The Strongman
1
68-Pound Weakling
MY LOCKER STUNK. It was the smell of a forgotten ham sandwich, sweat socks, and a particularly pungent fart. Still, I disciplined myself to wait until I’d counted to one hundred, like Mikey had warned me to. I heard the class bell ring, but no one suddenly appeared to let me out of my locker.
Ninety-nine. One hundred. I was just thankful she hadn’t told me to count any higher. I took hold of the string with a magnet attaching it to the inside of the locker door and gently pulled through the vent. The latch caught and I thought I’d still have to pound on the door to get someone to let me out, but then it popped up and released. The door swung open and I could breathe the fresh air of the school hall.
Fresher than the inside of my locker, anyway.
I was going to crush the guys who shoved me in my locker. Except they’d crush me before I even got hold of them. Stupid dumb jocks. My sister, Mikey, had foreseen something like that happening. She’d warned me. Before school ever started, she’d fixed the emergency release on my locker. As long as they didn’t padlock it, I could pull the string through the vent and it would trip the latch.
Not that it’s changed at all, but I wasn’t a particularly brilliant kid. Not stupid, but just a little slow. My sister was the smart one. A year younger, she was already in seventh grade with me, and three inches taller. She had her whole life planned out and she was only eleven.
It didn’t help that I was not only a little slow, I was a shrimp. Four-five and sixty-eight pounds. A sixty-eight-pound weakling. I thought that was funny. Dad said I’d continue to grow, but I doubted it. I seemed to have stalled in the past year. Maybe I’d grow a little someday.
I might have some kind of learning disability. Mom and Dad didn’t want to get me tested because the stigma of being a special ed kid sticks with you forever. And I wasn’t that bad—just slower. I had trouble paying attention and keeping up in class. I still have that problem sometimes, like keeping things in order when I’m telling about them. Mikey says my brain is just a wired differently.
Like this whole story about getting shoved into my locker in seventh grade happened a long time ago. But every time I walk into a gym, the smell reminds me of it and I automatically look around to see if those jerks are going to attack me again. Not that they’d get very far shoving me into a locker anymore. I’d like to see them try. I still had fantasies of stuffing one of the musclebound assholes into his own locker.
Of course, there were no threats to me in the locker room anymore. Especially not here at the gymnasium. I just always thought about it.
You might have heard of me if you follow sports. I’m an elite gymnast. And I have to say, I’ve got good prospects. They might not be what I thought they would be, but they’re still good. I have a few surprises cooked up for my next competition.
I know that doesn’t sound like where I started. That Paul was the Paul I used to be.
My family wasn’t poor or stupid. Just me. Dad was a campus engineer at the University. Mom was Human Resources Director at a big manufacturer down in Bloomington that made outdoor equipment for home and sports. Like golf carts and lawn mowers. We lived in a nice house that overlooked the lake near Uptown.
My parents suggested several times that I invite friends over. They were sure just having a lakeside house and game equipment and a home theatre would attract people. Yeah, Mikey’s friends. Not mine. I didn’t have any. And I didn’t much care. My classmates were even stupider than I was. What was I going to do? Invite the dumb jocks who stuffed me in a locker over so they could beat my ass at Xbox?
Mikey is my sister Michelle. She didn’t really have that many friends, either, I guess. She was younger than all the girls in our class and smarter than all the girls her own age. She just came home and studied after school. And sometimes helped me with my studies. She had her life all pretty-well planned out. Knew what she was going to study in college and where and how soon.
She’s also my best friend. She’s the one who started me on the path to change.
“What are you going to do, Paul?” Mikey asked me after the locker incident. It was looking like seventh grade was going to be a long year… or two.
“I don’t know. Wait in a dark alley after school and club ’em with a baseball bat?”
“Good grief! A baseball bat would just bounce off them, hit you in the head, and leave you with no memory of who beat you up.”
“You have a way with words,” I snorted. She laughed at me. I didn’t mind that because Mikey laughing at me wasn’t mean. She just had a way of seeing the humor in about any situation.
“Why don’t you change?”
“What? Presto-change-o; I’m a football hero. Oops! That didn’t work. Abra-cadabra; I’m an honor roll student. Damn! That didn’t work either. If I went out for a sport, I’d spend practice locked in a stinking gym locker. And nothing on God’s green earth is going to make me smarter or better looking or interesting to any girls.”
“You’re not that bad looking. The girls in our class are all too hung up on how they look to be concerned about how you look. They can’t see beyond their own budding breasts.”
“Neither can I,” I groused.
