Bottles of baby oil lie scattered. Empty. Dead soldiers perhaps from a strange carouse. The men glisten. Pump, pump, pump: Their biceps come up, leavened bread. My God, the physical effort; I pull a muscle imagining it. They are mostly short men, not handsome; physiques exaggerated, burly as low rock walls. Compensation, I wonder, for what childhood slight? Mothers and wives watch: They seem overdressed in the semi-nude context. It’s a competition and a social event. Cordial: They’ve met before in the wings of six dozen different theaters. Some jerk towels backward and forward, bent over, lumberjacks at a two-handed saw, pumping, pumping. I see an exploded tattoo. The outline of some predatory bird, fragmented to a blue connect-thedots sketch by muscle growth. Torsos are scarred with a pregnant woman’s stretch marking. Veins rush across them, crazy and desperate, overtaxed. Tonight one of these men will become Mr. World, 1973.
But the women are on now: Miss Body Beautiful. Strictly a bush league show. The entrants are nondescript; they know it. Most look as if they’d taken an innocent short cut from Lexington to Park across the Hunter College stage. They exit right with roses cradled gingerly, the thorns held just above soft parts. One woman has a 1920s bathing costume; her figure is roughly contemporaneous. Maybe a college scrubwoman ran home after work. A mobbed house raves by the numbers: forty or over. Sexual noises, wet and adolescent. The men are appraised in another mode. Loud, enthusiastic certainly, yet with Apollonian, reverent undertones. The last woman comes off, lips blue with embarrassment. You could dial her measurements and get directory assistance for downtown Chicago. It’s a joke. But the more contests you have, the more relatives and friends to hype your box office. Dan Lurie, the Sol Hurok of man flesh, understands that.
Comments