Yes, that makes sense, could very well explain her flashes of unreasoning, baseless anger, those sudden surges of unprovoked rage, which make her grit her teeth and growl, like a pit bull's final warning before it leaps on its victim and tears it apart.
Not, she tells herself, not that that's all such a bad thing, that extra surge of adrenalin that enables her to squeeze out that last repetition of a particularly gruelling exercise, that final bench press that will put the crowning, glory on the front heads of her deltoids, the outer edges of her pectorals.
Yes, they say that the steroids are bad for her, bad for anyone.
But so far, they've been pretty good to her, pretty good at giving her that muscle density and bulk she needs if she is to become, to become-more.
Yes, that's what she has to constantly become, in simplest terms.
More.
Meaning bigger, more muscular, more well defined.
Only thus can she justify her continued existence to herself, to the world.
One more pussy, one more pair of tits?
What the fuck does the world need with that?
Somebody to walk around sucking air, pissing in front, shitting behind and feeling like hell every twenty-eight days, hey, the world can live without that.
And she can certainly live without that.
But this, this! that a is building here, that she is evolving, forcing elf to become, well, this justifies her existenc This gives her a reason to go on living.
The others?
Let them think what they want, do what they want, be what they want.
Which is mostly nothing, zero, this last. And the rest is bullshit.
And yes, there are times when she envies them their indifference to the meaninglessness of their lives.
Because she sees them being happy, or at least imagining themselves to be so.
It's not true, of course, not if they stop to take a serious look at themselves, at their lives.
Not if they stop to realize their true situation.
Of course, some (many, most) of them couldn't do as she is, couldn't make of themselves what she has and is and will.
They don't have the structure for it-not the bones, not the height, not the proportion.
Face it, she tells herself, they haven't got the basic tools, the raw material to work with.
Those, she can understand, can forgive.
They are condemned for life, in her eyes as much cripples as any paraplegic, as any basket case, anyone confined to a wheel chair.
They call it normal; she calls it degenerate. At the gym, she is both loved and hated.
Well, not loved, perhaps, but respected as the undisputedly best personal trainer anyone can have, man or woman.
Hence, the hatred.
Because she is a fanatic and her methods those of a fanatic, of a training terrorist.
She will tolerate no compromise in the performance of the exercises, no deviation in the pursuit of the schedule.
She is serious and if they can't be likewise, then they don't want her as a personal trainer.
Rejection hurts, but there is a reason for it.
And because that reason involves personal truths (too lazy, too indifferent, too lacking in courage or motivation), and because people are what they are, there arises the hatred of her.
Because these are, after all, men and women, not animals, not beasts of burden to do what no animal, no beast would ever do, to put themselves through the tortures of the damned in order to gain a quarter of an inch here, in order to bring out a striation there.
That's crazy. She's crazy, warped, demented.
Because, after all, that's not what life is all about.
So that they are in the right, she is in the wrong, the maniac.
And, as much to show her just how wrong she is as to recover their self-esteem, they train with Marilyn.
More money for Marilyn, less for Doreen. Hitting her where it counts, which is in the pocket book.
Except that there are two things wrong with that. Number one, money doesn't count all that much with Doreen.
Number two, she has all the clients she wants, all she can handle, turning away further applicants right now.
Because she cannot have even her income cutting into her own time, time she needs to work out, time which she cannot, will not compress into under four hours a day, six days a week on a split routine, alternating upper and lower body.
And in fact, she is lucky to get by with four hours a day.
Because there is always something, some part of her that needs work.
Perhaps it's imaginary, a trick of the light as she gazes intently at herself in the full-length mirror, but then, that too is all to the good.
Because that adds additional impetus to her drive for perfection, a perfection which is ever before her, ever receding away from her, the carrot to her donkey.
So that she is not, can never be-there. So that there is, always will be-more.
So that she can live with, can survive dismissals and defections with perfect indifference, water off a duck's back.
She forgives them their hatred, understanding f without returning it.
No, her hatred is reserved for Marilyn.
For Marilyn, the liar, the cheat, the thief, all in one.
Indeed, she feels a kind of sympathy for Marilyn's client le, especially for those who would genuinely like to get built.
Because they will never do it, will never make it, not as long as Marilyn is their trainer.
Because Marilyn will never push them.
There are two things a bodybuilder wants from muscle-bulk and definition.
And Marilyn will never permit her people to handle the weight, to perform the hard core routines that will give them either..
So that Marilyn is living a lie.
Because Doreen knows how Marilyn builds herself, what she does.
Which is practically the same thing Doreen herself does.
So that those who have her as a personal trainer may think that they can use her as an example- that, after all, is partly what being a trainer is all about, to provide living inspiration-but they will never get there, will never be where she is, using the poundages or the exercises she prescribes.
Her body, with respect to her clients, is therefore a living lie.
And she is both a cheat and a thief because she takes money from them under what Doreen considers to be false pretenses.
And in fact, Doreen can't stand to watch Marilyn train her clients, sickened as she is by what she considers to be the waste of their potential.
As they make progress, certainly, but not nearly at the rate that Doreen thinks they should.
Because her own clients, those who can tolerate her perfectionism, her hard-driving regimens, do ever so much better, results-wise, even though they are not as happy, as comfortable over what it takes to get the results they achieve.
And with Doreen, at least, they graduate.
That is, at a certain point, their routines defined, their results solidly underway, Doreen sends them on their way, as it were.
Whereas, with Marilyn, they stay as long as they feel it to be necessary.
Each of them have six one-hour clients right now. So that they are, essentially, booked full since, under personal training, it's always one on one.
* * *
Doreen is glad that it's Saturday, that she has gotten her last client out of the way early.
Because she is always depleted by the end of the week, looking forward to Sunday, her day off.
Doreen plans to enter the Ms. Galaxy in the fall.
Not that that makes any difference in her routine, since she is always training to peak capacity, redefining that capacity even as she constantly redefines her notion of her own perfection.
Except that she knows that she will have to work harder as the contest date draws nearer, because it will take her three months to flush the steroids from her system to the point that she can pass the test, since their use for contests is a violation of the rules.
So that, essentially, her progress will be disrupted by the conversion of her routines from building to maintenance.
Still, it can't be helped, not if she is to get that recognition which she deserves and, with it, those rewards which will enable her to give up being a personal trainer.
Because she is convinced that, once she gets the title, she will hold it from then on out, for many years to come.
Unlike Mister Galaxy, Steve, who is on again, off again, for the simple reason that his fellow men are right on his ass, so that he has to go to great and not always successful extremes in his routines, if he is to stay in the running.
Speaking of whom- "Doreen."
"Steve."
Geez, she thinks, my voice is almost as deep as his.
Maybe she'd better go easy on the shots after all.
First the additional body hair, then the increased sex drive-the increased emotions in every area, in fact-and now she's getting that androgynous alto to her voice.
Still, the doctor assures her that her internal organs are continuing to function normally, her blood and blood pressure are likewise okay, so what the hell.
At twenty-five, she could still be a growing girl, with a changing voice.
"Hear you're going for it this year," he says.
"Heard the same about you."' They laugh.
"No uh, locals, no regionals, no... preliminaries?" he asks.
"Why should I let `em know I'm coming?"
"I admire your confidence, Doreen."
"You saying it's misplaced?" .
"Easy girl, easy! Saying nothing of the kind. "Just uh, the atmosphere, the contest environment, you know?
"Thought you might wanna give yourself a break, go through the motions where it doesn't count, maybe smooth out any wrinkles in your act and like that."
"Stan says it's not a requirement."
"Stan's right," Steve responds, shrugging. "He already got the go-ahead from Randy Buck on the sponsorship?"
"Absolutely. Stan's got confidence in me, unlike some people, apparently."
"Anything can happen."
"But not to me, Steve, not to me. I work too hard, plan too carefully."
"Oh, and like I don't?"
"Now who's getting defensive?"
"Watch out for those injections, Doreen; they're making you irritable."
"People who tell me I'm irritable make me irritable."
"See what I mean?
"Listen, if you're through for today, I am too. We both have to eat, so what say we chow down together, my treat?"
Doreen looks him up and down, a monster in grey sweats, and he looks at her, sunlamp-tanned muscles gleaming with perspiration, limbs showing in tank top and shorts, her headband soaked through.
Because both of them know that tomorrow is the day of rest from both their routines.
So that this is much more than merely an invitation to supper.
But then, to Doreen, at least, that is very much a part of her scene, of late.
The shots, no doubt, but then she always did have a pretty strong sex drive.
"Sounds... reasonable to me," she says.
And they hit their respective showers.
* * *
A tiger by the tail, Steve thinks, as the soapy water cascades off him. And the phrase repeats itself, over and over again, in his mind.
And his grin spreads wider and wider at this.
Because it's true; something like that, add a steroid emotional distortion, and you've got somebody really unpleasant, perhaps even dangerous to be around-in all situations but one.
And there-well, put it this way, Steve tells himself. He is going to get a little extra definition.
Because Doreen is going to sweat the subcutaneous fat right out of his skin.
And he sees his cock begin to twitch to life at the very thought of it.
* * *
"You two have yourselves a real nice evening, now," Stan, the manager of the gym, says, as they go by the door of his office on their way out.
They merely wave at him and keep going.
True, without Stan's recommendation to Randy Buck, owner of the gym and the franchise of which it is the flagship, she would not have been sponsored by the club for the contest, but then, if Stan didn't consider that to be in the club's best interests, he wouldn't have recommended her to Randy, so it's not as if he was doing her any favors.
And, as for Steve, well, maybe they were close at one time, years ago, but now Steve deals directly with Randy Buck and he and Stan rarely speak, except to say hello.
So that neither of them is inclined to stop and chew the fat with Stan.
* * *
"Nice place," Doreen says, looking around Steve's condo, eighteen floors up in the ultra-modem high rise building. "Of course," she adds, "when you're the titleholder, you can afford the best."
"That had nothing to do with it," Steve replies. "My father left it to me when he died."
"Lucky you-oh! I mean, I'm sorry."
"You mean both actually, I believe."
"That too."
They laugh.
"I'm not being insensitive, actually".
"I never knew my father all that well."
"He travelled frequently, distantly, and for long periods at a time."
"Something to do with international finance. Never took an interest, never knew the details and now, of course, it doesn't matter.
"He did some things right, some things wrong, and ended up with this place and very little else to show for his lifetime of whatever it is he did."
You sound disappointed."
"Not really. How much will any of us have to show that we ever came this way."
"My name in the books, my picture in a few magazines, a collection of trophies, this place, maybe a few bucks in the bank, and that's about it."
"Except for the realization that you lived up to your full potential."
"Do any of us ever really do that?"
"We try, some more successfully than others."
"And meanwhile, we-you-have the satisfaction of knowing that you didn't have to ever be afraid of what you'd see if you looked in the mirror."
"Oh no?"
"Try me the morning after I lost the Mister Galaxy contest a couple years back."
"Yeah, well, at least you knew where you went wrong."
"Would that it were that simple, Doreen. Because, really, I didn't."
"Instead, I just kept blaming myself for every time I gave it less than a hundred percent during my workouts."
"You know-no good, worthless, lazy, and so on and so on?"
"Did you believe yourself?"
"At the time? Damn straight I did!"
"And now?"
"Hey, I'm holding the title now, so I must have done something right, right?"
Doreen shrugs.
She wants to be champ and stay champ.
She is not interested in riding the rollercoaster.
But now, it's time for other things; not necessarily better, but other.
* * *
She's got a clit like a guy's knob! Steve thinks.
Large and firm, he can actually suck it as well as strum it with the tip of his tongue, can inhale and release it repeatedly between his lips as his tongue plays against it.
Like giving some guy a knob job, he says to himself.
And the concept, oddly enough, does not revolt him.
Because she seems to him some kind of androgynous, transition figure.
This is a large, muscular woman, her musculature not particularly feminine in its bulk, its definition.
Or maybe it's that vast musculature itself is not particularly masculine, being all curves and firm masses, bereft of hair, even the crotch mostly shaved clean because of the briefness of the bikinis they must wear.
The Romans considered bodybuilding a rather effeminate pastime, he recalls.
But then, in those days, the barbell had not yet been invented.
Muscles of a man, plumbing and glands of a woman, that's her.
Or again, perhaps muscle per se is devoid of gender.
But whatever the case, he is hot for her body. And she for his, and clearly in the much more than ordinary: sense.
Because no sooner they hit the sheets than she was all over him.
Even now, she bridges his body in reverse, he eating her pussy as she sucks his cock ardently, her ass in his face.
As his hands roam over her thick, firm thighs, her solid buttocks.
Such bulk, such definition! he thinks. And wonders about his own leg routine, his squats.
Are they deep enough?
His leg extensions-are they high enough and performed with sufficient weight?
And those glutes!
Do his have that same solid, rounded prominence?
So that, hot as he is; he sees in her a living checklist.
As the odd thought crosses his mind that, in a contest between the two of them, the outcome would not be all that certain.
And now, having sucked him to maximum hardness, Doreen dismounts from his face.
And, squatting above his crotch, lowers herself down onto his prong, guiding it up into herself one-handed.
And now, she rotates her hips, round and round, reaming her hot, juicy cunt with his mighty marauder.
Round and round she goes.
And now, she rides his pole, rocking up and down on it with a forward circular movement.
So that he is constantly pistoning in and out of her.
And now, he wraps his mighty arms around her and rolls over with her in the king-sized bed.
So that now he is on top of her, fucking her with rapid, powerful thrusts of his hips, driving his big baton in and in and into her, again and again, as she raises and spreads her legs.
And now, her hands explore him-trapezius, deltoids, pectorals, biceps, triceps.
Taking him in passionately, yes, that is certainly true enough, but at the same time expertly, critically, no doubt automatically making the same comparisons as he did before.
Because it's all of a piece in her mind, he knows, the gym, the bed, the body which occupies them both.
Because, to a certain extent, perhaps more than he cares to admit (certainly, it's so warped, that view), that is true of him as well.
They have both become so preoccupied with, so enamored of their musculature, muscles in general, that there is nothing having to do with the body, including sex, which is not muscle-oriented.
The better the muscle, the better the sex, no question about that in either of their minds.
As, even now, her pussy. comes to life, sucking his cock, thrill after thrill of sexual electricity coursing through their bodies as her cunt, her clit, her body ride his pole, which thrusts ever more ardently in and out of her.
So that they are becoming hotter and hotter, riding the rainbow of their shared arousal, onward and upward.
So that the pleasure beyond pleasure, dormant, suppressed within them all week, denied awakening in the name of progress, comes now into its own.
So that it takes them over, washing over them, permeating, inundating them with its presence, at once calming and stimulating, at once generating desire for itself and fulfilling that desire.
As their hungry bodies grasp, reaching out for that next increment of pleasure, meeting with their yearning, their bodies the rush of the ultimate pleasure, meeting it halfway, impatient for it to take them over completely.
So that now, they, have grasped it.
And now, it in turn has grasped them.
So that they feel it, welling up within them, the pressure of the pleasure beyond pleasure, exerting itself within every cell oetheir being.
And still they want more and more of it.
Still it drives their bodies on and on, he thrusting, she clinging wetly, smoothly to his turgid invader.
Super people, revelling in their magnificent condition, each claiming by right of that condition full access to the other's body, for the purpose of generating precisely that ultimate experience which even now pushes them over the top.
So that now, they are coming and coming, the thick, hot spurts of his jism injecting themselves into her vaginal depths, even as her series of multiple orgasms milks his persistent, pumping prick of all the pleasure it contains for her, and more, much more pleasure than she herself can contain.
As she explodes again and again in exquisite, irresistible convulsions, spasm after spasm wringing her, wracking her, tossing her this way and that atop him.
All the way to the end of the line she rides him, the two of them jetting out of control through the rosy empyrean of sexual paradise.
And only very slowly does the ride come to an end.
So that now, they float back down to earth, overheated, winded in the aftermath of their shared experience, their sweat merging.
And only now do they fully realize their fatigue. Only now does the net effect of their week of exertion catch up with them.
And she doesn't want to move, and neither does he.
