David stood naked before the full-length bathroom mirror and surveyed his body. He pressed a finger into the flesh of his chest. His pecks, once firm and defined, had wilted into lumps of doughy breast tissue. He attempted to suck in his gut, to no avail. The washboard abs he worked so hard for were long gone, replaced by a round little Buddha belly that hung over his waist and nearly obstructed the view of his penis.
“Fuck me,” he whispered as he attempted to strike a quarter turn pose.
The quarter turn had been his go-to pose, highlighting his ripped quads and delts. It was his moneymaker pose, the one that wowed the judges and ensured victory.
Now, 15 years after his last competition, the pose didn’t elicit much. As David flexed and strained, he felt an echo of those once familiar muscles – now quivering and weak – but couldn’t see them under all that flabby flesh. He gave his belly an open-handed slap and watched his hairy pink skin ripple out like concentric waves in a koi pond.
Some unnamed malaise had overtaken David of late. He felt an almost physical sense of dread all around him, as if it somehow coated his body. Had he been at all introspective – which he wasn’t – he might have surmised that this feeling had something to do with his recent birthday. Thirty-nine years old. One away from the big four-oh. Something about this birthday felt different to David. He felt tangibly older, and he was struck with a frightening realization that his life was passing him by.
Later that morning, as David hovered over a bowl of corn flakes while mindlessly scrolling Facebook on his phone, his wife, Cindy, gently placed her hand on his shoulder.
“You alright, hun? You look a little out of it,” she said.
“Huh? No, I’m fine,” David said.
“Yeah? You sure? You’ve been a bit distant lately.”
Cindy and David had been married for twelve mostly happy years. They began dating roughly two years after David gave up on his bodybuilding dreams to, as his dad put it, “stop dicking around and become a goddamn grownup.” He was in great shape when they met, but nothing like the chiseled Adonis of his earlier years. Cindy laughed the first time she saw his bodybuilding photos. She didn’t understand what drove anyone to dedicate their lives to such a frivolous pursuit. Besides, she thought those men looked ridiculous with their bulging muscles and leathery tan skin. She was a warm woman, exceedingly easygoing and temperate, and she didn’t seem to mind that David grew larger and softer with each passing year. David loved her, but he wasn’t sure he was in love with her. Even in their best years, David and Cindy never shared what you’d call an animal attraction. What little heat their relationship had produced in those early days was nearly extinguished now, and the couple had slowly become more roommates than lovers.
“I don’t know,” David said, finally looking up from his phone. “I guess I’m just feeling a little down.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
David shrugged and turned his attention back to Facebook, where he continued thumbing through Rick Turner’s profile for what must have been the tenth time that week.
“I’ll be okay,” he said.
Rick Turner was David’s primary competitor and biggest frenemy from his bodybuilding days. They worked out together, competed together, and pushed each other to their limits. David hadn’t thought of Rick in years. Not until last week, when he posted a birthday message on David’s Facebook page. There was nothing especially interesting or noteworthy about the message – just a simple “HBD, big guy.” Followed by a birthday cake emoji. Still, something about the message wasn’t sitting right with David. He didn’t remember Rick ever leaving him a birthday message, despite being Facebook friends for more than a decade. Why now? Was he mocking David with that birthday cake emoji? Was this his way of calling David fat? Because David couldn’t help but notice that Rick was still in incredible shape and,
shockingly, still competing all these years later. David scrolled through countless photos and was stunned to see that Rick looked better now than he did at 22. The younger Rick was jacked, but something about his impressive physique seemed fake, as if he’d been blown up by a bike pump. He had been a little soft, his muscles a little too rounded. Age had hardened Rick, and his body was now more defined, with ropy muscles rippling across his impossibly tan chest and back. David’s eyes kept wandering back to a photo of Rick’s incredible six pack. His abs were so hard that he looked almost alien, like some insect with a rigid exoskeleton.
“Fucker,” David whispered to himself.
“What’s that, hun?” Cindy called from the kitchen.
“Nothing, babe.”
David drifted through his day in a daze, and that night he had a vivid dream about walking in on his wife having passionate sex with a 6-foot tall red ant. In the dream, he stood frozen at the doorway to their bedroom, impotent to stop whatever monstrosity was unfolding in front of him. He couldn’t move. He tried to scream, but nothing came out. All he could do was watch this enormous arthropod go to town on his wife. Just then he locked eyes with Cindy. There was sadness there, and she looked like she wanted to say something.
“One sec, hun,” she finally said. “I’m about to cum.”
