Page 227 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 197

eventually decide to go different ways, no one, not even the beautifully
handsome physique champion, could take away from him the wonder of
their time together.
Kick was a good lover. He clarified Ryan’s life. Kick had pared down
his own life to an almost Thoreauvian simplicity. He had pared his body
down to transparent skin, hairy and tanned, with no subcutaneous layer
of fat, revealing only the cordage of vascularity, of veins wrapped like
cables around the defined bulk of his muscle.
Their nighttime lust matched their daytime discipline.
Kick had always called Ryan coach. “I know what else you want,”
Kick said. “You want muscle. Not only mine. Yours.” He handed Ryan a
training schedule. “I want you to be my official workout partner.”
“You’ll give me muscle?”
“You can have anything you want.”
“Can you make me blond?”
Six days a week, with Kick on split routines, they pumped through
their workouts. Kick popped caffeine pills to up his energy. Ryan followed
suit. “Whatever works,” he said. They ate omelets and broiled skinless
chicken. They drank eggs whipped with bananas in the blender. When
guys asked Kick about his diet, he described their basic drink. “Put a can
of tuna packed in spring water in your blender. Add another can of water.
Whip it and drink it.”
“The first one,” Ryan said, “is the worst one. It tastes like whipped
baby shit.”
Guys stood gagging on the corner of 18th and Castro.
“You really drink that?”
Kick flashed a single-biceps shot. “You betcha,” he said.
The fans looked somewhat dismayed, but the do-fer, as Kick called the
questions guys asked when they’d say, “What do you do for your arms,”
they took totally to heart.
There is no lore as esoteric as bodybuilding lore. If a big, impressive
bodybuilder said he got his build from drinking blenderized baby shit, in
ten minutes every aspiring bodybuilder within earshot would be out try-
ing to score used Pampers from the nearest child care facility.
Bodybuilding is a sport where genes will out. Bodybuilding is also the
sport where every aspirant plays three-card draw to improve on the hand
dealt him by his genetic code. When the muscle-genes are there, a man
pumping iron cannot help but push on out to the limit of his potential.
When the genes, as Ryan’s were, are more ectomorph than mesomorph,
hope springs eternal. And snake oil reigns supreme.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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