At 12, after being benched for three games in a row, I went shamefully to the coach and asked to be let off the Pop Warner team. I just couldn't stand it any more, all the questions from family and friends about why I wasn't played more often, and the unhappy comparisons with Ben and Danny. Quitting football was the nail in my coffin, as far as my brothers were concerned. From then on they started calling me "loser" and "fairy," and treated me pretty much like a punching bag.

I didn't have many friends to begin with, but now I started keeping almost entirely to myself. And more and more all the time, I buried myself in the pages of muscle magazines. I'd always been fascinated by the couple of bodybuilding mags that Ben and Danny had collected over the years. Now I began to read and study them obsessively. I would lose myself in the fantasy of being a huge competitor -- training and competing alongside powerful behemoths like Dave Draper, Mike Mentzer, and Sergio Oliva. After spending an hour or two with my nose in Muscle Mag International or Muscle and Fitness I would practically burn up with the desire to pump iron.

Before long I was locking myself in the garage every day after school and putting in three or four hours on the home weight set that had been bought for my brothers, and that they played with occasionally. After a while, though, the 110 lbs. of rusty plates were no longer enough of a challenge. So I took my paper route money and joined the local Y -- a down-and-dirty, hardcore weight pit frequented by the town's small collection of serious muscleheads.

For the first few weeks, I have to admit I was pretty timid at the gym, and tried to avoid eye contact with the group of sweaty, iron-obsessed oddballs who trained there. But after a while, the group became intrigued with me ...the quiet, shy kid who had decided to join their ranks. It's a little pathetic to say this, but I wasn't used to people accepting and liking me just for myself, and not as some kind of second-rate clone of my big brothers. I lived for the moment every day when I'd walk into the weight room and get a big hello from the sweaty guys resting between their sets. Better still, most of the guys -- even the huge ones -- were only too happy to train with me, or to offer me veteran training and nutrition tips. I'd found my world, my life. And rain or shine, sick or healthy, you couldn't stop me from rushing to the Y after school and spending the rest of the day there, pumping iron non-stop with my buddies until it was time to head home for dinner.

When Ben and Danny finally found out how and where I was spending all my free time, it brought on a whole new reign of teasing and cruelty. This was a time when anyone who lifted weights was considered neurotic and more than probably queer. My brothers relentlessly tortured me about my hobby and my weird new friends from the gym, and they would fall on the floor in hysterics when they saw me wolfing down a steak and a dozen eggs in one sitting, or drinking a huge protein shake. Their favorite trick was waiting until friends were over and then pulling off my shirt to prove that I was still the same skinny 12 year-old I'd always been.

What they didn't know was that all the teasing just made me hungrier to get huge, and that I was pouring my blood, sweat and tears into training... and slowly but surely making spectacular strength gains. In a couple of months I doubled and then tripled my poundages on most exercises. On my 13th birthday, with all my gym cronies watching, I nearly ruptured myself pounding out a killer workout -- benching 225 for reps, squatting 315, and doing strict sets of bicep curls with a 135 lb. barbell. I was still a skinny kid, and most of the older gym members looked on amazed at my incredible strength and determination. That day my gym pals rewarded me with birthday gifts of Brewer's Yeast and protein powder and a huge sweatshirt with the gym logo on it.

Getting stronger was a thrill. But two or three months after turning 13, I started to realize I had something special. With the onset of puberty, hormones surged through my young body. My appetite -- both for food and for iron-pumping -- exploded. And with all the months of intense strength training behind me, I magically began to make near-miraculous muscle gains.

After a year of just getting stronger and wirier, I now seemed to explode -- it was almost like I got bigger with every workout. The training log I kept shows that in just eight months I packed on 65 dense, solid pounds. The men at the gym were astounded, and devoted more and more time to helping and supporting the genetic miracle who had wandered into their midst. They called me "Boy Wonder" and "Superboy," and even though it embarassed me, I ate it up. The gym's manager loved to show me off to visitors and new members -- impressing them with my strength and muscularity -- and then laying them flat with the news that I was only going on 14.

