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Needs to be noted that Fussell was a bodybuilder in the late 80s, when Arnold was seen as an extreme versus Frank Zane.

But Arnold was about 6'1.5" and weighed 235 or so at competition. Compare that to guys like Ronnie and Markus and Jay who stand 5'10" and are nearly 300 lbs at competition weight. The 1980s seem archaic and naive by comparison.

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Introduction
You spot them on the streets of the city and, increasingly, in the malls and parks of the suburbs. Sometimes they band together. Mostly, they walk alone. Bodybuilders. You know the kind. They strut like no others, holding their elbows wider than their shoulders, legs far apart. I know, I was one of them.

For four long years, I trained four hours a day, six days a week with them. I broke whole wheat bread with them. I filled my body with steroids alongside them. I lived with them. And, finally, I competed on stage against them.

The following is an account of my journey - what I did, what I saw, what I felt. Those in search of a steroid primer or an exercise manual are advised to look elsewhere; my purpose is different. Part ditty, part dirge, I sing of arms and the man, of weight rooms and muscle pits, of biceps and triceps, bench press and low pulley rows, of young and old, woman and man, straining and hoisting iron to the boom box sounds of Top 40 record stations in bodybuilding gyms across the land.

I sing of dreamers and addicts, rogues and visionaries. And I sing of my own solitary pilgrimage into this strange world. A world filled with wrist straps and ammonia, BIG Chewables and "the juice." A world governed by a savage force that swallowed me whole from a bookstore in New York City, and did not relent until it had chewed me up and spit me out 80 pounds heavier and 3,000 miles later on a posing dais in Burbank, California. I was swabbed in posing oil and competition color, flexing with all my might, when I came to, a sadder and wiser man.

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(Page 25) It was simple at first - at least, so I thought. By making myself larger than life, I might make myself a little less frail, a little less assailable when it came down to it, a little less human.

(Page 31) It this "no pain, no gain" adage were true, then, I would learn not just to accept pain, but to embrace it.

(Page 43) There was a beautiful simplicity about it. I pushed the iron, and my body grew. The harder I worked, the better I felt. My routine brought order amid chaos.

(Page 48) There wasn't enough pomade, mouthwash, deodorant and talk in this world to eradicate my sins, but what if I created a shell to suppress them? What if my armour not only kept the world out, but kept me in?

(Page 61) Iron made sense to no one. To no one, that is, but me. All I knew was that I had found a sanctuary in the gym, and the more I trained, the better I felt. Out on the streets of New York, I'd found nothing but impediments, red lights, and stop signs everywhere. Inside the gym, I saw only green. ... From exercise to exercise I'd go, feeling as if I were driving a car on a dark, wet night in the city. Suddenly, the stoplight just ahead turns green, the next one green, and green again. YOu don't need to brake for even one light. All you see is the road before you. You're not quite sure why, but you're going at the right speed at the right place and time. You take a quick look at the speedometer. Just to memorize the reading. But there's no need. Just keep it going, another light, another block, another weight, another exercise. Green, green, green.

(Page 61) It beat the street. It beat my girlfriend. It beat my family. I didn't have to think. I didn't have to care. I didn't have to feel. I simply had to lift.

(Page 73) I had always been told that to grow up meant to stop wanting those things you can't have. But everything I'd learned from bodybuilding taught me to fight this notion. You can become the person you dream of being, bodybuilders say. You can defy both nurture and nature and transform yourself.

(Page 80) On my off days, I grew impatient, yearning to speed up time and start the next day's workout. The more I trained, the more desperately I needed to train. My body ached for the pump. I couldn't live without it, that burning sensation acquired through bombing a muscle area. At first it feels like someone rubbing heat balm on the particular muscle you're working, it feels almost numb; then the analgesic spreads. Within minutes, you feel your whole body glowing, as if you're the sole source of illumination in a dark world. You can't help but smile. And it was the pump that kept me going, endorphins running to the rescue whenever I called. If Sisyphus gets a pump from his eternal exercise, I assure you all this time he's been a happy man.

(Page 82) I longed for that conviction, the ease and peace of mind that would come from the simplistic belief that there is a top and a bottom in this world. Top and bottom, black and white, good and evil, positive and negative, big and small, I retreated into a narrow world of dichotomy. I no longer had questions, only solutions, and they all pointed to the weight room.

