The kids looked at me with a look of surprise and envy. I bet a lot of them would have loved to be Vinnie’s spotter. Little did they know I did a lot more with Vinnie than just spot his heavy lifting. And they looked at me a little differently because now I was working out with Vinnie. None of my friends worked out. Now I was different from them. And maybe I was even a friend of Vinnie’s. Their mouths dropped open as the looked at me and at Vinnie. Vinnie jerked my shoulder around. “Yeah, Arnold’s a great spotter. Now gimme some sandwiches. I’m really hungry.” A few of the kids reached into their backpacks and pulled out a protein packed sandwich. Vinnie grabbed one and handed it to me. “Eat it Arnold. You gotta eat big to get big.” I had just eaten a big breakfast, but the sandwich did look very good to me. Even in an hour I had gotten a little hungry again. I looked at my friends and thought about whether it was right for me to eat one of their sandwiches. Then I looked at the sandwich again and then at Vinnie. He was staring at me with his dark brown eyes. “Eat it!” he yelled. I looked at the sandwich and then I ate it voraciously. God it tasted good. While I was eating, Vinnie chomped down four sandwiches himself. Plus we both drank milk. “Feels good to eat,” said Vinnie between bites. “Feels real good, don’t it Arnold?” I nodded my head. It really did feel real good to eat. The kids watched us eat. We were eating their food. They knew Vinnie was going to get even bigger and stronger. They didn’t know what was going to happen to me. They didn’t know I had already gained three pounds of muscle. Vinnie gulped down his sandwiches so fast. He was like an eating machine. I wondered if I was ever going to eat as much and as fast as Vinnie. “Five more sandwiches for snack time,” said Vinnie. “Three for me and two for Arnold.” Five more hands pulled out sandwiches and handed them over to me to keep. We had already taken ten sandwiches from the boys and it wasn’t even lunch time.

Then Vinnie got a serious look on his face. “I feel so big and strong after my arm workout I’m wanna beat up a kid today. These big guns wanna smash the shit out of some pathetic kid. These guns wanna show off how strong they are. They love to smash human flesh.” He made fists and flexed his forearms. “Yeah, look at that muscle. Look at that power.” The kids’ faces got white. They sure didn’t want to be on the receiving end of Vinnie’s big fists. Vinnie kept flexing his muscles and making fists. The kids’ eyes were fixated on his fists and arms. They knew how strong those weapons were. “I bet some of you would like to get some protection from being beat up by these big fists. These guns are so strong they could smash you into a pulp. How many of you would like to get some protection from being pulverized by these fists?” A bunch of hands shot up. Nobody wanted to get smashed by Vinnie’s huge arms and fists. “Well, its very easy. You just pay Arnold $2.00 and you’ll have protection for a week. The protection insurance costs $2.00 per week. That’s nothing to you pussy rich kids. If you don’t got the protection insurance……… well, I hope you got good medical insurance.” Vinnie smashed his fist into his own rock hard abs. The kids gasped.

I looked at Vinnie with a look of concern in my eyes. He hadn’t told me about this protection plan. He grabbed me and took me to the side. “We’re gonna have lots of money to buy supplements, dweeb,” he said. “We got 40 seventh graders and 40 eighth graders. That’s $160 a week, except for the few fools who don’t pay, the fools who are gonna get smashed. With that kind of money, we can even buy creatine. I’m gonna pack on 30 pounds of muscle so fucking fast! You might put on some muscle too.” Then he grabbed my arm and squeezed. “Anyway, you got no choice. I call the shots around here.” I looked at Vinnie’s huge arm and nodded my head.

Vinnie turned back and faced the boys. He ripped a big piece of birthday gift wrapping paper, with a fancy design on it, out of his pocket. “Okay. You give Arnold the two dollars. Arnold’s gonna give you a piece of this special paper. If you got the paper, you don’t get beat up. If you don’t got the paper, these fists are gonna smash your guts into your spine.” Vinnie smashed his fist into his own abs again, making a loud smacking sound as the fist bounced off his hard wall of corrugated muscle. “Your abs ain’t as hard as my abs,” he said, looking at the wimpy boys standing in front of him. “You got until the beginning of lunch period to buy the protection.”

Immediately, the boys started crowding around me with money in their hands. They all wanted protection from Vinnie’s fists. Vinnie walked over to the yard where the 8th graders were. And after a few minutes he started collecting from them too. He gave them until tomorrow to pay up because they didn’t have any classes with us. But beginning at lunch tomorrow, any 8th grade kid without the protection paper was walking around as a target for Vinnie’s strong arms and rock hard fists.