I’d started noticing girls, but none would even waste her time talking to me. I wasn’t that rich. It’s funny. Even now, girls kind of shrink away when I talk to them. I try not to be scary. Tough luck.
I didn’t need to worry about that with Mikey. She was a year younger than me and a year behind the budding breasts in our class. Besides, she was my sister. I was just thankful she helped me pass my tests. Barely, but I passed.
“Why not get stronger? That’s something you can control. There’s no medical reason for you to be a wimp.”
Good old Mikey. She didn’t mince any words. Not when she was talking to me. I could always depend on her to point out how stupid or wimpy I was.
“How am I supposed to do that?”
If I went out for a sport at school, I’d be dead before I could get strong. Besides, sports didn’t really interest me.
“You could start lifting weights,” Mikey suggested. “Dad has an old set in the garage. You could do that and no one would ever know.”
“I thought the idea was that people would know.” Sometimes my sister was too complex for me to follow.
“You want them to see the result, not the work it takes to get that result,” Mikey said. “Remember the old saying, never let them see you sweat.”
“I thought that was about fear.”
“What’s the difference? You’ve got a computer. Look up what exercises you should do and what you should eat to gain muscle. You don’t need to be a rocket surgeon to follow the instructions on YouTube.”
I guess what she said made sense to my underdeveloped brain. I went to the garage after school the next day and found my dad’s old set of weights. What the heck? I might as well start lifting them. Then I’d shove a couple of jocks in their lockers and see if they could find a way out.
I know this is out of order and all if you’re trying to make this into a sensible narrative, but it reminded me of the first time I walked into the high school gym my junior year—after the change. I walked over to where the team was meeting and sat down with them. They all kind of edged away from me.
“Ladies, I’d like you to meet Paul Bradley. He’s joining our squad this year,” Mrs. Cook announced.
The girls all stared at me with big eyes and open mouths.
“Did he, like, even try out?” one asked. Funny. I didn’t know any of their names.
“No,” Mrs. Cook said. “I selected him.”
I kind of thought she was just inviting the cheerleaders to object. One—a little girl I couldn’t believe was in high school—stood up and came to stand in front of me. I don’t think she was quite four-and-a-half feet tall. Well, I was still only a foot taller than I was at twelve.
“Lift me,” she demanded. Like a toddler with her arms outstretched.
“How?” I asked.
“By the waist, straight up over your head, then hold me there.”
“Okay.”
She turned away from me and I stood up and put my hands on her waist. It was tiny. She bounced once and then I lifted her straight up. Her legs were kind of dangling in my face, but I just held her there as she spread them until she was in the splits over my head.
“Put me down now,” she said. I lowered her to the floor and she turned to face me. She held out her hand. “I’m Penny Layne. I’m a flyer and you just became my base,” she said as I shook her hand.
“Pleased to meet you, Penny. I won’t let you down.”
“At least not until I ask,” she giggled. We sat down and Mrs. Cook started explaining what we’d be doing to compete in cheer. I hadn’t known cheerleading was a competitive sport until my gymnastics coach had introduced me to Mrs. Cook. I always thought they just jumped up and down at ballgames with their boobs bouncing, and slept with jocks. I was about to find out very different.
Like, all the beautiful cheerleaders I imagined in my fantasies were sitting right there and I was stuck partnering with a little girl.
Yeah, I’ll go back and pick up where I left off. Or near then if I think of it. But I have to warn you that if you’re expecting me to suddenly have a girlfriend and get to the sex part of my story right away, you’re shit out of luck. Because I sure was.
It’s not that I didn’t like girls. I really did. I thought about them all the time. The pile of stiff socks in my laundry hamper was ample evidence of that. But at seventeen, I’d still never had a girlfriend, or even been on a date. And that wasn’t likely to change in the near future. I’d been too busy, really, to be concerned about it. And I was still a bit backward. I’d grown physically, but my emotional maturity was still a zero. Mikey was sixteen and had a date every weekend. She’d graduate in the spring and be off to college. Those poor college guys were in for a rough time if they got involved with her. I was sure she’d take the university by storm next fall. I’d be a senior in high school and my year-younger sister would be a freshman in college. How ironic.
Anyway, what Mikey told me back when I was twelve sort-of made sense. I went to the garage after school and found my dad’s old set of weights. I had to unload the plastic storage bin one weight at a time before I could move the bin to where I could easily get to them. I wasn’t sure I’d ever need more than the two-pound dumbbells I took out of the bin, but what the heck? I might as well start lifting them. Then, one day, I’d shove a couple of jocks in their lockers and see if they could find a way out. Yeah. I guess I said that before.
