locking the legs, the quads look fuller and larger. By keeping the feet at an angle with heels joined, the calves look bigger. I had to keep my bent legs together to make them appear thicker from the side.

  Just as important as the size and quality of my muscles was the ability to display them. I needed to show my physique to all the seated judges, not just those stage center, but those seated to the far left or right as well. So every pose necessitated a hip swivel. Too many bodybuilders rush through their posing, which is infuriating for the audience. To maintain a slow rhythm, Vinnie advised me to count out loud. “One, two, swivel, three, four, swivel, five, shift, pose, smile.” “One, two, swivel, three, four, swivel, five, shift, pose, smile.” Again and again and again.

  Memorizing the whole routine took days. Making the whole thing look joyful and spontaneous, instead of the mapped-out, scripted, well-rehearsed essay it is, took weeks. From my entrance on stage to my exit, it was all rehearsed. My entrance was stolen from Arnold’s 1975 Olympia in Pretoria, South Africa. On his walk to the dais, he flicked an imaginary bead of sweat from his massive upper pecs to draw the attention of the judges to the area. My concluding bow was stolen from Tom Plate’s appearance at the 1980 Olympia in Sydney, Australia.

  My routine was dramatic, all right, but not too dramatic. The goal is to play by the audience’s accepted rules, and then to shock them within the form, not venturing outside it. Michelangelo’s David and the Farnese Hercules are one thing, but, as professional bodybuilder Bob Paris learned, The Dying Gaul is quite another. From the Capitoline Museum in Rome to Columbus, Ohio, Paris concluded his posing program with The Dying Gaul at the 1989 Arnold Classic. It was met with an uncomfortable silence and angry suspicion, the latter confirmed months later when he revealed his marriage to his “husband,” male model Rod Jackson, and the joy they shared in their “children,” two dogs and a Macaw named Barney.

  Ten days before the contest, I looked less like a bodybuilder than a football player. I was still carrying too much water, so Vinnie shut down my carbohydrates, not completely, but on a 55 percent protein, 35 percent carbs, 10 percent fat split. Without carbs, I had no energy left to wade through my workouts, so the boys took turns training with me. Some sessions, it was Lamar (with Macon pressing us on), others Vinnie, still others Nimrod or G-spot.

  As the event grew closer, my most pressing waking consideration, aside from training, became my tan and tracking down the best methods to achieve it. The definition I had sculpted into my body in the previous weeks would be undetected without the glow of a healthy tan. I needed the sun to keep my fish belly white body from looking flat and fat under the harsh lights of the stage. But the sun wouldn’t be enough. As Nimrod accurately foretold, my WASP genes would also necessitate daily tanning sessions from Shangri-La’s sun bed.

  Thus, I spent 30 minutes before my workout each morning sequestered in the cocoon of the tanning bed. There I sat in a cradle of brilliant light, my naked hulking body stretched out before me, exposed to the humming rays I rented to penetrate my skin. But despite daily sessions, the first week passed without any result whatsoever. I increased the radiation dosage from a half hour to an hour per session. Still no result. Just as I feared, the problem was not with the machine, but with my own stubborn skin.

  In desperation, in the final days before the contest, I purchased a trunk load of tanning products from a retail bodybuilding outlet in West Covina called The Health Factory. Pro-Tan Instant Competition Color. Dye-O-Derm with special sponge-applicator tip. Part alcohol, part brown dye, I was fine so long as I avoided open fires or furniture. I could touch nothing without befouling it with my competition color. The chairs, the walls, the La-Z-Boy, the knobs on the television set, the toilet seat, the dishes—I made my mark on them all.

  And though the products, as they warned, completely clogged my skin, adding to the collection of carbuncles and whiteheads I acquired through my supplementation program, the brown coatings finally stuck (provided I didn’t shower or wear a full suit of clothing).

