Bridge and Tunnel Bodybuilders

We were teenage bodybuilders in the East Bay—Hayward, San Leandro, Castro Valley—territory that might as well have been stamped unfit for human company by San Francisco standards. In the city, we were a contaminant. The girls would look at us with elegant disdain, lips curled, and whisper “Bridge and Tunnel,” as if we had crawled through some damp subterranean artery to trespass upon their polished world.

We did little to disprove their assessment. We spent our afternoons at Lake Don Castro, marinating our skin in tropical bronzing oil with the reckless confidence of men who believed melanoma was a rumor. Between sets of posing and flexing, we argued with prosecutorial intensity over the great philosophical question of our time: Ginger or Mary Ann. This was not idle chatter. This was a loyalty test. Imagine a bare bulb swinging in a concrete cell, a man with broken teeth asking you to choose. Your answer wasn’t right or wrong—it was a measure of your authenticity.

In truth, there was one answer: Mary Ann. Ginger was spectacle—too lacquered, too deliberate. Mary Ann had gravity. Especially in cut-offs. She was the apex until Daisy Duke arrived and raised the stakes, turning denim cut-offs into doctrine and ushering in a new era of televised exhibitionism.

Bull, however, took these matters beyond reason. We didn’t realize the depth of his devotion to Gilligan’s Island until KTVU quietly removed it from the schedule. He responded as one might to a death in the family. He kicked his mother’s Sony Trinitron while wearing combat boots—an act of passion undermined by poor planning. The television survived. His shin did not. We spent the afternoon at Eden Medical Center watching him bleed through a makeshift bandage.

We offered no sympathy.
“You made us miss Pec Day,” Falco said.

“And forget donkey calf raises,” I added. “You’re benched for a month. Congratulations.”

Bull slumped in his chair, a chastened creature with curly hair and wounded pride. “Mary Ann’s gone,” he muttered, staring into middle distance as if mourning a lost lover.

“At least there’s Jeannie,” I said.
“Barbara Eden never lets you down,” he replied.
“And Charlie’s Angels,” I added.

Bull kept a poster of Farrah Fawcett in his room. Once a week, he arranged protein pills on a velvet pillow beneath it, as if offering tribute to a benevolent deity of blonde perfection.

Reality intruded. His mother, unimpressed with his theatrical grief, demanded repayment for the damaged television. He had already failed a security job test at Gemco. He was supposed to run up a staircase while holding a fire extinguisher in fewer than fifteen seconds. He gave up midway, keeling over and trying to catch his breath.

“What does it profit a man to have bulging muscles if he is not functional?” I asked.

“Shut up, loser,” Bull snapped.

He had rank—he and Falco were seniors; I was a sophomore with a loose mouth and poor instincts for hierarchy.

Now, with a bandaged leg, he faced a new problem: no job, no training, no progress. Falco, ever the strategist, offered his usual solutions in single-word fragments.

“Refrigeration.”
“I failed that test three times.”
“Take it again. Cold air builds muscle.”

Bull shook his head. “Fifty bucks a test.”

“Meat,” Falco said, referring to his door-to-door sales job of premium cuts of meat—a scheme so vague it sounded like folklore.

“I’m on crutches,” Bull said. “I’m not selling rib-eyes and Cornish game hens.”

As always, we retreated into fantasy. We would win international bodybuilding titles, open a gym in the Bahamas, and spend our days in Speedos while sunlit goddesses delivered protein drinks in coconut shells and validated our existence. Bull embellished the vision with architectural details and swimsuit specifications. He looked almost peaceful.

Which is why I had to ruin it.

“And maybe,” I said, “while you’re selling memberships, you’ll run into Mary Ann.”

“Shut up, loser,” he said again, clutching his leg.

The pain had sharpened. Not just the injury—the realization. One impulsive kick had cost him weeks of training, a job opportunity, and delayed the imaginary migration to a tropical paradise where everything made sense and nothing required discipline.

For the first time, Bull looked less like a future champion and more like what he was: a kid being forced to accept the fact that the Bahamas were postponed indefinitely. Accountability had arrived early.