Muscle Worship

Muscle Worship

If I Said You Have a Beautiful Body,

Would You Hold It against Me?

.

by Jack Fritscher

Part 1
The Roar of the Muscle
The Smell of the Crowd

.A lucky man with a normal body can be embedded inside muscle culture. For any curious initiates wanting to suck up the inside scoop on muscle worship, welcome to a fast introduction for muscle freaks. This brief true story, like a fast tutorial by a wine connoisseur, is an insider’s guide to a particular species of gay sex that is accessible to men who are willing to travel through a homomasculine synergy of lust, ritual, and archetype that allows them to genuflect to the muscular beauty of athletes’ bodies.

Gay sex always has an element of worship. In the way that rap is the lingua franca of Black culture, the platonic ideal of the perfect male body is the lingua franca of gay male culture. Each man as he comes out to himself finds his desires more revealed, until, if he is lucky, he is kneeling in adoration of the Greek statue of the perfect male body in the way that Blanche Dubois says, “Suddenly there is God so quickly.”

There’s no quiz at the end of this quick intro to the true story of how a guy with an ordinary body becomes lovers with a championship bodybuilder. For masturbators with an urgency to swing into the sweaty gymnastics of muscle sex, skip to part two. For men with eager questions about what it’s like to connect sexually with the ideals of hero worship experienced in high school, and who want to step up to the grown-men’s fraternity of hot, raw, naked muscle worship, fasten your seat belts.

Muscle is one means to an end of gay-male fulfilment. Frankly, for a gay man to die without delving into the Platonic beauties of musclesex may be some kind of existential sin against the queer necessity of pushing self-identity into the most supreme orgasm possible. Born a male, a man is gorgeously fated to learn what men are, and, in the hallelujah chorus of all that, he is fated to combust in the desire that he himself is part of all that fireworks essence, even at the risk of dying at the feet of the masculinity he worships.

American sports tend to be objective and subjective. In objective sports, the basketball drops or does not drop through the hoop. The tight end either catches the football or he doesn’t. The tennis pro makes his serve or he misses. Objective sports may have referees and umpires, but they are mostly yes-or-no athletics. Everyone basically sees the same results.

Subjective sports like gymnastics, skating, fencing, and bodybuilding determine winners or losers not by definitive touchdowns, but by judges’ opinions. Of all sports, bodybuilding is the least understood because it is the most subjective. If gymnastics has a right way to move on the flying rings, bodybuilding has several right ways to execute the mandatory poses that display the bodybuilder’s various muscle groups separately and together.

Who wins a physique contest is often as much a trick question as which is the best art form: literature, painting, or music. The results depend on subjective values and enthusiasms. Most Americans like their sports cut and dried. For that reason, bodybuilding has been slow in coming to national acceptance as more than a cult sport. Someday it will, when Calvinism dies, and when it does, bodybuilding will finally become an Olympic event.

Physique presentation is a sporting objectification of self that is art and science, logic and feeling. A bodybuilder needs to know his body. He is dancer, actor, salesman. He is a contradiction in terms: a romantic existentialist. He strides barefooted across the stage with a dozen other bodybuilders. He takes his place in the lineup. He stands pumped and oiled and nearly naked, pouched confidently into his tiny posing briefs. He poses without movement. A perfectly sculpted statue. He radiates victory. He asserts his Command Presence under the hot lights. He calls the eyes of judges and audience to the quality edge of his muscle. Size. Symmetry. Power. Proportion. Bulk. Definition. Striation. Vascularity. Grooming. Look. His superior Command Attitude reduces the other highly competitive muscle to beefcake. As much as drag queens can sing the anthem, “I Am Who I Am,” his posture states, “Here I am!”

Winners know how to peak for the contest day. Three weeks before competition they cut carbohydrates from their high-protein diet to remove the last micro-pinch of body fat that might obscure muscle display. Workouts intensify to carve out the lean definition of each separate muscle in the bulked muscle groups. A week before, the entire body is strip-shaved for the first time to allow any cuts or shaving rash to heal. In the last forty-eight hours, diuretics drain the minute layer of water between the muscle and the skin. The skin, paper thin, form fits the striae of each muscle, showing the minutest furrow like tiny grooves on granite. The vascularity of the veins snakes around the muscle almost on top of nearly invisible skin. The tan, by contest day, must be perfect and the body smoothed to a final shave before it is oiled backstage.

