By Thursday, the hallucinations began. Paranoid visions. As I saw myself shrinking, I felt my armor disappear. I felt vulnerable again, as exposed and assailable as I had back in New York. For a threat to my tenuous existence, I didn’t have to go farther than the neighboring freeway. My feverish imagination made it seem more than likely that, right there in 1404 Delacey, I might at any moment be crushed by a wayward Mack truck. I could feel the earth below me shake as the speeding vehicle spun wildly out of control in my mind, flattened a hedge at breakneck speed, and ploughed directly into the breakfast nook. I spent my days bracing for the collision.
I tried to escape through sleep, but it offered no release. As soon as my eyes closed, I floundered in the bog of a recurring nightmare. I dreamt that I was at a packed baseball game in an enormous stadium. I left my seat and the roaring crowd to descend into the silent innards of the amphitheater. It was cool there, the concrete as wide as a sea’s horizon, and utterly empty. The candy stand had been left unattended. I looked in every direction. No vendor. I reached my trembling, competition-colored hand out before me, clutched a box of Crackerjacks to my beating breast, and ran, frantically seeking cover.
Alone in a remote broom closet, I ripped the top off the box, and emptied the sugary contents in one swoop down my gullet.
Without fail, I awoke at this point, sat up in a panic, and thought, “Oh my God, what have I done? I’ve ruined my diet!” I’d disappointed Nimrod. I’d disappointed Vinnie. I’d disappointed myself. But it was just a dream. The same, recurring dream, came back again and again to haunt me. The nightmare caused me to rise sluggishly from the sofa, wheeze my way into the kitchen, and seek solace for my parched throat with a few gulps of distilled water.
At the beginning of the week, when I was still strong enough to travel outside of the house, I had gone on exploratory forays into the local market, where, using an empty cart for support, I cruised the aisles, staring at items I could not eat. I held the cart with both hands and pushed forward, stopping every few feet to catch my breath. With my emaciated face and my wavering walk, I looked less like a bodybuilder than a rank-and-file member of the Bataan Death March.
The tuna (sodium content too high), the hypertrophied chicken breasts (not lean enough), even the potatoes (too caloric) were all off-limits now. Instead, I tottered behind my cart as it careened toward racks of cookies, cake, pastries. I loitered around the fudge rack like a toothless pensioner outside an adult bookstore. I never bought any of these items, I just needed to know they were there. Shoppers avoided me as if I carried the plague. Obese mothers scolded their children for staring.
As I watched my skin shrink around my bones and remaining bits of muscle, I tried to countervene this trend of diminishment by asserting myself in some way. In this manner, I could at least prove my validity by reaffirming my own existence.
Facial hair, shotguns, and Big Man clothing became my obsession. I grew a quick Fu Manchu and stroked it continually to remind myself that parts of me, at least, were still growing. Without the armor I had grown accustomed to, it grew increasingly imperative that I buy the Mossburg 12-gauge I had seen advertised the previous “weekend. I spent hours on the sofa, my legs covered by a down comforter, a shawl over my shoulders, studying which shells would best be suited for the weapon. The Shotgunner’s Bible replaced The Encyclopedia as my manual of choice. I telephoned Moses, an authority on the subject, and discussed with him the many advantages of weapon ownership.
And when I was too tired to read about weapon specifications, I could still flip through the clothing catalogs for big men. With a red Magic Marker, I circled all the items I yearned to fill once more. Those shirts with 20-inch collars, those pants large enough to accommodate my 29-inch thighs. But I bought nothing. Just as I abstained from Vern’s doughnuts and the fudge, the 12-gauge and the clothes served as fodder for my fantasy of buying power, the only power I felt I had left.
As Wednesday ended and Saturday neared, I retreated fully to the bed in my room. I lowered the shades, and locked the door. Closeted in the comfort of darkness, I felt safe. At least here, there were no mirrors. Bad as it had been in the weeks before the last contest, for the Golden Valley it was worse. I had become like a vampire, terrified to look in the mirror for fear there would be nothing there. I hadn’t taken a steroid shot or a pill in a week, and though the Anavar and the Deca and the testosterone were still flowing through my body, I felt smaller.