So much easier, it is, simply to lie there, melting into each others' vast musculature, relaxing totally, allowing the mind to become a blank as, too tired to even think, they surrender to the forces of gravity and inertia, not moving as the minutes pass and sleep steals over them both.
CHAPTER TWO
Beef on beef, they awaken.
And of course. Steve has his morning buongiorno, huge and stiff and throbbing.
And there is the thereness of Doreen, a beefy mass surmounted by large, firm breasts, the compound product of healthy glands riding atop well-developed pectorals.
Confirming her femininity, or rather the fact of her femaleness.
Because, otherwise, they are merely masses of artificially tanned muscle, like with like, like enfolding, intertwining with-like.
So that, for a moment, upon awakening, Steve has the impression that it is himself, a projection, perhaps an extension of himself with which he is entangled-entangled and aroused.
Even now, there is a writhing movement as they awaken fully, sliding, gliding over each others' warm surfaces, muscle on muscle, muscle wanting, knowing muscle.
And now, almost as a natural, a biological movement, the automatic, reflexive function of some lower life form as seen under a microscope, they glide into position.
So that he is on top of Doreen, he is into Doreen, his cock has found its assigned berth within her pussy.
And he is fucking her.
No great technique, no fireworks of amatory proficiency, this.
Rather, it is a giving and a taking almost dispassionate, unthinking in its ease.
And yet, Doreen knows.
She knows that this is only possible between those of great similarity, their common interests, physical in nature, realized in a correspondence between them, with her his female equivalent, in the same sense that, say, male and female statues would be matching bookends or supports at the opposite sides of a coat of arms in heraldry, or monumental columns at the entrance to some public building.
Thus perfectly mated are they, as they in fact mate.
And it's so very easy, almost too easy.
So that it is not a question of conscious desire-although that is certainly present here-and not a matter of even that miniscule amount of planning required to set up something like this.
Rather, it is a matter of quite literally doing what comes naturally.
Because all that conditioning, all those hormones, all that drive is, in the end, directed only toward one goal, the goal at which all other human activity, whether directly or as symbol or substitute, is directed.
As their brains sit on the sidelines, coaches confident, at the moment, of their players' ability to function without guidance or direction, allowing their bodies to copulate without the sophistication, the technique, which ordinarily accompanies such action.
And they get each other off.
Over the top they take each other, barely working up a sweat.
So that there is only the flush, the sheen of their sexual perspiration, polishing the contours of their bodies to heroic proportion which not even the natural light of day can dull or diminish, for all its traditionally "flattening" effect.
They shower together in the shower stall, tile and glass, which occupies one 'corner- of the vast bathroom of Steve's condo.
Two athletes, looking somehow like members of the same team, right down to their skin tone and hair, Steve's long and brown, hers short and brown, seeming identical under the cascading water, as it forms slick helmets over their heads.
Two superjocks, obviously. belonging in the same league, they are, each clinically inspecting the other's musculature as they twist and turn, bending, soaping, rinsing, at last emerging to dry off with the oversized bathsheets which festoon the shelves neatly.
"We're making a mess here," Doreen observes, following Steve's lead, simply tossing her towel on the tiled floor in a corner.
"Maid'll clean it up," he replies, "She doesn't mind."
"Maid, huh?"
And Doreen grins, raising an eyebrow "Right," he shrugs.
"She get a little of this, does she?"
And Doreen playfully yanks his heavy equipment once.
"Well, of course. Think I'm stuck up or rude or something?"
She expected a reply, but certainly not that one. Mister Galaxy, and he puts out that casually? But then, she asks herself, as they walk naked into the kitchen and he begins preparing their breakfast, why not?
Because, after all, it's not like the maid actually has him when they fuck.
And in fact, Doreen questions whether in fact it's really possible for anyone to "have" Mister Galaxy.
He was before, he is during, he will be after. And there is nothing that anyone can do to change that.
So that he doesn't give of himself when he puts out.
No, he remains undiminished in every way. It was, is something he does.
Like signing an autograph or posing for a picture or giving advice or an interview.
It comes with the territory.
And is not so much a perk, perhaps, as an obligation.
It is, ironically enough, all part of his nice guy image.
To hold out, to deny any woman with the self-confidence, the nerve to ask for it, well, that would be unnecessarily cruel, and the rejection of what is, after all, the greatest gift a woman has to give, which is herself.
And yet, there is as well certain supercilious cynicism to it, a kind of assumed superiority on his part.
Noblesse oblige, he could think it is, without necessarily realizing it.
He could accept it as his due, in the natural order of things, of the world, that this should happen.
Because, on the one hand, he can be indifferent but, on the other, you can't fake a hard-on.
No, she reflects, the enthusiasm has to be there or it won't happen.
But enthusiasm for what?
For the woman, or for the image in his own mind of himself doing it, of his cock, his body in action.
So that his high, his enthusiasm could very well be nothing more than a tribute to himself, to his own sexuality, interacting .yet another time with the real world.
Or, if not that, then just exactly who or what is it that he is fucking?
Because she noticed that he keeps his eyes shut. So that whatever he sees, he is seeing on the viewscreen of his mind.
Is it some female idea, the archetype of the feminine, as conceived by Steve, some ideal mate for Mister Galaxy, some living female trophy, the prize of prizes, symbol of all that he has achieved, symbol and reward, all in one?
So that, by being with her, by fucking her, he is, in essence, masturbating, is jerking himself off with her, is using her.
Even as I use him, she appends.
Except.
She cannot get enough of his musculature, his mass, his bulk, his definition, the overwhelming presence, the thereness of him. Whereas, to the extent that he sees her at all, he sees in her a chart of correspondences, an object more of comparison, a walking, living, breathing, fucking check list.
Because she can see the wheels turning when he looks at her.
How does he measure up?
Almost as though women and men competed on equal footing, in the same events.
And almost as though he is not all that certain that, in such a contest, the judges would automatically award him first place.
Because Doreen has been around the iron game to know that she has reached a point in her development at which the genders meet.
The well-developed leg is not unmistakably male or female; rather, it is unmistakably well developed- period.
And face it; he may have her on size, but on proportion, on definition, she is definitely there, right on his ass.
And he has to know, has to see it.
They eat their hard-boiled eggs, eating only one yolk apiece, tossing the other yolks while taking advantage of the ideal protein of the hardened whites, washing them down with grapefruit juice.
The paper plates go into the garbage along with the shells and yolks, the glasses go into the dishwasher and the pot stays where it is in the sink.
They return to the bedroom, she in front of him, supposedly out of politeness, but she can feel his eyes traversing her backside, nape of neck to heels, trapezoid to connector of the soleus.
And, she is sure, all points in between.
And she knows that his thoughts are not entirely those of a man for a woman.
Still, she tells herself, she could have a shot with him.
Because theirs has been called the sensuous sport.
And bodybuilding an extension of sex life.
Because bodybuilding, as she has heard said more f: than once, is the one activity in which one makes love to oneself.
It is the one human activity, other than masturbation, which is totally self-absorbed.
This is why, at a certain point, those with personal trainers must discontinue.
So that they can, essentially, be alone with themselves.
So that, with all the trouble in the world, with the complexity of modem life, they can devote themselves, if they so desire, to the development of a single muscle group, or even a single, solitary muscle.
Selfish? Absurd? Perhaps even infantile in its obsessive preoccupation?
She wouldn't argue the point.
All that and more, it could be, could very well be, in fact.
So what?
Because the rest of it is all bullshit anyway-the politics, the economic struggles, the arts.
All worthless hype and meaningless effort. And in the end, we have only ourselves.
Born alone, die alone, and in between-what?
In between as well, there can only be ourselves.
Our own health, our own happiness, our own survival-these are all that matters, in the final analysis.
Because the only other things that exist outside ourselves-be they objects or ideas, phenomena of the real world or of our minds-are those which are within the scope of our own awareness.
So that it all comes right back to ourselves.
Who are we, really?
And only the bodybuilder constantly redefines the answer to that question.
Who am I?
Someone bigger and better than I was yesterday. And that's the way it is, the way it has to be, the only way it can be-for her, for Steve.
They dress, bluejeans and shirts and sneakers over socks.
Unisex, in that sense, but weighted in favor of the male.
Just like bodybuilding, even though Doreen herself comes perilously (to those men who feel threatened) close to closing the gap.
* * *
To walk around in the open.
To suck fresh air.
To inhale sunshine.
And to be glad that they are not like the people around them.
And yet, there is a certain sadness to them, a note even of envy.
Because these others are, if not happy in their lives, than at least not in despair.
As they would be, if they looked as these others do.
If we had no more by way of bodies than do those they see walking around, even jogging around here in the park, we would probably kill ourselves, she thinks.
Because there is a certain courage required to live weak.
Yes, it takes some kind of nerve to wake up wimpy and yet go out there-out here-and face the world.
Maybe it's all in our minds, Doreen thinks; certainly no amount of pumping iron could make her or Steve bulletproof.
And an airplane crash, a train wreck, even an automobile accident could kill or cripple them.
To be crippled-ah, surely that's the worst! That would call for even more courage than the mundane.
And Doreen has not even that.
Because, beneath her obsession, her drive for a constantly redefined physical perfection, there lurks that fear of weakness.
The weak, she considers already crippled.
And very few creatures there are in this world weaker than a woman.
Women, she reflects, looking around. Which of these could defend herself from even the most casual, the most desultory of attacks?
None of them, she tells herself; none of all that she sees here.
Every one of them, so far as she can tell, is vulnerable, has no protection, has nothing, nothing, nothing between her and chance outrage.
And, come to think of it, the men are not all that much better off.
Not that size and strength are the same thing, as she very well knows.
Still, there is that in appearance which discourages.
And then too, one cannot gain very much of one without the other being present.
And strength generally precedes size.
So that yes, she can walk in confidence, can go out of her door, can be in the world without viewing it as a hostile environment which could, at any moment, constellate a miniscule portion of itself into immanent and possibly deadly danger for her.
They walk.
Walking is good for the legs, the stomach, the back.
Walking is, quite possibly, the best low impact exercise there is, and they both know it.
Lunch. time.
Broiled chicken sandwiches at the fast food place. With soda, but they'll walk off the sugar. "Wanna take in a flick?"
They do.
Arnold Schwartzenegger. He was okay in his day, was Arnold, they both think.
And yes, there is life after bodybuilding.
Not, they remind themselves, not that he doesn't still stay in shape.
But not with their fanatical routines, certainly. Still, he looks really great. And their day will come, they know, when they too will have to taper off, slow down-and keep what they have.
But that day is not for many, many years to come. More years for Doreen than for Steve, she reflects. But she doubts that either of them have the flash and panache of an Arnold to carry off what he has, so spectacularly and so well.
Still, she doesn't envy him.
True, he has fame, wealth, and a lifestyle that would be the envy of most.
But she has-herself.
She is a living work of art, as well as the artist in the process of creating it, that is, ,creating herself.
And she has the daily satisfaction of knowing that she is in the process of becoming, and that she is in absolute control of that process.
She saw on TV a special on the current rage of the .art world, Armand Fortuna.
Asked why he retains none of his works, preferring instead, insisting instead on selling them all off, even though he no longer needs the money, he replied, "Not what the artist creates but what he becomes as a result of having created it-that's what matters!"
And she recalls this revelation, this sudden thrill coming from deep within herself at the realization that she has engendered a self-perpetuating process of becoming, because she is, after all, her very own work of art, her masterpiece.
She became very excited, very agitated, wanting to call up the studio, wanting to find out how she could get in contact with Armand Fortuna, wanting to ask him what he thought of her, childish, ridiculous as that sounds to her, as it sounded to her even then.
She practically wanted to crawl through the screen, as she saw characters do in a horror movie once.
She wanted to confront him, to ask him about this one special case, in which the artist and the work of art are one and the same.
She has never sought out, never actively solicited compliments-never.
But this one-for she is certain it would have to be a compliment-she wanted, she practically needed to hear, from the lips of the great Armand Fortuna himself.
Even now, she is tempted to run it by Steve.
But she doesn't.
They leave the movie in silence, walking on in silence.
They do not speak.
No small talk, nothing.
And somehow, she feels that this is a question which Steve is not qualified to answer.
His answer would be no better than hers; she is certain of it.
Because Steve may be many things, is undisputedly Mister Galaxy, and that many times over-although not without intermittent disruptionsk, interruptions- face it, failures.
And because she is not at all sure that his life is that of becoming.
So far as she can tell, he is driven, obsessed with but a single concept-Mister Galaxy.
To become and to remain him, now and forever, world without end.
And there is nothing of genius, of creativity, of art to him.
There is only his single, solitary obsession.
And it is not so much developmental as it is defensive.
Steve is a rock, an island, a fortress, defending itself against all comers.
I am Mister Galaxy or I am nothing.
That is his whole scene.
That is the message he is not hesitant, not ashamed to project.
Ecce homo.
Behold the man.
What you see is what you get.
This is not a part of his scene, not one facet of his existence; this is the whole shebang, right out there, for all to see.
This is what he lays on the line, year after year..
A year, two, three years of glory-and a year, two years perhaps of agony.
She has even heard rumors that, in his off years, not her, not any other woman, but a man would have been in the sack with him last night, would be walking around with him today.
And the man would know that he was merely being used as a form of self-abasement of self= flagellation by Steve, would know and would not care, being content to use even as he was being used, and getting the better of the bargain at that.
So no, she will mention nothing of this to Steve?
Work of art?
She doubts that he would understand the meaning of the term.
Not because he is too stupid to know the meaning of a three-letter word, but because the concept itself would elude him.
No, she tells herself, she is the artist, he just a lost soul, besieged, forced to defend himself as best he can.
And in a way, looking around her, she envies these people, these weak, helpless, threatened people.
Who have the courage to live with, in their weakness.
And not be, like Steve, like herself, prisoners of their obsession, be that obsession creative or merely defensive.
They are, both of them, chained to their bodies, to the gym.
And she is the one of the two of them capable of knowing happiness, of being happy; she realizes that now.
Because Steve is a loner, is noted for that throughout the sport.
Stan, the manager, is big enough, is a champion in his own right in a not entirely unrelated sport,, being an Olympic gold medal winner in weightlifting, and the heavyweight division thereof, having even set a record, years ago.
And Stan was even Steve's manager, during one unsuccessful bid for the title.
His manager, rumor has it, and even more.
But now, they barely speak, could be all but perfect strangers.
And this, not over any particular falling out of which Doreen or anyone else is aware, but rather because of that introspective withdrawal, that parting of the ways, that separation of himself from the world around him at which Steve is so very adept.
They have fucked, they have slept together, they will fuck again.
And yet, she knows.
She knows that he is capable of looking right through her on the street, even at the gym, as though she were not even there.
Still, she will not confuse two things-his personality and her own physical pleasure.
She will not, for the sake of his indifference, his self-absorption, deprive herself of the pleasure of his body.
Because it is what it is.
And one of the things that it is, is responsive to him.
A case of naught loving another as itself, perhaps, but then, she can handle that.
She can tolerate that she is exactly the sort of muscled mass of humanity that turns him on.
Maybe, maybe the guy is a little bit queer, or at least indifferent to gender.
Or maybe she in fact corresponds to his archetype of the female, to his own version of the feminine ideal.
But, whatever the case, the experience of that body in conjunction with hers, the heat, the action, the fact of it and the feel of it-she wants.
They walk on until she finds his silence oppressive.
"Steve?"
"Huh?"
"What are you thinking about right now?"
"When we get back to my place, I wanna take a real good look at your lower back muscles.
"I think, the year before last, that was where I blew it, not having that area totally free of water-you know, the Christmas tree?
"And I think I saw on you just about what I'm looking for, but I can't be sure until I check it out.
"I mean, face it; that's the first thing the judges look for, lately, before they even check out the rest of it, am I right?"
CHAPTER THREE
The Christmas tree, that phenomenon in the well-developed (some would say over-developed) back, caused by the lower insertions of the muscles of the ribcage and upper back, and the minimization of fat and water in that region, is singularly well termed, in Doreen's case. The insertions, or fingerings, are quite prominent.
