Unexpected Muscle

I have recently been doing some thinking about my relationship with muscle, strength and domination. I haven't come to any deep realizations. But I have remembered some really formative moments in the development of my relationship to muscle.

One of those was an experience with what I have called Unexpected Muscle, those chance encounters with muscle, sometimes a fleeting moment, when it's least expected.

I had met a friend for dinner at a Thai place in the Castro. We were shown to our table and I sat down on the banquet against the wall and my friend took the chair. He took off his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair.

He's taller than me, about 6 feet tall, and has a slender build that he has built up over the years into a lean and sculpted physique. I find him very attractive and usually find reasons to compliment his build when we're together and after. I mentally took note of how good he looked.

After he'd sat down and the waiter had left us, he simply lifted up his right arm and flexed it right there in the restaurant, admiring his own arm. His biceps balled up into a fine, vascular peak, and the sleeve of his shirt, slipped down off the muscle into the valley between his biceps and his delts.

I was shocked. Nobody had ever flexed for me in a public place before! And his arm looked great.

He kept his arm up and flexed and turned to me and said, "I know you're going to tell me about how good my muscles look later in an email, so I thought I'd give you something to talk about."

With that he turned to look at his own arm again and rotated his fist from over his biceps around away from them and back again a couple of times, making his biceps slide and move. Then he dropped his arm and picked up his menu.

This is not my friend. I've posted this picture before, but it seemed right as an illustration for my recollection.

I couldn't help but sputter my thanks for the flex. I'd always hoped to see him flex, but never imagined it would happen in public. It was seriously one of the most erotically charged events in my life. For the rest of the meal it was hard for me to focus on my friend's face when we talked. My eyes kept drifting down to his biceps, noting how nicely shaped they were and spotting the obvious vein that ran out from under the shirt sleeve, down over the front of his biceps and down onto his fore arms.

He's long known that i'm a muscle enthusiast, that i admire his physique even though he's not a bodybuilder. It was such an unexpected joy to have him flex for me like that. I only wish it could have gone on longer and that I could have reached out and touched it. But it is from such wishes that my fiction is born.

Reality and Fiction

It really is odd, when reality comes to mirror a fantasy. It is exciting and disappointing and something else all together.

For years I’ve written muscle fantasies some posted, some not, about encountering an ex; an ex who has beefed up in the ensuing years apart, while in those same years the protagonist has stopped working out.

Not long ago I joined Facebook. I found some friends and neighbors were already on. And I found an ex. Well, not AN ex, but THE ex, the one for whom I’d fallen hard and who had broken my heart when he dumped me. During that relationship I had been bodybuilding and in terrific shape, upwards of 200 pounds with a 34 inch waist, 48 inch chest and nearly 18 inch arms. I was built and strong.

At the very end of that relationship, the ex, who wasn’t my ex at the time, had started to train seriously and made noticeable gains. That had been really hot. Memories of that have become fodder for some stories I’ve since written. Of course, right after he’d made enough gains to really turn me on, he dumped me. It wasn’t a pretty break up and I was crushed. About a year later I heard through friends, that he’d continued to work out and gotten “buff”.

It’s been years and I’ve had to stop training because of the damage bodybuilding had done to my shoulders, knees, back. And my body isn’t anywhere near as muscular as it once was, all the muscle tone gone and now carrying another 30 pounds or so of fat.

The ex has been posting pictures from his mobile phone from a vacation he’s taking in NYC. Oh, my goodness. He is lean and built. Not a bodybuilder, but built. His arms are stretching his sleeves. He’s got a pencil thick vein running down the top outer side of one of his lean biceps. Holding a glass, or even relaxed at his side, his arms are clearly bigger now than mine. In some shots I can see how developed his chest is and how trim his waist is.

It’s hot.

I’m kind of hoping that at some point he’ll post a shirtless picture, because his torso looks lean, but with size and his waist is comparatively small. Is that wrong of me?

Flipping through the photos he’s posted to his Facebook, I can see that he’s continued to train, and he was never really into bodybuilding as such, but his continued dedication to the gym has paid off. He is clearly a muscular man now. And in the pictures I also see that his new friends, all people I’ve never met, are hot, beefy muscular men who make him look small. These guys are big.

It’s like the set up to a story that I might have written. In fact, I did start writing it about 2 years ago. And I wrote another version about a year before that. Neither one is finished yet. But it makes me wonder, have any of my other stories come true? If I finished these stories, would reality continue to mirror what I’d written?

