Like the weight-gainer powder my brothers bought in huge cans or big jugs that came with a plastic scoop, the idea of becoming a massively big man had an instantly easy appeal to it. Drink to gain muscle? Who wouldn't?! But, like any ad placed in the back of a fanzine or comic book, the claims never quite measured up to reality. My middle brother lifted weights to ease his stress, chill out, and bulk up, fueled by his fears that he would never measure up to society's expectations of him. He wanted the protection that size would bring him, along with the added assurance of Tae Kwan Do.
Just like his earring stud, mini mullet (like that kid from the 90s horror show "Saved by the Bell"), and his guido taste in fast red sport cars, it spoke to his cultural leanings towards quick visual cues that would keep him out of trouble long enough to make something out of himself. He had a strong preference for drunken bar brawls right around the same time he wrapped a shiny, brand-new sports car—the only new car my dad ever bought for one of his kids, as a moral lesson we would all hear about for many years—and his martial arts skills weren't always the guarantee he needed to win a fight.
And just like the t.v. shows and movies we favored, the star athletes who performed these roles for us often typified our society's exaggerated ideals about masculinity and male beauty. To my college boyfriend, "Ahnold" (Schwarzenegger) exemplified this overblown physique "to a T", and he struggled to understand why I didn't also make a fetish out of a freakishly muscled man covered in shiny body oil, too. Yeah...maybe because I'm heterosexual? He also loved the WWF (before it became the WWE) as his chosen comic-book escape from the pressures of the real world, in a choreographed show that played broadly to the crowd using the exact same stereotypes.
It was telling to me, as I asked my brother about his weight-training one afternoon at home while I was on break from school, in the downstairs area that was his makeshift gym. So, is it working? Oh, yeah! He stopped lifiting for awhile, pulling off his tan weight-lifting gloves, like the cheesy leather ones (or fake pleather ones) that so many guys used in the 80s to drive with, too. "There's only one problem", he said to me while he sat on his weight-lifting bench. Just one? Ok, what is it? "It kind of makes my heart speed up", as he rubbed his chest, right over his heart. "Like, even when I'm not doing anything!"
Uh oh. This is not good. Both of my older brothers sought to dominate their college scenes through Vivarin and heavy caffeine consumption, risky behaviors that they simply added onto a bigger list of items. "Sometimes my heart will start racing out of nowhere, like climbing the stairs!" Holy shit, dude. You need to lay off the substances. As we walked upstairs to look out that bottle it came in, there it was in small legal copy: Do not combine with any other stimulants. Consult your doctor if this, that, and the other thing happens, yada yada yada.
Yeah, bro. You need to chill with this! He'd cite something like his upcoming beach vacation, or a special date with his girlfriend, but, really, he was simply jacked up and it needed to stop. Like, quickly. Except that it didn't, and as I was went back to school to navigate my own success, he fell prey to an ever-escalating series of highs that mark the serious addict, as someone who can't cope on just willpower alone. He had an addictive disorder, a brain disease as bad as any other brain-based illness, and without the proper medicine, it was like pouring gasoline on a fire, lighting up all the wrong synapses from the bad part of his brain, and it was sold over-the-counter by the gallon.