Indeed, viewed as Steve is looking at them now, there is the definite irregular but symmetrical flaring of the back muscles away from what appears to be a perfect imprint of a Christmas tree in the small of Doreen's back, the insertions feeding clearly into the four columns which appear to comprise her lower back.
"Beautiful!" Steve murmurs, lying between her legs, viewing her back muscles in intimate detail.
And Doreen feels odd at the compliment.
Which was, is directed not at her as a person, not even at her whole body, but rather at a specific configuration of muscles in one part of her back.
The infinite absorption, the gross preoccupation with the body, in action.
And Doreen, for the first time, begins to have serious doubts about her own perspective on this lifestyle which centers around the body.
As Steve continues to marvel at the sight, as though at some vista in the landscape, suddenly chanced upon-an unexpected green valley with a rainbow arcing into the sky, perhaps.
Indeed, he cannot seem to get enough of the view as he lies there, looking now straight down, now at an angle, examining her "Christmas tree", checking the insertions this way and that.
And exploring them with hands and fingers, as well as eye.
And allowing his hands to roam down onto her bulging buttocks.
And now, he spreads apart the cheeks of her ass, revealing her bung.
He kneads their dense musculature, rolling them around, this way and that, admiring their smooth, protruding solidity.
And now, she feels the moist heat of his breath, alternating with the air-conditioned coolness of the room, against the tissues of her ass hole.
As Steve continues to gaze, as though fascinated, at the large, pale mauve, protruding, round star of her anus, surrounded by dark brown hairs which seem to flow around it from both halves of her split peach just below, its moist pink slit clearly revealed as well.
And Doreen lies there, not moving.
As Steve, as Mister Galaxy, no less, seals his lips to her ass hole.
And begins to rim her, sucking it, chewing on it. And raising it up, up, up, both hands grasping her glutes, pulling on them insistently.
As she hesitates for a moment before acceding to his wishes and rising to knees and elbows.
And she wonders if there might not be more than just a little truth to those rumors.
Because, from this angle, it seems to her that there is but little difference as to whether his partner of the moment is male or female.
Indeed, the only true distinction would be on her part, the internal plumbing adjacent to any insertion being the only significant difference.
Not that she hasn't permitted this before.
Indeed, it gives her a certain voluptuous pleasure to get rimmed, even to do what comes afterward, many times.
And she has had guys do either or both, some eating her ass as a preliminary to regular fucking, albeit from behind, doggy style, others treating this as an overture, a preparation for fucking her in the ass, still others preferring to skip the oral preliminaries to such activity in favor of a quickie finger wave with Vaseline or mineral oil before getting on with their anal intercourse.
But she knows, she can tell that Steve belongs to category two.
Because she can feel his trembling eagerness as he probes her nether star's convergence with the tip of his tongue.
And she can feel his excitement as now he tongue- fucks her, his long, thick, powerful, drooling appendage shafting deeply into her interior heat, contacting the soft tissues of her rectum, pushing forward to foreshorten and crowd the adjacent vaginal cavity with such displacement of her bowels.
And now, he is on her, on her and in her ass, the broad battering ram of his cock head pushing in and in and into her rectal channel, spreading it, filling it with its thickness and that of the shaft behind.
And she can feel him, can feel the pressure from behind on her joy buzzer, can feel the thrill of his power, of his arousal filling her down there.
So that she feels herself becoming aroused.
Mister Galaxy is fucking her in the ass.
The prime beef's prime beef is up her wazoo. As he pauses, the slab of his abdominals in contact with her glutes.
Which, she reflects, do not have to be hers, could as well be any other woman's-or even the man of his choice.
Or not, if he has discovered in her glutes something to be envied and emulated, similar to her lower back musculature.
What does he want from her, actually? To see in her an example of certain specific points of anatomy which he feels require further work on himself?
Obviously, that's a part of it.
He certainly would not look at the maid, say, in the same manner in which he looks at her, with that combination of professional interest, eye for the most infinite detail, and raw lust.
This last, maybe, but certainly not the other two. Because he wants, he wants-what?
Has she actually carried her development to the point that Mister Galaxy can look at her and feel-envy?
He is at least envious of her lower back, notwithstanding that her woman's hips render the area beneath it correspondingly configured in a definitely female width.
So that perhaps it is to emphasize the female aspect of her that he is fucking her in the ass now, driving home to himself the fact that, for all her development, she is nevertheless, now and forever a woman and therefore one with whose musculature, however spectacular, he will not have to compete.
Or is he, like most men, especially like most bodybuilders, forever competing in his own mind, each chance encounter, even a casual walk in public, a form of competition, in which he is both judge and contestant, the comparison automatic and ongoing and thus incessant?
She knows, for example, that she is built better than most of the men, even some of the so-called professionals, who work out at the gym.
So that yes, she can well believe that, in this absolute competition of the mind, she is in fact creeping up on Steve, is causing him to have doubts concerning his condition.
And saying to himself that if he is bested at present by a woman, at least in part, then he had best take a hard look at his routine and see what needs to be done in order to bring himself up to speed.
So that his desire for her is no doubt the same desire that an aspirant has for a champion, that in act many of the contestants have toward himself. Which is impossible.
Because there is no way that one person can become another.
One person can merely become, at best, like another.
And in fact that is the major contribution the publications, the competitions themselves, make toward bodybuilding as a whole-they constantly redefine, perpetually raise the standards of what it takes to be the best.
So that it could very well be that part of Steve's excitement concerning her is that he now sees that within himself which is not yet here, not yet his, but which is clearly attainable.
No question.
No question but that, given the right diet and exercise, then he too will be able to clean out his Christmas tree, will have it looking as spectacular as hers.
No wonder, then, that no woman can ever "have" Steve.
This is as close as one can come, this roundabout generating within him of admiration.
Of admiration for her musculature, at least in part.
And the generation of desire-to obtain that self- same development.
And the generation of passion-for becoming an improved version of himself, now that she has shown the way.
And he must be tired, mentally fatigued, in a way, as one who is perpetually on the defensive must inevitably grow tired.
Because the possibilities, the endlessly expanding horizon in which she so delights must be, to him, like an arms race against a tireless and implacable foe.
Good that Arnold took the title when he did, good that he got out when he did.
Because the standards, ah the standards! Excelsior!
Onward and upward!
What is the upper limit of human development? Who can say?
And perhaps there really is no such thing.
Maybe, she tells herself, maybe we just keep on getting better and better.
At one time, there was Charles Atlas.
Today, he would not even be considered moderately well built.
As champion after champion redefines, however temporarily, the best.
Which Steve, in order to retain his title, must constantly be.
An impossible task, on a permanent basis, and even he has to know this.
But now, he begins his movement, fucking her in the ass.
And, no doubt, looking down at her back muscles, still examining them, looking at them as he can never truly regards never actually see his own.
And seeing there the possibilities for himself; the he can see, can see with all the clarity of wishful thinking backed by the determination to make it happen.
So that she has, in that sense, done him a service, shcfwing him that (to him) crucial possibility.
And now, clutching at this particular straw, he has something on which to anchor his annual campaign.
The year of the lower back, then, this is to be.
And, having gained this insight, he can let himself go, at least partially, enough to truly enjoy himself with her.
No longer merely hanging on grimly, he sees a positive key, a clue to his victory, to his defense of his title.
So that now, he plows her ass with the vigor of hope.
He can win if he follows through on what he has discovered in her.
Not that it's that simple; victory in today's contests never is.
But.
He has a way to go, something he can do to influence the outcome, to provide that critical swing factor, should it prove to be a close call, in the event.
But now, her thoughts are disrupted.
Because the initial warmth is growing and growing within her now.
As his log of an erection repeats its lascivious message to millions of nerve endings within her rectum.
Over and over, back and forth, again and again comes the wake-up call to the pleasure which lies dormant within her.
Thrust and withdraw, thrust and withdraw, and with each thrust, each withdrawal, a building of sensation on the one before it.
So that they are driving each other up the rainbow, he actively, she with the pressure of the sleeve of her rectum over the whole surface, over the entire length of his mighty marauder, his pounding prick.
As the sexual electricity flows through both of them in a closed circuit.
As its intensity increases, surge after surge. As wave after wave of arousal sweeps over them. As level after level of their ever-increasing stimulation is transcended.
Yes and yes and yes! she is shouting, in her mind. Yes to the floodtide of sensation he has awakened within her.
Yes to his body, to the epitomy of muscular manhood he represents, by actual critical acclaim.
And yes to his prick, which is hers for the moment, hers to use, hers to experience in that most intimate of fucks.
Maybe it's the steroids, she thinks, but she is responding, can feel her clit awakening to the stimulus from behind, from deep within herself, as surely as though it was a prostate gland and penis combined.
This isn't supposed to be happening, she tells herself.
The only time she has ever actually gone all the way and blown her safety valve previously with an ass fuck was when the man reached around and down beneath her to play with her tits, ultimately to finger-fuck her in unison with the anal action.
But now, she feels herself well on her way to the summit, the peak, the zenith of her pleasure, using only the feel of Steve's cock in the sleeve of her rectum, stretching it, filling it, and, in the process, rubbing, stimulating her joy buzzer with the undulating internal pressure.
As she wills him to take her up, up, up the rainbow, all the way.
And he is doing it, with a strong, steady ass fucking.
As he too becomes hotter and hotter.
So that both of them are ruddy in face and upper body with the engorged blood of their aroused passion.
As an intensity comes over Steve, a manifestation of his desire to merge with her, to become one with her and thus gain both the attributes and the benefits of her own fantastic efforts to build herself up.
So that she is doubly rewarded here tonight-once by her being with Mister Galaxy in bed and once by this de facto recognition of her physical achievement.
They are made for each other!
And this despite the fact of their being totally absorbed in themselves, often in microscopic degree.
They are, respectively, the male and female equivalents of each other.
Not a good thing to be, necessarily, but there it is. Because could either of them really accept anything less by way of a sexual partner?
Would not whoever comes after either of them suffer by comparison?
Even though nobody can actually have them, can possess them to the degree required for exclusivity, they could make do with nothing less.
And there is nothing greater, not for them.
The body and the body and the body.
All there is, all there can be.
That and the feeling it engenders within them. This is, has to be it for them, whether they like it or not, whether they want it or not, whether or not they are even aware of it.
As, at the moment, they are aware only of the pleasure which inundates and permeates them.
So that they rise higher and higher toward their capacity to contain the pleasure which fills them, which exerts its exquisite irresistible pleasure on every fiber of their being.
Because this, this! is surely perfection, Steve tells himself, gripping the belled flare of her hips intently as his thrusts double and redouble, as his meat piston moves more and more rapidly in the channel of her hot, stretched, filled ass.
And now, the pleasure beyond pleasure takes them over.
So that Steve's efforts seem effortless.
So that Doreen is afloat in the world of the ultimate pleasure, rising and rising through the rosy empyrean of the kingdom of the senses.
And she is aware only of Steve, aware of his cock, of the body behind it, driving it.
She apprehends his image in her mind, eyes closed in her concentration on it, her hunger, her desire to possess it completely, to engulf it with her entire being, even as now her rectum holds him captive as it milks his mighty monolith of monster meat of more and more pleasure.
As now the two of them do the two-step of hunger and satisfaction that is the hallmark of all great sex.
The more you get, the more you want.
And more comes.
And yes, it does get better than this.
And better than this and this and this!
Better with each passing moment, it gets.
And they are vindicated, confirmed in their outlook, in their lifestyle.
Because only thus are they able to be aware of themselves as worthy vessels to accommodate the feelings they are generating with their fabulous bodies.
Dizzy, disoriented they may be, not knowing up from down.
But.
They are intimately aware of their bodies, their own and each others'.
That knowledge is a part of them which never leaves them, not for an instant.
They are this fantastic together only because of who and what they are, no question at all about that in their minds.
Minds in the heat of passion, in the throes of the feverish buildup of the pleasure beyond pleasure which has them firmly in its grip, two puppets jerked around by invisible strings, nevertheless, there is awareness, there is realization.
And there is as well a desire, overwhelming in its intensity, a part of the ultimate experience.
As they lock in on each other as parts of themselves, as extensions, as alter egos.
Because, after all, what is he, what is she, if not the realization-the making real-of the archetype, the epitomy, the ideal of male and female, each within the other.
How they will feel afterward does not enter their whirling brains at the moment.
Because at the moment there is for them only the moment.
No past, no future, but an extended present, an indepepdent time out of time, a world within the world which is themselves and each other and the feeling and the feeling and the feeling.
Which is everywhere.
Which fills them and radiates outward beyond them, beyond the double star they have become, incandescent with their shared passion.
As they gar up, up up And over the top.
As he injects jet after jet of his thick, hot jism in and in and into the depths of her bowels.
As she milks his turgid invader of its load and with it of the ultimate pleasure.
As contraction after contraction of rectum and vagina, caused by her series of multiple orgasms, causes her internal organs to move, to respond as though with minds of their own.
As she reaches beneath her with one hand and rubs her bulging, engorged clit, adding to the intensity of her climax, her clear, hot pussy juices soaking fingers and wrist.
So that now, they come and come together, again and again.
And afterward, he rides her all the way down.
So that he rests atop her, cheek to cheek, breathing the same air as they pant, recovering normal temperature and respiration.
And they continue to lie thus, his cock slowly detumescing inside her ass, fully inserted, until the peristaltic action of her bowels expels him.
He oozes out of her, his prong a long, smooth, solid turd.
And rolls off of her to lie beside her as she turns over.
And perspective is restored.
So that their reaching out for each other in their minds is retracted.
So that their merging is seen for what it was, a thing of the moment, a phenomenon of their shared passion.
So that their yearning for each other is an oddity which they themselves are at a loss to comprehend.
Because, in the end, they have only themselves, and not each other.
Each of them has a life, a task in which the other cannot help, when all is said and done.
She has certain information he wants, but that's about it.
"Specifically, what do you do for your lower back?"
"I want that Christmas tree. ": She describes the exercises, a series of bending and twisting movements done while holding a barbell plate with both hand in front of her.
"Of course, the main thing is the isolation of the lower part of the upper back muscles."
"Tricky until you get used to it, but if you listen to your body, it should tell you when you've got it right."
She almost added something about feeling free to call her over if he needs help.
But that would be ridiculous.
Not his needing the help, but his calling her over.
Because he is Mister Galaxy.
And this particular Mister Galaxy uses neither coach nor training partner, and certainly no advisor.
He works alone.
And their coming together like this was an aberration-for both of them.
Dangerous, their thoughts of a few minutes before, even though they were in the throes of passion-a shared passion.
A shared passion, and not one distinctly their own, not even though they were aware of the exact mass, the shape, the dimension of their own bodies, aware as well of just what it took to get them to their present state.
Dangerous, that.
Dangerous and distracting.
To want that which is not under one's control at all times is to have a weakness.
Not, they tell themselves, not that there was any actual danger of the emotion, the thought, the desire's lasting.
Actually, it was more an embarrassment, in retrospect.
Does the other know?
Does he/she suspect?
Best not to take the chance, they tell themselves.
"I guess I'd better get on home now," she says. "Busy day tomorrow."
"For both of us," he agrees. "You go ahead and help yourself to the bathroom."
And she takes him up on his offer, relieved that he will not be showering with her.
Because otherwise, she might be tempted to keep the party going.
Yes, they were on the verge, she tells herself, as she turns the shower on full force, boldly facing the daunting spray. At least she was, and she is pretty certain that such was the case with him.
The very fact that Mister Galaxy saw fit to seek her advice, even in private, shows her something, shows her that she has shown him something, perhaps something more than a part of him wanted to see.
But then, the reverse is also true, as, in the back of her mind, the idea of a certain need begins to form.
CHAPTER FOUR
The real world, she tells herself.
The gym, this is, that's true enough; but still, a part of the real world. The springboard to the bodybuilders' dreams, perhaps, the place where it will happen for them, if in fact it is to happen, but the real world nonetheless.
Her and Steve? Doreen asks herself. Now that, that was a dream.
Would be a dream, were she to pursue it.
Which she won't, because, seeing him already here, already working out, once again Mister Galaxy in the course of preserving himself, furiously engaged in the battle for that preservation, she knows that it simply wouldn't work.