Contests are grueling twelve-hour affairs. The Pre-Judging, where the contest is actually won or lost, begins at ten in the morning, and, depending on the classes, Teenage, Men, and Weight and Age Divisions, can last until the early afternoon. By the evening show at eight, the judges, of whom there must be at least five, have tallied their votes. The Pre-Judging audience, smaller and hard core, can only have guessed at the winner. The audience for the evening show is larger, fans and friends and family, hot to party and cheer the parade of muscle bodies and wait eagerly for the names of the four finalists and the winner.

In the morning, the contestants arrive early. They saunter into the green room. They check in disguised under thick jogging suits and bulky nylon athletic jackets. They carry enormous gym bags. Some arrive alone. Some have the company of their training partners or their coaches.

The room is silent. Brows furrow with concentration. They psych each other out. One by one they begin the slow strip of their jackets and gym shoes and sweatshirts and t-shirts and sweat pants. Each reveals his stuff slowly. The offstage competition posing has begun.

Arms, big guns, appear. Broad shoulders. Huge pecs. Washboard abs. Thunder thighs. Big, naked bubble butts. In unshaven groins, penises sprout tight with tension or hang long and thick with languorous confidence.

Attentive buddies fold the contestants’ clothes into the gym bags. They wet their hands with baby oil and begin the even slather of the huge muscle bodies. The bodybuilders slide into their nylon posing briefs. Most pull their penises straight up toward their navels and let their balls hang low in the pouch. They pin the small white paper with their contest number over the front left hip of their briefs.

This is ritual.

Some play tug-of-war with their partners, pulling white towels back and forth to bring up the day’s glossy pump on their years of hard muscle building. Others move to the ton of iron delivered to the theater for the day to polish their muscle, most often their arms, one last time before marching out on stage for the real competition of group comparison, flexing in unison mandatory poses, then individually, each one mounting the dais alone to pose for sixty seconds to music of his own selection.

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Part 2
The Spray of Flashbulbs
225 Pounds in a 2-Ounce Speedo

.Ryan, driving the Corvette from San Francisco to San Diego, could only guess what lay in store for him and his bodybuilder lover. That first morning of their first contest, when he and Kick entered the greenroom, Ryan thought he had died and gone to heaven. He was surrounded by more than twenty naked bodybuilders. He tried to keep custody of his eyes. He folded Kick’s clothes and knelt at his feet, oiling up his legs to his shoulders. Ryan, during a scene of musclesex, had convinced Kick to replace baby oil with olive oil, because its sheen was more lustrous and its essence more classic.

“Whatever you say, coach.”

Kick was up. He thought it was a good omen that his assigned contest number was One.

The morning Pre Judging ran nearly three hours. Ryan was beaming. Kick glowed. They met during a break backstage.

“You look great out there,” Ryan said.

“I feel great out there,” Kick said. He motioned for Ryan to move in closer. “Spread some more oil on my chest.” He pointed toward the watch pocket in Ryan’s Levi’s. “Give me a hit,” he said. He reached into Ryan’s pocket for a small snifter of coke. He blew two lines. “Now you,” he said.

“I’m already wired,” Ryan said.

“Come on.” Kick put his arm on Ryan’s shoulder. The heady smell of contest sweat and olive oil made Ryan’s tits ache. “We’re here to have a good time.”

Ryan swacked off the snifter.

“Again,” Kick said.

Ryan snorted another line.

“It’s good for the vascularity,” Kick said. He thrust his arms, fists down, alongside his thighs, flexed, and popped his veins. “Nice, huh?”

“Sexy.”

“I want you to know,” Kick said, “how much fun it is to be inside this body.” He chucked Ryan under the chin.

“Every man on that stage would like to be in your body. They might as well go home. You’re going to win.”

“I know.”

After the Pre-Judging, Ryan drove Kick in the Corvette to a coffee shop. Kick ordered an orange juice with four raw eggs. Ryan ordered, but was too hyped to eat.

“Keep your strength up,” Kick said. “You want to shoot a terrific video tonight.” He stroked his high-top gym shoe up and down Ryan’s leg. “Muscle TV.”

Kick was triumphant in his evening posing routine. Through his video monitor, Ryan caught every graceful nuance. He knew the choreography he had coached by heart. He had even selected Kick’s music. He was bored with uninspired muscleheads posing one after the other to the clichéd themes from Exodus, Rocky, Star Wars, and Superman. Ryan chose Tchaikovsky’s “Marche Slav.” Its thunderous power matched Kick’s smooth and commanding posing routine.

