A CASE OF THE BICEP BLUES?

I just finished reading an enjoyable memoir, Lust & Wonder, by acclaimed author Augusten Burroughs (perhaps best known for Running with Scissors). It’s well worth reading, with great humor and insight into gay relationships. The middle section, in particular, represents an author who is really clicking.

Strangely, two sentences on page 82 nearly made me throw the book against a wall and then shut if for good. Burroughs has a crush on a man and gets up the nerve to ask the guy if he’s seeing anybody. Burroughs writes:

I was wearing a tight T-shirt and jeans. I’d been to the gym

that morning, so my arms were large.

I still want to scream as I type that. I’m guessing Burroughs was about thirty-five at the time and yet that chunk of writing comes off as being the thinking of an emotionally stunted eighteen year old.

Initially, I check myself. Is this jealously? God knows, I’ve never had large arms. A morning gym workout has never made a lick of difference. Same with ten mornings in a row. (Yes, I’ve tried.) And the only thing tight shirts show off is a belly overhang. I could never write that passage, unless it appeared in a work-in-progress novel about, yes, an emotionally stunted eighteen year old.

There is the expression, If you’ve got it, flaunt it, but that always makes me think of women with boob jobs wearing low-cut dresses and open-buttoned blouses. My eyes get pulled in by some gravitational force and I all-too-obviously look away, fretting that I’ve been caught luridly ogling. I’ve got my defense at the ready—“I’m gay!”—but I’ve never had to go there. (Yep. They probably know. I worry way too much.)

I’ve reread the passage several times, and I don’t think Burroughs means to be funny or sad here. It’s just stated as fact. I looked muscular in my tight shirt. I wonder if his editor challenged Burroughs—not on the size of his arms, but on wisdom of including this throwaway comment. It comes off as incredibly shallow. Here, I suppose I’m grateful that I’ve lived a boring life because I could never be a memoirist. I’m fine with being self-deprecating, but I can’t do shallow. I suppose I have my fair share of shallow thoughts but I can’t recall any. Thankfully, they vaporize with due speed. As they should.

I was wearing a tight T-shirt and jeans. I’d been to the gym

that morning, so my arms were large.

There it is again. I can’t shake it. I realize I’ve been bothered by this thinking for so long. I see similar thought bubbles over guys’ heads every single time I go to the gym. If anything, it’s more rampant than ever. They don’t just peek in the mirror anymore. Now it’s full stare and linger as they check themselves out. How much bigger did my arms get after that set? What about my quads?

Even if I stay away from the gym, it’s all over Twitter. Guys post their daily shirtless shots from the gym locker room and their egos are reinforced by hundreds of “Likes”. And then there’s the weightlifting videos. Last week, a buff guy approached a schmo (like me) to get him to record his push-up stuntwork on his phone. It was an intense thirty-second routine but I wondered why it really needed to be preserved in video form. Maybe he’d post it to a dating site. Maybe he’d save it until he was eighty, something to show the grandkids. Or maybe he’d just watch it himself. Over and over. As I worked out this weekend, a guy had his girlfriend videoing him and I was inconveniently in the background. I had to glare pointedly so she’d change the angle, the best shot compromised due to “in the way” guy.

I try to see the big-arm point of view. Maybe greater confidence comes with bulging biceps. It’s true that last summer I had a date with a big-bicepped guy and he showed up in a flaunt-worthy tank top. It’s also true that I was terribly distracted, the whole conversation muddled as I kept telling myself to stay at eye level.

Perhaps I even strive to do the same thing when I show up in a green shirt, hoping it helps to highlight the green in my eyes. No muscles to speak of but, hey, I’ve got eyes.

Hell, maybe despite all the great prose in Burroughs’ Lust & Wonder, the one line I wish I could write is, “I’d been to the gym that morning, so my arms were large.” God, I hope not. If I ever get to go to an Augusten Burroughs author talk and/or book signing, I sure hope I don’t immediately look to see whether he just might have gone to the gym that morning. But then he put it out there, didn’t he?