A freshman has their nose to the ground. His top half is drooping off the side of the utility bench, hands out to catch himself. His thighs and everything beneath them are resting on the bench. He looks like he’s peering off the side of a cliff. His wired earbuds are swaying frantically, looking like a game of jump rope as he straightens his arms, lifting himself, before collapsing back towards the floor with pokey, awkward elbows. Not kissing earth. Headbutting it. Another, splayed out on a yoga mat. Her arms and legs sprout to each end, head down. Praying. I blink, and her waist shoots into the air like she’s repulsed by the ground, as if it’s scalding oil. Stretching like a cat in the afternoon sun. Another is throwing his arms into the air with dumbbells for hands. Another is tripping over their scuffed Adidas on a treadmill. Another drops five hundred million pounds of dead weight onto the ground, screaming in gleeful agony, pounding his chest, possessed by the primal rage of his ancestors.  

Every time I press my hip against the gym’s turnstile, falling into this box of clanging metal and musky sweat, I must remind myself that this is a gym. Gymnasium. Not a circus. Not a foreign, bustling street with signs I can’t pronounce. Gym. Subtitle: No outsiders allowed.  

I have always been an outsider—a visitor—to this world. I thought I was a good liar when I ran onto the track in middle school, crushing cicada shells beneath my feet, eager for football tryouts. A litter of boys flipping truck tires in the Bluegrass heat as their hair frizzed out into lion manes. My arms snapped like twigs under the weight of hot rubber and expectations. My stomach filled with muggy summer air, pumping shredded chicken and mushy apples up my throat and onto the grass. Eyes watering (no, I’m not crying), hands on dusty kneecaps, a heaving, dry mouth. I looked like a broken toy amongst the other boys standing tall, wound up ready for more. At the edge of the track, spotlit under the stadium lights, the coach was staring.  

Not at my pool of vomit or collapsed figure or upright tire begging to be pushed over.  

Right at my own watery eyes, swimming with self-pity and burning anger to be something impressive. He spat at the ground and shook his head. Subtitle: No liars allowed. 

I survey the expansive room filled with pec fly machines and weight plates, and sickly green yoga balls fading with age. It reminds me of a giant aircraft hangar, the way day floods in from the thick windows onto these clunky machines. You could spot a gnat dancing in the sunlight no matter where you stood. Wide open. Nowhere to hide myself. I hook a frayed rope to a cable machine, step back, stretching my muscles to make myself look strong, trying to carve out my own space.  

The rope feels like thick, knotted horsehair: itchy and burning my palms. I pull the cable down to the ground with me, brushing my knee against the rough rubber floor. My arms make exaggerated, bulky movements, bringing the rope from sky to ear like I’m rowing a boat in some freshwater rapids. I count my reps in pleas: Oh, to be there; to be anywhere else but here; to eat without guilt; to be infinitely tall; to look my father in the eye; to be fit and hot and beautiful  

and— 

“Woah, slow down, man!”  

The voice rips through my concentration, putting me in a dead stop. I splay my hands out like I’m being arrested, releasing the rope and sending it up with a clang. My eyes naturally move to the man before me, totally eclipsing the sun and cloaking me in his shadow.  

“Sorry,” I say. A question? A statement? I never know, but, involuntarily, it is a word which always scrapes across my tongue and out my mouth.   

“I said slow down.” 

He has a rough, red-leather face, looking like a sun-scorched iguana. He is as wide as he is tall, with shoulders that square his figure off like old castle doors. He’s squinting down at me, trying to read my intentions. I feel like a cold-called kid in lecture, trying to shrink away into myself.  

I felt as I did at the edge of campus, standing on the corner where university spills into downtown. I’d lived there my whole life, reminiscing as I looked out at the duck pond and park benches my mother used to lift me up on. Arms out, wonderful and innocent, before I’d ever thought to look downwards at the litter on the ground or at the roadside memorials driven into the mud.  