(page 97) In the final arena, there will be no judges, only witnesses to my greatness.

(Page 194) I didn't need to see passerbys doing double takes to be aware of my own movements, to watch myself - this huge, ungainly creature, suffocated by a world of his own making. In the end, "the Walk" I did, the being I had become, felt stifling, limiting, claustrophobic, far from liberating, as it had once been on the corner of Fifty-third and Second back in New York.

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I am astonished the book is not more widely known and read.

The book is a little glib, a little arty, but very, very good. I am not sure Fussell is being straight with us; it is as though he tells us things that he thinks will sell his book. Nevertheless, he is quite on target with what I know about bodybuilding. In fact, I think the truth is now way beyond what he told about.

Bodybuilding is a -- sport? profession? obsession? -- full of contradictions that well deserves Sam Fussell's book. "Muscle" poses as an antidote to an adolescent fantasy. But still it feeds the fantasy.

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I know exactly what you mean - I could hardly put the book down when I read it the first time. As far as what he tells us in the book, I'll admit that some of it does sound outlandish; but, I have given it to some people who come back and tell me things like:

"Yeah, I remember the YMCA back then - it was exactly like that".

So, at least parts of it are apparently dead-on.

I wish the book was more well known. I try to pass it on to all the people I think might appreciate it.

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I agree, it's like a special club, those of us who appreciate Sam and his book. I was just as engulfed in "bodybuilding" as Sam was. It was VERY difficult to return to being "mortal" after nearly a decade of being a super-human. He did a terriffic job telling his story, the story of thousands of would-be Arnolds, and I would be honored to some day shake his hand and say "well done and thanks for your courage and honesty." I reread his book every year or two myself. It's too bad that he hasn't written anything else. Or has he?

(From the comments section)

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Ben,

To my mind, Muscle's blood courses and pumps through the veins of satire, the tradition running from Swift (and way before that) to the 'Gonzo Journalism' of Hunter S. Thompson.

Hardcore bodybuilding itself is such an extreme, exaggerated activity.

For instance, does anyone actually believe Schwarzenegger ever was what his purported physical resume claimed he was?

Do you honestly believe he ever had 20 inch calves?

Or 22 and 1/4 inch arms?

Or, for that matter, was ever six foot 2 inches tall?

Bodybuilding is a lie through which we see the truth.

In other words, Schwarzenegger based a career on lying, but his arms were so outrageous that he could lead you to believe what he pretended.

Ditto the rest of his physical resume.

(Doesn't anyone find it outrageous and obscene that the movie, Pumping Iron, never mentions the word, 'steroids?' Not once. Talk about living a lie! (I guess the image of bodybuilders shooting up with syringes doesn't mesh well with apple pie, even dosed with protein powder).

Again, in my personal opinion, the diaper wearing deadlifter in Fussell's book continues the theme of the baby food eating bodybuilders, gobbling Gerber with tiny spoons at the juice bar, post-workout.

In other words, it's a world reduced to infantalism.

Or, perhaps, given the "Mine is bigger than yours is" goal of the activity, arrested adolescence.

Which isn't to say it's not a blast.

Ditto, the book.

If you want the standard public relations view of bodybuilding, stick to the magazines, who have a vested interest in lying in order to sell you products...

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Fussell, I believe, touches on some of these concepts in his book as well. He definitely talks about how bodybuilding and the world therein is very much about theater (bad theater) and self-reinvention. As far the actual details, I am not sure that they are that critical. As you say, the fact that Arnold's physique was so amazing was what mattered - the actual inch measurements were merely some codification of that, but not what people were intriguted with.

As far as steroids, I might be wrong, but I don't think they were illegal at the time of the filming. At that, I don't think they even talked about protein intake in the movie either. I'm not trying to dismiss your comment - I'm just suggesting that the information was perhaps not discusses out of some alterior motive, but rather as something that simply wasn't covered. To me, the movie was more about the psycho-social aspects of bodybuilding more than any technical/nutritional manual.

Have you ever watched the 25th Anniversary edition of the movie with the behind the scenes? I'd highly recommend it - it just really good. Arnold himself talks about how he perhaps took his whole "persona" too far. The director also talks about how he artificially created and played up much more competition that was actually there. At the end of the day, it's all about good entertainment, I suppose.