Even though I happily soaked up all this attention around the Y, away from the gym I was still pretty shy and embarassed about my obsession with bodybuilding. My old clothes stopped fitting, but I replaced them with baggy, long-sleeved shirts and loose-fitting pants. And even though I shared a bedroom with Danny, I made a point of never undressing when anyone could see. I guess in my head I was still the nerdy, awkward kid my brothers said I was.

By this time Ben and Danny were extremely caught up in high school sports and dating, and thankfully they paid less and less attention to me. But they did begin to notice that my neck and face were considerably wider, and took to calling me "fatso" or "meatball." They joked that my bizarre, mega-calorie diet was turning me into a fat boy, and used this fact to torture me whenever possible.

With the gym as an outlet for my pent-up energy and anger, I usually managed to ignore most of the bullshit I had to take from my brothers. But I guess I was changing on the inside, too, even if I didn't realize it. When it finally came out, it surprised me as much as anybody....

Ben and Danny had brought their girlfriends home, and all four teenagers ended up wandering into the garage while I was grinding out a set of 500 crunches, wearing the baggy sweatshirt my gym buddies had given me. Danny, who was 17 at this point, fell into his usual routine: He interrupted my workout by slapping me tauntingly as I was trying to finish the set, and ca lling me names. He fully expected the result to be the same as always -- me getting pissed and screaming at him before skulking away to my room. But this time it didn't go that way. Months of rage seemed to well up inside me, and without thinking I jumped up from the weight bench and quickly spun Danny around and pinned him against a stack of boxes piled next to the wall.

18 year-old Ben was surprised, and laughed teasingly at Danny for a minute. But then he said I'd just caught a lucky hold, and that he'd have to teach me a lesson. Ben -- who had varsity letters in both football and wrestling -- pulled me away from Danny and started trying to drive me to the floor. He'd done it effortlessly a thousand times, and grabbed my arms with a look of complete ease and bravado.

But Ben's face quickly reddened with confusion as he found himself struggling against what probably felt like a steel girder. In spite of Ben's height advantage, I dug myself in and easily held my big brother completely immobile. What Ben didn't know was that by now I was routinely benching 315 for reps, and that my sheer animal strength was probably twice that of his.

I was honestly surprised at how easy it was to hold him in check, in spite of all his twisting and fancy footwork. Once I got a sense of my advantage, I began to press forward. With what felt like maybe a 50% effort, I shoved him back against the garage wall. Then I locked both of Ben's wrists in my own left hand, with a grip that was vise-like after all those months of handling heavy iron. Acting on pure instinct, I used my right hand to grab Ben by the belt and turn him sideways against the wall -- pinning him there like a butterfly on cardboard. Danny and the two girls looked on slack-jawed at what would have been an amazing feat of strength for a grown man, let alone a 14 year-old boy.

You need to realize that Ben was by now considered an adult in our family, with full rights and priveleges. He had his own car and had been accepted to college. But at this moment he was in such a state of shock and panic that he peed his pants. The baby brother that he'd bullied and slapped around for the last 14 years was now controlling him and toying with him with what probably felt like the force of a diesel truck. After struggling helplessly in my grip for twenty seconds or so, Ben finally went limp, surrendering to my clearly superior strength. It was an absolutely mind-blowing moment for me, and I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that my dick was rock hard as I finally dropped Ben to the floor and watched him crouch there a moment, shielding himself and afraid to move.

On some level the sight of this was absurd to me, completely incongruous. I couldn't help laughing, still half-convinced that Ben was faking it as some kind of joke. But still brimming with adrenalin, I made a quick "fake" toward Danny, causing him to bolt nervously in the direction of the door. It was a life changing moment for me, and the feeling was exhilirating. I was flying.

All of a sudden the size and strength I'd been quietly building in the secret world of the gym became blazingly real. I was as big and as strong as a fucking tank, and for the first time I felt the sheer thrill of physical power and domination. In no more than a minute, I'd made clear to everyone in the room that now I was in control.

Covered in sweat, and shaking like a leaf from the incredible adrenalin rush, I stripped off my baggy sweatshirt and flexed like I did in the gym locker room, displaying the 195 pounds of rock-hard muscle that now filled my five foot, seven inch frame. There was a mirror against one wall of the garage, and in it I noticed in detail for the first time how incredibly bigger and harder I was than either of my brothers. Away from the Y (where 220 lb. bodybuilders were the norm) I suddenly had a sense of just how extraordinary my physique really was. For someone my age, I was a freak, and the thought of what I might become by 25 or 30 was outrageous.

