Flashback Friday (aka: Forehead foreskin due to a lack of forethought)

Flashback Friday will not be a weekly thing, but this story has been sitting in my brain for a good bit, and needed to come out. This is one of my favorite, and least favorite stories... 

My journey has not been a short one. It has not been a successful one. I guess the word “success” is somewhat nebulous. I have learned a lot about myself over the past 20 years. Maybe that’s a “success”. I have learned to come to terms with the role weight SHOULD play in my self-worth. I don’t feel that this is a win though. I have a goal, and I have not achieved that goal. That is a failure. The journey to reclaiming your physical identity is easy to misinterpret. The goals and measures of progress are mostly quantified by physical stats. Weight, body fat %, visibility of abs, clothing sizes. What tends to get lost is the mental growth… learning to reassess how you judge your value, the self confidence that comes with physical ability, learning to set healthy habits, and learning just how strong you can really be. During a 20 year series of failures, my mental fortitude is what has been tested the most.

This story I am about to tell you, is about my mental journey. This is probably the day I learned the most about myself. One event… no… wait… “incident” may be a better word.. One incident that taught me so much about myself. What I like, and what I don’t like. (I am going to change the names of those involved because I don’t have their permission to tell this story… I asked if I could, and they asked that I not use their name.

It was an unusually warm spring that year. I remember this because my gym at the time had a faulty central air system. I guess if we use the loosest definition of the term “worked”, the air system “worked”. However, considering the row of giant floor to ceiling windows that lined the west and south sides of the gym, and the excessive numbers of tank top clad bodybuilders that frequented this gym, the outdated air system bolted to the two story high ceiling didn’t even put a dent in the stagnant air. I attended this gym during one of my periods of personal training. I was a bit green about how to select a trainer, and I had chosen him based on physical appearance alone. Almost as if I said “I want to look like you look… where  do I sign  up”. I knew pretty early in the process that I had chosen poorly, but had developed a bit of a friendship with him, and my workouts became chat sessions most of the time.

It was one of those especially hot days that our incident occurred. The cause of this incident can be attributed to the fact that I am a walking calamity. I am not ungraceful or unathletic, I am unlucky. I have a tendency to leave a trail of unintended hilarity in my wake. Of course I play this up a bit, because I am always looking for a laugh. But I am not going to pretend that I am not riddled with unintendedly hilarious yet awkward experiences. My entire life can be summed up by my love of a good story to tell. In order to have good stories, you have to knowingly allow a certain level of idiocy to befall you, and you need to be willing to tell stories that paint you in a somewhat unflattering light. You have to be able to roll with things, and let go of control a bit.

I could feel my trainer knew he was losing hold on me as a client. With the warm weather came an increased level of commitment from him.. we will call him “Tommy” (this is not his name because he asked me not to use his name). Also, with the warm weather, I had increased my commitment to my health as well. Of course my increased commitment was born from the fact that beach season was coming… I had to have my bikini body in line. Tommy’s method of training himself, as well as his method of training me, lead to what would become a life and sexuality defining moment.

5-4-3-3-3-2-1… He had a habit of this. As he counted down my repetitions, he would watch me.. and if he felt I had some gas in the tank, he would repeat a number over and over. He really wanted to get every rep he could from me, because he knew that on days I worked out alone I would shave a rep or two off my goal. This system always ensured that I got every ounce of energy out. It also left me prone to needing help. My muscles would work to exhaustion, and I would need help finishing my last rep. I cant count the number of times I would be in the middle of a set, and I would need help reracking the weight. We had a few minor issues… I dropped a weight on top of his water bottle once, and it exploded water everywhere. I also had one incident where my last box jump ended with me not clearing the lip of the box and I tumbled over the box and landed on my head on the other side. This was made particularly humiliating because it was right in front of a group of women who had just exited an exercise class, and when I landed, my shirt got pulled up over my head. See, this is the type of stuff I love. Even as I laid upside down with my shirt over my head and half my ass probably showing (fat guys know that a sudden fall always ends with ass crack showing), right in front of a group of legging wearing foxes, I wasn’t embarrassed because I knew it was funny.

The following incident that I am about to describe was not met with the same sense of whimsy. I debated telling you this story because it left me changed in a very real and very permanent way. Self-actualization is not a journey that should be traveled unguided. Sometimes you get answers to questions you never felt a need to ask. Sometimes you don’t ask these questions because you don’t want to know the answer, or are scared what the answer will be. I can still feel the sweat pouring off me. My trainer and I were doing an endurance day. We were going for max reps on every workout, with very little rest in between. By the time we got to the final workout of the day, he had saved my favorite exercise for last. The bench press. Its such a meathead guy exercise. He saved it for last as a dangled carrot of sorts. If I just got through all of the work outs I didn’t enjoy, my reward was a session of my favorite exercise. But, by the time I began to pound out my reps on the bench, I was already pretty fatigued from a long day of hard working out. It had to be 90 degrees in the gym, and I had already worked most of my body to failure. Deadlifts, squats, upright rows, push ups, strict press… I was gassed.