He flexed. He shined. He was pure, hard, blond muscle. His hair and face and jaw accentuated the blond brush of his moustache, groomed trooper sharp. His physique flowed from his head. He hit each pose hard. He had appeal. There was no quiver from the muscle exertion or the coke. He displayed every body part alternating always with the dozen ways he powered out his arms.

The crowd called out for more.

He hit the Most Muscular pose three times and threw his arms up over his head in victorious salute. The muscle crowd rose cheering to their feet.

Here was a man.

“Alright, gentlemen,” the head judge said over the loudspeaker. “We’re calling the five finalists out on stage for a pose down. This is the final comparison, man for man, to determine the winner. Ladies and gentlemen, these are our five finalists. Number One, Kick Sorensen….”

Ryan heard no other names.

The five finalists strolled out on stage. Each picked a spot and hit a pose, playing the cheering audience. Kick owned stage center. He threw a double-biceps shot and then crunched down into the popular Most Muscular. The crowd went wild.

“Give yourselves some room, fellas. Spread out. Make sure you’re in the light.”

The finalists sought their places. Kick held center stage with two musclemen moving to each side. They all stood heels close together, toes pointed out, elbows extended, arms hanging down.

“Alright. Let’s do a double-biceps pose on three. I want you all to hit exactly the same pose at the same time. On three. One-two-three. Hit your pose.”

Kick raised both arms. His biceps peaked under the hot light. He was arms and more than arms. He worked his pecs. He tightened his abs. Always he was working his legs. Contests are won or lost on legs.

“Okay. A lat spread from the front. On three. One-two-three.”

Kick positioned his thumbs behind his waist with his fingers front pointing down his hips. He swung his elbows out, lifted his chest, spread his shoulders, and opened wide his lats, holding the pose, then twisting slightly from the waist, left to right, catching the best play of the light.

“Now a side-chest pose. Your favorite side. Take your positions. Quiet, please. We want a side-chest shot. Rotate the sides. One-two-three.”

Kick stood on his left foot and the ball of his right with his right knee bent to display his right calf development. He turned his head to face the judges straight on. He clasped his hands above his right hip and pulled his left shoulder toward the audience. His arms read like an awesome frame around his massive pecs.

“Now a side-tricep. Your favorite side. Take your positions. On three. One-two-three. Hit it.”

Again, standing sideways, yet facing the judges, Kick rested on his left foot. He placed the ball of his right foot behind him, flexing his calf. He shot his right arm down his outside thigh, displaying the horseshoe definition of his triceps. Then reaching his left hand behind his butt, he shifted the pose, taking hold of the hand facing the crowd to pop his tricep even more. He instinctively knew the extra flourish needed to show off the fine detail of each muscle to its best advantage.

“And relax. Turn toward the curtain, please. Give yourselves room, fellas. Spread out. Okay. Double-bicep from the rear. On three. One-two-three. Hit it.”

Kick was born to show arms. From the backside, his biceps mounded like twin baseballs on the girth of his huge arms. He powered into the biceps shot, spread his shoulders, and kicked in a rearview of his left calf.

“Gentlemen, let’s have a back lat spread. On three. One-two-three. Hit it.”

Kick thrust his butt out. His perfect glutes caught the light. A woman behind Ryan screamed. Kick tucked his thumbs behind his waist and opened his elbows, wide, spread his back, slightly at first, and then opening the left side to its full plane, and then the right, both wings from his waist to his shoulders in perfect symmetry. The back of his blond head glowed atop the column of his thick neck.

“Relax. Face front, please.”

The crowd had settled on a favorite. Someone set up a chant of “Number One! Number One!” The number Ryan had pinned on Kick’s brown nylon briefs.

“May we have some quiet, please. Face front, please. May I remind you, Number Three, that these are mandatory poses. If you’re not sure which way to turn, look at the men next to you.”

The crowd cheered and hooted.

“Alright now, fellas. Flexing the legs, display the thighs. One-two-three.”

