“If I tried to lift that over my head, the weight would crush me like one of those Super Mario Goombas,” I said, making a raspberry noise.
Big J, laughed at me as he stepped out from under the weight rack. He always laughs at me when I say stuff like that. I didn’t mind because saying I was weak in comparison to him was not only true, but also a testament to how okay I was with my manhood not revolving around this obsession with lifting large piles off heavy stuff for hours of a day like Big J’s did. It was a very liberating sense of inadequacy.
“When you gonna come back in and start training with me again?” He said, stretching out his sausage fingers to shake my elegant little writers hand.
Along with laughing at me, he always asks me about working out because he needs me on his client payroll, and because, like I said, he’s obsessed with working out.
“I don’t know man. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing right now.”
Big J’s big, shaven, meaty head pulled back in shock. “But you got ball, brother. Other guys are trying to take your job right now!” He pounded fist into open palm as if declaring we will defeat them!
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, here we go with that old song and dance again,” I went over to the dumbbell rack and started pressing the 5 pounder over my head like Big J was just pressing his 300 pounds. “Someone’s gonna take your job.” I said in a real high voice. “Well, I got no job to take, steakhead.”
“wh-wh-wh-what?”
“Yeah, they canned my ass. Got healthy on the DL and then,” I pulled my thumb across my neck, “see ya.”
“Oh man, that’s sucks. You wanna protein shake?”
“No. I’m good. I’m trying to get all the baseball player stink off me right now anyway—protein included.”
Big J made his way to a mixer bottle and a giant canister of powder. “What are you going to do now? Like, play in Japan or something.”
“Meh, I don’t know. Sit around and drink beer and play video games for a couple weeks until I’m motivated. ‘Course, if I decide I like it, I might just sit around and drink beer and play video games for the rest of my life. I guess I will have to figure out something since beer and video games don’t pay for themselves. Maybe I’ll brew my own beer, and design my own video games. They say you should do what you love.”
Big J stared at me, confused if I was being serious or not.
I passed a hand across my stubble. “I was actually trying to go to Japan before I got the axe,” I said, returning once again to small, directed sentences.
“Would you like it over there?” He asked.
“Hell yeah, they invented video games. Well, most of the good ones anyways.”
“Then you should do it.”
“I can’t just say, ‘hey Japan, I wanna play baseball at your house tonight’ and they’ll be all like, ‘Oh, Dirka-san, we love have you, come, please, and bring large steakheaded friend,’ Doesn’t work that way.”
“They talk like that? That’s funny.”
“Yeah, they all talk like that.” I said.
“Why wouldn’t they let you come over if you wanted to? You can play.”
“Because…” I took a deep breath, “because they wouldn’t. Trust me. You have to know how to use a samurai sword and I never took that in college. I did wine tasting instead.”
“So you’re not gong to be working out then?”
“Oh, I am. It’s ingrained in me now. That’s the damn problem Big J. I mean, I could do anything I wanted outside of baseball, but I have this baseball player tick inside of me to compete at something, or push myself at something, or throw baseballs at something. I could use most of those traits in some other line of work… just which one?” I shook my fists at the heavens.
“Wow. You sound obsessive,” said Big J between sucking down his shake.
“You’re lucky you’re bigger than me,” I said.
Big J laughed, then asked, “why?”
“Oh, never mind man. I’ll be in here to work out with you, don’t worry, I’ll be in here even if I don’t know what I’m in here for.”
“Because we’re friends, and you’d miss me,” said Big J.
“That’s exactly it, buddy.”