(Trigger Warning : foul language, sexual comments)
A week ago I got a message from Tommy saying he was coming back into town. He was a high school buddy of mine who left Jersey for the West Coast after graduation. Hadn’t seen or heard of him since.
When I browsed his Instagram to catch up on what he’d been up to, I had to double-check to make sure I had the right profile. In a little more than five years, he’d become a monster.
In school, he’d always been tall and lanky. Six foot-five or more (after a certain point, people don’t care, and you’re just tall as fuck). The type of guy who gets worried when passing through doors, ducking down and looking silly when he had enough clearance, or risking getting another bruise on the forehead when he didn’t.
We had needed a tall guy like him on the basketball team. The poor kid was hopeless with the handling the ball no matter how many hours of drills he did. He was no better at volleyball. So many inches gone to waste is what we would always say to him, jokingly. Not sure if we would joke about it now that his biceps were big as balls, to say they were basketballs would be exaggerating, but not by much.
Sports weren’t his thing, in the last year at school he was getting chubby with long spaghetti arms. He was more into movies and reading and writing. That’s why he’d gone out west; to try to get one of his screenplays picked up by Hollywood. His Instagram showed no trace of success in regard to that project. Anyhow, it’s doubtful he’d be coming back home if his script was becoming the next blockbuster.
We were meeting for burgers at Beefy Moe’s for an early afternoon lunch. He was already sitting in the booth with two glasses of milk when I arrived. He was bigger in person, completely filling one side of the booth. To his previous fear of bumping his head, he now had to worry if the door frames were wide enough to not scruff his shoulders, for real.
The odd thing was he looked impressively good. His skin didn’t have any of that rubbery gleam like the bodybuilders at the gym, and he had a full set of hair. Things you wouldn’t find on guys on the juice, which there was no way he wasn’t on. I mean, his arms were so massive I feared the table would collapse when he rested his elbows on it. Damn impressive if you ask me.
The first thing he mentioned after we were done with the common bro chitchat was if I was still with Evelyne. I wasn’t. She’d broken up with me, the bitch.
When he asked about her, I recalled that he was the one who’d first introduce me to her. Truth is, he wanted to have her, but she refused to date him. Their families were so close she considered him a brother, at least that’s what she said when he asked her out To keep her nearby he set her up with one of his friends, me for that matter. It was a bit creepy when think about it. We had some good years until she left me for a guy with more money.
Beefy Moe’s was the type of place with sexy waitresses and mediocre burgers. Stacey, the waitress working our table, was a stunner. I knew her from seeing her at the gym. Knew her might be pushing it a bit far, I recognized her. I doubt she knew my name, but that didn’t matter, at least she recognized me when I came to eat and acknowledged it by asking if I had a good workout. When she came over this day with Tommy she gave me the friendly, “Hey, how’s it going,’ then proceeded to take our order.
When she left, Tommy leaned over wanting to tell me something without being overheard. “Tell me she’s on OnlyFans.”
“You’re kidding me,” I said, surprised he hadn’t noticed her gawking at his forearms or at the traps bulging through his shirt. “You didn’t hear her sloshing in the puddle she left because of you.”
“You’re funny, Steve.”
I thought about it afterward: The reason Tommy didn’t notice her eyes crawling over him was because he developed a self-preserving habit of not paying attention to women’s stares. You see, most women are scared by guys like Tommy. You hear them all the time, not liking too much muscle and thinking the veins are disgusting. They fear guys like him, and Tommy trained himself to ignore them.
What he didn’t yet know was that Stacey was among the type who thought there couldn’t be too much man on a man. At my gym, Stacey, Sarah and Caramel (yes, that is her real name, she’s Vietnamese, not that I know if that makes it more common) were women who obey the laws of gravity, the bigger the mass (of muscle of course) the stronger the attraction. The cool thing with this, for the big guys at least, was that all three of them spent plenty of time at the gym and were drop-dead gorgeous.
“You’ve been working out?” he asked me, as if the answer was not obvious. That hurt, badly. I’ve been busting my ass in the gym for over a year, ever since Evelyn ditched me. At first, I just went to hang out with the boys. As my body firmed up it became more of a passion, my mom said it was addiction. Whatever, it felt good to get the pump. But my gains had stalled lately.
“Yeah, I’ve been going. Not too seriously.”
“You want to get bigger,” he asked, finishing his Milk.
“Who doesn’t?”
He laughed, “You know what I’m saying, right Steve? Do you feel like getting huge?”
I was in a bit in a rough spot. I saw where he was going with this and saw no other option but to deal with the situation bluntly. “Tommy, I’m not sure how to say this, but if you’re trying to get me on the sauce, I’ve decided it wasn’t for me, already. I don’t want to risk it.”
“You’re smart Steve. I remember that about you, that’s why I wanted to talk to you first, man. I like you and together we could do something big.”
“I’m not following, Tommy?”
“I got something special. Directly from a lab in India. No sides.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I’ve been taking it for a year, bloodwork shows nothing abnormal. No mood swings or anything like that. I’m telling you, this stuff is the next big thing, and we’ll be the first in Jersey to have it straight from the source”
“What about…you know…the balls and the sex…”
“No change man, everything works the same, even better, like a fucking rocket. I’m telling you…”
I shook my head in disbelief, trying to not see the images of myself as the most jacked guy in the gym. Not imagining myself throwing around ridiculous weights with Caramel in her little tight top to spot me, placing her little hands on my oversized shoulder saying how impressive I was.
“Think about it,” Tommy said. “Come over tomorrow if you want, I’ll show how it works.”
I watched Tommy quietly as he ate his four burgers while I admired his full set of hair and his healthy skin, starting to believe he wasn’t shitting with me. Was the holy grail of muscle gain in his possession. Could I become the next ‘holy shit you’re jacked’ type of guy? I was thinking these things when I noticed a vein in his neck that totally freaked me out. The vein was the size of my fattest finger, and I swore I saw something pass through it. Like if a solid chunk of a burger made the vein bulge as it passed, or perhaps this wasn’t a vein but a second esophagus to efficiently carry down all that food he was wolfing down.
I shook my head, wanting to unsee it. My mind was surely playing tricks on me for having repeated to myself too many times that Tommy had become a Monster.