  Three days before the show, Vinnie finally flushed my body with carbohydrates. After so many weeks on 1,000 calories a day, it was a relief to carbo-load for my last four days. I substituted oatmeal and raisins for my two eggs and a slice of bread for breakfast, and was allowed a side of spaghetti for a midafternoon snack.

  As the training and dieting and varnishing took effect, the result, two days out before the contest, was indisputable. The mirror did not lie. I had effected a most extraordinary mutation. The man staring back at me was, unquestionably, a bodybuilder. With the reduction of my waistline and the tightening of my abdominal muscles, my chest looked twice its normal size. Veins covered my thighs and chest like cobwebs. Thanks to my diet, my skin was thinner than airmail paper. And with my varnish, I was browner than a buried pharaoh. I’ve done it, I thought to myself. I’ve actually done it. I had at last achieved the metamorphosis. What my father called “an atavistic nightmare,” what Clive James called “a condom filled with walnuts,” what my mother called “a cautionary conceit,” I had become. A bodybuilder at last.

  Those bronzed, muscle-bound figures in the glossy magazine pages had always seemed to me creatures from another world, in some way not quite human. And God only knew, how many hours, how many days, how many years I had spent trying to join their ranks.

  Then why did I feel so awful? Thanks to the rigors of my training, my hands were more ragged, callused and cut than any longshoreman’s. Thanks to the drugs and my diet, I couldn’t run 20 yards without pulling up and gasping for air. My ass cheeks ached from innumerable steroid injections, my stomach whined for sustenance, my whole body throbbed from gym activities and enforced weight-loss. Thanks to the competition tan, my skin was breaking out everywhere. Vinnie and Nimrod explained that all this was perfectly normal.

  “What, do you think this has anything to do with health?” Nimrod asked, shaking in mirth at the idea.

  “Big Man, this is about looking good, not feeling good,” Vinnie added soberly.

  But it wasn’t simply my shortness of breath that bothered me, or my accelerated heart rate, dizziness, or bruised hands. No, I suffered from a more severe affliction, and well I knew it. I’d become a bodybuilder to be comfortable with a self I’d invented. I had counted on the security, the simplicity of the mask, the armor. But once I’d manufactured all the muscles and the puffery, I felt trapped inside this colossal frame. Everywhere I went, I heard myself breathe. I didn’t need to see passersby doing double takes to be aware of my own movements, t
o watch myself—this huge, ungainly creature, suffocated by a world of his own making. In the end, “the Walk” I did, the being I had become, felt stifling, limiting, claustrophobic, far from liberating, as it had once been on the corner of Fifty-third and Second back in New York.

  But no one in Shangri-La detected a thing. To them, with my muscles and my new competition color, I was a rank and file bodybuilder. Opinion was divided on the expected outcome of the contest. Some gym rats, hearing the quantity of drugs I had consumed in my efforts, labeled me “The Experiment,” in homage to a college football player whose steroid exploits had just then made the pages of Sports Illustrated. They were convinced that no one could stop me from winning both my weight class and the overall trophy. They saw my victory as a product of science.

  Others were convinced that by entering the open class, I had invited disaster: that only a fool would compete in an unlimited class in his first venture on the stage. Hadn’t I, after all, come close to “bombing” at the strength exhibition?

  But I was deaf to everything. To keep from feeling bad, I kept myself from feeling anything at all. Nothing penetrated my muscular armor. I had descended completely into a world of my own, a world based on sets and reps, anabolic steroids and vitamin supplementation, coats of Pro-Tan and Dye-O-Derm, compulsory and optional poses, and protein and carb and sodium and fat ratios.

  12. THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY

  THE MUSCLE-FLEXING IS OFTEN THERE, ALL RIGHT, AND IT IS REAL, BUT IT IS NOT, AS SO MANY ASSUME, BORN OF A DESIRE TO BE TOUGH.

  —JAMES M. CAIN

  By the time I heard Vinnie’s knock, I had already been up and posing for an hour. I counted on last-minute isometric squeezing and flexing to increase my vascularity and muscle separation for prejudging.

  “You ready, Big Man?”