Kick locked his hands behind his head, elbows wide, armpits rampant. He flashed his washboard abs and thrust one leg and then the other out for judgment. The thickness of his thighs broke up into distinctly displayed muscle groups. The contestant on his right moved his own leg toward Kick’s, daring closer comparison. The crowd went wild. Kick lowered his hands to his waist, thrust his leg toward his competitor, flexed it, looked at the other bodybuilder, then pointed, grinning, to his own thigh, bulked, carved, cut, vascular, and tanned. He looked up from his leg and threw the crowd a devastating so-what-do-you-think grin.

“And relax. Fellas, we’re going for your favorite ab shot on three. One-two-three. Hit it.”

Again Kick locked his hands behind his head. The crowd was with him. He kicked out his right leg, resting his foot on the heel, working his leg length, giving more than required, locking his abs into the sculpted ridges Ryan’s tongue knew by heart. He carved his abs tight, then sharpened them tighter. The crowd chanted “Number One!” Kick’s whole posture, arms up, leg extended, belly displayed, seemed to focus the light on the full pouch of his posing briefs. Ryan, at the last minute in the greenroom, had slipped Kick’s balls and cock through a brass cock ring to accentuate the big package. “I want them to see everything you’ve got,” he had said. He wondered how much a big cock and balls registered with the judges, many of whom were older, closeted gay men. On stage, Kick radiated pure sex. Women in the crowd were shouting, “We want Number One!”

Ryan shouted into the din. “Dream on!”

“And relax. Catch your breath, fellas. We’re going to do the Most Muscular now. Your favorite Most Muscular. On three. One-two-three. Hit it.”

Kick raised his arms wide, elbows above his shoulders, then slowly, hunched, leaned over, and powered down into the Most Muscular crab pose. His right leg led his left. His arms were Most Muscular. His chest pumped like a barrel. His head was up. His face back. His chin out. The cords in his neck spoke power. The crowd loved him. He broke the pose and hit it again. Then again. This last time in full lockdown, revolving his fists one around the other to play the brute force of his upper body and massive arms.

“And relax. Now there will be sixty seconds of free posing. Remember, fellas, this is a pose down. This is your final chance to show why you should be Mr. Western Pacific Coast. Take your sixty seconds. Use it, please.”

The disco music came up over the cheers of the crowd. Each contestant tried to outpose the other. They moved, freestyle, pose against pose, topping each other: arms, chests, backs, abs, and legs. They moved sideways. They turned front and back. Kick stayed confidently in place in the melee. He had found the best light. He was center to the group. They were good. But he was power. They were competitors, but he was brooking no competition. He ignored them jockeying into him, following his poses, trying to lure him into following their competitive moves. Instead, he grinned, thrust out his chin. His blond hair and his moustache glowed. He played straight to the audience, straight to the judges, straight to Ryan behind his video camera in the first row. Kick was surrounded by bodybuilders, but he was more than a bodybuilder. He was a Lord of Light.

The crowd turned to near riot. Fans with cameras rushed the lip of the stage. Applause. Whistles. “Number One!”

The minute of blasting music stopped. The crowd rose cheering louder. The head judge called for quiet. The auditorium soothed down expectantly. Finally, he named the fifth and fourth and third runners-up. The three men took their trophies, kissed the girl who presented them, and moved off to the side. Kick flexed his pecs and ran his hand down his rippled belly. The hall grew tense. Expectant. Kick stood next to Number Nine. He reached out to shake Nine’s hand. Calls for “Number One!” flared here and there from the orchestra and balcony. “Number One!” Time stood still.

Ryan knew there was no God if they came this close and lost. In the pause, Number Nine hit his best Most Muscular. Kick raised both fists into his best double-biceps shot of the night and killed the guy with his arms.

“Number One! Number One! Number One!”

“Quiet, please.” The judge was a sadist. “We have three trophies to award before we announce the winner of the Mr. Western Pacific Coast Contest.” Ryan knew. He knew that he knew the verdict. “The trophy for Best Legs goes to Number One, Kick Sorensen!”

Kick hit a severe leg pose then threw his arms up in salute. Number Nine reached to shake his hand. The young blonde woman carried the Best Legs trophy to Kick. She leaned forward to give the winner his customary kiss. Ryan watched Kick deftly turn his mouth away. The blonde air-bussed his cheek. Kick set the trophy down at his feet.

“The trophy for Best Arms,” the trophy Kick coveted most, “Number One, Kick Sorensen.”

Kick hit a single side-biceps pose. The crowd cheered. He was sweeping the competition. Number Nine realized he was going to place second. Kick received the second trophy from the blonde girl and placed it near the first.