Look at that intensity!
He's going all out.
He's risking what no sane person would in order to achieve the effect he desires, in order to clean out that formation in the lower back iron pumpers call the Christmas tree.
She can see him there, on the slant board, skilfully and yet, at the same time, maniacally isolating the lower insertions of the upper back muscles.
Fine, okay, she's all for that; but with a fifty-pound weight extended before him, now extended high in the air, a priest consecrating a fifty pound, black iron communion wafer, and now (her back muscles hurt just to watch him) rising, the resistance of his insteps against the restraining strap of the slant board strained beneath his socks.
Again and again, he does it, up and down, up and down, until she is tempted to tell him to stop before he rips out his back muscles and ends up out of commission for weeks.
Which she would do, but for the fact that he is Mister Galaxy, but for the fact that he has an audience at all times.
Because what else are people going to focus on around here between sets, if not the sight of Mister Galaxy working out?
So that she can't do that; that is impossible. As impossible as his and her becoming an item, having an actual, ongoing relationship.
Right now, she tells herself, he'd probably go for it-provided she made the first move.
He was, obviously, just that impressed with her over the weekend.
But, she reminds herself, impressed with her as what?
As a body, as a mass of muscle from which he could learn something.
And he did.
Because bodybuilding today is not as'it once was, with each professional, each amateur champion having secret routines, secret diets, secret lives.
Somewhere along the line, that all changed, probably as a result of the realization that no one person had The Big Secret, as well as the proof that there was no one way to the top.
So that, without a fund of information, without a free exchange of "how to", they would all suffer, would all, eventually lose.
So that now, today, if there is any secret to success, it lies in experimentation, in trying this and that, seeing what works best for the individual.
And, she has to admit, what Steve is doing, crazy as it looks, will probably work very well for him-if he doesn't kill his chances in the process by sustaining an injury which only time can heal.
"Your goddam fault, anything happens to him, you know."
Stan, coming up behind her, watching Steve over her shoulder, startles her.
But she recovers quickly, not diverting her eyes from Steve.
"He asked, I told 'im, that's all," she shrugs. "But you know how he is."
"Right Stan," she says, turning to face him, "I know how he is.
"Sick, is how he is.
"Obsessed with the fucking title, is how he is."
"Destroyed if he doesn't win every time, is how he is."
"So yeah, Stan, I know how he is.
"I know how he'll be if he can knock out the judges with a lat spread that begins from a Christmas tree that'll have their jaws on their chests in awe.
"I know that that may be just what'll get him the edge he needs to win-this year."
"And next year, Doreen?
"Tell me about next year, why don'tcha?"
"Tell me what he does for an encore?"
"I'm not his coach, you know, Stan."
"I know you're not; nobody is."
'That's just the fuckin' trouble."
"He couldn't have a coach even if he wanted one."
"Oh no?"
"Hell no."
"Would you want that kinda responsibility?"
"His coach has got, would have, only one reason for being-to win."
"That's rule one and, for Steve, the only rule."
"He has got to win, period, no if's and's or but's about it."
"You tried once."
"Once. Never again, though."
"It's not worth watching him destroyed."
"It's not worth the recrimination for holding back the steroids."
"He'd rather win the title and be dead a week later than he would live a day not bein' fucking Mister Galaxy."
"You exaggerate, Stan."
He grins at her, a baleful smirk, saying, "Just because you got a pet Doctor Feelgood pumpin' you up with moonshots, kiddo, that don't mean it's the way t'go."
"Hey, if it can do for me, a woman-"
"Who says you're still a woman?
"You got a deeper voice than I do, Doreen."
"And you think, when you sweat, I can't see the hair around your aureolae showin' through yer tank top?"
"You got an eight inch clit yet, Doreen?"
"Or is it just kinda big and active, and gets all hard when you-"
"You got a dirty mind, Stan, and the mouth t'go with it, you know that?"
"Easy Doreen, ee-zee!"
"That's another thing, see?"
"We're just standin' here talkin', an' you're red in the face at me."
"Because you're raggin' on me, Stan!"
"What's your real problem, anyway?"
"You bent outta shape because Steve and I were together over the weekend, because we slept together and like that?"
"You're not jealous are ya, Stan?"
Stan looks at her a long moment, saying nothing. He turns around and goes back into his office and Doreen goes into the locker room.
* * *
"How's it goin', Mare?"
This to Marilyn, who is already there, changing into sweats.
"Oh, Doreen! I'm glad I ran into you!"
"Have you got room in your personal training schedule for somebody else?"
"One, maybe. Why?"
"I got a guy with an attitude problem I told 'im I can't help him with."
"Good thing you found a life in the gym, Doreen, because I gotta tell ya, you'd never make it as a diplomat."
"We're supposed to teach them the moves, Doreen, the moves and the scheduling."
"We're supposed to familiarize them with what each exercise does and how they tie in together to create a rou-"
"We're also supposed to put them on the road to achieving their maximum potential, Marilyn."
"On the beginning of that road, Doreen."
"That's where you and I have always differed and where we always will."
"From day one, you wanna do the whole shot, Doreen."
"Good thing you weren't an architect, too."
"You'd build skyscrapers starting with the thirteenth floor or something, instead of from the ground up."
"Ever see them artists on the TV, Marilyn?"
"What's that got to do with-"
"If you ever watch `em, you'll see."
"They work all over the canvas, Mare, not in one little place at a time."
"You have got to place the muscle under real stress to get real results."
"You've got to strain at the upper limit of good form for the sake of real progress."
"They pay you for results, Marilyn, and they get dingdong school, the Sesame Street of bodybuilding from you."
"So chances are, the guy is right and you're wrong."
"The other reason we agreed he'd have to go," Marilyn continues, changing to another area of discussion, "is that he keeps trying to come onto me."
"Uh-huh. Well maybe you better tell the guy to find himself another gym."
"I don't mix business with pleasure any more than you do."
"I don't think that'd be a problem with you and him, Doreen."
"You're not his type."
Doreen, who has been changing into shorts and tank top, pauses, looking at Marilyn.
"And just exactly what's that crack supposed t'mean?"
"I just mean that I think he'll find you, well- intimidating."
"I mean, as an instructor, a trainer, I'm sure you'll give him what he needs."
"But at least, when you touch him to correct his form, he won't read anything into it."
"That's for sure," Doreen agrees. "I can handle that."
"Anything else wrong with the guy?"
"Ambition."
"Meaning?"
"He wants to be the next Mister Galaxy." Doreen grins and snorts.
"Saved the best for last, eh, kid?"
"Tell 'im t'forget it, okay?"
"That takes a combination of size, heredity, proportion, metabolic response-"
"I know, and I've told him all that and more."
"And?"
"He feels he's got what it takes."
"And does he?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Doreen! Does he. Yeah, right."
"Clown walks in off the street, decides he needs a personal trainer, trains for a month and like he knows he's got what it takes to build himself into the champ."
"I mean, okay, he's got the height, the proportions, the, the... looks, I suppose, for whatever that counts, in the end."
"I mean, face it; Steve is not exactly a collar ad, right?"
"But the work he'd need."
"And he's not willing to stick with the basics, to take the time to build a good founda-"
"You got me curious, Marilyn."
"When's he showin' up?"
"He's scheduled for five o'clock, just to pop in and meet you, if you want to, otherwise, he'll just do a regular workout."
"He and I have already agreed-actually, I already told him-that I'm not the trainer he wants, but you just might be."
"That's uh, strictly over the difference in training philosophy."
"We didn't touch on your possible roles of lover and trainer of future champion."
"Thought I'd leave that up to you."
They chuckle.
"My first client's due in at seven, so that'll be okay."
"We'll see from there."
"And uh, thanks for thinking of me-I guess."
"Yeah, well, good luck to the both of ya, know, what I'm sayin'?"
* * *
"Doreen, this is Bobby. Bobby, Doreen."
Bobby extends a hand, smiling.
Doreen walks around him.
He starts to turn, but- "No, no. Stand fast. I wanna check your proportions, see what you've got to work with."
"Good height, good basic mesomorphic structure, no ectomorphic elongation or hirsuteness, looks to be the right age-"
"I'm twenty-three," Bobby says. "I'll be twenty-four on-"
"Shut up."
Bobby recoils, but recovers himself when her hands, which appeared about to strangle him as they came toward his throat suddenly, instead begin kneading his neck muscles.
"Not bad trapezius muscles, clavicles not too prominent, that's good, pectorals thick but .smooth- okay."
She bends down and grasps his calves, just below the knees, sliding her hands down them, saying, "Calves low enough, could be lower, but we could work on that, so," standing up, "okay."
"I think we've got the raw material."
"You got three hours a day, six days a week-not counting three training hours a week-to give to this?"
"Absolutely."
"Twenty an hour," Doreen says.
"You got it-but I want six hours of personal training a week, not the usual three."
"If I can get beef like yours, that is."
"If I don't move off center, then all that's gonna happen is I'm gonna hang around and watch you work out so I can see how it's really done."
This last with a sideways glance of recrimination at Marilyn.
Who looks at Doreen and shrugs.
"I see you two don't need me for anything more," Marilyn says, and moves away from them.
"I wouldn't say that," Bobby murmurs, looking at her, even though there is nothing to see, really, since she is in grey sweats which cover her from neck to gym shoes.
"It's a sexual thing with you, isn't it, Bobby, getting built?"
He looks at her, unabashed.
"What if it is?"
Doreen shrugs, looking away from him.
"No skin off, Bobby. But you're talking about spending a hundred and twenty a week on my words of wisdom, on my correcting and observing you."
"So I guess what I'm saying is, if sex is all it is with you, you'd be better off buying a sports car and painting the town with your choice of women out there."
"With your looks, that shouldn't be so difficult."
"It wouldn't, no."
"But."
"When we went to bed, what would they be in bed with?"
"I got a picture of myself in here, Doreen," he says, tapping his forehead, "and I gotta tell ya, until that picture and this body are one helluva lot closer together, going out, getting laid is not really gonna mean all that much to me."
"Tell ya the truth, I'd rather spend the money on getting built and jerk off for nothing back home while I'm getting there."
And the idea which began to form back at Steve's grows stronger, begins to take shape."
Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, she tells him in her mind. If you didn't exist, I'd have to invent you.
Because she doesn't have to make a true believer of him; he already is.
As she recognizes the bodybuilder's syndrome within him even as it exists within herself.
Only the bodybuilder is in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction with the body he or she has.
To change. it, to become better and better-that is the underlying preoccupation of the bodybuilder's existence. And in Bobby's case, he recognizes that he is so far away from his potential that this dissatisfaction takes the form of an over-riding impulse,-overriding everything within him in priority except for the drive which underlies it.
Marilyn was wrong to take personally the fact that Bobby was coming on to her.
He was coming on to her by virtue of what, rather than who she was.
His instructor, his mentor in the area of physical development.
So that with her, it would have been all right.
No need to put himself on hold, not with her.
Because he was doing what he could, was in the process, of becoming.
And she was a part of that process.
So that it was all right.
There was no conflict, no diversion of concentration.
Except that Marilyn wasn't having any.
He would, in fact, have stood a better shot at Marilyn had he been a perfect stranger.
Because Marilyn is no fanatic.
She has a life outside the gym, people she sees, things she does, places she goes which have nothing at all to do with getting built or staying that way.
And she told him as much.
And more, she told him.
If he really believes what he's saying, then yes, he'd be better off training under Doreen, Doreen who has caused so much traffic to flow away from her and toward Marilyn with her fanatical, uncompromising attitude.
So that Marilyn sees in Bobby the exact opposite of what she wants in a client.
She wants, needs someone who will require her to inspire in just the right way, to admonish, to encourage as well as to teach.
And with Bobby, she saw-and rightly so-the attitude of a Doreen, grim enough, in and of itself, in its narrowness, its isolation, its dead seriousness over something which is not, should not be, that serious.
What's wrong with having fun?
Marilyn is not only prettier than Doreen, she tells herself, she is built every bit as well-better, from the standpoint of aesthetics-and without using steroids.
What does she need with such massive musculature, after all?
Why does she have to destroy her femininity, merely in order to pack pounds and pounds of beef on her frame?
Marilyn doesn't understand that compulsion.
Any more than she understood Bobby's intensity, his compulsion to do the exercises with heavier weights than good form can accommodate.
She guessed, as did Doreen, that it was a sexual thing with him.
But it was one with which she had no sympathy whatever.
Because the two are not directly related-sex and bodybuilding-not in her mind, at least.
Marilyn doesn't see anybody from the gym, and not for lack of being asked, certainly.
Except that, in a way, that also says something sexual.
She doesn't date anybody from the gym for the simple reason that the emphasis would then be physical rather than emotional.
So that a hierarchy of "lovers" would be established with her, if she were to do that.
Not who is the best in bed, but which one has the best abs, which the best arms, and so on and son on.
So that there would ensue a merger of what are, in her mind, two separate and distinct worlds-that of the gym and that of the rest of the world.
And she enjoys them both equally, and far, far too much to allow one to spoil the other for herself.
So that she is just as well off being rid of-Bobby.
Because, except for the nonsense in his head, he is all right.
He hasn't yet begun to develop that musculature in any part of his body that says to those who behold him, "Hey, that guy must work out!"
So that she wasn't lying when she told him. that, had they only met outside the gym, in a different setting, then perhaps they could have done something along the lines that he suggested.
So that, again, they were diametrically opposed, he wanting her precisely because she was a part of his process of becoming physically what he wants to be, she rejecting him for precisely that reason.
And never the twain shall meet, she told herself.
And on that note, goes on about her business, going over the routines for her clients she will be seeing later on this evening.
* * *
"Okay, Bobby, let's see just how far you've gotten along with Marilyn."
"Not as far as I'd-"
"Please. Let's not waste a lot of time dwelling on the past."
"We'll start with all the standard exercises."
"This is called calibration."
"I need to see exactly how much you can push for full sets without breaking form."
"But I want to be able to do more-"
"And so you shall, right away."
"We'll work on the overload principle, but first I've gotta see where the overload begins."
"We'll do this for each exercise."
"The overload principle says that bulk and definition can be stressed at one and the same time."
"The use of heavier weight gives bulk, the insistence on the full number of sets and repetitions yields definition."
"Two for the price of one, right?"
"You don't know how relieved I am to hear you-"
"Please. I'll do all of the talking and a good part of the doing as well, to begin with."
"If I wanna hear from you, I'll tell you, okay?"
"This is not a social occasion."
"On the bench, on your back, we begin with what?"
"It's okay, Bobby, I asked a question."
"One-eighty?"
"Sounds reasonable."
"Here we go, now, thirty pounds in the bar, a fifty and a twenty-five pounder on each end and we got it."
"Make it happen for ten reps, any way you can get them up there."
He complies.
"Good form!" she says, when he has finished and racked the bar.
"That part, Marilyn got right."
"Okay, Bobby, what do you weigh?"
"Two hundred."
"All right, I wanna see you bench pressing your own weight."
She adds a ten onto each side of the barbell. "Give me ten more."
He does.
"Very good. As soon as you recover your breath, give me. ten more."
And he does.
"You uh, you feel the tug on the outer borders of your pecs?"
"A little, yes."
"Okay, you're gonna do ten more, and, along about the eighth repetition, I'm gonna be hangin' over you, helping you, because you're gonna need it."
"I don't think-"
"Trust me."
He squeezes out seven repetitions, teeth clenched.
The eighth starts to go up but reaches a sticking point.
And she is right there, helping him up with it. She releases it and he lowers it to his chest, or rather resists gravity as gravity wins.
This time, the sticking point is much lower, but again she is right there, for that and for the last repetition, and he thinks, At last, I'm getting somewhere.
CHAPTER FIVE
So it goes, the calibration.
Exercise after exercise, just the basics, but each assigned a beginning weight significantly higher than the one Bobby started out with.
"We'll give you a day to recover," Doreen says, "and then we'll begin a split routine, beginning with the upper body."
"I don't think I need-"
"When you get up tomorrow morning, you'll see why working out tomorrow evening is not such a great idea."
"I'm really excited about-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a thrill for me too."
"See ya Wednesday."