The sun was spotlighting me in my sweater vest and ear piercings. Through my music, I hear the chugging of a truck muffler. It blows by me as the light flashes green, and its driver leaves me with one parting word. It struck me like a javelin between the eyes. I completely forgot where I was, forgetting the ducks and the park benches and the beauty of the city I loved. Insults have always hit me like a wet dish sponge, heavy enough to leave me cold and dirty, yet always falling off of me and to the floor. This one lodged its way deep into my skull. I was like Phineas Gage with a hot, metal beam of anger driven into my brain and out my cheek.  

I never remembered the man’s face, but his red Chevy, dirty with grime and rust, has always occupied my mind. Subtitle: No faggots allowed. 

 Mr. Iguana was still lurched over me like I was some prey he could pounce on. I force myself to get off the floor, meeting him at eye-level. My body feels heavy, bewilderment and shame weighing down my bones.  

“I had to stop you. You were going to hurt yourself,” he says. His rigid features relax as he speaks to me. There’s a glimmer behind his eyes.  

I look up at the rope, swinging with laughter like a noose in the western wind. Mocking me. How can I blame this on you?  

“Was I?” 

“Big time,” he says, launching into a tirade of advice, commenting on my body like an essay begging for corrective red ink. Target muscle this. Rep count that. Bodies all around me, all in motion. Television screens blaring the news behind me (another missing kid?). His animated hands stretching to his side, miming lateral raises. Christ bloody on the cross. Amidst it all, I only note the highlights of his grand speech: 

• Muscles are like rubber bands, meant to be stretched and broken. 

• It’s not about moving weight but controlling it. 

• Go until failure.  

He throws me a different rope to use, adjusting the machine so I’m standing instead of kneeling. 

“You’re new to the gym, aren’t you?”  

“Newer,” I responded, avoiding his eyes. You’ve been going for years. 

His reptilian features return, smiling a satisfied smile like a proud uncle.  

“Well, good luck,” he says, walking away. A few feet out, he throws his head over his shoulder, shouting something which barely reaches me through the chaos. 

“Remember: Rubber bands!” 

For a good while, I stand, soul thrown onto one foot, just trying to understand it all. An unbalanced mess. It’s not about moving weight but controlling it. 

I look down. I clutch the rope. This one fresh and fair, like it could melt into my palms.  

Once more, I tried to carve out my space, trying to worm my way between the delicate worlds of boyhood and manhood. Toy trucks and electric bills. Duck pond and park bench.  

I move slowly, carefully observing the sweet pain nesting in my shoulders. Each tug feels like I’m diving to the bottom of a pool, before releasing my tension and swimming back up to the surface for air. I try to find the rubber band in my body. Each rep brings a new set of thoughts: How can I make it snap? What taught, insecure strings will I cut? Will the aftermath be bloody, violent? What will I hurt? Subtext: No overthinkers allowed.  

I watch the cable stiffen and relax with my movements, looking like a failing organ. My mind lands on the only broken rubber band I’ve ever seen in my life.  

My father was on the front porch, surrounded by fall leaves, with the grill going. He was flipping burgers with childlike wonder, like he’s just discovered fire for the first time. Spatula-microphone to his chapped lips, singing The Doobie Brothers. I just sat there, young, scared, fistful of khaki as I gripped my shorts. Something in me said not to look him in the eyes. Don’t provoke the caveman.  

 He turned. I was ready for him to lift the scalding spatula into the air. Smack me across the face with fatty grease and manly rage. Caveman, caveman! I flinched as he pivoted, releasing my fears and letting a wet spot run down my shorts.  

His eyes widened, and all of his features started to droop, like the shock made his age catch up to him. The whiplash of seeing a distraught child, one who was holding up a bitter, smeared mirror of manhood, broke him. Soiled shorts. Glassy eyes. Trying to swallow myself up. The band within him snapped after sixty-five years, and he broke down in tears before me.  

His crying was like a howl, each sob louder and more uncontrollable than the last. It was an incredibly ugly cry, completely foreign to me, like some forgotten species of the Amazon emerged from hiding. It looked painful. I thought he was dying right then and there. The black grill-smoke engulfed his face as he sobbed.