So I hid, freezing, covered in layers, playing my posing music over and over again in my mind. I realized that my wooden posing had cost me points with the judges at the San Gabriel Valley. I needed something far more dramatic for a physique my size.
“Posing isn’t Sunday mornin’, Sam, it’s Saturday night,” Vinnie had told me with a wave of his wrist strap back at the aerobics studio the previous month.
I finally understood his message, and replaced my 90-second selection of “Theme from Shaft” with “Live and Let Die” by Paul McCartney and Wings. The music change necessitated altering my posing routine slightly, but I had to rehearse the whole thing in my mind, since by now I was far too weak to actually practice the moves with my body.
Vinnie and Nimrod visited my room on Friday night, the eve of the contest. I had lost all track of time at this point, minutes blurring into hours, hours into days. At the sound of their knock, I wearily rose to my feet and, almost fainting from the effort, limped to the door. My first human contact in two days.
Unlocking the door seemed like a marathon trial of motor skills. But the presence of these builders resuscitated me, at least for the duration of the visit. With his extensions and his muscular but short physique, Nimrod tumbled through the door looking like an animated troll. He held a tiny piece of black luminous cloth in his stubby fingers.
“Check these out, Rocky Mountain Way! This ain’t the fifties no more. You’re allowed to show the knees now,” he said, waving the trunks in my face.
I extended a weary limb to take them, and, using a straight-backed chair as my walker, retreated to the corner of my bedroom to try them on. The journey almost floored me. I had to pause every few feet to suck in great gasps of air. Constructed from two tiny black patches and a string, the trunks were a decided change from my previous pair. I hoped I had them on the right way. I had followed the normal procedure, keeping the tag, which bore the title of the briefs, the Enforcer, to the rear. Again, with the chair as my walker, I made it out to the center of the living room to essay a few painful, exploratory poses.
As soon as I twisted my body into “The Javelin,” I felt my head begin to spin. Trying to maintain consciousness, I focused my eyes on the blue lenses Nimrod had left in the ashtray on the coffee table. I shifted into a transitional pose first, then a full front-lat spread. My body reacted with alacrity. The “Shake and Bake” I did was involuntary. I was on the verge of blacking out, when Vinnie’s scream brought me back.
“Holy shit, Big Man! Now you’ve done it!” Vinnie said, leaping up from the sofa.
I looked back at him in confusion. What was it this time? Had I befouled the competition briefs? Popped the lining of my intestine? No, apparently I had, as Vinnie went on to say, “done the right thing.” I had pleased Nimrod too. He pinched the diaphanous layer of skin covering my subscapula, my suprailiac, my upper hamstrings. He could find no fat anywhere.
“Do Gaspari! Sam, do Gaspari!” Nimrod cried, holding one cupped hand to his mouth.
I slowly turned around, gave them a view of my back, then dramatically hiked up the legs of my competition briefs from behind, and flexed my now-exposed ass cheeks.
I heard first Vinnie’s whoop behind me, and then Nimrod’s. Just like Rich Gaspari, a current contender to the throne of Olympia, I had achieved a low enough fat level to make even my ass cheeks look like a slanted washboard. Line after line of muscle showed through the transparent skin. I hoped to God the needle tracks weren’t visib
le.
“I say it here and I say it now,” Vinnie declared, in the “standing relaxed” position himself, “come the Golden Valley, heads are goin’ to roll! Shit, you can’t be more than 5 percent—maybe even less!”
While Vinnie spun around the room in joy, I dragged myself to the stereo and inserted my posing music cassette. Vinnie and Nimrod sat as one on the sofa. With a motion of his hand, Vinnie bade me go on.
For 90 seconds I endured sheer misery. I forced myself to flex. I whirled and turned, panting and coughing all the while. As Vinnie had taught me, I showed the imaginary judges my Platzean thighs, my Arnold chest, my Joe Bucci biceps. Vinnie was pleased, but Nimrod kept shaking his head through the performance. I realized something was amiss. Nimrod stood up as soon as my music faded and I’d completed the full circle.
“No, Rocky Mountain Way, no!” he shouted, “you’re showing the judges all the parts you got to hide!”