"You got it!"
"Oh, when do you want your the-"
"Anytime, but only once a week, please."
"Makes the records too complicated otherwise."
"See ya."
And Bobby leaves the floor, a bounce in his step, almost childish in his happiness at what is happening.
And Doreen thinks, Y'see, Steve, this is where you and I are barking up the wrong tree.
We sweat and strain, we fret and slave, we drive ourrselves until hell won't have it and then along comes a guy like this one, all proportion and attitude.
And no way, Steve, no way is he not gonrra go over, the top.
The right diet, the right supplements, a little strategic use of the old steroids, a lot of the main event, and voil! I give you the one, the only, the new-Miss-ter Galaxy!
And she can hear the chant now, to the accompaniment of stomping feet.
"Bob-ee! Bob-ee! Bob-ee!"
It will happen, she tells herself. She will make it happen.
She is going to take care of this situation, beginning to end.
No question.
No question, but that she will make him a champion.
And her champion lover as well.
Why not?
She is in perfect position.
And she has the precedent of his trying to get it on with Marilyn, that waster of time and effort, that phony.
And she knows how to do it.
She is going to manipulate him shamelessly.
And she becomes excited at the prospect, more excited even than over her run at the Ms. Galaxy title.
She can have him ready-when?
Not this year, certainly; much too soon for that. But next year?
She can have him right up there.
And if she herself does well at the Ms. Galaxy, then she just might have enough political clout to achieve her purpose.
It's entirely possible "Steve is sponsored by Randy Buck, you know, Doreen."
"Yeah, so? And like I don't know that, right?"
"You got yourself a new client today."
"And this is some business of yours, is it, Stan?"
"The best interests of the franchise-"
"Are served by producing the best bodies, Stan, not by one single best body."
"Which, by the way, Bobby's is not. Not yet, anyway."
"But you're gonna change all that, right?"
"I want all my clients to do the best they can."
"Be all that you can be, like the Army says."
"You better let Steve know what you're up to, Doreen."
"Why don't you let `im know, Stan, if you're so concerned."
"He doesn't listen to me."
"I'd say he's sure got that part of it right."
"Very funny, Doreen. But it won't be so funny if, if... something happens."
"Listen, pal, if the guy is so fragile that losing his title will destroy him, then he's not strong enough to be Mister Galaxy to begin with."
"Like I said before, what's it to ya?"
"Besides, I won't even have him-I mean he won't even be ready until next year, if then."
"I see that."
"Y'know your trouble, Stan? It's that you see too much."
"And what the eyes see, the mouth reports."
"That's you, Stan, the eyes, ears and mouth of the world."
"You shoulda been a sports reporter, y'know that?"
"Bodybuilding is not a sport."
"Weightlifting, power lifting-those are sports."
"Oh? And what do you call bodybuilding?"
"I'd call it a neurosis."
"My, my, my! Not only a gym manager, but a psychiatrist as well!"
"Is there no end to your talents, Stan?"
"Hey, look it up some time, if you don't believe me, Doreen."
"Look what up? Bodybuilding?"
"No, look up neurosis."
"Later, Stan."
And she turns on her heel, setting up the bench, getting ready for the first of her regulars.
From the comer of her eye, she sees Steve, still at it.
She sees Marilyn as well, but she can't stand to listen to her as she instructs her client.
Like fingers on a blackboard, Marilyn's voice. Not so much the tone as the content.
Because Marilyn will never build a champion. Will you just listen to yourself? she tells herself. Never build a champion.
Like thats what personal training is all about.
Champions become personal trainers and personal trainers become champions-sometimesbut clients never do.
Because the mere fact that one requires a personal trainer means one doesn't actually know enough about bodybuilding, about what it takes to get built, to be able to do what is required to become professional material.
So that here, now, she is about to create an exception, perhaps unique in all the annals of bodybuilding, were such records to be kept.
She is going to take a client all the way to the top.
A new dimension of personal training will have been reached-if it works.
She can keep Bobby from hurting himself, she reminds herself, looking over at where Steve has apparently recycled his routine, which has been going on all day with the briefest of respites for liquids, snacks and bodily functions, to the point that he is once again doing the special exercise for the Christmas tree.
Overdoing it is more likely, she thinks. But he will no doubt discover that for himself in the morning, when he goes to get out of be and can't move.
"Hi, Doreen."
"Hello, Jane."
"Jane, I want us to try and see if we can keep our form with five pounds additional on an end."
"I'll be right here behind you, so don't worry about such minor problems as a crushed larynx, okay?"
"Okay," Jane says, her tone compliant but uncertain.
And of course, it works.
"You were right, Doreen!"
"So what else is new."
"We go ten more pounds on the upper body, twenty except on leg biceps, which will remain as they are indefinitely as far as I'm concerned, and if all goes well, this'll be it for you."
"You know the form, you know the routine, you know the diet, and the rest is just adding on pounds gradually, so I don't wanna be taking your money for nothing."
"You'll get no argument from me," Jane says. "I mean, I appreciate all I've accomplished, thanks to you, but believe me, it hasn't been exactly a pleasure."
"We're not here for pleasure, Jane. At least I'm not."
"And uh, I'd be very disappointed if you were to slack off."
"You've got the foundation on which to build a competition-ready body."
"At least you could get up there on the stage and not have to look ashamed."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, but if it's all the same to you, I intend to simply maintain."
"Between the husband and kids plus holding down a full-time job-"
"Okay, okay, have a nice life already."
"Now then, let's see the standing barbell curl, shall we?"
* * *
Neurosis.
She reads the words.
Combination of anxieties, compulsions, obsessions, phobias-okay, okay, Stan, she thinks, you made your fucking point.
She reads on, noting that it's less serious than, say, a psychosis, which she doesn't bother to look up, apprehensive as to what that might prove to be all about.
Stan, you bastard, she thinks.
Far too perceptive than anybody has a right to be, is Stan.
Why can't he be what he looks like? she asks herself.
Enough that he took the Olympic, gold in weightlifting, that stupid sport, at once dangerous and boring, in which the next lift could well prove to be one's last.
If what we do is a neurosis, then what he does, or rather did, must be a psychosis, she reasons.
Still, she doesn't look it up.
Because she doesn't want to know Which evasion, she reflects, could well be a part of her neurosis.
* * *
Bed time.
Naked in bed, lying there in the darkness, she thinks of Bobby.
Not of Bobby as he is, but of Bobby as he could be, could and will be.
And she thinks of Bobby in transition, of Bobby in the course of becoming.
And this thought she finds the most exciting of all.
Because it is as if she can see his body, naked, standing there before her, transforming.
She can see him broadening, thickening, hardening.
Like an erection, she thinks, except that this involves his whole body.
Yes, she realizes, that's exactly what this is like-a head to heels hard-on.
And in fact, the image of Bobby develops an erection, slowly, surely, keeping pace with the rest of him.
And the sight of this excites her, just as the sight of the male organ itself has always excited her.
Because she has always been fascinated at the shape, the form of bodily parts.
And form follows function.
She remembers that phrase out of context from one of the art shows she saw on TV.
And the male member itself has but the one function.
Not two, but one.
Because it doesn't have to look the way it does to pee.
For that, all that's required is an opening to the bladder.
No, that organ is both sex organ and symbol of itself.
And she has always been naturally, biologically drawn to it, as though some part of her being is an atavism, a throwback to that primal urge which dwelt within the primal organism from which she is descended.
And she doesn't resist, doesn't fight the feeling.
Experience tells her that it doesn't pay, that all it does-her trying to sublimate, to rise above such thoughts or to shift her mind to something, anything else-is to rob her of sleep, to make her nervous and irritable, even more nervous, more irritable than she has been lately.
Which is very nervous, very irritable indeed.
The steroids?
She'd like to think not.
Maybe, maybe, she tells herself, it's merely her neurosis.
And nothing she can do about that.
She is what she is, and if that's a part of her, then so be it.
At any rate, she knows what to do.
She reaches into the drawer of one of the nightstands flanking her bed and extracts therefrom her vibrating dildo.
A long, thick tube of plastic, hollow to accommodate the D batteries which fill it, the surface sheathed in flesh-colored latex, the head that of a cock in full erection, a dial in the base controlls the on-off and speed of the artificial monster.
She put the head into her mouth to wet the knob.
She raises her legs and spreads them in the darkness, shafting the device up into her hot, juicy cunt before turning it on to maximum speed.
And she sighs in contentment as she deftly shafts it in and out, in and out of her pussy with one hand, the other kneading and fondling her breasts, fingers tugging sporadically at her nipples.
As she feels the lascivious sensation, ever novel, ever familiar, work its way through her body to her breasts.
And now, she rotates it round and round as she glides it in and out of herself, rubbing it, sliding it against her nub of a clit, now become a knob of a clit.
Yes, the old joy buzzer seems to have come into its own of late, more and more, she reflects.
But then, that's all to the good.
Because sex-sex of all kinds, including this has been getting better and better of late.
No question about that.
No question, but that she gets a better, a deeper thrill, a faster rise, working less hard for it, having it come to her easier and easier.
As though she has developed, has progressed in her control over her erogenous zones, turning them into fully voluntary functional parts, as much under her will as are her muscles.
She. has but to touch her joy buzzer these days to know why it has been so named.
Which leads to a lot of pleasure-and a lot of frustration.
Which is good.
Because she has learned to channel her emotion, any strong emotion, be it rage, frustration or sexual arousal, into a cathexis of intensity in her workouts.
Of course, she is only partially successful in this.
That is, the emotion, whatever it is, is never entirely vanquished by her exertion$, however intense.
But then, she reasons, that's all to the good. Because the emotional input will sustain her. She will become physically exhausted before she is emotionally drained.
Which, she suspects, is impossible, in any event, or so it seems to her of late.
Because she seems to seethe within herself at all times, her emotions like a pool of boiling, molten lava deep in the bowels of the earth, the volcano quiescent at the moment but always, always containing deep within its depths the potential for sudden eruption.
So that moments such as this are especially precious to her.
And satisfying.
Because she will get off this way-provided that the images within her head, those which play themselves on the viewscreen of her mind behind her tightly closed eyelids are intense enough in their content.
And right now, Bobby's is, as he goes from development to development, from strength to strength.
Because she has long ago overcome her awe at the presentation of the well-developed male physique as finished product.
She has long ago dissipated within herself the myth of the superman, the man who is actually a different, a superior model of the basic homo sapiens.
No, she has seen too much for that to holdup.
The only awesome thing about them is the work they did to make themselves into what she sees.
And that particular finished product she has learned very well how to manufacture.
To manufacture.
That's the exact right word for it.
Meaning to make by hand.
Because the bodybuilder is the purests example of the self-made person.
Neurotic?
We may very well be, she tells herself.
But if she's sick, then she's sick in a very healthy way.
Because there is nothing like the satisfaction she takes from seeing herself in the mirror and realizing that she has gotten, is getting better and better.
Of course, there are not more leaps and bounds, not for her.
She has reached the point at which improvements within herself are significant but miniscule.
So that only her practiced eye can discern the specific area of progress, the almost esoteric result.
But the overall impression, the thing that "wowed" her initially in others, that, that is available to the public eye.
But now, with the image of Bobby, (here returns to her that initial period of thrill upon thrill at real, clearly visible, even spectacular progress, that memory adding itself to the figure now transforming itself before her, layer after layer of thick, bronzed muscle adding itself as the huge prick continues to rise and rise.
Yes and yes and yes! she cries out in her mind.
And it is not even the image of Bobby fucking her, of them making love, of his doing anything at all which excites her as she figs herself more and more frantically with the dildo, her body becoming hotter and hotter, there in the dark, as she breaks her sexual sweat.
No, he is merely standing there, becoming better and better built, more and more erect, the more excited, the hotter she becomes.
Such a sensual, intimate, sexual pleasure she derives from the image and her actions, which seem to interact within her, a closed circuit of sexual electricity which becomes stronger and stronger with each manipulation of the faithfully vibrating dildo, with each passing moment of the image's inexorable progress.
So that here, now, she summons from within the molten lava, the boiling, bubbling pool of her emotions, that which is not of her, even though it resides deep within her.
The pleasure beyond pleasure.
That which is greater than herself, that which has the power to take her over completely.
And now, she feels it, feels it awakening within the depths of her innermost self, an incandescent pinpoint of brilliant light which expands rapidly to fill her total being, absorbing the pleasure already raging within her, adding that to itself as it swells to fill every molecule of her being with its irresistible pressure.
The pressure of the ultimate pleasure.
And she feels it fully within herself, feels herself filled to capacity with it.
Which in fact is the case.
As it continues generating more and more of itself deep within her, pumping out more and more of the rich, complex flow of lascivious sensation.
Which she can no longer contain.
As she rises up, up, up And over the top!
As she blows her safety valve.
So that now, she is coming and coming, rocking and rolling from side to side there in the darkness, in the uncontrollable throes of her series of multiple orgasms.
Twinge after exquisite, irresistible twinge of the ultimate experience shakes her, each more delicious than the last.
On and on she is driven by her rampant lust, by the pleasure which generates it, turning her on and on and on, like an invisible hand turning her up to full throttle, like an unseen foot tromping down on the accelerator.
So that all she can do is to give her body free rein to twist and writhe as the powerful contractions of her vaginal muscles milk the vibrating monster of all the pleasure it contains for her, which is more pleasure than she herself could contain.
And so it goes.
As she zooms and soars through a private sexual paradise.
As the image of Bobby within her sex-fevered brain turns ruddy, gleaming now with sexual sweat as it too comes and comes.
Thick, hot, white spurts of jism emerge from the big eye of his knob.
And it is as though she can feel these being injected in and in and into the hot, streaming, convulsing depths of her cunt.
And each spurt prompts a fresh thrill, a fresh orgasm within her, throwing her now this way, now that.
So that she is like a rag doll being worried by a playful puppy, her jerking helplessness, pure reflex, raw reaction, inspiring it to further shakings and tossings.
She is all over the bed now.
Now her legs bicycle furiously in the air.
Now her heels dig into the extra firm mattress, tearing the fitted sheet from its moorings, along with the mattress cover.
Dizzy, disoriented, not knowing where she is, not knowing up from down and certainly not caring, Doreen continues to be propelled through the rosy empyrean of the sexual heavens.
And only very slowly does the series of orgasms within her subside.
And allows her to drift gently back down to earth.
Where she lies in the midst of a bed, the bedding soaked through with her sexual sweat, besides being in total disarray.
And now, she removes the still vibrating dildo from her flowing cunt, its buzzing filling the stillness of the room.
Quickly, she turns it off, holding the wet column with one hand as, with the other, she turns the dial in the base.
And tosses it onto the bed, between her legs, as she wipes her crotch with a wad of sheet.
And lies there, grinning into the darkness, not moving as normal temperature and respiration are restored.
And the image of Bobby, of Bobby as he will be, stands before her, development retained, even as his cock slowly, realistically detumesces.
Powerful image, she tells herself, as though she were some outside observer, seeing the effect it had on her.
And yet there is nothing casual in"the inner satisfaction she experiences now, as she realizes that there is no reason why she cannot make it happen for him, for that body of his.
As, already, she begins to block in his routine, his diet, his schedule, all guaranteed to accomplish exactly what she depicts in her mind's eye.
And he better not blow it, she thinks.
CHAPTER SIX
"What are YOU doing here, Bobby?" Doreen asks, surprised to see him there, in his streetclothes, admittedly, but then wondering why he should be here at all.
"I just came by to tell you that you were right," he says. "I am stiff as a board. I can't move!"
Doreen stops working on her checklist for another client, letting clipboard and pen drop to her sides, as she says, "Let's get one thing straight, Bobby.
"I don't need confirmation from you that I'm right, okay!.
"You are paying me because I supposedly know my shit."
"If, as and when it becomes evident to you that this is not the case, then we call it a day."
"But unless and until that happens, I expect you to accept anything I tell you in my professional capacity as gospel."
"It is what it is, Bobby."
"And not because I say so, but because I've been at this game a while and experience tells me that that's the way it is, that's what works, whatever."
"And this isn't some esoteric bullshit I'm laying on you; we're talking physical, visible, actual, real, got it?"
