playernumber37:

& it’s just so hot lately.  The humidity seeps, coats, invades.  
Soon your shirt is sticking to your chest and back.  Sweat drips at odd
intervals, and you only feel a ghost of it, suddenly, down the edge of
your torso.  You spend more time outside, even if it’s just on the
porch, reading, but you can’t seem to keep your attention on the page.  
You catch yourself staring off into the distance, across the street, or
maybe to the left or right, and you’ve already been doing this for some
time.  Not really thinking about anything.  It’s too hot to think of
anything.  The heat gets inside your skull and expands.  It’s a
semi-delirium, the heat.  Muggy, foggy, hot.  And the noises of summer
are rising; the oscillating crescendo of the cicadas, rising, then
falling, rising, then falling.  This constant burr of noise in your
ears.  The weight of the sun on your bare arms and chest.  You’ve taken
your shirt off, and you’ve had it off for some time.  When did that
happen?  You probably just got too hot to have a shirt on.  It’s always a
little too hot to have a shirt on when it’s this comfortable to be
shirtless.  Rising, then falling.  Your muscles are bunched inside of
their sheaths, they are coiled, demanding animals that are whining,
scraping at their cages, to be used.  You can recall fondly the last
time you worked out.  The pleasant buzz and hum of endorphins singing in
your brainblood.  The ache of torn muscle tissue.  That was just a few
hours ago, wasn’t it?  Hard to recall.  It happens so often.  You almost
always seem to be in a daze lately, either a post-workout daze, or a
post-fuel daze, or a heat daze – seems like everything you do is about
your body, whether it’s cooling down or fueling up or working out.  
There just isn’t that much time to focus on much else, and you just
don’t have the effort to do anything other than workout, fuel up, and
cool down.  It’s just too hot.  

Someone is walking by.  Maybe
a neighbor, or something.  It’s one of the bros from the frat house
down the street.  You can see the big Greek letters on his gray
tanktop.  

                                                        ΣΝ

He has his cap on backwards, and he’s probably heading to the store for a beer run.  “Sup, bro,” he says to you as he walks by.

“Sup, bro,” you say back.  “Fuckin hot out.”

“Fuck yeah.  Gym later?”

“Fuck yeah, bro.”

“Seeya.”

“Later, bro.”

The
cicadas, again, their rise, their fall.  God, it’s like everything in
nature is ganging up on you, and you’re just so heavy and relaxed.  The
fan is going back and forth.  It hums and whirs as it passes, there in
the background, this whole time.  You don’t remember when you got so
friendly with the bros in the house down the street, or even how you met
them.  You laugh as you remember the noise complaint you filed with the
cops as a prank.  They were all good bros at Sigma Nu, though it didn’t
really seem like they actually went to college, just worked out and
fueled up and chilled out.  One or two of them even work at the gym you
go to.  You’ve seen a notice on the door lately, NOW HIRING.  You’ve
caught yourself considering it, but just once, maybe twice.  For some
time now.  Just as a joke, a little one, inside your own head, maybe
imagining it, you in the gym’s t-shirt, behind the counter.  It sure
would be a whole lot easier than uh, your day job.  

The
same bro is walking by, back from the store, a glistening, shiny
six-pack of tallboys in his hand.  The sun glints off of the cans, off
of his shiny watch, off of the black mirror of his sunglasses.  “Yo,” he
says, clearly.  Catches your attention.  He flexes, right there,
grunting cartoonishly as he does.  

You catch yourself standing up, flexing back, holding the pose.  He’s been gone for a long time now, and you’ve already been doing this for some time.

This works great for me since it’s really hot right now where I live, so it got to me that the heat speeds up the change

playernumber37:

It was like he couldn’t help himself, slowly raising the phone to the mirror, watching himself appear, but backwards. Yeah, the room had gotten a little messy – he just seemed to keep forgetting to clean it – and he’d had a bit of an obsession with protein lately – but otherwise, this was normal, right? Well, maybe some of a change. Hard to say.

As always, or at least lately, the thought left his brain. It happened simply, just one moment he was thinking, wondering, about who he was and what he did, and the next moment he was thinking about the gym and how much protein he’d had that day and whoa bro check out that fuckin pump! Bro… yeah that had happened too, even in his daily life. At first he started saying it tentatively, then more frequently, like a joke, but then it became real, and people accepted it.

Snap, the camera went off and his image was frozen on his phone. He sure looked dumb. (thought gone) He absently flicked over to Facebook. To “Photo,” to “Camera Roll.” To “Post.”

He scrolled to his News Feed to see the status and photo. It read,

“Mad pump today! Fuck, I love the gym!”

playernumber37:

– Bro, I just gotta ask … have you just been like really stoned the past few weeks, or… whats goin on. Youve just been so fuckin … dumb, lately.

– Uhhh…. huhuhuhuh.

playernumber37:

its that easy yo, just do it.  u just do it and then u just do it some more.  u wont know what ur doin at first but u just keep goin and u keep talkin about it to everyone even th ppl who wont listen and then ppl see u in ur workout cloths more and more and theyre like whats up with u and u say oh i just went to the gym, and they say Oh in that way that ppl do when theyre suprised or impressed they say Oh and it has that kinda edge to it u know its like theyre about to ask and then they do How long has that been goin on for and u say Oh like a week or so now and theyre impressed and ur like fuck yeah this is my life now i tell ppl i went to the gym and soon i wont even have to say nothin theyll be like Whoa have u been workin out?  ppl gonna wanna feel my guns huhuhuh.