Monforton S. Smith
Hey man, what’s your name? I seen you here before.
I’m not a first name with
these hard bodies,
some of them already featured
in muscle magazines,
not much more than “Howzitgoin?”
“Goodyou?”
and sports talk at the
water cooler.
In the locker room, dosing creatine
supplements
around conversation about food
and women
they punctuate sentences with
short,
beefy exclamations: “Dude!
. . .No way!”
One of them is “cutting”
for a show, so he’s “all about definition.”
Another has broken up with his
girlfriend again. Pressed for time,
I just want to do my mileage,
elevate the pulse rate—
“get your swell on,”
as they say, so I nod and change.
Halfway through my row, a tanned
bundle of pecs
and delts and traps wades into
the room.
We swap the usual,
but then he talks past the Lions
and Packers and Bears
into the local economy—housing
markets;
he’s a first-time homeowner
(with a sometime girlfriend).
I watch my splits—2:15,
2:23...try to concentrate on long exhales,
short answers, more time
between responses.
He doesn’t care. The exuberance and attitude of youth,
by turns willful and indifferent,
crushes my manicured regimen.
I watch him do dips, a 45 lb
plate hanging from a chain around his waist,
“…ten, eleven, TWELVE!” I towel sweat and stare at Arnold on the wall
—a vindicating photo from
his first world title—and remember 1977,
a crusty gym, next to Bruno’s
Pizza and the Velvet Touch,
where we bench-pressed super
sets into the night
praying for growth and a second
Boston album.
In the sauna, where three can
be a crowd
especially if one of them likes
to talk, he tells us
he’s off to a wedding
that night and plans to eat heavy,
hoping for some of that “green
stuff on pasta. Man, was that good.”
“Pesto?” I ask. “Chopped basil with olive oil and parmesan cheese?”
“That’s it! Dude, I could eat a friggin’ bowl of that shit!”
I nod and pour water on the
rocks. Next, we’re onto famous people
who have homes in the UP “nobody
knows about.”
“Dale, Jr. comes up to
ride snowmobiles every winter. My buddy’s partied
with him at the Mosquito
Inn. And Ted Nugent—he’s got a camp near Tapiola!”
He starts singing and slapping
his buddy who agrees with a “Dude.”
“Well, Detroit city, she's
the place to be. This mad dog town's gonna set you free.”
Madonna makes her entrance—I’ve
heard this one before—and it’s easy to imagine her naked on my lap; after all, we’re the same age, went
to the same college…
“—She does, man,
she’s got a place down in Michigamme, on the lake.
I seen it.” Naw, man, she’s got a place right here.
I tell them about Arnold, how
when he was 19 he’d load his car with weights,
a picnic lunch, and his girlfriend,
and drive deep into the Austrian woods
where he’d have massive
workouts with iron and food and, well…her.
“Dude, that is so awesome!” He jabs his buddy. “We gotta do
that.”
Monforton S. Smith has lived half his
life on the hard rock of the Keweenaw Peninsula, where he teaches at Hancock High School and Finlandia University in Hancock,
Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula.
