"Did you know that the human head weighs 8 pounds?" - Ray Boyd
"Actually it weighs 10-11 lbs." - The Voice
The clock on the gym wall read 3:59 AM. I paused, holding my breath against the tremor in my hands, and took a photo. Hourly proof. Documentation to show him exactly where I stood when 4:00 AM hit. I had two hours left before his truck pulled up to the curb, two hours before he handed me my first meal and expected the job to be done. Failure meant facing him empty-handed.
I let out a heavy sigh, reached down, and hauled the 90-pound dumbbell off the rubber floor by the preacher curl stand. I forced my right hand into the steel grip and locked myself into position.
I was staring at my calendar, mapping out the rest of the month and calculating the trajectory toward my final goal, when the air in the room shifted. He appeared out of nowhereâa quiet, impossible feat for a man of his sheer mass. Without a word, he dropped a heavy stack of fitted baseball caps on the desk in front of me, ranging from size 6 7/8 up to 8 1/8. He gave a single, sharp nod downward.
I started trying them on, one by one, until I hit the 7 5/8. It fit snug against my skull. I looked up at him. A slow, knowing smirk crept across his face as he jotted the number down on a notepad. He reached out, plucked the cap off my head, gathered the rest of the stack, and walked out, leaving me in the silence.
I didn't question it. Words were a luxury with him, few and far between, and yesterday was no different.
A low, guttural grunt tore me from my sleep. I blinked awake in the dim light to find a fresh set of clothes laid out at the foot of the bed. Next to them on the nightstand sat the usual array of pre-workout tablets, liquid concoctions, and a cold, freshly prepped syringe of GH. He helped me get readyâa paternal, controlling routine that had slowly become our normâand then we piled into the cab of his pickup, the engine rumbling in the midnight quiet.
He didn't park. He just rolled up to the front doors of the gym, shoved a heavy canvas gym bag and a sealed envelope into my chest, and waited for me to get out. The moment my boots hit the asphalt, he hit the gas, leaving me in a cloud of exhaust.
I watched his tail lights disappear into the dark before tearing the envelope open. The note inside was jagged and brief:
"I'll be back at 6:00 AM on the dot. My latest logs have your arms at 23 1/2 inches. Your hat size is 7 5/8, which translates to 23 7/8 inches. You have six hours to make them match that missing 3/8 of an inch. Send me hourly documentation. You do not want to fail me."
I grabbed the cloth measuring tape heâd packed in the bottom of the gym bag and tried to loop it around my right bicep. My arms were so engorged with blood, so stiff from the sheer volume of reps, that my flexibility was gone. I couldn't get it straight.
I looked across the empty, fluorescent-lit floor and nodded at a guy sitting on a flat bench between sets. I waved him over, gesturing to the tape. He didn't ask questions. He just took the ends, pulled it taut, and leveled it across the peak of the muscle.
The numbers came into focus: right between 23 3/4 and 23 13/16 inches.
I was agonizingly close, but close wasn't a pass. I cracked open a bottle of Powerade, choked down half of it to keep the muscles hydrated, and drew another 4 ius of GH.
The clock was ticking. Failure wasn't an option.
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