David woke with a jolt, covered in a sheen of sweat. He looked to his right, where Cindy slept peacefully, dreaming of god knows what. He reached to his nightstand, grabbed his phone, and quickly found himself on Rick Turner’s Facebook page. Photos of Rick flexing. Photos of Rick eating barbeque. Photos of Rick surrounded by a gaggle of muscle-bound oafs in an album titled “Saturdays are for the boys.” Photos of Rick posing in front of a strip club wearing a skintight t-shirt featuring a howling cartoon dog with the words “pussy hound” in bold black lettering. After a few minutes of scrolling, David was struck by a beautiful and calming epiphany. Grinning like an idiot, he put his phone back on the nightstand and drifted off into a wonderful, dreamless sleep.
“I have some big news,” he told Cindy over breakfast.
“Oh, yeah? Let’s hear it.”
“I’m getting back into bodybuilding,” he said proudly.
Cindy’s facial expression was that of someone who just found out their cat was being recruited by NASA to go to the moon.
“Wait … what?” she asked, tucking a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “What do you mean you’re getting back into bodybuilding?”
David had already pulled out his phone and was scooching closer to his wife to show her something on the screen.
“Here,” he said, “Look at this.”
“What am I looking at?” Cindy scrunched her face as she scanned a tiny, garish poster full of half-naked bodybuilders.
“It’s the Hardbody Classic. It’s one the biggest bodybuilding competitions in the country. And it’s here next year! What are the odds? It’s like it was meant to be.”
“Sweetheart … this is crazy. I’m sorry, but you’re just not a bodybuilder anymore.”
“But see, that’s the beauty of the whole thing,” David said. “The competition is exactly 11 months from now, so I have plenty of time to train and get back into shape.”
Cindy could only shake her head in disbelief.
“I … I … just don’t know. But why now? This is just so out of the blue, hun.”
“I just need to do this, babe. For myself. And besides, the cutoff for the completion is 40 years old. This is literally my last chance.”
David didn’t delude himself into thinking Cindy supported his plan. She had said as much. But sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do, and David reckoned this was just one of those times. That very day, during his lunch break at work, David drove to his local Planet Fitness and paid in full for a yearlong membership. He showed up at 5 a.m. the next morning with a gallon of water in one hand and a towel in the other. A big lug named Brent led David on an enthusiastic tour of the facilities, pausing periodically to congratulate someone on a good lift or gently scold them for poor form.
“You got this, girl! It’s all you,” Brent barked at a slight blond woman struggling with a rep of shoulder presses.
Brent was so large that his gait was more a waddle than a walk. His comically bulbous muscles seemed to impede forward movement, forcing him to swing one leg in front of the other like a pendulum. David stayed a step behind the big man, transfixed by the topography of bluish veins bulging from his oiled traps and biceps.
“Atta baby, Carl! Ass to grass,” Brent hollered at a man squatting an obscene stack of weights.
It had been more than a decade since David stepped foot inside a gym. Things had certainly changed. The men were a bit more styled and coiffed than in his days, and David thought some of the women were dressed too provocatively for the setting. Everyone seemed to be filming themselves, their phones leaning against a dumbbell rack or sitting erectly atop a tripod. David got the stink eye from several lifters for inadvertently walking through their shot. Still, there was something satisfyingly familiar about the experience. The musty aroma of dried sweat and disinfectant cleaning spray. The thunderous clank of iron hitting iron. The low, primeval grunts of large men lifting heavy things. David couldn’t help but smile. He was home.
When the tour was over, he found a quiet corner of the gym and got right to work. Deadlifts, bench presses, squats, bicep curls. It all came back to him surprisingly fast. He felt a tingling rush as he powered through a set of curls with trembling arms, felt the lactic acid coursing through his muscles. Straddling a padded workout bench, David sucked in lungfuls of air and used a forearm to wipe salty sweat from his eyes. Muscles he hadn’t used in years twitched involuntarily. He felt euphoric. It was a high he didn’t know he had been missing.
This became David’s twice-daily routine. No matter what was going on in his life, he mustered the internal fortitude to drag himself to the gym for an hour before work and another hour after work each and every day. He settled into a rhythm. The days turned to weeks, and the weeks turned to months. Things were changing, and it wasn’t just about the gym. David’s entire lifestyle had shifted. When he wasn’t lifting, he was researching workouts, watching
Youtube videos or scrolling bodybuilding message boards. What little time he had left was given to meal prep. That became incredibly important, because David never stopped eating. Breakfast consisted of five hard boiled eggs and a pound of lean ground turkey. Lunch was the same. Dinner was four chicken breasts, a head of broccoli, and three more hard boiled eggs. Between meals he chugged chalky protein shakes and gnawed on massive chunks of beef jerky. He didn’t speak when he ate. He just hovered over his plate and grunted. Cindy said it was like living with a gorilla.