Have you seen Bigger, Faster, Stronger - The Side Effects of Being American? I would recommend that as well.

[www.bennadel.com]

... it gives a much more honest, more critical view of the fitness world, this time concentrating very much on the topic of steroids (even in women's sports).

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. Fussell earned his words. Talk about a hardcore gym-rat. Don't think so? Try benching 400 plus, squatting 500 plus and deadlifting 500 plus.

B. The reason the book was controversial when it came out, 19 years ago (!) is that he was honest, not dishonest.

If you think the behavior of the bodybuilders was embellished, it means you've never trained at a hardcore gym. These gyms are about lift-and-scream, not lift-and-giggle. These gyms are about growing, not toning, suffering, not smiling. The use of chalk and the practice of spitting (and, if need be, puking) is allowed - if not encouraged.

In hardcore gyms, there is almost a hierarchical status based on crazed, hardcore behavior. The inmates take great pride, in the asylum, to see just how outrageous they can behave. It's part of the fun, for God's sake. It's entertaining.

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Agreed on the hardcore gyms.

Any one who prefers the image to reality ("The truth? You can't handle the truth!), shouldn't read books, much less Fussell's book.

Bodybuilding is a 'sport' (or at least competition) of appearances.

In the far more financially lucrative field of physical appearances, female modeling, models regularly stick a finger down their throat to regurgitate food, use drugs as diuretics and as appetite-suppressants, and frequently supplement their incomes by taking 'play-for-pay' when it comes the bedroom. But who cares about the truth? They are paid to 'give good face,' regardless of how they get it (or how much they pay their plastic surgeon for it).

Duh.

Ditto, competition bodybuilding.

It turns out the beauty contest is not so beautiful.

Or the Fairy Tale doesn't have such a happy ending.

Given this, I suspect Fussell actually sugar-coated much of the story in order to protect his friends.

For instance, Gordon Kimbrough, who competed against Fussell for the heavyweight title of Mr. Golden Valley, ended up murdering his live-in girlfriend with a kitchen knife sliced across her throat when she actually had the nerve to object to his cheating on her. Oh yeah, he beat her up first before he took a knife to her throat.

When the police SWAT team stormed through the door of his San Francisco apartment, they found him on the floor with his girlfriend's nearly severed head lolling on his lap. And what was Kimbrough doing?

As they trained their weapons on him, he was busy trying to use one of his steroid syringes to inject bleach into his carotid artery to kill himself.

Honestly, you can't make this stuff up. Reality's too rich, as is.

As to Oprah, it would be great to see Fussell on the show. Since he's a guy who had the guts to fight the establishment and to write his own autobiographry, and she's the talk-show host who had a ghost writer pen her 'autobiography' and then cancel it, pre-publication, because she realized that her image and brand would be tainted by the truth, yes, by all means, bring them together and let her take notes on what it means to be truthful (and what it costs).

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I haven't really been to any hardcore gyms. I'd love to one day (there's a few in the city here); but, it's very intimidating. But, even in regular gyms - my college gym for that matter - there is plenty of heightened attitude. I used to have one friend who would shake the entire squat rack for 5 seconds (knocking plats off the side) to get himself psyched up for the set.

Ooooh, I totally forgot, there used to be this one guy in my gym would would walk around in the most ridiculous outfits and sunglasses and occassionally yell out, "It's GO TIME!!" Every now and then he would even common-dear the loud speaker and announce, "I'm about to hit it hard - anyone here thinks they can keep up with, then let's do this!!"

I used to have so much fun with my lifting buddies just discussing the "personalities" at the gym.

@Reg,

On the topic of giving good face, the irony of the bodybuilding world is that when these people "look" their "best" is actually when they are probably in the most unhealthy shape possible. In the book, he talks about it hurting to walk because there's no fat on his feet. But, even today, you always hear about people passing out back stage or needing oxygen tanks or having horrendous muscle cramps.

If you ever read "Flexibility" by Flex Wheeler, he talks about how he needs to sleep with a pillow under between his legs and under his arms because otherwise, the weight of his limbs upon his body is enough to interfere with proper blood circulation. He even said that if he didn't hug a pillow, his arm would put too much strain on his chest. He also talks about how his girlfriend would have to help him get to the bathroom when he was often too weak from dieting to walk.

It's a bit crazy, right?