"Got it, but I just wanted-"
"I'll tell you what you want, Bobby."
"I thought about you last night, and I can see, I know-" She taps herself on the head with the clipboard for emphasis.
"I know exactly what you can become."
"It's no idle dream, Bobby; you can make it happen."
"We can make it happen."
"Only no more bullshit, okay?"
"Uh, Doreen, we're not, we're not talking about what, what I think we are-are we?"
"You mean, as in Mister Galaxy?"
"Well uh, frankly, ridiculous as it must sound-yes!"
"Absolutely. And I can assure you that there's nothing ridiculous about it.
"It's a doable thing, Bobby."
"When?"
"Next year."
"Wow! That soon!"
Not a question, this last, but a vision, a looking forward to the actuality."
"See ya tomorrow, Bobby."
She goes to turn away from him.
So that he takes her completely by surprise. Suddenly, his arms are around her waist, his lips mashed against hers.
Startled, she drops pen and clipboard, puts a hand on each of his shoulders and pushes him back, away from her.
"The fuck was that all about?"
He stands back, looking at her, startled in turn.
"You hafta ask, after what you just told me?"
"Oh here, let me get those for you."
And he picks up her pen and clipboard, holding them out to her.
She takes them from him, her gaze not leaving his eyes.
"I uh, I wish you hadn't done that, Bobby. Not here."
"Gives.. people the wrong impression, y'know?"
"I'm sorry, Doreen. It's just, just... y'know?"
She smiles faintly, replying, "Come to think of it, I do."
But her smile fades at the sight of Stan looking at them.
"You better go now, Bobby."
"Why? I mean, is anything-"
"Just go, all right? See ya tomorrow, as agreed, okay?"
And, seeing him standing there, nonplussed, she pats him on the cheek.
"And don't worry. Everything's okay."
But she doesn't look at him, instead glaring over his shoulder at Stan, who continues to stare at her, expressionless.
Bobby backs off a few steps, looking at her, then turns and leaves, walking by Stan as though he's not even there.
Doreen walks up to him, saying, "You got a problem, Stan?"
"No," he replies, "but I think you do, Doreen."
"Don't cha think you got a full cup, gettin' ready for the Ms. Galaxy?
"Takes a lotta work t'make a men's champion, y'know "
"I know exactly what it takes, Stan."
"As you will see, you and everybody else, come next year's Mister Galaxy."
"That's the way it is, huh"
"That's just the way it is, Stan. "And you'd better not do anything to fuck it up for me."
"Or what?"
"Or I yank Bobby and myself right outta here and we see if Joe Weider or Jack LaLanne or whoever's got better vision than Buck's."
"Now hold on a minute, Doreen."
"Randy Buck is your sponsor-and Steve's."
"He knows nothing about what's happening here."
"Except what you tell `im, right, Stan?"
"Right. Of course. That's my job."
"Then do your fucking job, Stan, okay?"
"Tell Randy Buck what you see, that's all."
"Hell, tell `im Bobby wants to become Mister Galaxy."
"How's that so different from what a million other guys in their twenties want?"
"It's different because they haven't got you training them, Doreen."
"So? At one time, Steve had you training him, Stan."
"And a fat lot of good it did him, right?"
"That wasn't my fault," Stan replies, looking away from her. "There were... problems."
"Not saying it was your fault, Stan. And there are always problems-big problems, little problems."
"And in the league Steve plays in, it's mostly the little problems that kill ya."
"I gotta tell Randy somethin', Doreen."
"Facts, Stan. Stick to the facts."
"Bobby wants it, I'm training 'im for it."
"Besides, Steve's safe this year, at least from Bobby."
"But I can see where this thing is going."
"I wish I shared your vision, Stan."
"I look at the work Bobby has to do and I get tired just thinkin' about it."
"So you go to Randy Buck with some bullshit story about how Bobby is a threat to Steve next year, he comes down on me for it, and we're walkin', Stan, I kid you not."
"And if you don't believe me, you just go right ahead and put it to the test."
"Okay, okay, Doreen."
"I. mean it, Stan, you are off my case as of now, or else."
"I said okay, didn't I? Fuck else iou want-a written guarantee?"
"What I want-Stan-is for you to leave me alone, from here on out."
"Let's make it that, for you, I don't even exist."
"Little hard t'do, Doreen, considering that you're the lead filly for this year's Ms. Galaxy."
"Fine, Stan. We'll smile for the cameras, sit next to each other at the award banquets, take care of all the administrative bullshit involved together."
"But other than that, nothing, okay?"
"I mean, it shouldn't be all that difficult for you, Stan. You've certainly been getting a lot of practice with Steve."
Stan throws up his hands, turns away, and goes into his office, slamming the door behind him.
Doreen looks at the closed door a long moment before returning to the workout area.
What does Stan know about anything, after all, when it comes to bodybuilding? she asks herself.
How can he understand the anxieties, the compulsions, the obsessions-stop!
As she realizes that she is reiterating the definition of a neurosis.
"Here's your diet chart, Bobby, along with a list of the supplements you're to take."
"This uh, this job of yours."
"It won't interfere with your getting enough sleep, will it?"
He shrugs.
"If it does, I can always quit."
"Guy never had a better reason, right?"
And she hesitates only an instant before replying, "Right-if you can afford it."
"Not indefinitely, of course, but I'll be all right for the time frame we're talking about."
"And in fact, as soon as it starts happening-"
"Wrong."
"Wrong? What's-"
"It's gonna start happening almost right away, Bobby."
"Your Most spectacular gains come when you first start a serious program."
"It's when you get to the high end that the gains come most slowly."
"Six weeks from now, you won't know yourself."
"Wow! That fast?"
"Not if we stand here talking about it."
Suddenly cold, hard, almost hostile.
And Bobby looks askance at her before taking up his position in front of the barbell, addressing the weights for his first exercise, the shoulder shrug.
"Feet and hands at shoulder width, lift with the knees to bring the bar in position," Doreen instructs, continuing, "Standing as, straight as possible without the bar's riding on your' thighs, one set of forty-five-begin!"
Bobby does it perfectly.
"Wrong," Doreen says.
"Huh? But I-"
"But you took your position at once."
"What did I tell you about limbering up?"
"Geez, that's right! I forgot!"
"And I let you, so you'd remember."
"Next comes?"
"Bent over rows. After I limber up, that is."
"Let's see you limber up."
She watches as he does curling motions, the tension on chest and shoulders rather than arms, a towel stretched between his fists.
Forty-five of these he does, then goes overhand in a rowing motion, forty-five that way.
"No good, Bobby," she says, "You've got the form but not the tension."
"The idea is you need the pump as well as the range of motion in the shoulder joints."
"You should be breathing hard and you're not."
"Not tryna fake me out, are you?"
"Of course not!"
"From here on out, you wear shorts and a tank top, not those sweats, Bobby."
"I wanna see those muscles work when I'm instructing you."
"Save the sweats for your own time, if at all."
"No, no; too late now," she continues, as he starts to limber up all over again. "Go on to the bent over rowing and we'll limber up properly before we proceed to the bench press."
So it goes.
At the end of the session, she says, "So much for the first session, upper body."
"Go home, eat, sleep, be back here tomorrow prepared to do the lower body and abs."
"Listen, Doreen, I'm sorry for the way I-"
"We live and learn."
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go over my notes for the next client."
And she abruptly walks away from him.
* * *
Bobby sees her busy with another woman as he walks by her, gym bag in hand.
He doesn't see Stan's eyes watching him from behind the Venetian blind slats of the picture window on his office.
Not until Bobby has left the gym does Stan emerge.
He stands there, supposedly looking the place over, but actually waiting until Marilyn has finished her session with a client.
"Got a minute, Marilyn?"
"Just about, Stan."
He ushers her into the office, closing the door behind them.
"What's up, Stan?"
"That guy you sent over to Doreen for hard core training?"
"Bobby. What about him?"
"Unless somebody does something right quick, you are lookin' at next year's Mister Galaxy."
"No! Bobby? You have got to be kidding, Stan!"
"I kid you not, kid."
"You just watch."
"A year from now, he'll be ready."
"He'll be ready, Doreen will already have the Ms. Galaxy title, and if she moves from personal trainer to coach of none other than Mister Galaxy-you tell me, Marilyn-who's gonna wanna train under you when they can have miss triple threat there as their mentor?"
"Course," he says, leaning back, "I could be wrong."
"Maybe you won't have to leave here to make a living."
"Maybe she'll give you a real good job as her assistant."
"Please, Stan, I can live without the sarcasm."
"Just tellin' it like it is, kiddo," he responds, shrugging, looking away from her, avoiding eye contact, giving her a chance to reflect.
"What's your angle in all this?" she asks.
"Worried about Steve, is all."
"Steve's a big boy; he can take care of himself, Stan."
"Wrong. Never could, never will be able to."
"Been goin' from luck to luck.
"But I figger his luck oughtta be good for at least a couple more years."
"Sides, this Bobby hasn't paid his dues yet in the iron game."
"I thought you didn't care for the sport, Stan."
"Ain't a sport, and you're right, I don't much care for it."
"Fact is, point is, Steve does."
"He does a good job for the gym, the public likes 'im, Randy Buck does too, and I can't see some newcomer upsettin' the apple cart."
"And you want me to do-what?"
"Steada lettin' Steve or one of these other muscle studs around here haul yer ashes once'ta month 'er so, might be you could go for a little, shall we say, strategic deployment of the resource?"
"Seen the way Bobby looks atcha, so it shouldn't be all that hard t'do, if-oh, come on, Marilyn!"
"Don't put on that act with me, lookin' all huffy an' bent outta shape!"
"You want names an' dates?"
"Hell, bod like yours, be a shameful waste if you didn't let it go once in a while t'do what comes natcherly."
"All that sweat an' strain, all that buildup fer no payoff?"
"Get real!"
"Sex is what bodybuildin's all about anyway, push comes t'shove, right?"
"You've got some attitude there, Stan, is all I can say."
"Why, because I cut right t'the chase?"
"I tell it like it is an' you know it."
"Ever hear of human dignity, Stan?"
"Yeah. It's right up there with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny."
"What's the use arguing?"
"When do you suggest I begin the great project?"
"Suit cherself, Marilyn."
"Longer you wait, though, the harder it'll be, even fer one of your obvious charms."
"Strike while the iron is hot."
"Nip it in the bud."
"A rolling stone-"
"Okay, okay, Stan! I get the picture!"
"Then you'll-"
"I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do, Stan!"
"You did your thing."
"Why, I don't know, but you did it."
"Message received and understood, o-kay?" And she gets up and walks out of his office, leaving the door open.
As Stan reaches for the telephone to call Randy Buck and apprise him of the situation.
* * *
"It's true enough that the lifting belt protects your back, Bobby, but it does so by giving your abdominal muscles a resistance against which to push, thereby keeping the spinal column aligned."
"Never squat without a belt, never squat without using a board on which to rest your heels."
"I know Marilyn never had you use either, but then you weren't lifting the kind of weight with her that you will with me."
"Get the thing tighter, Bobby."
"I could reach down through it and grab your balls if I wanted to, the way you've got it now."
"That's right, go another notch."
"Okay, fine."
"And leaning against the wall, alternating calf stretches, thirty per."
She watches as he does the limbering up exercise. "And full squat with no weight, rocking back and forth at the. bottom eight to ten times."
He complies.
"Okay, so far, so good."
"Head into the weights with a towel on the shoulders."
"Don't forget the towel or the skin on your shoulder blades'll be raw before yoti get halfway through your second set."
"Okay, head under, centering your back, straightening up slowly, backing onto the board, heels even and-you're there."
"Twenty-five full squats, and let me tell you how low to go the first five reps, okay?"
"And... here we go."
"Don't look at me, look straight ahead, back straight, firm grip on the bar, do not sway-I said do NOT sway!-okay, you even now?"
"That happens again, you are to stop, not keep on going with the squat."
"Okay, hold it right there."
"Feel where you are?"
"That's your full squat, Bobby. Never go any lower than that."
"Okay, straighten up."
"Slow down, this is not a timed exercise and no bouncing back up, a smooth, even movement... " She's doing it, Stan thinks. The bitch is actually gonna do it.
She is gonna bring this kid from nowhere and skyrocket him to the top.
If he can absorb all that she's laying on him, if he can do exactly as she says, then it follows as the day the night that the guy can't miss.
Unless Marilyn-well, she knows what she has to do.
He said nothing about that to Randy Buck, of course.
And Randy dismissed his qualms by adopting the attitude that Bobby isn't doing, saying, thinking anything different from a million other guys.
Everybody wants to be Mister Galaxy, after all; nothing new there, calm down, let nature take its course, thanks for keeping me posted and have a nice day.
And he could be right, Stan reflects. Look at Doreen over there, chewing the guy's ass out for something.
The occasional word drifts over to him.
"... bouncing, Bobby. It won't work, you will not derive the full benefit of the exercise... You say okay, but then you go right back... Bobby, you hafta make up your mind and tell your body to... It makes all the difference... I don't wanna hafta make the same correction over and... " - Geez, Stan thinks, she's not even talking to me, and I'm embarrassed for the guy.
But there he is, taken aback, but taking it. And to think, he's even paying for the privilege.. Hell, he reflects, maybe he was worried for nothing.
That particular combo doesn't seem very long for this world.
He sees Bobby turning away from her now, red in the face.
Stan shakes his head and goes back into the office, his empathy for Bobby making him uneasy, despite the fact that he wants him to fail, to fall on his ass.
He has done his duty as he sees it and, from here on out, he will let nature take its course, and let the chips fall where they may.
After all, he and Steve really haven't been all that close lately, he tells himself.
Still, his loss of the title next year would be a hell of a price to pay for their estrangement.
Maybe, maybe I should make the first move, Stan thinks.
But then-nah! He hasn't done anything wrong, after all, nothing of which to be ashamed, really.
Still, he can see where Steve might have gotten the wrong impression.
If he has so little use for bodybuilding, then why was he coaching him?
Not understanding that there is nothing defective about Stan's knowledge of the techniques for achieving the results.
Technically speaking, Stan is okay, bodybuilding- wise.
It's just that he can't take the bullshit that goes along with most bodybuilders.
Even in his Olympic heyday, his sport-weightlifting-was not a way of life for him.
It was something he did, something he enjoyed doing, but hardly the be all and end all of his existence.
But Steve, the others?
Something else, they are, something Stan can't see, doesn't much care for.
To build a world within the world, to thus depart from reality seems to him an unhealthy thing.
Just as he recognizes in Doreen a user of steroids, a fanatic when it comes to her own body and to those of her clients-those who can stand to remain with her, that is.
She is, therefore, an unhealthy person, for all her size and strength, based on both what she does to achieve it and what attitude she has toward the rest of the world.
She is a narrow, incomplete, in short, a sick person.
And she is about to turn Bobby into the same.
She is about to make him into another Steve.
So that he too can begin that long journey of the soul, in which paradise is a title, its loss a fall from grace.
No favor is she doing Bobby, not even if it works.
Perhaps especially if it works.
He gives Arnold credit for that more than for anything else, that is, for his perspective, his attitude.
Which is complete, well-rounded, joyous, and which has nothing to do with the shrill fanaticism, the insane intensity with which Doreen and Steve and those like them approach this, tltis... thing of theirs.
He wishes that Marilyn would enter the Ms. Galaxy, using her combination of grace, beauty and physical development to sequester the title from the likes of Doreen the Mean, the steroid queen.
But she will not, not so long as the judges are in their power and bulk phase, not so long as Doreen the muscle monster shows them what they want most to see.
And it is the judges who are as responsible for the phenomenon of size as the supreme, quality as the contestants.
Because if they were to look for other properties-overall presence, grace of movement, personality- then there would be a change for the better, so far as Stan is concerned.
Because if size and strength are what it's all about, then why not have a lifting contest and be done with it?
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Hello, Bobby," Marilyn smys, smiling radiantly.
"Oh, hi."
"How's it going?"
He shrugs.
"You heard," he says. "The whole gym heard, I guess."
"Not much of an ego-builder, is she?"