Ben and Danny, who'd always considered themselves well built, stared in shock at biceps that already measured 17.5 inches, and at pecs that looked like huge slabs of beef criss-crossed with deep separations. Although I still had the smooth, soft skin of a child (the fact is, I was barely yet able to grow a mustache) my physique was more massive and virile than any of their friends -- or anyone they knew, for that matter. Seeing their amazement, I raised my arms in a rear double biceps shot, and I'm fairly certain my brothers went weak in the knees as they looked at my cannonball delts, sculpted triceps, thick, sweeping lats and impressively peaked bi's, all standing out in bold relief under the bare overhead light in the garage.

The girls, meanwhile, had been blushing bright red for the last five minutes, and one of them giggled nervously when the other one unintentionally let out a tiny, orgasmic sigh.

"You guys should get to the gym once in a while," I said, and then picked up my sweatshirt and strode out of the room.

Things were different from then on, to say the least. The next day Danny came home from school and found his beloved Reggie Jackson poster stripped from the bedroom wall. In its place I'd put up home-made charts, detailing my training schedule and tracking my growth and progress. I wasn't going to be embarassed or secretive about bodybuilding any more. I'd taken the trophies and MVP awards that had once filled the top of the dresser and tossed them casually onto Danny's bed. In their place were muscle magazines, and the rows of vitamin and supplement bottles that I was dosing myself from nowadays.

I watched Danny walk in and react in shock to my brazen rebellion. His first impulse was clearly to wheel toward me and start a fight. But he froze the second I looked up at him from the bed, where I sat shirtless, performing a long set of strict dumbbell curls with a 60-lb. weight. I didn't have to say a word: my blood-engorged bicep did all the talking. (Later that night I watched unseen from the hallway, and was richly amused as Danny tentatively picked up the heavy dumbbell and tried unsuccessfully to perform a single rep.)

A day later I calmly informed him that it would be his job to measure me after my workouts, and to help me keep track of my bodyweight and my lift records on the wall charts. Danny acted like he didn't hear. But that night when I stomped in, sweaty from my workout, I ordered him to fetch the tape measure, and then dictated a list of the huge poundages I'd hoisted that day. Danny complied -- unhappily, but without a word of complaint.

For Ben, I came up with a more subtle revenge. I started going shirtless around the house more often than not -- especially when Ben had girls or other friends over to visit. It excited me to know I could stop the conversation dead just by walking into the room. Ben would become virtually irrelevant as the teenage girls begged me to pose and flex, and admiringly squeezed my huge biceps. The best moments, though, were when some pretty classmate of Ben's shamed him into flexing his arm and comparing it to mine. Ben had a strong, agile body, and by normal standards he was in terrific shape. But compared to the guns I'd developed, Ben's flexed arm looked like a soda straw next to a tree trunk. I would always remind the girls that I was only 14, and would usually find a way to tell the story about lifting Ben sideways and pinning him to the wall.

Our father also underwent a change in attitude. Where, before, football trophies and earned run averages were the normal dinnertime conversation, the old man now delighted in quizzing me about my day's achievements in the gym, or the latest increase in my bodyweight or measurements. He started taking photos of me on almost a weekly basis, and began compiling a videotape that would be a graphic record of my explosive growth. His favorite trick, though, (one he saved for company) was to drape his bulky, 210 lb. body over my back and let me pound out a hundred perfect pushups with his dead weight on top of me. Usually, in the course of this demonstration, Ben and Danny would find an excuse to leave the room.

Some time before I turned 15, my dad secretly sent one of the photos in to Muscle Mag International, and it got printed, along with his proud letter, in the "from our Readers" section. I got hundreds of fan letters, most of them from other teenagers hoping to get big.

