I was sure my teenage bodybuilding quest would bring me fame and fortune. Signs of my impending greatness seemed everywhere. Not only had I developed an unusually muscular physique for a seventeen-year-old, but I also believed I possessed extraordinary networking abilities that boded well for my future as a world-famous bodybuilder and tropical gym entrepreneur. After all, while ordinary teenagers worried about algebra quizzes and acne, I was training alongside professional athletes and cultivating what I considered elite social capital.
At The Weight Room in Hayward, for example, I worked out regularly with John Matuszak, the massive NFL defensive end known to fans as “The Tooz.” For reasons still unclear to me, Matuszak had taken a liking to me, and I interpreted this as further confirmation that destiny had marked me for greatness.
Between sets of bench presses, T-bar rows, and seated behind-the-neck presses, we sang along to whatever soft-rock ballad drifted through the gym speakers. Watching the Tooz and me harmonize with Nicolette Larson singing Neil Young’s “Lotta Love” was one of those surreal spectacles only the late 1970s could produce. There we were surrounded by clanging iron, ammonia salts, sweat puddles, and steroidal aggression while two men built like escaped Vikings serenaded one another with tender California pop lyrics.
People often spoke fearfully of Matuszak’s temper, but during our workouts the atmosphere felt less like an NFL locker room and more like a chemically enhanced Kumbaya retreat.
Television could not adequately prepare you for Matuszak in person. He was a biological event. Standing close to seven feet tall and weighing nearly three hundred pounds, he somehow appeared lanky and gigantic simultaneously, as though his limbs had been stretched by industrial machinery. He wore his beard and long hair with the wild authority of a mountain outlaw, and his pale predatory eyes possessed the fixed intensity of a hawk searching for movement in distant grasslands.
One afternoon he sat beside me on a bench while the gym speakers played England Dan and John Ford Coley’s syrupy anthem “Love Is the Answer.” The sentimental lyrics appeared to offend him on a molecular level. He slowly curled his lips, looked at me with utter disgust, and muttered:
“Bullshit.”
Then he lay beneath four hundred pounds on the bench press and began repping the weight with terrifying force, repeating the word between repetitions as though contempt itself had become a pre-workout stimulant.
In addition to networking with John Matuszak, I cultivated what I considered another crucial professional alliance: my relationship with local fitness legend Joe Corsi. In the bodybuilding ecosystem of the San Francisco East Bay, Corsi was practically a minor deity. He sold more supplements, weight-gain powders, and fitness equipment than anyone in the region, and his credentials appeared unimpeachable to my teenage mind because he had once appeared alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger on an episode of The Streets of San Francisco. To me, this television appearance elevated him beyond ordinary humanity and into the sacred cinematic realm of bodybuilding aristocracy.
Corsi owned a fitness store next door to The Weight Room, and he frequently wandered into the gym to observe the lifters like a seasoned jungle naturalist inspecting promising wildlife. He was already in his late sixties, but he dressed with the flamboyant confidence of a retired nightclub vampire who had recently discovered Nautilus equipment. His uniform consisted of a sleeveless black one-piece jumpsuit in the style of Jack LaLanne, complete with a gold zipper pulled halfway down to reveal a thick mat of black chest hair. His arms remained impressively full and vascular for a man his age, though gravity had begun its slow negotiations with his triceps. His hair was dyed a shade of black so aggressive it looked chemically weaponized. His eyebrows were equally dark, thick, and glossy, giving him the appearance of a man who had personally declared war on aging and refused to surrender despite mounting evidence.
Overall, Corsi resembled a geriatric Dracula who had traded bloodlust for protein powder.
Whenever he saw me training with Matuszak, he showered me with praise. He said I had “world-class structure,” “exceptional symmetry,” and “champion potential.” At seventeen, these remarks struck me not as casual gym flattery but as contractual prophecy. I became convinced that Corsi would soon sponsor me in the same way Joe Weider had sponsored Arnold Schwarzenegger. Any day now, I imagined, trucks would begin arriving at my mother’s house delivering crates of supplements, industrial tubs of protein powder, and enormous butcher-paper-wrapped T-bone steaks intended to fuel my ascent to bodybuilding immortality.
When this glorious sponsorship materialized, my mother would finally understand that I was not joking about bypassing conventional adulthood altogether. College would be exposed for the pointless detour I knew it to be.
Unfortunately, my mother remained skeptical.
After I graduated from high school, she badgered me daily about my future with the persistence of an IRS auditor.
“What exactly are you going to do with your life?”
“I already told you,” I said confidently. “Joe Corsi is going to sponsor me.”
She would stare at me for a moment, then deliver the kind of devastating realism only a financially stressed mother can summon.
“Well,” she said, “this morning I opened the front door to get the newspaper and I didn’t see a pile of T-bone steaks on the porch. You sure you’ve got a lock on this?”
Of course, I was sure. What I lacked in viability, I made up for with cocky, self-righteous rectitude.
Cinemorphosis 
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