"Guess I had it coming," he says, "but she's so, so... different from you, Marilyn."
"That's for sure," Marilyn chuckles.
"Don't cha just love it, though?"
"Not hardly."
"You saying we made a mistake, transferring you over to her training from mine?"
"Oh, no, no. No complaints on that part of it, I don't guess."
"When she's right, she's right and all that."
"It's just that there are ways to be right without getting all bent out of shape over it, y'know?"
"Well, it's the steroids. You have to make allowances."
"You mean she's on that stuff?"
"Put it this way, Bobby-I doubt she started out in life as a baritone.
"Or are you used to women with voices like hers?"
"I gotta ask her about that."
"You gotta ask her about a lotta things, Bobby."
"Yeah, well, she's not the easiest person in the world to talk to."
"Yes, I know that only too well."
"You mean you and her don't get along?"
"Doreen and the rest of the world in general don't get along."
"At least you and I... got along."
"Almost too well, 'til you turned me down."
"Nothing personal. Just I never mix business with pleasure."
"I thought I explained that to you at the time."
"Y'did, y'did."
"But I thought that was just an excuse."
"One way to find out about it, isn't there?"
"You mean-"
"Try it again and see what happens," Marilyn says.
"Never can tell."
"Tonight?"
"You're on."
"Where and when?"
"Why don't you meet me at my place, Bobby?"
"It's a week night, so you could come over and sort of... get acquainted."
"Nothing really late."
"Don't want to interfere with your training now, do we?"
"What time's good for you?"
"I should be home and ready for you by eleven."
And she gives him the address.
And Stan, watching the scene through the blind slats of his office, smiles.
* * *
Bobby shows up promptly at eleven.
She buzzes him into the building and opens the door immediately to his knock at her apartment.
And Bobby can only gape in astonishment.
No cocktail dress, no blouse and slacks, not even shorts and a tank top.
Rather, she greets him in a transparent short neglige, through which the twin mounds of her large breasts with the doorbells of her nipples show clearly.
She smiles in greeting, closing the door behind him.
And he can see the bulges of her large, firm buttocks as he leads him into the living room.
"Care for a beer?"
"It's all I keep around the place."
"Not much on alcohol, for understandable reasons."
"Uh yeah, sure. Beer's fine."
"Sit down, make yourself comfortable."
And she goes to the kitchen, returning quickly with a round tray .holding two beer bottles atop which glasses tinkle, bell-like.
As she puts it down in front of him, her boobs hang heavily in her deep dcolletage, as though this were necessary to show what she's got.
"So," she says, joining him on the couch for the pouring ceremony, "you and the incredible hulkette aren't exactly hitting it off, eh?"
"I, I guess it's just me," he replies. "And uh, a little bit you."
"Oh?"
"Well, you helped me quite a bit with the basics, and I know what to do, how to do it."
"Just, it's not so easy when you go to do it at the weights she's got me working with."
"Not," he adds quickly, "not that they're the wrong weights."
"In fact, I just wish-never mind."
"No, go ahead. Say it, Bobby."
"Well, if you would have brought me along on the poundages, everything would have been fine."
"You see, Bobby, that's where she and I differ."
"By the time you got up into that weight category, you would have mastered the basics from me and would have been able to progress without a trainer."
"But I want to go for, for... competition."
Not daring to mention Mister Galaxy, lest he sound ridiculous.
But she knows exactly what he means, thanks to Stan.
"But for that, Bobby, you don't need a personal trainer; you need a coach."
"Or, if you're good enough, you need nobody except yourself and your own determination which, in the end, is what it all comes down to anyway."
"I don't know," Bobby says, shaking his head, "Doreen is telling and showing me so much that I'd never have suspected, never have guessed to do on my own."
"Well, those things were coming with me."
"Essentially, the only area of disagreement between you and me was the question of weight."
"I was stressing the basics, the fundamentals and you wanted to do poundages."
"You uh, you saying I should come back."
"Absolutely not."
"If you did that, how could we be-like this?"
And she leans over, into his arms, putting her own around his body, sealing her lips to his.
And he can feel the strength, the intensity of her grasp, the firmness of her limbs, of her body against his.
And he wonders if, after all, he wasn't wrong, if he wasn't simply too impatient.
Because he can feel the solidity of her back muscles and the mass of them.
And he knows that, if her methods lead to these results-on a woman and, apparently, without steroids-then she too has to know what she's talking about, bodybuilding-wise.
On the other hand, how long would it take to get results like that with her since, by her own admission, he would actually have to wait until he finished training directly under her to achieve the male equivalent of what he feels here.
And he doesn't want to wait, nor does he think he should have to.
If only, he thinks, if only Doreen were not so damned... unpleasant.
And now, she breaks the clinch, standing up, so that he can see her pussy with its well-trimmed triangle pointing down at her mostly clean-shaven pussy beneath the transparent, shifting fabric-of the neglige.
As she offers him a hand and he rises, following her into the bedroom, where she at once strips the bed of its covers, tossing them onto the bureau.
He fumbles hastily out of his shoes and begins to remove his clothes as she, seated on the edge of the bed, facing him, slips her neglige off over her head and tosses it onto the bedding on the bureau.
She lies back on the bed, on her side, watching as he finishes stripping.
And he sports a lazy hard-on already as he joins her and they entwine their limbs and mash their lips together in naked embrace.
And he cannot seem to get enough of her body.
As he grasps her large, firm breasts with both hands, feeding them to himself one at a time as he kneads and fondles them.
Her nipples go rubbery and erect beneath his oral attentions.
And his hands linger on her breasts, continuing to manipulate them as he slides down, down, down her body on his tongue, which explores the cubes of her abdominals, the deep center line of her body in intimate detail.
The perfection of her! he marvels.
Of course, he could see it, could see parts of it, could get the impression of it, seeing her around the gym in her various workout costumes.
And he always sensed a vague disappointment on days when she wore the all-concealing sweats.
But here, now, she excedes his expectations.
Because there is absolutely nothing he would change on her.
She is the ideal combination of musculature and beauty-his ideal, at least.
And Doreen is far from his mind indeed right now, as he loses himself in Marilyn.
Down, down, down he goes, gliding, snail-like, on his ever-working tongue.
And he has no problem at all with her pussy, is in fact eager to explore it with this same thoroughness, notwithstanding that it has nothing to do with her musculature.
Because right now, he is fully aroused.
His erection throbs with an almost painful hardness, as his tongue seeks and finds her clit.
And he places his hands on the backs of her thighs as she raises and spreads them, giving him a clearer target.
And now he is strumming her joy buzzer with the flickering tip of his tongue.
And feeling it respond to this almost at once, becoming engorged and rubbery, just as her nipples did before.
And now, he is tongue-fucking her, shafting his tongue in and out of her hot, juicy cunt, maintaming constant contact with her clit as he does so.
And she is rocking and rolling from side to side, writhing and moaning with pleasure as he continues this action relentlessly.
Until, unable to hold off another second, Bobby pulls his face back and, bracing himself on one hand planted firmly beside her, with the other he guides his missile toward its target.
And he is in and in and into her, feeling the warm, wet, smooth pressure on his mighty marauder as it enters her, all the way.
And they pause thus, he above her, looking down at her face, rosy now with the engorged blood of her aroused passion.
And now, he shifts from hands to elbows.
So that the big balloons of her bountiful boobs press against his chest.
As he begins his fucking motion.
In and out, in and out his mighty monolith of monster meat shafts, the piston of a, one-cylinder engine of living flesh.
As they communicate.
As millions of messages of lascivious delight and of the promise of other, more intense pleasure still to come are passed back and forth between them.
Yes, his cock and her cunt are in deep conversation, are in heavy dialogue, no question. , No question, but that they are speaking to each other, body to body, in the only language the body can understand, which is that of sensation.
As the pleasure within them both spreads from the contact point to make itself felt throughout their entire bodies.
As the delight becomes ecstasy.
As the ecstasy turns into rapture, a rapture too long held in check on Bobby's part as an impossible dream, a fantasy, a waking but not a working hypothesis.
Except that here, now, it is being realized-made real.
And there comes over him that added dimension, the dimension of power we feel when things which we desire but which are not under our control begin to go our way.
As though our will were strong enough to influence the world itself, to reach out and take control of independent, outside reality.
Because how could he ever have hoped to actually possess the likes of Marilyn?
Indeed, he counted his discounting of the possibility as a sign of his growing maturity, a rejection of blatantly sophomoric wishful thinking as an obvious waste of time.
He thought that the closest he would ever come to fucking Marilyn would be to date one of the girls from the office, a thing he does from time to time, closing his eyes during the main event and allowing the images on the viewscreen of his mind to be those of Marilyn and himself going at it.
Unfair to the girl, perhaps, but then who knows what is transpiring within her mind, behind those closed eyes?
And maybe that's why every girl he has ever fucked has kept her eyes closed, except, perhaps, at the very beginning.
Precisely so that she could have her fantasy, so that she could assign credit for his cocksmanship to somebody else.
In a way unfair, but in a way, no skin off, right? Because, in the end, there is only the feeling and the feeling and the feeling.
Not that the rest is bullshit; far from it, in fact. Because, but for Marilyn's inspiration, would he be this ardent, this skilfully attentive, this determined to give her the pleasure as well as himself?
He thinks not.
And besides, the proof that Marilyn is special, if such proof were required, lies precisely in the fact that he keeps his eyes open, anxious that he should miss no detail of the event.
Which is what it is and not otherwise.
Which is, for him, a dream come through, the bonds of practicality, of possibility shattered, all limitations transcended in favor of this, in all its glory, in all its reality.
Yes and yes and yes! he cries out, in his mind. Wanting her hungering for her, even as she gives him her all.
Wanting more and more, as the drooling, insatiable hunger and its satisfaction begin their two-step within him.
The more he gets, the more he wants.
And the more he wants, the more is given, is delivered to him.
So that yes, as good as this is, it does get better than this.
And better than this and this and this!
And so on, onward and upward, through level after level of his arousal, of their shared arousal.
Because Marilyn's motives may be far from pure, but her response is certainly genuine.
Because it requires no great effort on her part to simply let herself go.
As, on the viewscreen of her mind, Steve is fucking her brains out.
That's right, no less than Mister Galaxy, exactly as he is in real life-with one major exception.
It is Steve, Steve in full, intimate detail, Steve exactly as she has had him in reality, a couple of times.
But.
It is a Steve genuinely desiring her, wanting her for herself, for her uniqueness, and experiencing a hunger, not only for her luscious body but for herself as a whole person.
So that this Steve is not the fanatically self-absorbed neurotic, perpetually haunted by his fear of losing his title.
Rather, this is a well-rounded, real man of a Steve, one for whom his title is but an attribute, a part of the man, and not the man himself.
And yes, she deserves him, is worthy of him, she tells herself.
After all, she is doing for him what no other woman on earth would know how to do.
She is nailing his title for him, down the road.
Next year, next year when, but for what is happening right now-what she has just begun to make happen-Bobby would wrest the title from Steve, becoming the new Mister Galaxy and probably destroying Steve in the process.
So that Steve owes her, owes her more than he'll ever know, unless, somehow, the opportunity for her to tell him what she has done presents itself.
Ah, but she will have to be very careful there, she cautions herself, lest her big favor turn to her own disadvantage, lest he come to hate her for what she has done.
Because men have such egos!
So that his reaction would undoubtedly be that he could have done it without her, so she need not flatter herself that she has accomplished anything in his behalf by playing the whore-saboteur.
Still, she will know what she has done.
And this will give her the inner strength, the confidence to manipulate Steve himself, to the point that he will truly become hers.
Yes, if she is clever enough to accomplish her objective with Bobby, then surely she is clever enough to ultimately wrap Steve around her little finger.
Evil?
She thinks not.
Because, after all, who will end up getting hurt by all this?
Certainly not Steve, since the purpose of the exercise is to see to it that he ends up with exactly what he wants.
And not Doreen, who will undoubtedly become Ms. Galaxy, thanks to her determination, one might say her insanity, although at what long term cost to her health nobody can say.
And Bobby?
Bobby is young.
And this Mister Galaxy thing is an idea, a fixation, and one not even entirely his own, but rather Doreen's, using-one might say abusing-her talents to lend feasibility to an otherwise impractical notion on his part.
Because, left to his own devices, Bobby wouldn't make it.
And now, thanks to Marilyn, he won't make it anyway.
But at least, Marilyn tells herself, he'll end up with one hell of a body.
That, and a year and a half of her under his belt, a year and a half of first-class sexual imagery and experience.
Not a bad deal for a young man with his whole life ahead of him.
Mister Galaxy?
Who needs it? Marilyn asks herself. In fact, who the fuck needs that whole sick scene, sick because of guys like Steve, because of a growing number of gals like Doreen?
So that what she's doing isn't all that terribly wrong, is in fact right, in a way, if, in the long run, it saves Bobby from the kind of live Steve is living.
So that, actually, everyone will end up a winner on this one-thanks to her.
Beautiful, really, when you stop to think about it, she tells herself. And yes, the right thing to do, absolutely.
And now, assured that this is so, he relaxes, opening herself up to Bobby completely-physically speaking.
So that now, they are climbing the rainbow together.
Higher and higher they rise, up the rainbow of their shared arousal.
Hotter and hotter they become.
Faster and faster, Bobby pounds his prick in and in and into her.
Anxious now to have the ice broken, to get this first fuck, this precedent between them, on the record, so to speak.
Because what's done is done and cannot be undone.
And once their fucking is an accomplished fact, it is something Marilyn will have to accept, will have to live with.
And now, impelled by an urgency to make what is happening a done deed, Bobby accelerates still further.
Forcing the pleasure beyond pleasure to awaken within himself.
Forcing it to take him over, it is.
Forcing himself to become dizzy, disoriented, awash in the floodtide of his passion.
And it works.
And just at the right time, as it turns out.
Because, even now, Marilyn is coming, the first of her series of multiple orgasms causing a powerful contraction of her vaginal muscles, milking his prick even as he shoots his first wad into her juicy, convulsing depths.
And now, in paroxysm after paroxysm of ultimate pleasure and calming relief, Bobby comes and comes into her, even as her pussy sucks his cock of wad after wad with the strong spasms of her orgasmic series. As they traverse the sexual paradise of their shared climax, floating effortlessly, helpless, mindless puppets jerked this way and that on invisible strings.
And only very slowly do they come back down to earth.
And they cling together in sweaty, panting embrace for a long moment before Bobby slides wetly out of her cream-filled cunt.
And sits back on his knees, taking a long, hard look at where he has just been, as though memorizing the view.
And she lets him, lying there, legs akimbo for a long, unobstructed look before playfully reaching up with her legs, locking her heels behind his head and pulling his face closer to her pussy, its entrance agape and slimed over with his jism.
And he cannot believe himself, as he seals his lips to those of her pussy.
And, crouching there, begins eating her defiled quim, heedless of the residue of his own previous efforts.
But he wants her, is drawn to her, not only for her own sake, not merely because of his longstanding desire for her, but rather because of his whole situation.
A week ago, he was nothing, had nothing to which to look forward.
And now, it is all, all! happening for him, to him.
Go figure.
But he cannot.
Except that nothing in this world happens for nothing.
He has heard this, but only now does he believe it.
Only now does he appreciate that there is a hand in the affairs of men which guides their destinies.
And that hand is, by turns, beneficial, malevolent, indifferent.
And right now, things are going his way.
He will help them, of course-oh how he will help them!
He will work his balls off, he will fuck his brains out, he will win on all fronts.
He has the youth, the energy, the determination, possibly the best trainer in the world, certainly the best girlfriend in the world.
So that he simply can't miss.
Yes, let Doreen abuse him verbally all she wants.
He can take it.
He will take it, will take the ball and run with it. And let none of them down-not Doreen, not Marilyn, not himself.
And now, his cock is fully erect once more and once again he plugs into Marilyn and feels her hot pussy eagerly grasp his pole as she smiles at him.
And closes her eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Could she have been wrong? Doren asks herself.
The progress is there, but not as she envisioned it. She knows what it takes to build big beef. After all, she herself is living proof of that. And yet, what's wrong here?
