YOU CAN'T OUTWORK THE OLD JACKED DUDE AT THE GYM

a short story about limitations and derangement

borrowed photo from here

Vacation in Tampa, baby. Spa resort. Work hard, play hard. That’s what I do. You ride with me, you gotta be ready. But first, some self-enhancement. I didn’t drink the night before and slept well. Took a short but fast run ten minutes after waking up to get my T-levels up, drank alkaline water from a glass bottle to optimize hydration. Felt good. Let’s hit the gym. When you feel good, you wanna feel better. You wanna feel great. Get strong. Be all you can be isn’t just for the Army, baby, it’s what people like me do because we have no choice. If we don’t make big moves, we stagnate, crumble, and die.

And since I ain’t dying today, I had to crush some fucking weights.

I expected your typical half-ass hotel gym with two dusty treadmills and a single 10-pound kettlebell, estrogen-effort bullshit, but this hotel didn’t play stupid games like that. This was a real gym for real people like me who demand the best in life. The go-getters and power-lifters. The high achievers and high T-ers. The ones maximizing their physical and mental potential to create a new benchmark of humanity. That’s me. That what I do. Be more like me. And the gym was empty because nobody else around was as focused as me. Other people go on vacation and drink diabetes-infused pina coladas by the pool, pretending getting fat and drunk isn’t what they do when they’re not on vacation.

But I go on vacation to get better, stronger, faster, more productive. I looked around for some weights to crush - and that’s when I saw him.

The man had snow white hair and his face was dusted with wrinkles. He wore a light blue jogging suit that looked like it smelled like moth balls and Old Spice. He stretched his arms out and slowly brought them forward slower, like if he moved them the wrong way, they’d snap. Everything about him seemed delicate. I was afraid he might hurt himself and thought maybe I should offer some assistance, help the old-timer out. Sometimes, we have to give back to the community, even if the community isn’t worthy of our gifts. When I got up to do my good deed for the day, he grinned at himself in the mirror, growled like a horny lion, and ripped off his sweatshirt like it was wet tissue. He tossed the pieces aside, jumped up onto a pullup bar, and cranked out chin-up after chin-up with smooth ease - and fast, looking like a white-topped blur.

Each time he brought his chin above the bar, he let out a “RARRR!” that intimidated me. And once my eyes focused on the blur, I saw that this delicate old man was completely and utterly jacked. Yes, his skin was old - loose and crinkly with splotches and uninvited hair spots. And the skin was getting worn out by the mountains of rock-hard muscle flowing and rolling underneath. The old man’s back was a convoluted map of canyons - I got lost just looking at all the crevasses. His arms consisted of gears, perfectly tangled into each other, beautifully grinding with each pull. And his shoulders looked like they were pale, flesh-covered football helmets. I felt tired looking at him. I felt weak and left behind, like everything I had ever done to this point was worth nothing because this man, twice my age, was a specimen of vitality. His existence mocked mine.

But I didn’t get this far by giving up. Whatever he could do, I could do better. I popped a Zynn and got to work.

After the old man finished on the pull-up bar, I got on it and did more reps than him, hiding any signs of effort from my face.

When he got off the pulley machine, I added more weight, did more reps, and didn’t need to grunt or “RARRR” like he did. Easy work.

When he got on the rower, I got on the one next to him. I watched how much weight he put. I put more. He growled a vigorous “RARRR!” with each rep. I hissed a confident “shoop” with each rep. I was in charge. I was stronger. This was easy. Light work. I overestimated my opponent. While he might have looked good for his age, I was younger, stronger, better.

But then the old man walked over to the thrust machine. He grabbed the waist of his sweat pants, growled his “RARRRRR” and tore them off. My mind was about to question why this man tears off his clothes instead of coming to the gym in appropriate attire, but then I saw his ass. Underneath his shiny red polyester underwear was an ass so muscle-packed, it looked like two steroid-ridden pigs fighting over a protein shake. A GMO ass if there ever was one. But GMOs can be beautiful and this man’s ass was a masterpiece. If they made a Mount Rushmore of ass, his would be the only one on there.

He got on the thrust machine. He put as much weight as he could put on it - plates to the very end. He looked at me as his rock mountain ass surged upwards. I looked away, thinking his eyes accidentally landed on mine. But I looked back and his eyes were still looking at me, only they were closer now. Just the eyes. Closer. I looked away. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked fat and scrawny - just weak, empty flab. I picked up some dumbbells to save face. Maybe I wasn’t done yet. I did just get here. Maybe I was just warming up. I pumped. One-two. Again. Three-four. Yeah, I was getting there. I could feel it. I looked at myself to see my muscles bulge. But I couldn’t see me. I could only see him looking at me as his lethal ass thrusted his hips to and fro. His energy was evaporating me.

“You can’t outwork me!” the man said, thrusting and RARRRRing after every sentence. “You’re not on my level! You don’t know what my level is! You couldn’t recognize my level if it grabbed you by those little Tic-Tac balls between your legs and yanked them off.”

I heard these words, but I wasn’t sure if the old man was really telling me this, or if it was just in my head. When I looked at him, his mouth wasn’t moving. But I heard the words. They were loud. The voice was gruff, confident, deeper than mine. But I didn’t see his mouth move. He was looking at me, though. His eyes locked onto mine, glowing like they were about to spark into flames.

“You’ll never achieve anything close to what I have!”

Hip thrust. RARRRR!

“I have more money than you.”

Hip thrust. RARRRR!

“I have more muscles than you.”

Hip thrust. RARRRR!

“You’re younger, but my focus sees more than you, my hunger devours more than you, and oh yes, my little friend, my dick gets harder than yours ever has.”

The man got off the hip thrust machine and walked over to where I was at the dumbbell station. He grabbed the 100-pound dumbbells and blew a kiss to himself in the mirror. He grinned as he lifted the 100-pound weights like they were mere cans of spaghetti sauce. His teeth were massive and their whiteness was offensively bright. He looked at my reflection. He looked down and saw I was holding 60-pound weights. He smirked and RARRRR’d.

“Capitalism is for cucks,” I heard him say, still not sure if this was all in my head. “The whole I give you something, you give me something bullshit is a bitch’s game. I don’t exchange. I take everything I want, and then I take more because I can. I take until there isn’t anything worth taking, and then I destroy what I don’t want so that something I want replaces it.”

RARRRRRR!

He dropped the weights on the floor. He did a backflip and got back on the chin-up bar, only this time he did one-handed pull-ups. I watched his reflection in the mirror in front of me as I did my hammer curls. His voice continued to dominate my head.

“Everything about me is enhanced,” I heard him say. “Yeah, I have ab and pec implants. Yeah, I get a little lipo once in a while. I shoot testosterone everyday like it’s a morning coffee. And you’re goddamn right I use PEDs. But the only reason everyone doesn’t do this is because they can’t. I can. And I do. And it feels so damn good because I’m so goddamn strong and beautiful. You’ll never get to my level. You’ll always be prey, never a predator. You’re nothing but food to me.”

RARRRRRR!

He pounced on me. His weight crushed the air out of my lungs. His bright white teeth blinded me before they sunk into my neck. I felt my blood gush out. The meat of my body torn and chewed. My bones snap. My brain still worked, processing everything, feeling everything, the pain of dying, the desperation for it all to end, and the shame that I failed because I didn’t try hard enough.

My sight came back, but I was hovering over myself, watching myself being consumed, digested, and turned into shit.