Wouldn’t that be a great premise?! A writer of muscle growth fiction finds that one of his stories, where he used his friends as models for the characters starts to come true. Now that would be hot.

fantasies

i'm not sure who this monster is, but he resembles an ex of mine in the face. sadly, my ex never had a bod like this.

but he had started working out really seriously just before we broke up. he hired a personal trainer and made noticeable progress in a fairly short period of time. i know he continued to work out for at least a year or more after we broke up.

before we broke up, i recall really enjoying his transformation as his muscles firmed up, he started to lean out and then started to get bigger. the whole time he was getting stronger. it was damn hot.

i also recall being told about six months after we broke up by a mutual friend, who was serious about his own training and had pretty high standards, that he had seen my ex and was really impressed by how buff he was getting. another friend also mentioned that my ex had been hitting the gym pretty hard and making real progress.

ah! how frustrating! my long held fantasy of the guy i found sexier than any other working out to build up his muscles to get big, buff and strong was actually coming true, only we weren't together anymore! the tease of the noticeable changes i had experienced only whet my appetite for even greater changes that i could only imagine. how big was he now? how strong was he now?

i haven't seen him in years. i hear thru the grape vine that he's not working out seriously anymore. it's a shame. he was hot before he started working out and i can only think that if he'd kept it up, he'd look like this guy. and this guy is amazing. every time i scan thru the muscle pix i've saved, my heart skips a beat when i see this one. the lost potential!

muscle morphs

this was the first muscle "morph" i ever saw on the internet. it looks fairly amateurish to me now, but back when i first saw it.... let's just say that this image featured in many of my dreams.

i'd never SEEN a picture of a guy with this kind of outsized muscle before. he didn't look like any bodybuilder i'd ever seen. he was even better! just the thought of a guy with arms so over developed compared to the rest of him....

whew. the idea still gets me hot.

i enjoy a skillful morph. they tap into the fantasy aspect of the muscle growth fascination. if they're well done, they give you pause, is that real? it's hot. oh, it's a morph.

for a fleeting moment, the possibility of really freakish muscle is real. i like that.

my ideal body

once, a long time ago, i trained as a bodybuilder. in my very best shape ever, i had a reasonably muscular physique.

i'm 5'-9" tall. in my best shape ever,
i was 176 pounds,
with a 33" waist.
a 44" chest
with 16" arms
and 25" quads
at about 8% bodyfat.

at my biggest and fittest,
i was 205 pounds,
with a 34" waist,
a 47" chest
with 17-1/2" arms
and 26" quads
at about 12% bodyfat.

most guys would be satisfied with either of those builds. i never was. i wanted to achieve the "three L's: large, lean and limber". i was never large enough or lean enough. and we won't talk about the limber.

i like a physique with exaggerated proportions. i think for most people into bodybuilding, that's true. bodybuilding is all about exaggerating the body's muscle size. but what i mean, is extreme exaggeration.

the body i was shooting for, the body i really wanted would have been more like this:
225 pounds
32" waist,
50" chest
19" arms
27" thighs
at around 10% bodyfat.

never got there.

when i dream about the body i want, this is what i want:
same height, 5'-9" is good.
weight? i don't know. whatever it takes to achieve this:
26" waist,
50" chest
28" thighs
20" arms
at around 6% bodyfat.

that's imposible.

now, years later, with my body limited by injuries and having not worked out in years, we won't talk about my current condition. but i find myself thinking about getting back into the gym and working out again. other than losing the weight i've gained and generally getting closer to "fit", i fantasize about training to exaggerate one or more muscle group.

a couple years ago i went back to the gym with the same idea and i tried to focus my training on my arms. i wanted big ass biceps. i wanted biceps that would be "too big" for my body. that didn't last too long. turns out i have tendon issues in my left fore arm and the arm training only made them worse. that was so discouraging, i stopped going to the gym.

so, here i am on the verge of returning to the gym. in addition to dropping some pounds, for the sake of my heart and my back, not to mention my appearance, i want to train some muscle group to exaggeration. which one?

let's consider the alternatives:
arms: given the ongoing tendon issues, no can do.
chest: possible. i'd love massive muscle pecs protruding from my chest like a shelf. i do have old injuries to both shoulders, however, that would limit my chest work.
shoulders: unlikely. the shoulder injuries just won't allow it.
abs: possible. i'd love a cobbled, washboard stomach, but is that exaggerated? and lets face it, they aren't great "show" muscles.
back: possible. a dramatic "V-taper" would rock. but again, not a great "show" muscles.
quads: possible. i just think tom platz or paul demayo. i'd love great tree trunk thighs. but i have bone spurs in both knees. that could limit my training.
calves: possible. i used to fantasize about having calves so big that they'd press against one another when i put my feet together. not a great "show" muscle, but imagine the gasps and stares when i wore shorts.

there is also the possibility of training to create the illusion of exaggeration. i mean bodybuilding is all about minimizing your short comings and maximizing your positives. for instance, if i worked my chest and my abs, presumably my shrinking waist and growing pecs would make my pecs look even bigger. similarly with quads and abs.

at the moment i'm tending toward working both my chest and my abs for that reason. but if my old shoulder injuries start acting up, i'm thinking i may focus all my attention on my calves.

i really don't know.

once i've moved house and am closer to the gym and my money has sorted itself out, i'll set back to the gym and we'll see what happens.