28. Blake

Blake craned his neck up so he could see the mirror. Past the landscape of his body – rolling, bronzed hills that could be mistaken at this angle for a set of unusually regular sand dunes – he saw the reflection of his legs planted on the floor, the same ripples of his torso, and his eyes just barely edging over the twin domes of his chest. Satisfied with his vertiginous appearance, he began his routine of high flies, bringing the forty-pound barbells together over his head and separating them, together and apart, the stainless steel weights coming together with the 'clack' sound of an office executive's desktop toy.

He admired himself. His was the body of a gladiator, he imagined, or a high-octane action film's leading man. When he saw an advertisement for some fashion product like designer briefs or cologne, ubiquitously featuring some overbuilt model's ornamental abdomen, he could legitimately make a comparison to his own physical attributes. He couldn't change the shape of his features – his nose was shaped like a bulb of garlic, and his eyes were like weekends: too small and too far apart – but in a contest from the neck down, he felt up to the challenge of any of those pampered paragons. Just in case the competition ever materialized, he moved on to complete the circuit with a set of preacher curls, skull crushers and planks, relishing the feeling of exertion, gritting his teeth until beads of sweat rolled into his eyes and stung. Let's see them do that, he said to himself.

On leaving the gym, Blake checked his cellphone, and found several text messages waiting for him. One of his frat brothers, known by the moniker 'Sacks,' wrote "Dawg, u clubbin 2nite?" Blake hit reply and typed on the smartphone's tiny keys. "ya im up 4 anething weher u thinkin?" After sending the message, he smiled, and punched in a follow-up. "Letz get CRUNK."

The pink silk shirt shone under the lights of the club, striated reflections hugging the contours of Blake's prominent chest and shoulders. The dance floor was packed with bodies, and Blake's eyes darted from each to the next, evaluating them. None of the men, he saw, were as developed as himself. There was no competition. He felt smug as his group fell back to the bar.

"Round of Jaeger bombs!" Sacks shouted at the bartender.

"How many is that?" He asked.

"One for all of us," Sacks replied, pointing at Blake and the rest of the Delta Epsilon Kappa brothers.

"When you decide on a number, let me know," the bartender said, and turned away.

"Yo, fuck that guy." Terry, one of the brothers said. "That's disrespect. I'd knock him out like a skinny bitch."

The bartender came back. "Six," Sacks said, "Six Jaeger bombs."

He lined up the glasses, the shooters, and six cans of Red Bull. "Forty-six fifty."

The boys drank fast. Sacks left two twenties under an empty can.

When the floor began to thin out a few hours later, Blake had just about had enough. The other brothers had mostly paired off with a sorority girl's birthday entourage, a matching-up that had happened so quickly it left Blake with only the last few to choose from. It wasn't that he found the selection unappealing: that was not so much of a barrier as an incentive to drink more. He could simply not reconcile the idea that he deserved better than last pick. He'd spent the hours sweating, eaten the vile-tasting protein bars and creatine phosphate supplements, read up on plyometrics and isolation presses – he didn't put in all that effort just so he could settle for substandard hook-ups. Growing despondent, he went to the bar and threw back a shot of Patron, getting ready to troll the dance floor again with meagre hopes. Just to be sure, he had another.

It was there, under the stippling light of a disco ball, that Blake saw the most beautiful girl he'd seen in his entire short-term memory. She was curvaceous yet thin, a sought-after shape that did not come easily, accentuated by matching triangles of skin revealed at the top and bottom of the girl's blouse where several buttons had been strategically unbuttoned. Her hair, a gust of blonde that had grown dishevelled over a night of dancing, fell past her shoulders. She wore flat-heeled shoes, which Blake deemed permissible because she was already rather tall. While conducting his inspection, Blake noticed a brown bangle on one of her ankles. 'Probably some kind of rainforest tree wood,' he thought, and resolved that he would mention that he cares about that sort of environmental thing if it came up in conversation. He made his approach.

"I've got two hundred pounds of dynamite," he said, and she looked at him with almond-shaped, deeply made-up eyes so enthralling he forgot the second part of the pick-up line.

"What?" she said, narrowing her eyes and pushing her hair back behind one ear.

He abandoned the tack. "What's your name?"

"Nevermind," she said, turning away.

He grabbed her arm. "You want to dance?"

She resisted, but Blake knew it was just a test. He'd read about this behaviour on the internet; a beautiful girl will deflect a guy's advances to see what he's really made of. Blake intended to persevere. He pulled her closer, her body was lithe and surprisingly powerful. "Come on, dance with me," he said, "you know you want to." The smell of her perfume gave him a heady rush. Her touch was intoxicating beyond intoxication.
Someone interrupted the moment, cutting between them and breaking Blake's grasp, pushing him away. This skinny, artsy-looking guy with too much hair and these wiry little arms.

"What do you think you're doing, buddy?" he said, getting right in Blake's face. He seemed pretty confident for a guy with earrings.
"Are you stupid or something? Don't cockblock me," Blake said, not backing down.
The guy laughed and turned to address his entourage. "He doesn't know who I am," he said. 'He's about to find out,' Blake thought, and planted a paw in his scrawny chest. He pushed him backward. The nuisance fell right on his ass, his spindly legs sticking straight out in front of him, his girlish leather boots up in the air. A strobelight seemed to have turned on as flashes of light began to appear constantly.

"Not such hot shit now, huh?" He'd show this scarecrow, nobody pushes Blake around. He began unbuttoning his shirt. "You want to start something?"

"Leave him alone," the girl said. She started to pull at his arm, but backed away as the pink silk parted to reveal the juggernaut underneath.

"I'll show you a real man," he said. He threw the shirt aside and advanced on his enemy. "Come at me," he bellowed, "see what you got!"

Someone came at him, but it wasn't who he expected. The force caught him by surprise, not hurting him, just holding him back. He lunged against the grip and craned his neck to see the black-shirted bouncers with "security" stencilled across their chests. Two of them restrained him while a third stood by, a hand hovering over the stun gun on his belt. They wrestled, forcing his back to the ground, and he looked up to see the crowd beyond his mountainous muscles.

People were gathering around now, all staring at him. Now he noticed the cameras. They seemd to be everywhere, taking photos of him being held down. He locked eyes with the guy who had started this; he was slightly bent over, looking vulnerable, with the beautiful girl at his arm, one gentle hand on his sunken chest. One of the security guards was talking to that guy now, addressing him as 'sir' and saying the words 'deeply sorry.'
"Make way, we're taking him out of here." The ground began to slip as the guards dragged Blake towards the exit, his shirt still in a heap on the floor. Blake tried to break free, and a voice shouted in his ear, "If you resist, I will tazer you. Do you understand that?" He felt a prod in his ribs and stopped struggling.

People were pointing and talking. Someone was laughing. "Respect me," Blake shouted into the sea of eyes, "Respect me!"