Gym Candy

by Carl Deuker

  My mouth was so dry, I couldn't speak, but I did manage to nod.

  He picked up a vial and held it in front of him. "Here's the most important thing: Think clean. "He dipped a cotton swab in isopropyl alcohol, pulled his shorts down a little, and spread the alcohol over the top part of his butt. Then he cleaned the top of the vial.

  "Once you've got everything clean, take the needle out of the wrapper, insert it into the syringe, and draw it full of air like this." I watched as he pulled the handle all the way back. "Next, stick the needle into the vial and push the air in. See?"

  I nodded.

  "After you've done that, turn the needle and vial upside down and pull back on the needle to fill the syringe, like this. You're going to be taking two hundred milligrams each time," he said, "so go to about two twenty-five milligrams to compensate for any air bubbles. Once you've got the right amount, pull the needle out of the vial and then tap the plastic part of the syringe to get all the little bubbles out." I watched as he tapped it. "See how all the air moves toward the pin? Once that happens, push down on the syringe like this to force the air out of the needle. Don't stop until a few drops of the stuff run down the pin."

  He handed the syringe to me. My hands were shaking so badly, I didn't think I could hold it. "Just relax, Mick. We're about ready." He pulled his shorts down a little again and reswabbed the injection site. "Clean," he said. "Always clean. You ready?"

  "I guess."

  "Okay. You're going to stick the needle in like it's a dart. Go ahead." I swallowed, then stuck the needle into his butt. "All right," he said. "That's good. Now slowly push down on the syringe." I pushed, just as I'd seen nurses push. It was way easier than I'd expected. "That's right," Peter said. "Just like that."

  After about ten seconds, the syringe was empty. I removed the needle and threw it into the trash. Immediately, Peter dipped another cotton swab into alcohol, cleaned the injection site, and massaged the area. "Rubbing cuts down on soreness," he said. "Now I'll do you."

  It seemed like it had taken me an hour to give Peter his stuff; it took about thirty seconds for him to inject me. "That wasn't bad, was it?" he said when he finished.

  He put the stuff into a small travel kit and handed it to me. "Four times a week with this, Mick, and the four tablets every morning, and you're on your way. If the D-bol was like hitching a ride on an express train, this is like blasting off on a rocket. I'm talking an explosion." He raised a finger. "Just remember to watch out for the rage and even more for the depression. Guys have had spells of depression six months after they've stopped doing injections. Don't get too wound up, because when you unwind, you'll spin that much faster. If depression does come, you've got to fight through it."

  I didn't go home. Instead I got out on the road and drove. You do something huge like injecting steroids, and you expect to feel hugely different. But I didn't. In fact, I had to keep telling myself over and over that I'd just done an injection, that I'd just started on a real stack. I took the ramp to Aurora Avenue and drove along the viaduct toward West Seattle. I had a CD playing, but I wasn't listening. In my mind, I was back in the Foothill game, only now I was stronger, now it was number 50 who had the turf give way, now he was crumpling and I was in the end zone. Was that really what the needle would do? Would it change everything?

  When I got home, my mom told me Drew had called. When he had called me before, it had been as if I'd been thrown a life ring. Now, with one injection, everything had flipped one hundred eighty degrees. The zits would be coming back, but it wasn't just the zits I was hiding—it was everything.

  I punched in his number.

  "We missed you today at Green Lake," he said. "Kaylee especially. You coming tomorrow?"

  "I can't, Drew. My dad is after me to finish painting the house before football starts. My afternoons are jammed."

  "How long is it going to take?"

  "I don't know. Maybe all summer."

  "To paint your house?"

  "He wants it done right. And starting tomorrow I'm going back to Popeye's to work out." I paused. "I can't let that Kane kid beat me out."

  I could hear Drew sigh through the phone line. "Mick, we need six to play. If you stop coming, Natalie's going to ask Brad Middleton. When he comes back from Scotland. You hear what I'm saying?"

  "There's nothing I can do. I wish I could play, but I can't."

  "Okay," he said. "I wanted to make sure you knew the score."

