I was the worst college student imaginable. Not mediocre. Not distracted. Catastrophically misaligned with the stated purpose of higher education. But before we get to the academic wreckage, we must begin in the fall of 1979 when I arrived at the university at the age of seventeen carrying not intellectual ambition but bodybuilding delusions of tropical grandeur.
At the time, I was an Olympic weightlifting champion and competitive bodybuilder whose life plan possessed all the sophistication of a teenage steroid fantasy scribbled on a cocktail napkin. I intended to become Mr. Olympia, conquer Mr. Universe, achieve international fame, and eventually leverage my bronzed magnificence into opening a gym somewhere in the Bahamas. My career goals were astonishingly clear: maintain a beautiful body and construct an entire existence devoted to preserving that beautiful body indefinitely.
As an added strategic advantage, I was deeply attracted to the tropical lifestyle because it minimized the need for clothing. I hated clothes with almost theological intensity. Clothing felt restrictive, oppressive, and fundamentally hostile to my vision of human flourishing. The moment I finished dressing, my immediate impulse was usually to tear everything off again like a deranged orangutan trapped in formalwear.
This is why the Bahamas seemed ideal.
No parkas. No wool sweaters. No suffocating layers of civilization.
Just tanning oil, ocean air, and perpetual existence in bodybuilding briefs.
People today talk endlessly about “life hacks,” usually involving productivity apps or minimalist desk setups. Allow me to offer a superior life hack developed by my seventeen-year-old brain in 1979: eliminate clothes altogether. There’s your optimization strategy. Imagine the savings alone. No suits. No winter jackets. No agonizing over fashion. Merely rotate between several pairs of Speedos while glistening permanently beneath the Caribbean sun like a narcissistic sea mammal.
This, I believed, was adulthood perfected.
Meanwhile, the university mistakenly assumed I had arrived to pursue an education.
Whenever I shared this magnificent vision of my future with my recently divorced mother—who was meanwhile trying to perform minor financial miracles just to keep us solvent—she reacted with the exhausted realism of someone who had actually paid utility bills before.
“Don’t be a nincompoop,” she would say. “You can’t isolate yourself from the world on some tropical island.”
But I was seventeen, chemically saturated with bodybuilding mythology, and utterly immune to practical concerns.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” I assured her with the confidence of a man who had never balanced a checkbook. “I’ll be well connected. I’ll invite all my celebrity bodybuilding friends to visit me.”
Then I would begin listing names with reverential excitement as though reading apostles from sacred scripture: Frank Zane, Tom Platz, Robbie Robinson, Kalman Szkalak, Danny Padilla, Ron Teufel, Pete Grymkowski, Rudy Hermosillo. In my imagination, these men were not distant figures from glossy muscle magazines but intimate companions who would naturally gather around my future Bahamian gym drinking pineapple protein shakes while discussing symmetry, calf development, and the spiritual dimensions of hypertrophy.
I envisioned myself lounging beside them under swaying palms while explaining how bodybuilding had catalyzed my personal metamorphosis into a bronzed titan of self-actualization.
My mother stared at me with the expression of a woman realizing she had accidentally raised a delusional peacock.
“You sound ridiculous,” she said flatly. “For one thing, those aren’t your friends. They’re from your muscle magazines. I’m not stupid.”
Her remark landed with the force of unwanted reality.
To me, however, the distinction between celebrity and friendship still seemed negotiable. After all, I had spent hundreds of hours studying these men’s physiques in magazines with such devotional intensity that I felt we already shared a profound spiritual bond. Surely if they someday met me on my tropical bodybuilding island, glistening heroically in tanning oil while handing them frosty pineapple shakes, they too would recognize the connection.
Cinemorphosis 
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