With his potential, at his age, and following the regimen of diet and rest prescribed by her, Bobby is not where she feels he should be.
She is not ready, or rather he is not ready for the steroid "boost".
He is, after all, a man, and one whose youth should guarantee a natural and copious production of testosterone.
And one which, being natural, will not be injurious to his health down the road.
One thing to take the risks she does in that department, she tells herself, quite another to unnecessarily risk Bobby.
And they do have time yet.
But something-she hasn't a clue as to what-is wrong.
And he seems rather listless of late.
Two months into his program, and he seems to be showing signs of bum-out.
She has seen it too often not to recognize it.
What the fuck could it b-of course!
Stupid of her!
How could she have been so thoughtless, so careless?
She gets her ashes hauled regularly, and here he is, a young guy, in his prime-and not getting that taken care of.
Hell, that's probably all it is.
And a little fucking is good for a man, actually, she reflects, in fact serves to produce more of the necessary growth hormones.
And in fact, that should probably be a regular feature of his training program.
She should have noticed it sooner, she tells herself, adding, ass hole.
But, no problem.
And in fact "Bobby. My place. Tonight.
"Saturday night, so you can stay over. Be there." And she gives him the address.
"But I-"
"I know, I know, but believe me, it's part of the program, that's all.
"Just sorry I didn't think of it sooner."
"Uh, yeah, right, Doreen.
"I'll uh, I'll be there."
A look of anxiety on his face, he turns away from her.
"Hold on, Bobby. Don't cha need the address?"
"Oh! Yeah! Right!"
She gives it to him, adding, "I should be there at eleven, okay?"
"Uh yeah, sure, why not?"
Puzzled at his apparent discomfiture, Doreen watches him as he heads for the locker room.
She shrugs and greets her next client.
She is halfway through the session when Bobby emerges and goes over to Marilyn, who is seated by the office on a bench, going over notes, apparently for her next client.
And she stares in disbelief at what is apparently a whispered but furious argument between them.
And it all becomes clear to her, what's been wrong.
Bobby's problem isn't lack of nookie, but rather an excess of same.
This bitch has been undoing her work, undermining, sabotaging the effort!
Bobby has just had to break his date with Marilyn in order to accommodate Doreen's unexpected directive.
Doreen smiles and turns away from the altercation.
Bobby has had to make an on-the-spot decision and he decided in her favor.
Finally, Bobby shrugs and stomps off.
Immediately, Stan emerges from the office. Rather, his head does.
As he pulls Marilyn inside and closes the door. I should have known, Doreen says, seeing at once the fine hand of Stan in all this.
She will straighten Bobby out tonight, she tells herself. And she will never mention Marilyn, not even once.
* * *
They shower together, as is inevitable.
They have just finished with their last clients and require only a shower before dressing and leaving.
And Doreen cannot help it, perhaps it's the sadistic streak within her because of the steroids, but she snickers, turning away from Marilyn to hide her smirk and the giggles.
Actually, she tells herself, she should be outraged, pissed off at Stan, at Marilyn, even at Bobby.
But she caught the action in plenty of time, she has it under control-at Marilyn's expense.
So that she herself is caught with a case of the gloats.
And it shows.
"What's so fucking funny?" Marilyn asks, her tone a growl.
"Oh, nothing. Just, just... thinking of something."
"Yeah, I'll just bet you are, Doreen!
"Like your date tonight?"
"Okay, yeah, like that, Marilyn. What's it to ya?"
"Bobby and I are an item, is what."
"He just agreed to see you tonight because he needs you for his training and he didn't wanna start any shit with you, is all."
Suddenly, the good humor is gone from Doreen's face.
"You think I didn't figure out what you and Stan are up to, Marilyn?
"You think I don't know that you're tryna ruin Bobby's chances for Mister Galaxy by wrecking him with marathon fuckathons?"
"You're full of shit, Doreen! Bobby and I, well, we just like each other, that's all."
"Yeah, well the party is over, Marilyn."
"We'll just see about that."
"No, Marilyn, I'm tellin' it just like it is."
"You back off, you leave him alone."
"Read my lips, Marilyn."
"He's mine, slut!"
"You wanna be a so-called item with him, you do it after next year's Mister Galaxy, o-kay?"
"Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do?"
"The one who caught you doin' what your doin', is who!"
"I'm not afraid of you, Doreen!"
"An' that was your second mistake!"
And a voice inside Doreen's head protests. But it's only a small voice.
And not nearly convincing enough to stop what happens next.
As Doreen aims a punch at Marilyn's jaw.
But Marilyn ducks, kicking Doreen in the stomach.
Surprised, Doreen doubles over.
But an uppercut from Marilyn quickly straightens her out.
She staggers backward; heels slipping and sliding on the tiled floor of the shower, slick with the running water.
And Marilyn quickly pursues her advantage, hooking a foot behind one of Doreen's, tripping her, so that she lands on her ass, the resounding splat of bare cheeks on wet tile resembling a rifle shot.
Doreen goes to get up, but Marilyn kicks her in the shoulder, flattening her on her back.
Marilyn leaps into the air at once, intending to come down on Doreen's mid-section. with both heels.
But Doreen, instead of trying to get up, as anticipated, rolls to one side with lightning speed.
So that Marilyn, instead of landing on resilient flesh, comes down instead with the full weight of her body on her. heels, on unyielding tile.
She barely has time to register the shock, the pain, before Doreen whacks her behind the knees with a vicious forearm blow.
And, still prone on the tile, snags a heel with one hand and yanks.
So that Marilyn sits down hard, reflexively throwing her hands behind her to catch herself.
But another forearm swipe, intended to crush Marilyn's larynx, missing because it was delivered at an awkward angle, instead strikes her in the mouth, knocking her flat on her back.
"I'm, I'm bleeding!" Marilyn exclaims, looking at the blood on her hands as they descend from her split lip.
She looks up just in time to see a fist filling her vision, jerking her head up in time to save herself from a broken nose.
Her jaw, however, is less fortunate.
And Doreen, huffing and puffing, leaves Marilyn there, slumped unconscious against the shower room wall with a broken jaw as she shuts off her own shower and leaves hurriedly.
* * *
Marilyn was unreasonable, Bobby reflects, buzzing Doreen's apartment, getting the answering buzz, entering the outer door. And in fact, more than unreasonable, totally off the wall over tonight.
Like she didn't understand what Doreen's training means to him, after that being practically all he talks about for months now.
Bobby has an eerie sense of deja vu as Doreen opens the door, wearing a filmy neglige.
But on her, the effect is different.
Because, if Marilyn, for all her musculature, was nonetheless voluptuously feminine, here before him stands a female warrior statue, come to life, a bronzed goddess of war incongruously if revealingly draped.
As though this is a replay of some kind, or perhaps an actual play with a different actress playing the same role, Bobby is led into the living room, where he accepts a beer from her and they drink, followed by her leading him into the bedroom, after a preliminary embrace.
Ah, but now that they are in bed, there is a real difference!
He thought Marilyn was built?
Doreen is a phenomenon of prime beef, its density surely the envy of any man, it's condition the goal of any bodybuilder, male or female, Mister Galaxy not excluded.
And he cannot help but think how very fortunate Steve is that men and women can't compete for the same title; And now, sucking Doreen's tits, fondling her breasts, a strange, new sensation steals over him.
As this new image, this new ideal, this female archetype of physical achievement presents itself to his mind on the precise model of reality, that is, of Doreen herself.
So that yes, he is excited, but with an excitation which incorporates not only the sexual aspect, but that of his personal aspirations as well.
This is real, but unreal in its very reality.
That such a body should be possible, that it should be a woman, that this woman should be his, at least right now, at least in the strictly physical sense-it is as though everything he ever wanted is presenting itself to him.
Everything-and more.
Because the archetype, the ideal was presented to him in the real world, rather than being prefigured in his mind, thence to proceed in search of fulfillment.
Because this, this! he tells himself,. as his tongue explores the cubes of her abdominals, is not the realization of his desire, as was the case with Marilyn, but rather the refining, the revelation of the true, the underlying, the all-encompassing desire beneath mere surface sexuality.
As he slides on down to her cunt, where- Can you believe the size of this clit? he asks himself.
And the responsiveness of it!
And of her, of she who represents everything he ever wanted!
How wrong he was, he tells himself, to think that he could ever be happy with Marilyn, when there is something like this in the world.
And he is here, with her, with this, and it wasn't even his idea!
He needs no Marilyn now, he tells himself; Marilyn was practice, was warm-up for the main event, which this is.
Marilyn was, is just another pretty female pro bodybuilder, that's all.
Rare but by no means all that unusual, and becoming less and less so in today's bodybuilding world.
But this, ah this! is surely one of a kind, unique in all the world.
And yes, she is foul-tempered and foul-mouthed and fucked up in the head and on steroids and who the fuck cares?
Because, dammit, a man has to have goals, has to have ideals in this world, and he seldom attains either.
But this is the exception that proves the rule, so far as he is concerned.
And if she can build him like this, if she can so unite with him in his purpose that he can attain in the male body that which she has over-achieved in the female, if she can do that for him, with him, then he could ask for nothing more.
Because yes, this is, has to be, as good as it gets.
And now, he is tongue-fucking her, and having no trouble staying in contact with that fantastic clit of hers.
Because it's right there, big and firm and throbbing in its responsiveness.
And in fact, the thereness of her is overwhelming.
Because she is solid, she is real in her unreality.
As though reality itself had expanded its possibilities to accommodate her.
As though her will, her determination and above all her truly Herculean efforts had bent the world, had prevailed upon it to allow her to thus create herself.
And this, this! is what bodybuilding is all about-not to follow in the footsteps of anyone, no matter how fantastic, but rather to redefine possibility, reality itself.
And he wants her, he wants her in ways so intimate that his wanting of her has about it the character of a sense of incompleteness.
As though his not being a part of her and vice versa creates within him a lack, a lacuna,, a hollowness which cries out for fulfillment, a fulfillment which only she can give by giving not of herself, but simply by giving herself.
To incorporate her-and move beyond.
To take advantage of the fact that he is a man and she is a woman, hence that he can fold what she has into himself-what she has, what she is- and, using that as his foundation, his starting point, build himself into a hulking monster such as the world has never known.
And Marilyn?
Marilyn is history.
He cannot be concerned with her-not as a person, not as a part of his future.
Sorry kid, but those are the breaks.
And having said that, if only in the silence of his mind, he moves on.
To bigger and better things.
To a bigger and better thing, which Doreen is-but not on the order, not of the magnitude of himself as he will be.
But for now, he wants to reach out, to close the gap between her and himself, a thing which she also wants to achieve.
So that, united in purpose, they are united here, now in their sexuality.
I've got him on the right path now, Doreen thinks. I've got him good.
He is mine, now and forever, inextricably linked to, hopelessly dependent upon-me.
So that he will not be like Steve, whom she could never possess, no matter how badly she wanted him, no matter how hard she tried.
Rather, he will be a creature, in the most literal sense, that is, something which she will have created.
And now, she offers herself to him that he might revel in her body, binding him to herself this way as well.
So that he can never, never be free of her.
As his tongue shafts in and out of her hot, drooling pussy, stroking her cock head of a joy buzzer.
And now, he goes lower, sucking, chewing her big round bung.
In and out of her ass hole he shafts his tongue, rimming her.
And she rolls over, going onto knees and elbows, offering it to him, giving him a better shot at it.
So that now, he has a choice of targets, suitable for tongue or prick.
But he has not yet explored her from this angle orally, so he takes his time, helping himself to handfuls of her solid boulder buttocks.
And spreading them wide, so that he can go in, in, into the depths of her ass.
So that he can feel the heat of the life within.
So that he can probe her rectum with his tongue, rolling it around, stretching the entrance, even as he moves the soft, yielding tissues within, around and around.
And now, Bobby pulls his face back and stands up on his knees.
He spreads the cheeks of her ass with the fingers of one hand as, with the other, he deftly inserts his rampant invader into her ass, buttoning the head of his cock into her ass hole, then, firmly grasping both her hips, rotating his own, drilling in and in and into the depths of her rectum, the battering ram head of his cock stretching and filling the channel as it goes, the thick shaft behind keeping it stretched and filled.
Yes, Bobby tells himself, she will deny me nothing.
Has she not just given him her ass?
And is he not even now fucking her up the yingyang for all he's worth?
So that yes, she is his-for as long as he wants her.
After next year's Mister Galaxy, well, who knows?
Perhaps his taste in women will return to normal. Or maybe it's that his taste for women will return, period.
Because look, just look at this fantastic creature! This is a woman?
Not like any he has ever seen or known, she isn't. Look at that Christmas tree imprint in her lower back!
Nobody, not even Mister Galaxy, can show something like that, not with that clarity, not with that thickness of insertions.
And now, he is pumping in and out of her ass for all he is worth.
To make this an accomplished fact, to nail it down in the annals of time.
So that, whatever does or does not happen after this, she will know that she has been fucked in the ass by him.
Let the record show So that now, he drives himself to completion. So that he is injecting wad after wad of his thick, hot jism into the depths of her bowels, is giving her a sperm enema.
Let the record so state, be it duly noted, and like that.
And now, he is riding her all the way down, collapsing in the aftermath of the ultimate pleasure, of supreme relief.
Neither of which, he knows, she has yet experienced this evening.
But the night is young and she's so, so... inspiring.
Plenty of time, he reasons. All the time in the world.
As he lies there atop her solid, lumpy musculature, his cock, fully inserted in her ass, slowly detumescing.
Until the peristaltic action of her bowels expels him and he oozes out of her, long and thick and smooth.
And he looks at her ass hole, the entrance, ruddy, distended, oozing his melting jism.
And he steels himself to do that which must, surely bind her to him for as long as it takes for him to get to the top.
And she can scarcely believe it as he rims her cream-filled bung.
How badly must he want her, for him to do a thing like that?
But does he really mean it?
Or is he that clever, that devious that he will go through the motions like that, merely in order to secure her for-never mind.
Because he isn't that clever, isn't that devious. She is the mentor here, not he, she reminds herself.
No, he really wants her.
And if proof were needed, then surely it is forth-coming.
Because he makes a meaL of her ass hole. for a few more minutes.
And then, he rolls her over.
And she looks down and sees his huge erection. But not for long.
Because, even now, he is on her and in her and fucking her for all he is worth.
The front way, the right way.
So that she knows now that his enthusiasm for her is boundless-as boundless as is hers for him, not as he is, but as he will be.
So that her enthusiasm is for that which she is about to create, is about to make from Bobby as raw material.
After all, who the fuck is Steve, to think that he is too good for her, too far above her, whatever?
Hell, didn't she even have to show him what all he must do to create in his lower back that which she already possesses to perfection? So where the fuck does he get off, thinking himself head and shoulders above the mass of humanity, herself included?
This time, she tells herself, this time she will do it right.
She will create her own Mister Galaxy, one utterly beholden to her, to have and to hold.
Even as, right now, he is having her and holding her as though hanging on for dear life.
Which, she reflects, is not, in a manner of speakipg, all that far from the truth.
Because without her, he would never become Mister Galaxy.
And would not make it with her, either, had she not rescued him from the nefarious and malevolent clutches of Stan and his tool Marilyn.
So that it is to her and to her alone that he owes allegiance.
As, even now, he is swearing allegiance to her with every thrust, every withdrawal of his turgid intruders And she knows that it's all okay, that everything will turn out as it should, with herself in full control.
So that, right now, she is free to let herself go completely, to relinqish all control to the pleasure beyond pleasure which wells up within her.
And she flushes beet red, her mighty chest heaving up and down in deep, rapid panting as her pussy, worked reflexively by forces greater than herself- forces exquisite, irresistible, delicious in their intensity-sucks Bobby's cock of its load, milking it with the spasms of her series of multiple orgasms.
So that they are zooming, soaring through their shared sexual paradise, spurt and spasm alternating until, at last, they float back down onto the bed.
Which should "prove" his utter attraction to her, he tells himself.
Which should "prove" her absolute devotion to him, she tells herself.
As they lie there in locked embrace, sweating together, breathing together, cooling off together, each pleased at how well it's all going.
