Stymie Magazine
Autumn & Winter ‘10
at my need to hear something encouraging. He never spoke to me like that again but in some ways he saved me, offering a strange token, not the compliment so much as the gesture of being seen and understood. It was a generous confirmation of existence. Over the years I have since met men who would remind me of Perry, and I would come to understand this deeply: that he knew what he was saying that day and why it was necessary. ―Give me a break,‖ I said and told him I wanted to try bodybuilding. He laughed. ―No way, Spencer. You‘re not built for that. For one thing you‘re too short. Your legs and arms aren‘t long enough. You‘d look ridiculous.‖ I dropped my head and reached for my foot, pretending to stretch but really trying to hide the tears that had sprung up. Bodybuilding, it turned out, was not just work, lots of lifting, posing and dieting. It had never occurred to me that I'd have to be anything more special than crazy. ―Besides, why would you want to go and mess your body up like that anyway?‖ ―I just thought it would be cool,‖ I said, looking up. ―Hey, don‘t feel bad,‖ he said. ―There are worse things than being short. Look what I have to live with.‖ He shook his hard, round belly and stood up, tightened his gloves, and went off to do free weights. * For the later parts of training and competition you wear a specially-designed suit to support your joints. Buddy helped me order one, offering to pay for it in exchange for cleaning the locker rooms every night for a month. The suit arrived one Saturday. I held it up and told Buddy they sent the wrong size. The black suit was smaller than a pair of children‘s lederhosen. Buddy said it had to fit tight to hold your hips and back firmly in place when you lifted. He sent me into the locker room with a bottle of baby powder. I struggled with the suit for fifteen minutes, unable to get it past mid-thigh. After a
while I went to the door and called out. Buddy and Frank came to the locker room. Kara was in Salt Lake with her family for the weekend and I was relieved she wasn't here for the spectacle of my white thighs spilling over the leg openings of the suit. I peeked past the door and told them I couldn't get it on. ―Let‘s take a look,‖ Buddy said. I tugged the bottom of my T-shirt down over my underwear and opened the door. Buddy got behind me and started tugging the suit by one of its shoulder straps, and it inched painfully up my leg. ―You okay?‖ he asked. I said yes and then Frank took the other strap. Together they lifted me off the ground and shook me, pausing now and then to catch their breath. Finally, they shook me into the suit and pulled the straps up over my shoulders. My thighs bulged out the leg holes and my boobs hung over the top like two fists underneath a bunched-up sheet. Buddy and Frank swore the suit would loosen up with time, but they also said it was made with reinforced steel threads, so it was hard to believe them. When I tried a squat that morning, the suit resisted the force of my body trying to bend and literally forced me back to standing, and instantly I added forty-five pounds to my lift card. As soon as we were done I retreated to the women‘s locker room and began the slow process of easing small sections of my skin out of the suit. My hips and thighs were crisscrossed with little cuts, like lashes from a hairthin whip. My skin stung in the open air and I sat, feeling sick but happy. The wounds were souvenirs, of what? Greatness, I suppose, or vulnerability. I traced the lines and imagined Frank's big hands applying healing balms. * At the four-week mark, we started our workout by weighing ourselves. Just as Buddy predicted, I‘d gained almost ten pounds. Kara had lost a couple pounds and announced she was dieting so she could segue into a bodybuilding competition that summer. I rolled my eyes, thinking, how stupid, bodybuilding, why mess your
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