Gymbro Flash-Fiction

    Ronnie was killing it, he’d been curling in the squat rack for a good hour but admittedly, he was losing steam. Ever since he read an article in a Men’s Health magazine about the benefits of using dumbbells, he had almost entirely ditched the barbells at the gym. Reading was not really Ronnie’s forte, so most of the words didn’t make any sense to him, but he understood the gist of the article. 

 

A guide on utilizing your stabilizer muscles.

 

    His old routine was almost exclusively curling the Smith machine’s barbell. Since ditching the mechanically assisted machine and adopting free weights, Ronnie had to learn to employ proper form. He went from curling forty-five pound to a measly twenty-five pounds, but it was an honest twenty-five pounds, and he could feel the gains flexing in his biceps.

 

    “Eight,” Ronnie said, breathlessly curling the cast iron weights until they were tucked under his chin. He paused and exhaled deeply. In those moments of pumping iron, very seldom did he think about the act aside from keeping count. His mind wandered. Ronnie realized when he thought about each rep he did, it exhausted him quickly, so instead he’d play out scenarios in his head. Usually what it would be like to have a nice body. Girls would dig that. Nice.

 

    Enough time had passed, ten reps was the goal, and only after that could he rack the weights and leave satisfied. Ronnie sucked down a deep breath and dropped his tired arms back to his sides. Across the gym mounted on the wall, old reruns of SuperMarket Sweep played over a snowy TV. Mindlessly, his eyes watched the images of David Ruprehct schmoozing with contestants. Music pumping from the ceiling speakers made it too loud to hear anything he was saying though.        

 

    Ronnie’s lips pushed together and he started to exhale. Veins running across both biceps bulged as the muscles contracted. Both arms reached ninety-degrees, bent at the hollow. It would be easy to quit now, but he didn’t. Nice.

 

    “Nine,” Ronnie said exhaling the rest of his breath. He looked at himself in the mirror and gazed at what he saw in the reflection. Everyone in his family said that he looked more like his mom than he did his dad, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Did that mean he looked like a housewife? Most of the guys back in high-school thought his mom was hot, so that was good he thought, maybe. Once again, the clenched dumbbells were tucked under his chin. In the reflection, he could see that he was drenched in sweat. Perhaps he looked like a sweaty housewife, and that was why he hadn’t been able to get any babes yet? Ronnie drew a deep breath and lowered the weights back to his side for the last rep.

 

    Usually, the music playing at the gym was just over played music piped in from KL-HOT99FM from the city, but as luck would have it, Vanilla Fudge came on over the speaker. Ronnie smiled to himself feeling a rush of energy listening to the whining guitar play into an accelerating drumline that branched into bellowing organs.

 

“Here comes Ronnie,” Ron said as his muscles began to contract.

 

  ♪ You just keep me hangin’ on!

 

    The veins on his biceps stood up like rope wrapped around the mast of a ship. At this moment, he felt powerful. Ronnie paused his arms midway to admire the vascularularity, and as he gave one last effort to complete the rep, his biceps popped and slipped up his upper arms. All of his strength was sapped and the weights slipped from his grasps. They landed with a thud against the black matting. A moment passed and the pain had not yet come.

 

♪ You really don’t need me!

 

    And then it came. A sudden rush of burning, stinging pain just above both elbows where the muscles had torn washed over Ronnie. He screamed standing in place looking at his arms. Where the bicep had connected to his elbow, the skin sagged. Below his shoulder a great knot of muscle bulged. Never before had Ron felt such tremendous pain, it was dizzying and tears began to well up. A wrist-watch that Ronnie kept in his nearby backpack started chiming. 

 

8:40PM, the bus comes at 8:45. 

 

    “Shit,” Ronnie whined with tears liberally streaming down his cheeks. Unable to lift the bag in any capacity, he started pushing it towards the front door with his feet. Outside, the bus stop was just at the end of the plaza, but the driver liked to come early. “Shit.”

 

    Leaning into the door with his shoulder, the plate glass door swung open into the night. Everytime Ronnie had gone to the gym he strictly trained his biceps, so the act of kicking his backpack along was fatiguing in its own right. However, he was in luck.

 

    “Excuse me, sir!” Ron said disguising the whimpering in his voice. Sitting on the curb appeared to be a bum with his face buried in their palms. He lifted his head up. “Sir, you have to help me!” 

 

    The man rose up and wearily walked over to Ronnie. Tired eyes surveyed Ron top to bottom. “What kind of space shoes you wearin.”

 

    Ronnie was puzzled, they were Vibram FiveFinger toe shoes. Babes loved those. “They help me keep my base when I lift weights,” he explained nervously. In the distance, three minutes early, the bus pulled in with a screech. “Please sir, help me!”

 

    The vagabond looked over his shoulder toward the glowing headlights of the bus and then back to Ronnie. “What happened to your arms,” he said, paying note to the bulging knots.

 

    Ronnie rolled his eyes, “I hurt myself getting ripped!”

 

    The bum looked into Ronnie’s eyes for a moment and made the decision to sucker punch him cold. He wanted to be the only bum at the soup kitchen with shoes from outer space.