“Number One! Number One!”

Kick was a generous poser. He obliged the cheers, roiling a double-bicep shot down into one last Most Muscular pose. Number Nine, a sport to the end, followed suit. The audience screamed as Kick took the trophy for Best Posing.

Under the roar, the judge’s words were lost as he named the second runner-up. Number Nine heard. He raised his arms in valedictory and turned to shake Kick’s hand.

The audience rose screaming to their feet.

“The winner of the Mr. Western Pacific Coast title is…Number One! Kick Sorensen!”

Ryan nearly died. “Omigod! I love you, Kick!”

Kick pumped off a succession of killer poses. He raised his prizewinning arms high over his head. The cheering rose as he accepted his First Place trophy and headed toward the posing platform. He mounted the dais and placed the four trophies at his feet. The four finalists grouped themselves on the platform’s lower levels with Kick in top place. Photographers crowded to the foot of the stage to shoot the winners with cameras and flash guns.

Ryan toyed with his own anonymity. “Wasn’t that Number One somethin’?” he said to a small group of three huge powerlifters.

“Yeah,” they said.

“I hear this is his first contest.” Ryan cast bread on the water.

“You’re shittin’ me.” The guy curled his twenty-inch bicep up to stroke his thick moustache.

“Not me,” Ryan said.

“Then the guy’s even more of a dude.” He turned to his partner. “Hey, Doyle. This is Blondie’s first contest.” Then he saluted Ryan with his big meat hook. “Yeah, buddy.”

That night Ryan drove the red Corvette, crammed with the four big trophies, back to the Motel San Diego. Laughing and exhausted, Ryan stripped and lay back on the bed.

“Lie still, coach.” Kick arranged the muscle trophies carefully on the sheets around him.

“Now I know,” Ryan was hot with anticipation, “what Oscar winners do when they get home.”

Kick, smiling, moved back from the bed. Slowly, sensually, he stripped himself out of his green Adidas warm-up suit. His tanned body still glistened with the olive oil and sweat of the competition. With his thumbs, he pulled his tailored brown posing briefs down from his waist, down past the brass cock ring circling the root of his big blond dick and balls, down his official Best Legs in Ten Western States.

He had become very serious. For a moment, he stood and studied Ryan who was awestruck at this intimacy following so quickly the public physique presentation. The applause was nothing compared to what they saw in each other’s eyes. In all their private nights of making love, no night had begun with such wide-open celebration of Kick’s exquisite manliness. The world for the first time had acknowledged what they had privately known and pursued so intensely for so long together. The victory belonged to them both. They were united. They had gone public in their quest for manly excellence, and the crowds were eating it up.

Naked, in his All-American prize-winning glory, Kick moved toward the bed. He lowered himself slowly down on Ryan’s naked body.

“I’ve wanted all my life to do this,” Kick said. “This way. This time. On a night like this. Tonight’s a special one.”

He meant make muscle-love man-to-man, lover-to-lover, bodybuilder-to-coach, in those triumphant first hours after the winning of his first physique contest. Their separate boyhood dreams of manhood had conjoined.

“It’s you, Ry. This is my personal best. From me to you. There’s no other man.”

At the start, the only promise they had made was never to become ordinary to each other.

“I want to lay it all on you, coach.”

The Energy between them was stronger than ever.

Hours later, exhausted in each other’s arms, in the quiet before the San Diego dawn, Kick whispered to Ryan.

“You won’t laugh,” he said. He rubbed Ryan’s belly frosted with dried glaze. “I mean it seriously.”

He moved his golden face in close to Ryan’s and announced it like a mandate to the writer whose cheek rested in the fragrant under-cove where Kick’s arm and shoulder joined his chest.

“Someday,” Kick said, “I want us to be a story told at night in beds around the world.”

Ryan’s hungry heart came running.

.Part 3
Sport-Fucking
Romancing the Stoned

.In gay sex, more is more.

In gay muscle-worship sex, more is the perverse divine.

Three months later, and very late on a spring night, after watching Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan nailed up naked to the Tree of Woe, Kick was inspired to play an exotic sex scene. At first they joked about it, but the laughing fell away and the night grew serious. It was typical of the way they had sex. Kick poured them each a hit of the ecstatic drug their dealer nicknamed Kryptonite.

  “I only want half a hit,” Ryan said.

