A Freak's Delight

My friends accused me of being "Mr. Incredible", "Superman" and "Astro Boy"

The locker room of the new Causeway Bay gym has its mirrors arranged at an angle rather than facing each other. That way I finally get a clear view of my back. Gains on my back are visible even from the front – I am spreading my lats out like a vampire spreads its wings. But when I actually see my back first time in months, I’m still pleasantly surprised. My back is wide, meaty and delicious at the shoulders, and tapers all the way down to my waist painstakingly capped at 31 inches, forming the long coveted V-shape. I hold back my shoulders and squeeze my back. Small hills and valleys materialize and I feel like a freak. A proud one.

Nearby a colossal, bald pro bodybuilder sits his gigantic glutes on the mirror counter and eats his post workout meal. My narcissist posing and flexing what in his eyes a skinny torso with spaghetti limbs apparently cracks him up. In return I give him a self-depreciating smile. An amateur freak has to pay respect to the real freak. I take caution not to overdo it so it won’t come off as disrespect. Not that I’m scared of those big boys. In spite of their rugged, macho exteriors, pro bodybuilders I encounter are mostly docile, peace-loving beings. Taking steroids or not, they still need to put in the hard work. I know firsthand every awful sip of protein shake, every muscle-breaking rep and the next day soreness that goes into muscle building. Therefore they deserve my respect.

Now that I'm becoming a freak, people start reacting to me like one. My friends accused me of being “Mr. Incredible”, “Superman” and “Astro Boy” (WTF?). In public, men gawk at me with intrigue. They point fingers at me to other men and talk about me. They wish their women did not see me. One fellow on a MTR train went so far as videotaping me behind my back – while I was stretching after a demanding workout - until I flipped him the bird. I did not want to be a YouTube sensation for being an idiot on MTR. Women too are always aware of my existence. Mature female cleaners in restaurants smile at me before questioning me of my eating habits. Young women in malls cringe and look away with their sparkling eyes. School girls on MTR trains seem to get totally awestruck and burst into uncontrollable giggles. All of this is making me as self-conscious of my body as a teenage girl entering puberty of hers. I'm even thinking of wearing a coat on these hot summer days, just to avoid the attention.

Mr. Incredible

Lifting weights has become my coping mechanism for life's problems. If Jay-Z has “99 problems but a bitch ain't one”, I have a hundred. I channel my sexual tensions, or frustrations for that matter, into each row, each curl and each push and pull. Dumbbells and barbells are my wives and mistresses. I feel like a king doing them one by one. When I work out, I moan, shriek and howl as shamelessly as a whore. Sometimes several guys moan together, it sounds like gay porn but really we are just having group sex. Each rep is one step closer to climax. And when I finally exhaust my muscles to failure, I’m in heaven. A freak doesn't need a girlfriend because he is already having all the fun in the gym.

Astro Boy