The goal for my workout was 3 sets of 20 reps at 75% of max weight. We picked a weight that I can easily do. A weight I had done a million times. The goal was to completely fatigue the muscles. Set one was completed without a hitch. 20 perfect, slow, methodical reps. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. I sat up triumphant. Like a god damn king. Like a typical idiot guy, I sat at the end of the bench sort of dramatically stretching my arm across my chest as to announce to the gym “Look how amazing I am and how hard I am working… LADIES… LADIES.. IM OVER HERE”.

Set two wasn’t as easy. I really had to dig deep. My last few reps felt as though they required energy from every inch of my oversized body. God, its been so long since this happened, but I can still remember looking up at my trainer for approval as I reracked the weights, and seeing his dumb fucking smug potato faced grin looking back at me. He was not impressed. I could feel his mocking tones. Anyone who knows me, knows exactly how much I hate this. I shot up like lightening, and spun to look at him. That son of a bitch looked back at me and smirked a disapproving smirk that shot fire down my spine. The next words out of his mouth almost ended our relationship. He had the audacity to suggest we just call it a day and go schedule our next appointment. Now, here is a good life lesson… I am a firm believer that the first rule in public speaking is the same as the first rule in life… “Know your audience”. In other words, “KNOW WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE TALKING TO”. There was no way I was going to allow this fucking meat head to judge me. Me? I had done this weight a million times.

I took my 90 second rest, and I laid down for set number 3. I couldn’t allow this steroid using, shriveled testicle having, bag of shit to mock me. I had to win. I had to win this contest that only I knew we were having. 1-2-3-4.. I was counting out the reps quickly as I flew through my set. My muscles felt hollow. There was almost nothing left. I was pounding these reps out with sheer will. Tommy’s attention started to wane as he looked around the gym for a woman to assault with his glances. 5-6…..-7…… my body was fading and I was laboring through every re-….. .oh fuck… MY BODY IS COMPLETELY OUT OF GAS… ¾ of the way through a rep, it happened… my body gave up. I felt the bar start racing for my throat, and my arms had nothing left to try and stop the free fall. Tommy snapped to attention and dove out to rescue me. I had done this weight a million times.

It took a perfect storm. Had I not entered into an ill-advised and marginally provoked pissing match with my trainer, this wouldn’t have happened. Had Tommy not been scouring the room for beautiful women to make uncomfortable, this wouldn’t have happened. If Tommy wasn’t sore from his workout that morning, this wouldn’t have happened. Had we not been fatigued from the fact it was 90 degrees in the gym, it wouldn’t have happened. But all of these factors did happen, so the incident happened. As Tommy dove out and grabbed the bar to help me rerack the weight, his momentum carried him out over my body. He lost his footing a bit, and his forward momentum coupled with my inability to be of any help, caused the weight of the bar to pull Tommy down and out over the top of me. Tommy’s body landed smack dab on top of me…. And then… then we experienced “the incident”… the single act that forever defined our relationship. Tommy’s crotch landed, with a whip like thud, right on top of my forehead. The combination of the thin material that comprised his gym shorts, and my lack of hair, contributed to the thoroughness and detail I was able to use in studying the shape and size of his penis with my scalp. I felt dong. Lots of dong. Trainer dong. My trainers dong. I felt it with my forehead. And with great detail. If his penis committed a crime, I could use my forehead to spot his penis in a line up. Unbeknownst to me, this was the calm before the storm. Tommy had realized the issue as well, and instinctively tried to remedy the situation. The only problem is, having not spent much of his life straddling a dudes head while holding a barbell, his footing was not as sure as he hoped… and his exit strategy was untested and therefore unpredictable. As he tried to dismount, he actually ended up falling off to the side of me, but without being able to create clearance. Yes, his penis drew a detailed map from my right temple, to the left side of my chin. His testicles bouncing along behind, just happy to be along for the ride. While his penis took a tried and true path from point A to point B, his giddy shrunken testicles decided to study the contours of my face with bouncing giddy glee.

As Tommy tumbled to the ground, the reality of what just happened, simultaneously absorbed deep into both of our souls. He stood up and helped get the barbell off me, and then we just stared at each other. Neither of us spoke. I mean, what was left to say. What words could I hear over the chanting chorus of “you had his dong on your cheek” that was screaming in my head. We stared at each other for what felt like an hour, without seeing each other for a second. Neither of us could climb outside of our own minds. We never spoke about this again, until yesterday when I asked him if I could tell this story. I doubt either of us will ever speak about it again. This was the day in which I set out to test my body, but ended up confirming my sexuality. I have had enough dong on my head to confirm that this is not my preference. Everyone should seek to confirm their sexual identity… although there are probably better ways to do it.