Exhausted, I fell to my knees.
“You’ve got to hide everything you got from the judges,” Nimrod said, cataloging my flaws, “everything except your bent arm shots, your chest shots, your most-musculars and quads.”
As he explained it to me, thanks to my starvation diet of the last week, I had attained fantastic cuts, but I had also lost huge chunks of size. My lats, weak before, were now laughable. Last week, my triceps were hanging sections of beef. Now they were emaciated strands, connecting atrophied tissue from shoulder to elbow. My once-huge neck was now almost skinny enough to accommodate a napkin ring as a choker.
But the muscles that remained, my chest and legs, were shredded beyond compare. When I flexed these, fibers rippled and danced just beneath the skin. The cuts were one knuckle deep. Something had been lost; something had been gained. With no fat, my abdominal section was utterly “sliced.” My intercostals alone looked like corrugated cardboard. Nimrod assured me that my new look would not go unnoticed by the judges.
“In the long run, Sam, they are the ones who are goin’ to judge you, not the audience. The audience will jus’ appreciate your general massivity and overall Big Man demeanor,” Vinnie said.
Nimrod gave me a final coating with the sponge-tipped applicator. As I shakily stumbled to the bed, too tired to stand on my aching feet for another second, he promised to bring the boys and pick me up well in time for prejudging the next morning.
“Don’t blow it now, Sam. Keep your mitts off the cookies, keep your head intact, and, I kid you not, you’ll get your saber come tomorrow eve,” Vinnie whispered. He tucked me into bed and he and Nimrod softly made their way out.
I could hardly wait for tomorrow. Not just for the contest but for the toothpaste. I hadn’t used my Crest for the last six weeks. It was off-limits. The sodium content was simply too high.
14. THE GOLDEN VALLEY
I MET A TRAVELLER FROM AN ANTIQUE LAND
WHO SAID: TWO VAST AND TRUNKLESS LEGS OF STONE
STAND IN THE DESERT.
—PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The next morning, I sat at the breakfast nook, brown sweat dripping from my coated brow to the two poached egg whites in my bowl. My metabolism had gone haywire. I couldn’t eat even that without breaking into a sweat.
I was too weak to walk at all now, so Vinnie collected my wasted frame in his arms and carried me, bundled in sweat clothes and my woolen shawl, to the car. We both knew that I was on my own once we reached the theater in Burbank. This method of conveyance would not win me points with the judges.
Our caravan circled the theater once before parking. I had graduated. This was a legitimate high school auditorium. Outside, I found about seventy competitors, hovering in single file by a theater wall, all (save for the black contestants) colored various shades of orange. All were “standing relaxed.” I had found my own people. They looked like me, they walked like me, they wheezed like me.
Judging by the lean, drawn faces, there would be a number of shredded contestants. Everywhere I could see, skin stretched over ridges of cheekbone and descended precipitously down deep glens where once there had been cheeks. It was not hard to see the skull beneath the skin, but was there anything else left? It would be a giant step up from the San Gabriel Valley if, beneath the mounds of clothing, the contestants had retained some muscle mass.
Vinnie and Nimrod left me in the registration line with my bag containing rice cakes, distilled water, and Gerber baby food—my diet for the day—and headed to the main entrance to pick up their tickets at the front desk. For the 45 minutes I waited outside with the other competitors, not one word was spoken. I felt the stares and I understood. This was war, and each of us considered himself alone in a hostile camp.
One by one, according to weight class, mine last, the competitors filed into the building for the ceremonial registration and weigh-in. After 40 minutes, in which we, as male open heavyweights, sat on our bony haunches, the promoter, a fat gym owner sporting a prodigious belly and a mincing step, finally let my group proceed. There were ten of us in my weight class alone, all of us weighing-in at over 198 pounds.
We silently shuffled into a decrepit hallway that now housed a long table and the Medco weight scale. We filled out our NPC registration forms, received our competition numbers, which we attached to our posing trunks, and delivered the $15 entry fee to one of the registrars seated behind the table. Then, we stood along the wall and closely examined the naked physique of each contestant as he was called to take his place on the Medco.