After about two weeks, I noticed the weights didn’t feel quite so impossibly heavy. I actually managed ten reps instead of five dumbbell curls and presses.
Dad surprised me by getting home early one night while I was doing my little routine. The whole thing took me about fifteen minutes.
“What’s up, son? You’ve never been interested in weights before.”
“Damn stupid jocks,” I muttered. Then I was dumb enough to tell him about the locker incident and Mikey’s advice. “One day, I’ll be strong enough to shove ’em in their own lockers. See how they like that. Maybe I’ll even get a girlfriend.”
“That’s a kind of vengeance. Can’t say I blame you for wanting to build up your strength, though I hope you never have to fight them, and that you don’t turn into a bully yourself. There’s more to life than the physical. Being strong carries a responsibility to help and protect the weak. It’s that way throughout the entire animal kingdom. The strong care for the pack, the herd, the flock. Whatever. Real strength is inside you—in the kind of person you are.”
He reached in the box and pulled out a twenty-pound dumbbell and joined me in curls. Talk about making me feel weak and puny. I figured my dad could have pulled any weight he wanted out of the box and casually started curling it. He worked outdoors at the campus most of the time and he was really strong.
“I’ll tell you from experience, just lifting isn’t going to do you much good unless you get on a program and get some guidance. Besides, that makes it more fun. Is that what you want to do?”
“Not really,” I said. “I don’t like the gym teacher yelling at me all the time. I’d rather work alone.”
“Hmm. I understand that. There are other kinds of activities that could build your body and get you active without an annoying guy with a whistle,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Well, there’s skating. I don’t mean rollerblades around the lake, though that’s a good activity. I was thinking of figure skating. Building up your body to do jumps and spins. Or Karate. Martial arts have a good focus on building your body and inner discipline. Gymnastics. Did you see the guys at the Olympics in gymnastics? Man, are they strong. And, of course, there’s bodybuilding with a good coach who will coach you through it and not scream at you.”
“Where would I get any of that?”
“Hmm. I don’t have all the answers. Why don’t you do some investigating and see what you find? I know there’s a skating rink downtown. A martial arts dojo up on Hennepin. Oh, the other direction on Hennepin, there’s a gymnastics and tumbling center. It’s probably the closest thing to us here. Check them out and if you see something that interests you, let me know. We’ll see if we can get you in.”
Dad was like that. He’d make suggestions, but if I didn’t follow through on them, it was my tough luck. My arms were going to burn like hell tomorrow because I kept curling the whole time he was talking. I put the dumbbells away and went to my room to look up the places online.
I hadn’t really paid much attention to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. I was only ten at the time and they seemed like a world away. But weightlifting, figure skating, martial arts, and gymnastics were all Olympic sports, though not all in the summer. I settled in and watched a bunch of events online. They each had something going for them.
The weightlifters looked so musclebound they couldn’t bend over to tie their shoelaces. I wanted to be strong and muscular, but I didn’t want muscles piled up on top of other muscles until the only thing I could do was lift weights.
Figure skating was cool and the jumps and spins looked great. I could just imagine, though, that if anyone found out I was figure skating, they’d think I was gay. That’s what I thought. It was a really girly sport, even though they were obviously strong. So were the girls. I didn’t need to give anybody new ideas for harassing me.
Martial arts. Wow! I could just imagine myself twisting a little and throwing a 250-pound football linebacker over my shoulder. As I watched, though, I realized that in order to get to that level, I was going to get punished. A lot. I was already getting beaten up. I didn’t think my best bet would be to invite more of it.
Finally, I got to the gymnastics events. Some cute girls, basically dancing on a beam or doing somersaults on a mat. Nice butts that were just about fully exposed. But the guys. Wow! I’d never seen such self-control. Their bodies were sculpted. They stretched and pulled. The gymnasts could hold their bodies in any position and then just press to a different position. Impossible positions.
I stupidly tried to do a handstand in my room and fell flat on my back.
“You okay?” Mikey asked from my doorway. “Sounded like you just crash-landed.”
“Good way to put it,” I mumbled, picking myself up off the floor.
“Oh, God! That guy is gorgeous!” she said looking at my monitor. I didn’t think my sister was all that interested in guys, but if that was her opinion of a gymnast, it was worth considering. I did want to attract a girl someday.
I know you probably think this is going to lead up to me and my sister getting it on. Yuck! I love my sister. She’s cute. But sex with her? No. Just yuck! There are a couple of girls she hangs out with I’d like to see more of. Much more of. Like completely naked. Oh, geez, yes.
