Personal Narrative: A Short Story

For a long time, juicing was my elixir. It got me bigger. It got me stronger. It got me laid. But that was before it nearly ran my life.
It was the fall of 2004, and I was having such a rough go of it that even my depression was depressed. I had just totaled my brand new car, broke up with my much younger girlfriend and felt like I was spinning my wheels in a town I was scared I would never leave. I stood 5-foot-10, weighed 205 pounds. At the ripe age of 19, I had a new crush, on Michelle, a friend of a friend I had met my senior year of high school and basically organized my day around our 10 pm phone calls. I think we had always had something…. But each of us was always involved with someone else. As far as I was concerned, I had no chance

We had seen each other a few times in the gym, but it was more of a “bro nod”, never much talk. Finally I knocked on his door. He ripped it open; seemingly ready to confront someone with the door he nearly tore off its hinges. He listened to my spiel about being a Friday night hero who'd grown up thinking he had what it took it make it somewhere, and listened to my sales pitch about wanting to get big, followed by my admiration of him being so fit. He advised that he himself had been gangly until the summer before his senior year of high school. "What," he asked, "do you want at the gym? Do you want to get big or do you want to get strong?" To me, that was like asking if you wanted a beer or a

They hung there a moment, eyeing the view, then came down much too fast. "Slowly!" Mark yelled at me. "You lift the weight; the weight isn't s'posed to lift you!" Chagrined, I shoved the bar up again and offered some push-back when it dropped. I did a third rep, and a fourth, when something strange happened. A radiant heat began filling my chest, as if someone had draped a compress across it. I did another rep and the feeling spread, inching past the collarbone toward my throat. I kept on going, losing track of reps, attuned to the muzzy, pins-and-needles buzz that was setting up in my ears. It was sharp and soft, then hot and cool. I forgot who I was and even what I was, imagining myself as a two-stroke engine and my arms as pistons firing. Dropping that last rep, I lay there, clinically stoned, wrists hanging limp at my sides, watching fireworks on the back of my