So all morning I collected money from the seventh graders and Vinnie collected from the 8th graders. We were collecting a ton of money. I never knew the insurance business was so good. By lunchtime I had collected $74. There were two seventh graders who hadn’t bought protection. I didn’t have to pay because I was part of the insurance company. Vinnie was the President and I was the Vice President - Finance. I didn’t know who the non payers were because I was collecting money and handing out protection paper so fast. Vinnie and I ate our big snacks after gym class, but I was still hungry for lunch. Vinnie took 10 sandwiches from the seventh graders and then went over and grabbed 10 sandwiches from the eighth graders. We had 20 sandwiches for two 13 year old growing boys. We also had lots of milk and juices. We just took tons of food. We saved seven sandwiches for our afternoon snack and we ate the remaining 13 sandwiches for lunch. Vinnie gobbled down eight sandwiches and I ate five. I couldn’t believe I ate five whole sandwiches but I did. I was really hungry. After we finished, Vinnie got up and rubbed his rock hard abs. “Feels so good to be full. Full of protein. Full of protein and buildin’ more muscle.” He flexed his arms. “Look at the blood flowing into the muscle. That muscle wants to beat up somebody. It wants to beat up somebody right now.” Vinnie started walking around the school yard, moving his arms back and forth and making fists. As he walked by the kids, they would hold up their little piece of protection paper and Vinnie would pass by, flexing his guns as the kids watched his body. Vinnie kept walking around until he saw two kids over at the side of the school yard, trying to make themselves as invisible as possible. Vinnie strutted over and said, “What’s up punks?” The kids looked at him with a terrified look in their eyes. They didn’t hold up any protection paper. Maybe they thought Vinnie was only kidding. Well, Vinnie never kids around when it comes to his muscles. If he says he’s gonna beat you up, he’s gonna beat you up. “Well look at this,” said Vinnie. He moved his arms around, flexing them and making fists in front of the boys’ horrified eyes. “These two punks didn’t buy any protection insurance. I got two little punks at the same time - two for the price of one. It’s like bargain day in the school yard.”

He grabbed their shirts and stood them up. The kids were both kind of fat. They each probably weighed as much as Vinnie, maybe more. But they were all fat. Vinnie was all muscle. “Fuckin’ little punks. Fuckin’ fat punks. Fuckin’ rich little fat punks. Fat punks with no protection.” He pulled them by their shirts behind a hedge at the side of the school yard. All of us boys went over to watch what was going to happen.

Vinnie grabbed their fat stomachs with his hands and squeezed. The kids started crying in pain. Vinnie’s forearms bulged as he applied more and more pressure. Veins popped out all over his arms. His forearms looked like bowling pins of muscle. “God what a bunch of fuckin’ fat. How’s that feel, havin’ your fat stomachs squeezed by pure muscle?” The kids cried out in pain. They couldn’t talk. Tears were rolling down their fat cheeks. “Look at my muscle. Feel how fuckin’ strong it is. I got muscle and you ain’t got shit.” He squeezed harder and laughed as he jerked his hands up and down as the kids cried in abject pain. The fat jiggled around like jello. The muscles in Vinnie’s forearms looked like writhing snakes, bulging snakes of steel hard muscle. Tears were coursing down the cheeks of the fat dweebs as Vinnie played with their fat. They were just toys to this young muscle kid. Vinnie was inflicting tremendous pain on these two kids and it was obvious he didn’t care. Vinnie liked to give out pain to kids. And he sure had the muscles to do it. “I love to make kids cry,” he said as he played with their fat. After another 30 seconds, he finally let go. Then he pinched his own skin that covered his abs. The skin was as thin as cellophane. It looked like Vinnie was pinching two sheets of paper. “Look at that, punks. No fuckin’ fat on my body. Nothin’ but solid muscle.” He rubbed his hand over his washboard abs, feeling the ridges of rock hard muscle under the thin skin. Then he grabbed the fat again and said “Fuckin’ slobs. Big fat fuckin’ slobs. I can hardly wait to beat you up. But I wanna do something else first.”

Suddenly, Vinnie moved behind the two fat kids and grabbed them by their arms. “Hey Arnold. Come over here and stand in front of the two fat slobs.” I followed Vinnie’s orders and stood in front of the two kids who were still crying in pain and fear. These kids weren’t really friends of mine but I knew who they were of course. They looked at me with a plaintiff look in their eyes, like Fred please help us. I looked at them and then at Vinnie. Then Vinnie said, “Punch ‘em, Arnold. Punch out their fat guts. See how much fun it is.” I looked at the kids’ fat guts and then at Vinnie. “It’s so much fuckin’ fun,” he said. “Smash ‘em!” I looked at my hands. I looked at their fat guts. I thought about working out with Vinnie and how good it felt to be lifting weights and eating big. I tensed my arm and I could feel the muscle bulging inside, muscle that wasn’t there yesterday. I felt like a man. I felt more like a man than I had ever felt before. I made a fist and looked at it. I had never been in a fight before. But now I was building muscle and becoming a man. A man like Vinnie. “Smash ‘em!” yelled Vinnie. I pulled back my right arm and smashed my fist into the gut of one of the kids. I will never forget that sensation, the sensation of my hard fist smashing into the kid’s fat, my hard fist hitting human flesh. A surge of adrenaline rushed through my body. I felt alive. I felt strong. I felt like a man. “Wow,” I said as I pulled back my fist and smashed my left fist into the gut of the other kid. It was like I had turned into a different boy. Adrenaline and testosterone were surging through my body. I wanted to hit. I wanted to smash. I wanted to pulverize those two punk kids who were so stupid they didn’t buy the insurance. I started smashing my fists into the kids’ bodies. And I was loving it. I wasn’t strong enough to do any real damage to the kids, but I was strong enough to inflict some pain on them. They were begging me to stop but I was having too much fun. I loved the feeling of my fists hitting their guts. Vinnie was laughing the whole time. “Another Mohammed Ali,” he laughed as he watched me punching. Finally he said, “Okay Arnold, that’s enough. See how much fun it is? It’s the best fun there is. Now it’s my turn.” •