“…the sorcerer silenced him with lifted hand and a bland, uncaring smile.”

-6, The Chamber of Sphinxes, page105

Circles of Friends

I had a group of friends growing up in Shorewood, and I knew Robby from Taekwondo class in sixth grade. Then when we got together in high school I hung out with him and his friends, so I had that group of friends. One of his buddies was this guy named Quan. He got me my job at Cub Foods doing security and at Builder’s Square. We were pretty close until he moved to Michigan. One time he got bit by a girl with AIDS working security and he had to go get tested every six months. Sean was a neighbor of Dwayne, part of the Shorewood Crew, had a reputation for being a brawler, an Irish kid.

When I started working at Brown’s Chicken, there was an eclectic group there from five different high schools. At one time or another I hung out with all of there different friends groups.

Tony was the manager, ten years older than me. He was into lifting weights. I started working out with him in his basement. His best friend, was Scott, who was eleven years older than me. We used to work out at least three days, sometimes five days a week. We’d go for a run around Tony’s subdivision afterwards and go back to Tony’s house and slug protein drinks. I went to a lot of parties and ended up hanging out with these guys. That’s who I did the vast majority of my fishing with, Tony and Scot and their friends. Mike was from Brown’s and Rick was his brother.

All of these groups intersected with the others because I would invite my other friends to various parties.

Muscleheads

From the Taekwondo basement gym and Tony’s basement, we expanded our training. A gym opened close to my house in Shorewood and I joined that and became friends with this kid Jason who won every teenage bodybuilding contest in Illinois. Then we went to college together and were in the same classes so we would go to the gym with each other around our schedule. Our schedules were pretty much the same in Junior College. He introduced me to his friends. Because he knew everybody who was anybody in body building in Illinois, I made a lot of connections. One gym we went and started training at a lot, this guy named Bill, who won the Mister America, it was twenty minutes away, we started going there and hanging out with him. It was quite a ways to drive but it was the best gym around. The atmosphere was really good.

A couple of the guys I met in that era I ended up working with, who happened to be electricians working in my own local, which was fun. Nick, I met first with Jason and I worked with him later on. He was 5’ 11” and 295 at his biggest, with no gut, when I first met him. Later on when I worked with him he was probably still 260 and lean. He had a lot of trouble with his feet because he was so big for so long the arches were shot and he had to wear orthotics. He could only handle working an eight hour day. He had to turn down over time because he couldn’t stand for that long.

Back at Kwon’s, when I was working out there with Mike, his older brother Rick and his friends were the main crew at that gym. They were really hard core. You were a pussy if you weren’t squatting. Mike and Rick had really big upper bodies. Rick could use a lot of weight squatting and leg pressing but didn’t have very big legs himself and said he kept them small so that something else looked bigger. On the back of his leather lifting belt was written “French Fries” in marker and he would say those ain’t fries those are french fries. They started me out squatting with just the bar at 135. Within a couple months I was doing my reps and sets with 315.

I wanted to be a big muscle head but I didn’t want to do the steroids. The injections I always associated with hard core drugs and it seemed too much. I knew people who spent all there money on steroids. I always wanted to bulk up and get bigger so I never wanted to diet. Besides dieting is no fun, bulking up is a lot more fun!

I got more into power lifting because I knew I was never going to be a body builder. I used to go to APF meets [American Powerlifting Federation, because they were based out of Aurora, Illinois.] I did the lift off for my friend Stan who did a 507 pounds bench press in the 242 pound drug-tested class. Every time I was consistently squatting or dead lifting 500 pounds I would fuck up my back. My best bench press was 375. I wanted to do 400 so bad because my buddy Scott could bench 405 and Stan was benching 500.

So, my shoulders are bugging me and I just kept grinding away at it. I stopped because my shoulders were sore all the time and I started regressing. I started Olympic lifting just for fun and to work out. I noticed that in my class the top ten in the nationals at the time did around a 100 kilo snatch and a 150 kilo clean and jerk. So I focused my efforts on that. I could power clean and jerk 315. But didn’t have the good form to do a squat clean, which lets you use more weight. I could snatch 185, and so 220, is a 100 kilos, so I was trying to get up to that. The 150 clean and jerk is like 330 pounds, so I had those as my goal weights. I was pushing the front squat trying to get strong in that position so I would be able to squat clean. I fucked up my back, lost a front squat forward with 275 and I couldn’t even tie my shoes after I did that. I pretty much quit trying to do a lot of weight in the Olympic lifts. I did those exercises but didn’t push it.

I never stopped, really, using weights. I would do dips because I could and it helped me keep strong. In the weight rooms at hotels, I could still do the max on the machines because of the work I did with the dips.

Sean’s Plight

[Back to the venn diagram of friends, and the enigmatic Sean.]

Sean was just a guy in the neighborhood and we were the same age and ended up in the same places, casual friends. One night we were playing darts together, I like to play cricket. He throws a dark that sticks in the back of another dart like a fucking Robin Hood! I never saw that before. The next day we were all going to meet at Dwayne’s house and help his mother move. His stepdad had passed away and it was just his mom and she was moving. I was maybe 21. Sean didn’t show up for the moving.

Sean wasn’t there, at his house, the next day and everything was quiet at his house. No one was answering the door. We found out later from his little brother that some cop that they knew called the family and warned them that they were on to Sean for the murder at the beer distributor.

Sean had gotten fired from his job and he went in to get his last check and got in an argument with the guy that fired him and he stabbed him to death. That was two weeks before we were playing darts together! He was on the run for like seven months with family, hiding out. They gave him like a life sentence.