David’s body was also changing. Fat was melting away, revealing newly-defined muscles. It was hard work, yes, but David’s transformation wasn’t all natural. He was also roided to the gills. Winstrol, Anadrol, human growth hormone, oxandrolone. You name it, David was on it. He would have injected Vitamin D into his prick if he thought it would help him bulk up. Were there side effects to David’s pharmacopeia? You bet. Namely, his balls shrunk to the size of grapes and his entire body was flecked with bright red acne. But he figured great achievements require great sacrifice. And make no mistake, David viewed what he was doing as a great achievement. He couldn’t articulate why competing in the Hardbody was so important to him, but it had become the driving force in his life. It was all consuming.
The time flew by. Eat, sleep, lift, repeat. He was a machine, a beast, and it showed. His body was getting massive, but the steroids made him irritable and aggressive. The slightest inconvenience sent him into a blind rage. He threatened to “face fuck” a coworker for eating one of his bananas and was placed on administrative leave and later fired. Screw it, he thought. More time in the gym. He barely noticed when a teary-eyed Cindy packed her bags and left to stay at her sister’s house for a while. He heard something about a trial separation. Whatever.
The Hardbody was just two days away when David finally came face to face with his old nemesis. There was something disorienting about seeing Rick Turner in person after so many months of staring at his photos. For David, Rick had stopped being a real person long ago. He was now just a talisman, a symbol of all the things David wanted for himself.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t my old pal David,” Rick said as he waltzed into David’s gym like he owned the place. He looked immaculate – absolutely yoked from head to toe – with a pair of oiled up lackeys trailing behind. “A little birdie told me you were attempting a comeback, but I had to see it for myself.”
David was momentarily stunned and unsure of how to react. Fight or flight? His chemically-enhanced hormones made the decision for him as blood rushed to his head and his entire body tightened into a fist.
“If it isn’t Ricky Turner,” David sneered.
“Don’t tell me you’re entering the Hardbody,” Rick said with an arrogant chuckle.
“Just watch me.”
“You think you’re ready for the Hardbody? You think you can run with the big dogs?”
Rick’s lackeys snickered derisively, their arms folded across their ripped chests. Both men, though impressively built, looked like children next to Rick. They had frosted tips and skin the color and consistency of worn naugahyde. David looked at the three of them and could feel the roid rage beginning to boil over.
“I don’t need the Hardbody to know I can out-pose your corny ass,” David said.
“Don’t you fucking talk to Rick like that,” said one of the lackeys, who looked to be on the verge of tears. “You couldn’t hold Rick Turner’s jockstrap!”
“No, Pierre, it’s cool. I’ll give this has-been what he wants. You want a pose off, little man? Careful what you wish for!”
In one motion, Rick grabbed the plunging neckline of his hot pink tank top and ripped the fabric from his body, tossing it nonchalantly to the floor. David had to admit that it was a really cool move.
“Let’s dance, shitbird!” Rick hissed.
David and Rick circled each other, preening and flexing as they went.
“You’re mine, bucko!” David said as he peeled off his sweaty tank top.
A crowd soon gathered, hooting and hollering at the spectacle. With his ice-blue eyes locked on David, Rick transitioned into an elegant front double bicep pose. He strained and quivered, his oiled muscles glistening in the gym’s low light. Then it was David’s turn. He performed a weird little bow, almost a curtsy, and then turned his back to Rick, breaking into a glorious rear lat spread. His back, though covered in pimples, was something to behold. David flexed with all his might and unveiled his brawny back muscles like a peacock unfurling its plumage. There were audible gasps from the growing crowd. When David turned back to face his rival, he saw doubt, and maybe even a little fear, blossoming in Rick’s eyes. Ever the competitor, Rick shook it off and went right back to work. He transitioned into a brilliant side tricep pose. He flexed harder and harder, veins popping from his neck. His entire body was vibrating. It was beautiful pageantry. But then David noticed an odd twitch in Rick’s right eye, followed by spasm in his left arm. And then the big man tumbled face first into a dumbbell rack. The next 15 minutes were chaos. Ambulances. Sirens. Paramedics. Defibrillators.
David was shaken up by the whole thing. He drove home, showered, and went to bed. In the morning he checked his email and noticed a single new message with the subject line: Hardbody Classic. He opened it and scanned the brief message, which read: It is with extreme sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved friend and colleague Rick Turner. In light of this tragic news, we have decided to cancel this year’s Hardbody Classic to honor Rick’s memory. We will be back better than ever next year.”
“Well, shit,” David said. “Now what am I supposed to do?”