  When I hung up, I stared at the phone. It wasn't that big a deal, I told myself. Sure, I wanted to hang out with Drew, with Kaylee, but you can't have everything. Six weeks—that was all I was giving up. After six weeks, football would start and I'd have two practices every day until the season started. Then there wouldn't be time to play volleyball, to walk the lake with Kaylee. In those six weeks I was giving up, I could transform myself. I could make myself into the player I wanted to be—and the payoff would be this season and the next season and the season after that.

  ***

  Peter had said it would be like a rocket ride, but day in and day out it was just hard work. He had me double the time I spent lifting, and he had me work to total failure, where I actually had to drop the weights because I couldn't move them either up or down. I'd work out, drink some Gatorade, work out, work out, work out, work out. And when I finished at the gym, I'd run three miles at the Seattle Pacific track to keep up my stamina.

  On Saturdays, Peter would take me to the back room and lay out which pills I should take when, the days I should do the injections, and the progress he expected from me. That first week, I did the injections with Peter, but after that, I injected myself. Once an injection was done, a sense of power would rush through every cell of my body, and every time I looked at myself in the mirror after I showered, I seemed not only stronger, but also older—more like a man.

  10

  The depression hit me the day before tryouts. It came out of nowhere—it was as if I'd stepped into an elevator and the doors had closed and the elevator had started falling and falling, and there was no stopping it. Everything seemed pointless—the morning workouts, the weightlifting, the running, the steroids. Pointless. Pointless. Pointless. None of it was going to matter. I was certain I was going to fail. I was ugly and gross and I'd given up Kaylee, I'd shut the door on Drew, and it was all for nothing. I'd always fail, all my life, in everything. That's who I was.

  Peter had told me exactly what to do when the blackness hits. "Move around," he said. "Do something, anything. The one thing you don't want to do is nothing, because if you do nothing, it will get worse."

  His advice had sounded easy to follow. No big deal. If depression ever hits me, I had thought, I'll just play some video games. How hard can that be? But now playing a video game seemed like the stupidest thing in the world.

  My father saved me. Since it was Sunday afternoon, he was around. He tapped on my door, opened it a foot, and leaned in. "You doing anything?"

  "Not really."

  "Your tryouts are tomorrow, right? How about we toss the ball around a little?"

  "I don't really feel like it."

  "Come on. Do it for me. Whenever your season starts, I get the taste for it."

  I had to force myself downstairs. Lacing up my shoes was a huge effort. But once I was outside, once I broke a sweat, the elevator stopped falling, reversed, and slowly came back up. By the time we finished, it was almost as if the depression had never happened.

  Almost.

  ***

  Monday morning, I felt strong. I took the D-bol first thing but waited until just before I left for practice to inject testosterone. On the way out, I pulled on the sleeveless T-shirt I usually wore. I looked at my arms. They were muscular, defined. Would one of the coaches notice? Would they know? I took the shirt off and put on a baggy sweatshirt instead.

  Carlson ran a crisp practice, much more focused than Downs's. They both ran the same drills—running through tires, hitting the sleds—regular football practic
e stuff. But there was no slack time with Carlson, while there'd been tons with Downs. The afternoon session was lighter, with more walk-throughs, more explanations, but he still moved it along.

  Tuesday, practice turned serious. Carlson's assistant coaches were all over the field, clipboards in hand, timing this and that, seeing how far and how high we could jump, how strong we were.

  An hour into Tuesday's afternoon practice, Coach Brower, one of the assistant coaches, called Middleton and me over. "I need to get a forty-yard dash time for both of you," he said in his gravelly voice.

  Shilshole has a crushed-rock track—not exactly high tech. I'd always run 4.7 or 4.8 in the forty, not great, but not terrible considering the quality of the track. I knew I'd been running faster than that on the rubberized track at Seattle Pacific. Brower pointed to the start; I settled into position and waited, muscles tense.

  "Ready ... Go!"