The summer after 8th grade I lived in the gym -- spending half the day there doing heavy-duty, mass-building workouts. Then I'd go home and eat an enormous, protein-laden meal, relax for an hour or two with my muscle mags, eat another gut-busting dinner, and then maybe pose for an hour or so, driving blood into my hungry muscles until they ached. Then I'd go to bed at 9 pm and sleep like a baby till breakfast. The whole summer there were no movies, no beach excursions, no ballgames. My life was food, iron, and rest. I even pumped iron in my dreams.

By the time I got to high school, at 15, I was packing 210 pounds of chiseled beef. I had a physique as seasoned and conditioned as the best, national level, 18 or 19 year-old teen champions. A little nervous about starting at a new school, I made the decision to wear extremely modest and concealing clothes on the first day. But even so, it took all of three hours for me to become the most talked-about student on campus. The commotion when I stripped down in the boys' locker room for gym class was a hell of a lot more than I bargained for. The reactions of the other freshman boys ranged from envy to downright astonishment. (And at least one or two had to conceal swelling dicks behind their gym towels.) The fact is, at 15 I was bigger and more muscular than any student or teacher in the entire school, if not the entire state.

Gym class that morning consisted of a basketball game -- "shirts" vs. "skins," and by dumb luck I ended up on the "skin" team. As all of us freshmen boys filed through the huge, multi-room gym toward the basketball court, we had to pass through four other gym classes (two male and two female). Each time we entered a room, an audible gasp could be heard from the students lined up in their squads or beginning to distribute equipment.

I actually felt the heat of the hundreds of eyes that were raking me, and could hear snippets of whispered reactions to my sculpted physique. The last class we passed through was the senior boys -- which included my brother Danny. I felt myself standing a little taller and more flexed as I paraded my hard body through the room of envious and goggle-eyed senior boys.

My eyes met Danny's for a moment, and he seemed stunned by the degree to which I'd managed to completely dominate his classmates' attention and interest. I gave Danny a little wink, and immediately four or five senior boys surrounded him, asking him who I was and how he knew me. I smiled, thinking about how he'd have no choice but to talk me up proudly, and give out information about my stats and my workout weights.

Coach Bill Porter was the school's head wrestling coach, and he also taught "Health and Hygiene" to the freshman boys. A week or two into the school year, Coach was teaching the section on human anatomy to our class, and came to the part where he explained and identified the various muscles of the body. Instead of simply using an anatomy chart, he suddenly ordered me to come up in front of the class, and asked me if I'd mind removing my shirt. I turned bright red at the request, but my classmates clapped and jokingly called out "take it off," so I didn't have much choice. Coach spent the next forty minutes pointing to the well defined, carefully sculpted muscles on my body, and getting me to flex various body parts to demonstrate specific muscular functions. It was hard to say how much information the class absorbed, given the intense focus they seemed to be fixing on my overall size and hardness.

After class Coach asked me to stay a few extra minutes in his office. "You can call me Bill," he said, and then explained that he had briefly competed as an amateur bodybuilder earlier in his life, and asked me if I had any plans to compete. Truthfully, it was all I'd thought about for the last three years. But all I said was that I'd been thinking about it.

"With what you've got, at your age, you can go to the absolute top in this sport," the Coach told me. "And if you're interested, I'd be willing to help you get there."

I immediately told him that I was very interested, and within a few minutes Bill had gotten me to strip to my underwear and was maneuvering me into classic poses in the locker room mirror. I was in heaven. For years I'd been a competitor only in my dreams and fantasies. But now another person -- an adult, a fitness professional -- was seeing what I saw and sharing that dream. It was truly in that moment that I became a BODYBUILDER. I would never think of myself as anything else.

It was also clear from what Bill said that he knew a lot about bodybuilding and about training. As he explained what areas would have to be worked on and how we might go about it, his hands traveled over my body -- grabbing and squeezing, and occasionally coming to rest for several seconds on a particular muscle or joint. Somewhere inside of me, I had a queasy feeling that told me Bill's interest was more than just professional. But as scary as this knowledge was, what surprised me was how much it also excited me. I wondered if Bill noticed the bulge at my crotch, and if he did, what he thought about it. But I just ignored it and kept flexing as Bill guided me. My feet had left the ground. I didn't know for sure what was coming; but I knew it was going to be a new and important phase of my life. •