Once they start working out in the college fitness room, or in the training house if they're a jock, the gods among us start becoming apparent, and start peeling away from the rest of the herd - the geeks and dweebs and losers and such. The alpha-gods are ruthless about enforcing the social superiority their muscle gives them over the pathetic mass of losers. I sure felt the pressure of this dichotomy, when I arrived freshman year as an innocent, idiot cute smart kid. SO many guys around me, upper-classmen and shit, were studs. Some were even amateur bodybuilders, fitness models, nationally-ranked athletes, or what have you. The only question was…in which camp did I belong?

A lot of guys from my high school went to this college too. As we moved into our dorms that week, I started to notice that some of the cooler, better looking kids in my class must have spent time lifting weights, you know, over the summer or something. I mean, the rest of us were out playing Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the Gathering et cetera, but these guys, quick as a good fuck, moved to the TOP of the popularity charts, and became gods to the whole school. Guys like Otto, Chris, and Jared…when we graduated high school they were just these squirmy little guys, but then POW! By September, they were muscle jocks with shoulders way broader than their tight waists, round, thick butts that bounced when they walked, and sturdy legs that spilled out of their gym shorts. Some even started shaving their heads to look like mean mother-fuckers while surfing, or getting inked or pierced, or simply unbuttoning their shirts all the way down, to reveal their swelling chests and tightly rippling stomach muscles as they walked around campus. I had been friends with some of them before, but now they would hardly talk to me,

These jocks dominated all the sports teams, only hung out with each other, and, I had it on good authority, fucked any girl they wanted. They would rush to the commons from practice to bolt down dinner, so they could run back out to spend the evening with their buddies at the gym, lifting iron.

Sometimes on weekends, they'd go into the middle of the green so everyone could see them, shirtless, pounding out set after grueling set of push-ups, sit-ups, whatever, til their muscles got all swollen and pumped and their fresh young skin would get flushed by the warm humidity. There would be five, six jocks clustered together, a fuckin' GAGGLE of 19-year-old muscle jocks, pumping rep after rep, punching each other in the shoulder and wrestling around and shit, lying on top of each other to increase the weight of the push-up, and taunting and teasing each other whenever they'd "inadvertently" get boners. The fuckin' queers….

So of course, by Thanksgiving break, I had taken a good look at the gods - and took a look at the dweebs - and said, "Fuck the dweebs. I want to be with this school's ruling muscle clan." On second thought, it didn't really even seem like it was my decision…instead, it felt like I was suddenly zapped from above - chosen to join a tribe I never even knew existed before. This, even though I was still all small and just a normal sweet shy kid and all. But suddenly I just knew I wanted to have muscles. And more than that - I suddenly realized that my body was of a type that would build big muscles, if I worked for it. (God - I really pity those guys whose bodies - the only thing we come into life truly OWNING - are skinny, runty, ugly, or covered with jiggling fat. What fucking chance do they have at happiness?? I know, I'm shallow. Sue me.)

If I just started working out, I figured, I could be hanging around the other muscle guys by second semester freshman year. This sense that I belonged to the alpha class, and could take my dominant place in it if I got built, quickly became an obsession. I guess I was TOTALLY naïve. See, I came from a pretty privileged, yet fucked-up, rich family, and was something of a "late-bloomer". I didn't really realize that my desire to build up my young bod was the beginning of a life-long obsession with packing ever-greater muscle mass onto my frame.

There's basically three ways to get into the jock clique in an American college. One is to be athletic, two is to be good looking, three is to be built. I knew I wasn't really athletic. Tell you the truth I fuckin' hate sports. So I was fucked on that score. However, I thought about it, and figured I might be a pretty cute guy…some dudes who looked vaguely like my type were in commercials and on TV and stuff. I actually started doing these stupid experiments when I was alone in the dorm; I would find a guy in a magazine who I thought looked like me, and then I'd rush to the mirror and compare his face to mine. This, I could do for hours. Fucking conceited little peckerwood, I know I totally was. Still am….LOL!

Or I'd look at my dorm's Resident Advisor, who just happened to be my older brother Joe - a senior who was considered by almost everyone to be the single cutest boy on campus. Looking at him objectively, I thought we looked pretty much alike. We both have reddish-blonde hair, smooth golden-tan skin lightly freckled from the Florida sun, and intense, amber eyes that can appear almost black sometimes.. His face is a little longer and more "chiseled" looking and German than mine, which is more boyish and I think more Irish-looking, which is what we are. White fuckin' teeth, no zits, the whole nine yards. So I figure, just as Joe's the cutest boy in his class, I stand at least a 70-30 chance of being the cutest boy in mine. Or at least up there in the rankings. (Did YOUR school do this?? Rank kids by their looks? It was, like, an unofficial ritual at my school.)

Since I was pretty sure I was good-looking, I figured if I got built too, I might be a shoo-in to join the jock clique. I know it seems like I'm dwelling on this, but give me a break! It's important you understand this stuff fully. The point is, that in some fucked-up way I still don't really understand fully, my life was changing. This was just the first manifestation, the dawning glimmer, the fuckin' foreshock if you will, of the destiny that would guide my life. (Fuck, that sounds pretentious. Let's say instead, "It was the first step on the incredible road to where Jeff and I are today.") What was happening was, my body was getting flooded with the juice that gooses - aka, testosterone. •