“Name your poison,” Kick said.

They toasted one another with the wine glasses. “To Arnold,” Kick said. “And to us.”

They had both liked the scene in which the muscle-warrior Conan, captured by the evil priest James Earl Jones, was crucified to the mammoth stump of a huge tree on a barren primeval plain. Ryan grew excited as the image of Kick crucified grew between them. They began their preparations. Kick slowly stripped. Ryan anointed his body with olive oil to a high glaze.

In the basement room of the Victorian where they played before three full-length mirrors under the track-light spots, huge horizontal beams crossed over the heavy upright wooden foundation posts. They stood, both naked, before the crossed beams in the center of the room. Ryan fashioned a small linen loin cloth that he wrapped around Kick’s muscular waist, then dropped down to create a pouch for his dick and balls. He pulled the long, twisted length of linen up the crack of his ass and knotted the cloth to the waistband in the small of his back.

“I want to look stronger than Conan,” Kick said. “I want us to get more intense than the movie. Let’s see what a real musclebeast restrained by steel looks like.”

Ryan cinched Kick’s wrists into heavy leather cuffs. Ryan’s dick grew hard at the prospect of a new worshipful view of the man who relied on him to create the most private of the fantasies he could not perform alone.

Kick smiled at him. “Now you know why I love you,” he said. “Now you know when I heard about you and read your stories, I had to meet you.”

Ryan, the acolyte, led Kick to the beams. He placed a short wooden barrel at the foot of the cross. He gave Kick a hit of popper.

“I love you,” Kick said, “for this, and more than this.” He looked deep into Ryan’s eyes. “You know, don’t you! You know! You understand the Gift. It’s not always in a man’s body the way it is in mine. But more than my body, it’s in my head. You’re one of the few men who know I have a head.”

“I love you,” Ryan said.

The Kryptonite ecstasy was coming on. Ryan raised Kick’s huge arm and dug his tongue into the sweat steaming in his armpit. His mind swirled with images of ideal men, men without whom the world would be an intolerable place.

Kick mounted the barrel. His calves, sculpted to the perfection of inverted hearts, bulged as he rose up to position himself. He turned, as he always turned on the posing platform, arms held loosely akimbo from his massive shoulders, his hands hanging down, thumbs in, eight inches out from his thighs, and looked down at Ryan. He flexed his pecs: the muscles striated and defined and rolled, up, then down his chest. His dick tented the soft linen loincloth. His smile at Ryan was triumphant. There was no shame in this crucifixion.

Ryan administered them both a hit of popper. Kick’s face, in the low tracklight, began to morph into the face of the idealized young Christ, stripped and crucified, whom Ryan had worshiped since boyhood. He had been trained at Misericordia to be an alter Christus, another Christ, but he knew he’d never be another Christ.

He realized a special revelation.

It was not himself; it had never been himself; it was Kick who was the alter Christus.

  “I’m stoned. I’m stoned. I’m stoned,” Ryan repeated to himself. “This is so crazy….” But the vision would not vanish.

“Tight,” Kick said. “Tie me tight. I want to feel this.” He nodded toward the three body-length mirrors. “I want to see this. I want to show you a show I’ve never shown anyone before.”

Ryan tied Kick’s ankles together and then wrapped the rope around the rough-hewn post.

“I want to take it as long as I can,” Kick said. “I want to feel the full glory of muscular restraint.”

Ryan tied Kick’s huge arms wide open on the cross. Kick raised his headland breathed. His chest expanded. Sweat rolled down his face and dripped on his pecs. His cock writhed in the small linen loincloth.

Ryan offered him, the way Christ on the cross had been offered vinegar mixed with opium on a sponge, a double hit of coke. Kick snorted, then relaxed. He twisted one hand to a more comfortable angle on the cross.

“I’m ready,” Kick said. “I want you to see a musclebeast more glorious than you’ve ever imagined.”

Ryan pulled the barrel out from under his lover’s feet. Kick’s muscles tensed. His whole body, hanging under the strain, and triggered by the rush of the coke, took on a pump and vascularity so supernal that Ryan fell to his knees at the foot of the cross. He watched his lover strain and flex like a muscular Olympic gymnast performing the crucifix on the double rings. I always thought, Ryan’s head swirled, that it was to be me who was to be crucified.

  He serviced them both with popper.