  I exploded forward, my arms and legs churning, my lungs filling with air. I was still picking up speed when I crossed the finish line. I slowed, then stopped and headed back toward Brower. Middleton came over to me. "Man, you were flying."

  "I've got you in four fifty-two," Brower said to me, staring at his stopwatch. "That's two seconds faster than last spring. Middleton, you came in at five twenty-three." Brower looked up. "Run it again for me, okay?"

  I ran my second forty in 4.51, despite a tiny slip at the start. After Brower wrote the number down, he eyed me closely. "How much do you weigh, Mick?"

  "Almost two hundred," I said.

  He whistled softly. "Two hundred, with that kind of speed. You are going to be a load to bring down."

  We had two practices every day: pads and helmet in the morning, helmet only in the afternoon. Lots of it was conditioning and agility stuff—drop step and go left, drop step and go right, backpedal, explode. In drill after drill, I was at the top of the charts. "Come ready to play tomorrow," Carlson said on the second Wednesday. "Time to find out where we are."

  11

  There's something incredible about pulling a helmet on just before a game; it's a feeling only a football player knows. Your vision narrows, and the whole world shrinks. You can't hear much of what goes on outside you, but you can hear yourself breathe and you can feel yourself sweat.

  Drew and I were on the Black team again. The first play from scrimmage was a toss sweep for me. I took the ball on the dead run, looked up, and saw a freshman linebacker coming up on me.

  The kid had taken the perfect angle. I couldn't juke him without going out of bounds, and I couldn't cut back without taking myself into the range of more tacklers. The only thing I could do was lower my shoulder to try to drive through him ... so that's what I did.

  I hit him, and he went flying like a bowling pin, his helmet rattling off as he smacked the ground. I saw the helmet rolling ahead of me, bounding crazily, but I kept my legs churning, gaining yards. Fifteen yards later, somebody pushed me out of bounds. When I turned to head back to the huddle, I saw the freshman. He was down on the ground, flat, looking as though he'd been shot.

  Our trainer, Mr. Stimes, raced onto the field, with Carlson right behind him. Stimes cracked open some smelling salts and stuck them under the kid's nose, and he came to. His arms moved, and then his legs moved, and I could breathe again and so could everybody else.

  You never want to hurt anybody, but once I knew he wasn't paralyzed, inside I was electric. I was a rocket. That's what I can do now, I thought to myself. Carlson looked over at me. It had been a hard hit, but it had been a clean hit. "Way to drive your legs, Mick."

  The next two plays were passes, and then Drew called my number for a draw up the middle. The handoff was a little sloppy, so I wasn't going full speed when I hit the hole, but I kept churning my legs forward, driving, driving. I don't how many yards I got, but I know it was at least ten.

  Carlson had Drew stretch the defense by going deep to DeShawn. The play almost clicked, but the ball slid off DeShawn's fingertips. The next play was a screen pass to me. I blocked my guy for a two count and then slipped into an open area in the right flat. Drew's pass was on target. I watched it into my hands and only then turned upfield.

  I got two good blocks and cut back toward the middle, and suddenly only the free safety was between the end zone and me. I bore down on him, but instead of holding his ground, he stepped to the side and waved at me as if I were a bull and he were a matador with a red cape. I broke right through his arm tackle, and then I was off, running straight into the end zone. Touchdown!

  The guys on the Black team circled around me, screaming, but I kept a stone face. When you get into the end zone, act like you've been there before and you're planning on being there again. Those were Carlson's instructions, so that's what I did. I high-fived a couple of players, trotted to the sidelines, pulled my helmet off, and took a swig of water. Carlson glanced over his shoulder. "Nice running, Mick."

  The Red team took over on offense, with Dave Kane in at tailback. By the time they ran their third play, Drew had planted himself next to me on the bench. "You were awesome," he said.

  He kept talking and I managed to answer, but my eyes were on the field, watching Kane. I tried to see him the way Carlson was seeing him. Did he run hard? Did he run north-south? Did he block? Was he as good as I was? The answers came pretty quickly. Yeah, he ran hard. Most of the time he ran north-south. Yeah, he blocked. No, he wasn't as good as I was.

