GYM GOLD

“You want to work in for a couple sets?” It’s meant to be a joke, because it’s laughable.

The only place where Jim Gold and I work out together would be a gym in an alternate universe.

Jim Gold is six foot eight, weighs well north of three hundred pounds, and most of it is well-defined muscle. He makes a living as a pro wrestler in a premier league, lifting people twice my size over his head and flinging them. I’m a writer, and I resemble a guy whose work consists of pecking at keys on a keyboard. I have well-defined index fingers and thumbs.

Still, here are he and I at the local gym. I’m here because I have a deadline coming up, and this way I can procrastinate and punish myself for procrastinating at the same time. Jim Gold is here for obvious reasons – To press immovable objects overhead, and to film promotional content for social media.

Rather than walk past the busy multitasker, I stand gaping. Only for a few seconds, but it’s a few seconds longer than courtesy dictates. I guess that means I deserve the extra-extra-large scowl Jim Gold gives me. I shudder. He might just be practicing for an upcoming event, seeing as he recently “turned heel.” To those of you who flip past pro wrestling on television every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night, I’ll explain. Jim Gold has been cast as a villain in the violent dramas that play out in front of, and occasionally among, the frenzied fans.

From what I know, in real life, Jim Gold is a congenial fellow. But if he’s only acting right now, well, he’s a great actor. His withering glare is very convincing. I’m getting weak in my knees and in my bladder. I should move along.

His pecs twitch inside his tank top, a clear warning. I’m moving, I’m moving. He turns his attention back to the camera on the tripod in front of him. I watch him dump a bunch of capsules into his palm and begin to extoll their benefits to his online audience. Mid-sentence, he stuffs the huge handful into his mouth.

“NO!” I’m almost as startled by the shout as Jim Gold is. It came from me. Now he is clearly annoyed at my continued interruption. I press my luck, a dangerous exercise. “Spit that out!” I command. My mouth is on too fast of a setting, and my brain can’t keep pace.

The big man’s square jaw clenches. He starts to chew the capsules, a sure sign of anger. He makes a face, part purple from frustration, part green from what must be an awful taste. Have you ever chewed non-chewable vitamins? He grabs his conspicuously placed bottle of X-treme Hydration to wash it all down. 

I run at him before he can take a swig, and he freezes in clear surprise. I watch in horror as I lunge and slap him hard across the face. Did I just do that? I’m having an out-of-body experience. The tremendous pain in my hand assures me that I am still in my body. For the moment. The bottle of hydration flies away from the huge, angry, face-slapped wrestler. Valuable electrolytes and enzymes spray as it bounces hard on the floor. I will be next.  

My hand feels like I tried to catch a fastball without a glove. It’s just a hint of the pain I will feel everywhere when Furious Jim Gold gets his hands on me. He is millimeters from doing exactly that. Now he lunges at me and roars something indiscernible. It sounds like someone with their mouth full calling me a name I won’t repeat.  

I manage to avoid certain concussion and possibly coma by ducking beneath a 22-inch solid steel pipe known as Jim Gold’s left arm. I see skulls and crossbones before my eyes. Before either of us can think, I swing around his waist and jump onto his broad back. I am full of surprises today, and possibly a subconscious death wish.  He lets out another garbled roar/curse. Good! Now we’re getting somewhere. I wrap my much smaller arm around his throat and hang on for dear life. He shakes back and forth, like a grizzly bear wearing a human backpack. 

He lurches back into a concrete wall. The poster that says “Do Better” is not adequate cushion for my spine. Ouch! Jim Gold throws a lethal right elbow into the side of my head. I hear a sound like two forty-five-pound plates clanging together echoing inside my empty cranium. I’m still clamped around that tree trunk of a throat for dear life. The big man can’t swallow, and he can’t breathe, and the little man can’t hold on much longer.

Finally, in desperate need of oxygen, Jim tosses me away, and spits a huge frothy mouthful of goo onto the rubberized gym floor. Then comes a second splat. That’s me. The floor feels more concrete than rubber. I’m flat on my back, wind knocked out of me, looking up at stars and circling birdies and an understandably irritated gentleman. No one rushes over, no crowd gathers around. Everyone else in the gym has loud music in their earbuds and are very diligently focusing on their workouts. Or, more likely, they want no part of this.

I don’t even have enough breath to whimper when Furious Jim Gold pulls me up by the front of my shirt, yanking out more than a few chest hairs in the process. He lifts me up to eye level, and then up higher. He’s going to do a clean-and-jerk, and we all know who the jerk is. He presses me up. And up. The people look like ants from here.  I gasp for air and choke out a few words. 

“What?” He growls. His grip doesn’t loosen, and he doesn’t lower me. “Look!” I say. My arms dangle uselessly, but my eyeballs and eyebrows both signal furiously at the ground far below me.  

He looks down and sees what I do. A nauseous foaming puddle. Branched-chain amino acids, creatine capsules, and two silica gel desiccant packs. They’re those little packets that keep your vitamins dry and prevent them from becoming one big inedible glob. The packs are small and white with all capital letters warning “DO NOT EAT.” You know, like the big guy with his hands on me just tried to do.  

I think there’s an unwritten rule that if you save a guy’s life (or at least save him from a giant case of diarrhea) you have a gym partner from that day forward. Even if the guy warms up with double the weight I can lift on my best day.

“So, you want to work in for a couple sets?” I say, grinning.

“I sure do, Bro,” Jim Gold says to me.

“Oh, so I’m ‘Bro’ now?”

He laughs, and before I can duck, he has me in a headlock.

“You’ve always been Bro,” he says, messing up my hair with his knuckles like he’s done a thousand times before.

END