I saw my competition before me; no one looked invincible. I was sure that I was the most cut, but I couldn’t detect much else, not yet. The room was too crowded. I knew I would be the tallest, but that was irrelevant. The best body would win, not the tallest competitor. The San Gabriel Valley had proved that. At the mention of my name by the chief judge, I stripped and mounted the scales. I felt the stares. Two hundred twenty pounds. I had lost twelve pounds in six days.
I retrieved my layers, donned them, and headed off the stage to the seats. The boys and G-spot sat in a muscular cluster three rows back. The lightweight women were already on. Male heavyweights would not be on for two hours. G-spot offered me a rice cake, as Vinnie gave me some last minute advice.
“You’re the fucking King of Kings, man. You need a new coat on your chest? Lemme see—no, you’re okay there. Oh Jesus, isn’t this great!”
Nimrod handed me a vial of pills. “They’re niacin, friend. Pop four of them right now and watch your veins explode. Don’t worry if you feel a little … uh, overheated. That’s normal.”
I threw five of the little white 250-milligram pills down my throat, chased them with some distilled water, and tried to relax. Contestant after contestant took to the stage, but I barely noticed a thing. I sat in my chair too preoccupied to watch, too anxious to leave. Within minutes, the niacin kicked in and I was breathing fire. It felt as if I’d swallowed a dozen hot tamales. My body was no longer freezing, just flushed a blotchy red and sweating uncontrollably.
I knew I hadn’t practiced my posing enough. Over the last week, my diet had left me so drained that I had failed to go through my routine for more than a few dry runs. There were complete movements that I could no longer perform because of my debilitated physical condition. “Shake and Bake” would have to be eliminated. If I didn’t kill it, it would kill me.
When the open male middleweights strode to the center of the stage, the announcement went out for all heavyweights to report back to the pump-up room. This was it. I gave Nimrod a high five, Vinnie a hug, Cuddles a pat. G-spot kissed my sunken cheek, and, gym bag in hand, I was off.
Backstage, in a dressing room filled with mirrors and light bulbs, we stripped down to our posing trunks, and began the pump-up process. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a short, thick contestant, number 60, flooding his biceps with quick repetitions. He was big, yes, but flat, at least so far, and 15 pounds off, at least.
I looked at the
others in the room. Number 63. Black, five foot eleven, very symmetrical, excellent size. My heart sank. “I can’t believe he entered this contest,” I thought to myself, knowing that he belonged in a show a notch above this one. I felt cheated, and, in my anger, pumped out set after arm set, grabbing, as we all were doing, any weight that was available. I kept assuring myself that I hadn’t come to this contest to lose. Sacrifice, I told myself, was something I knew just a little bit about.
How many of the other contestants, I wondered, had traveled 3,000 miles to become Mr. Golden Valley? How many had quit their jobs? Left their friends back in New York gyms in pursuit of the dream? Endured the grueling workouts I had?
I removed myself from the other competitors to catch my breath back in the men’s room. As soon as I opened the door I saw him: a short, stocky competitor bending down, the syringe in his palm, his thumb working the plunger, the needle inserted deep into his calf muscle. It was Escline, the last-minute inflammatory.
“Shit,” he groaned, feeling the rush as his calves swelled before my eyes.
He threw the disposable syringe in the waste basket by the sink, smiled at me nervously and headed out the door. A light heavyweight. They were nearly on.
I flexed in the mirror, pumped up now for the first time in days, and as my muscles inflated, I saw that my diet had succeeded—at least from the neck down. I was as cut, as sliced and diced, as any professional bodybuilder. But above the neck, when I managed a smile, I saw a stranger. This blond-haired, orange-skinned face smiling back at me was unrecognizable. The diet had taken its toll. My face was drawn and haggard, my eyes the haunted sockets of a ghoul.
I made my way from the bathroom to the pump-up room to prepare for prejudging. With a smooth coat of sweat covering my body, I reached into my bag and took out my Muscle-Up Professional Posing Oil. I rubbed it onto my legs, my calves, and the rest, hoping I could find someone who would coat my lats. Someone I could trust not to purposely leave great gobs of the white liquid at any unreachable spot.
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