  The Red team made a couple of first downs and then punted. I pulled my helmet on, my world got small again, and I headed back onto the field.

  All through that scrimmage, I was in the zone. When I needed a burst, I could feel my muscles explode. I was fast to the hole; I was strong through contact. I had more endurance than ever before. I felt as if I could play and play and never get tired.

  When Carlson finally blew the whistle, he still had questions to answer about the team. Who was going to be our strong safety? Our right cornerback? Our kick returner? But there was no question about the featured running back, because that job was mine.

  After practice, I was too pumped up to go home. I climbed into the Jeep, stuck an old Rolling Stones CD into the player, and pounded on the steering wheel as I drove out on Greenwood toward Shoreline. The wind was blowing in from all directions, and my hair was flying like my spirits.

  I'd done it.

  I'd won the starting spot.

  I turned the Jeep around at the community college and came back on Third Avenue. When I saw the turnoff for Carkeek Park, all I was thinking about were the curves on the road going down. I pushed on the accelerator, taking each one as fast as I could, tires squealing in the summer heat. I didn't think about Piper's Creek until I reached the parking lot and saw it, right in front of me. I looked around. No police. I revved the engine, popped the clutch, bounced up and over the curb, and then roared down into the creek and up the other side, tires spinning but pulling me out and back onto the road.

  12

  Saturday I went to the gym early. I knew Peter would want to hear how I'd done. The sun was shining and a breeze was blowing in from the Sound. Popeye's was nearly empty—everybody was outside. I asked the guy behind the counter if Peter was around. "He said he was going to Jamba Juice. He's probably sitting on the steps leading down to the cut."

  I walked toward the water and spotted him leaning against a cement block, watching the boats. "Hey," I said. "Got a minute?"

  "Tell me," he said. "How'd it go?"

  "I did it, Peter. I blew them away. I'm starting, and I feel so strong out on the field. So ready. I'm going to have a big year. I know it all through my body."

  He reached and gave me a high-five. "I told you you'd rock and roll. Didn't I tell you?"

  I nodded and then fell silent.

  "So what else? I can tell there's more," he said.

  "The season is starting now."

  "So?"

  "So this is when I stop using the steroids. Remember?"

  "Yeah, yeah," he said
. "I remember you saying something like that."

  "What I'm wondering is, will you still train me?"

  He smiled. "Ofcourse. I'll admit I've made a few extra bucks from the steroids, but it's not like I need that money to pay the rent. And your dad pays me for the one-on-one sessions. I just hope you know what you're doing."

  "What's that mean?"

  He looked out over the water. "Most guys don't go off the juice unless they have to. They don't drug test in high school, right? So why not do another stack? You see what it does for you, how strong it makes you. Why stop?"

  "There are a bunch of reasons."

  "Like?"

  I paused. "It's hard to explain."

  For a long time neither of us spoke. Then he held out his Jamba Juice cup toward me. "You want some mango smoothie?"

  "Sure," I said.

  I took a good swallow and handed the cup back to him. He stirred his straw around a few times. "We're sort of back to where we started, aren't we?" he said.

  I nodded, then stretched my arms over my head and stood. "I'm going to work out now," I said and started toward the gym.

  Once I was in the gym, I headed to the free weights area and lifted. It was the first time I'd lifted without the help of steroids in a long time. I hadn't been able to explain to Peter why I was quitting because I couldn't totally explain it to myself. What I'd done was cheating, but deep down I didn't think of myself as a cheater. I'd gotten on the train for a while, just to get a boost, just to get that starting spot. But now that I had it, it was going to be me that was keeping it, not some drug. And there was more. By stopping, I could look Drew in the eye again without feeling like a liar, and that mattered a lot. Maybe I could even get things going with Kaylee. People become alcoholics or drug addicts, and then they stop and nobody holds it against them. It was the same with me. I'd used steroids, but I'd stopped. I wasn't proud of what I'd done; I wouldn't want anybody to ever find out; but the important thing was that it was in the past.