Kick locked into a massive body flex. His loincloth, heavy with sweat, fell away under the strain of his muscle. His dirty-blond cock jutted straight forward over his massive thighs. He took a huge breath and let go. He hung, by his massive arms, crucified, head back and haloed by the shine of the tracklight. Ryan knelt before the sweating muscleman, cruciform above him. He took himself in his right hand and began to stroke his own hardening flesh. The moment grew mystical as Kick struggled, flexed, relaxed, flexed, and endured against the hard wooden cross.

It started as night games: heroic sculpture from drawings and movies. It became some ritual else. Their separate fantasies meshed in the flesh, then separated in their minds, coming back together, each traveling separately, traveling together, finding the Ecstasy, the Energy, the Entity, the boundaries, the limits. Kick was a bodybuilder, crucified, displayed in all his muscular glory, straining against the bondage, flying with the bondage. Ryan was his coach, his lover, his priest. He worshiped Kick’s body from the foot of the cross. Coke sweat poured down Kick’s naked flanks. The hard rod of his manhood arched over Ryan. The blond man glowed in the spotlight. He began to moan under the weight of his own big body. He saw his own face in the mirrors, handsome over his hanging muscle body. He moaned the moan Ryan always knew meant he was entering the Energy. Ryan followed with his own cock. He clamped the clips on his own tits. He hit them both with popper and tongued his way down Kick’s body to his feet.

This was no Imitation of Christ.

This was real.

Kick was more than an alter Christus.

  He was the incarnation of the real Christ Himself.

Ryan rose from his knees. He licked the sacred sweat from the blond fur of the thighs. He touched his Savior’s massive meat. He massaged it, stroked it, while he stroked himself, until Kick’s huge prick, throbbing with the tension of the muscle bondage, glistened. His whole body tightened down into a cruciform Most-Muscular position. Ryan’s greased hand stroked Kick up to the edge of cuming. Ryan readied himself, stroking faster, his face looking up lovingly at his crucified Savior. He could feel the power rising in the crucified’s body. Then suddenly, the white clotted rain shot like saving grace from Kick’s lordly rod. Ryan’s mouth opened hungrily. In his own hand, his own flesh throbbed to a simultaneous climax.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Oh, my beautiful God.”

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* * * *

  Two days later, over coffee at the Castro Café, Ryan’s longtime confidante, the drag theologian, Sister Ironica Herself, was less than perpetually indulgent: “What you gay boys won’t do to have fun.”

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Part 4
“Je ne regrette rien.”
Sooner or Later Every Bodybuilder
Hustles Muscle

.They were too hot not to cool down. A year passed. The idyll ended. They had a gentlemen’s parting that left a bit of the best of them in each of them. During the months that followed, Ryan had to smile when he read a personals ad in the back of the Bay Area Reporter listed under “Models for Hire.” He recognized Kick’s way with words, and he recognized the thumbnail photo showing the model “Armstrong” from the neck down.

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I AM ARMSTRONG! BIG GUNS. Feel them: thick, big ARMS, muscle-bulked heavily from sweaty workouts, their huge girth sported in a cotton T-shirt, or subtly concealed by shirt sleeves of well-washed flannel stretched across their mass, now stripped to reveal mounds of baseball biceps cabled with vascularity, and thick horseshoe triceps, growing bigger before your eyes, the pump of each successive flex further expressing the disciplined power of the life force that built them. With those Big Guns lifted high in full frontal display of arm muscle, feel them again. Feel the density of each striation as it’s gathered down into the depths of muscle armpits rich with the heavy male scent of bodybuilder muscle sweat. After a bit of 420 smoke and popper, if you find your nose exploring the heights of those pits, if you can take that big muscular arm in one hand, and your dick in the other, and discover that between the stroking of the two that you’re cuming, then we’re both gonna have fun! I’m on my way to the gym now. If Big-Guns rap-n-jack-off makes you break into a sweat you can’t cool off by yourself, contact me. Armstrong@www.intro2muscleworship.cum

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All models have a going-rate, and no models are in more demand than muscle men. Kick was charging $200 a session, no time limit, safe sex only. Ryan, amused, figured that during the two years he and Kick were together, he had enjoyed, at five sessions a week, over $100,000 worth of free sex, and a million bucks of personal intimacy on the sport-fucking circuit. Every curve and taste and smell and vision of Kick’s body existed inside his head like a 3D hologram he could enjoy forever.

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