Bleached

Josue likes us to be seen in white. Tops, shorts, underwear, socks. All white. Crisp, tight, clean. Flawless. Even after hours of training, Josue wants us to project perfection. Emperor energy, he says. Josue and I are unfazed and unbowed. Josue and I are transcendent, and he expects us to always look the part.

But it takes effort to look god-like. It’s late, and I’m at the all-night laundry with two bottles of bleach.

“You can’t use all that in these machines,” the attendant says.

“I know. This one’s almost gone,” I say. I swish a bottle around.

The attendant returns to sweeping.

The machine is topped, all white, but it’s only three days of wear. If I were here more often, I’d owe rent.

The attendant’s back is turned; I dump the bottles in.

The machine does its work to make me perfect while I pace. Forty minutes is not such a long time to wait. In five hours, I’ll be back at Planet Fitness—all white—with Josue again. For forty minutes, it’s all I think about. What else is there?

 

I’m flinging my sopping clothes into the dryer when I notice a mistake, an imperfection. My tank has a needle-point blotch of red at the shoulder. Blood? I’m not sure. But if it’s of the body, it cannot be. There can be no humanity when Josue expects me to be inhuman, and Josue is a man who gets what he wants.

I see red. Where is that attendant?

“This machine ruined my shirt.”

“Lemme see here,” the attendant says. He flips the shirt around. “Where?”

“Right there!” I point at the red spot. It’s the only thing I can see. Red.

“Huh? That?”

“Yes! It’s ruined now.”

“Sir, no one’s gonna notice. No one could see that.”

I laugh. I bend over. It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.

It’s obvious he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s another idiot—another peasant.

The attendant crosses his arms.

I’m laughing so hard. I want to speak but I can’t. I want to tell the attendant he wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t get it. The only reason, the only scenario where people wouldn’t notice a red spot like this is if no one was looking at you.

 

 

Geared

This needs to stop but it doesn’t.

We do it every Friday. I bend over, pull down my shorts, and Josue does me. He pulls down his, and I do him. It’s hard to imagine stopping now. We’ve been at it for weeks, pyramiding, building up doses, testing our limits. Josue and I need to know how much we can take, how much we can handle.

Josue doesn’t believe in plateaus, and I believe everything Josue tells me; I don’t believe in plateaus either. It’s up, up, up—bigger, more vascular, more striated, more cut—or it’s nothing. On this Josue and I agree; we’d rather be dead than small.

He points at the sharps bin.

I toss the needles in.

Clink, clink.

Josue and I have clean hands now. It’s our first joint decree: never leave a trace.

 

In the showers, Josue’s back’s become braille. He permits a touch—the bumps don’t represent him, the man he is—and yet, I receive a jolt. Feeling him, this contact over his braised skin, is like a visit to a new land, a distant vacation from real life.

“Stop, bro,” he says. “It’ll go away on its own.”

 

That night, at home, I angrily masturbate.

 

 

The Dead

Josue and I run shit at Planet Fitness. We’re first in the door every morning. We’re not here to work out; we’re here to hold court. It’s not a bench. It’s a throne, and we’re its rightful owners. Josue and I outline our perimeter with battling ropes, and no one—not even the frat brahs from the state school—will cross it.

Yes, even these peasants know when to show respect. Even they understand the mandate of our majestic reign. Even they recognize Josue and I rule Planet Fitness.

 

I lie back on the bench, and Josue’s immense forearms cage me as he releases the bar into my palms. He spots my reps as I stare into his warm bronze eyes. They are evaluating my progress, assessing my growth, the widening of my chest as the weights are lowered and raised, heart pumping rapidly through my bleached tank top. Josue’s eyes see everything and nothing at all. There are things I’m not ready for Josue to see. While I give the bar everything I’ve got, I’m always, still, holding something back.

Josue cranes his neck. One of the peasants has kicked the perimeter rope out of position, a border incursion. An international incident. Obvious or not, I don’t care. I could lie here all day,  pushing weight, gazing up at Josue.

But he cares.

“Appreciate the barrier,” Josue says to the peasant.

The peasant, a scraggly ginger with a 10-pound dumbbell raised over his head, is mortified; his face becomes vermillion. He drops the weight, but it fails to make as much as a smack on the mat.

“Tonto,” Josue chides.

“Sorry, man. I didn’t see it. I tripped!” the peasant pleads.

Unfortunately for this peasant, at Planet Fitness, justice must be served.

Josue cradles the bar and starts towards the offender. He flexes his supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and his subscapularis so that his shoulders and neck look like one bulging mass of fused muscle. Josue’s gone bullnecked and is ready to rage! The peasant quakes in his athletic shorts. Josue kicks the rope back into place and returns to spot me. The peasant scurries to the locker room, and Josue and I know he’s one peasant we’ll never see again.

Josue and I call the boys who never return, the dead. And it’s true. Without the gym, they’re less than nothing. Without Josue and I, these boys don’t even exist.