Even when I was lifting up Penny Layne my first week of cheerleading and her legs were dangling in my face, I wasn’t particularly turned on by her. I mean, sure, she’s athletic, but she’s really skinny. I’m sure if I’d been holding Georgia Nichols like that it would have been different. Georgia was in my class until a year previously when I extended my term in tenth grade. Now she’d graduate a year ahead of me. Georgia had boobs. And a butt that looks so soft and round. I sometimes imagined lifting her up like that, only she’s naked and I look up at her as she does the splits. That’s enough to get me hard in an instant.
Not that I’d ever actually seen that view. Except in porn. I don’t know why they keep cluttering up perfectly good porn with overendowed guys’ dicks. They really spoil the view. But Georgia. I can just imagine taking her clothes off. I know she wears a pretty sturdy sports bra when she’s cheering—all the girls do—but I’d dearly love to see those beauties unleashed.
Of course, Georgia had a boyfriend, and it just so happened that he’s one of the football players who once shoved me in my locker. Still, taking Georgia away from her boyfriend would be just as good as shoving him in a locker.
A couple of days after my conversation with Dad—yeah, we’re back to when I was twelve—I stopped by the Hennepin Gymnastics and Tumbling Center, a few blocks from my home.
“Hi. Welcome to the Hennepin Gym,” a guy said when he spotted me standing inside the door looking. People were all over the gym working with several coaches. Mostly girls, but there was a guy on the pommel horse doing a routine while a coach watched him and called instructions. “Interested in learning gymnastics?”
“Like… um… How old do you have to be before you can do that kind of stuff?” I asked, pointing at the guy on the horse. He was bald, but I wasn’t sure that was an indication of age. He might just shave his head. He was sure built strong.
“Eric is twenty-nine,” he answered. “I’m Coach Dawson, by the way. I’m forty-seven. We’ve got guys in here as young as six, learning basic tumbling. When you’re devoted to a sport like Eric is, you continue to grow and progress for a long time. He could do a routine like he’s doing now when he was fourteen. He does it a lot better and more confidently now.”
“I’m Paul. Twelve. Do you think I could learn to do that?”
Coach Dawson surprised me by tossing a bean bag thing at me. I caught it and it gave off a big puff of dust. I tossed it back and got ready to catch it again if he threw it.
“That’s chalk. Good reflexes. That’s one key,” Coach said. “How strong are you?”
“Not very. I’ve been lifting weights lately. Trying to get built up some.”
“Weights can be helpful, but remember, there is one weight you carry with you all the time, and which you have to support through every gymnastic exercise. That’s your body. Push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, step-ups. They’ll not only build your body; they’ll build the muscles you need to be a gymnast.”
“I didn’t even think of that,” I said.
“If you’re trying to do it all on your own, you’re unlikely to think of things like that.”
“I looked at bodybuilding and weightlifting as a possible way to grow, but the guys all looked musclebound—like they wouldn’t be able to tie their own shoes.”
“You don’t know how true that is. We call it hypertrophy and gymnasts have to train carefully to avoid it. There are two more components that we emphasize: flexibility and endurance. When you work in a program here, you will have balanced training in five areas: balance, reflexes, strength, flexibility, and endurance.”
“I just want to grow big enough and strong enough to not be picked on at school all the time.”
“There’s never a guarantee of that,” Coach sighed. “I truly wish there was. We don’t teach self-defense. But being healthy and strong will make you confident, and confidence is a good defense in itself. Anyone who sees you perform will respect you physically.”
“How do I get started?” I asked. I was ready to go try my hand at the pommel horse right now.
“We’ll need a parental authorization first. You know, I hate to mention it, but someone has to pay for training. We also need a doctor’s statement that there are no signs that you would be hurt by athletic training. Then we need to set up a program that is customized to your goals. How much are you willing to do? How hard are you willing to work? Those aren’t judgments I make for you. That’s a difference between Hennepin Gymnastics and a lot of other training programs around. There’s no pre-defined color of belts you earn like in martial arts. There are levels of expertise, but they indicate when you’ve gained a specific skill, not when you’ve beaten a certain person. I want to make you as good as you want to be. If you just want to be stronger and healthier, we can do that. If you want to compete in gymnastics, we can get you ready for that. If you want to compete in the Olympics, like Eric’s goal, we can get you ready for national and international competition. It’s really all up to you and how much you want to work.”
“I want it all,” I said. I reached out and touched his biceps. “I want this. And I want that,” I said, pointing at Eric, who had switched and was standing on his hands on the rings. Yeah. I wanted it all.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
