Billy called me into the living room one night
And brandished a syringe
As though challenging me to a duel.
“Gym candy!” he half-chuckled, half-slurred.
His smile, a size too big and buoyant to a fault, seemed
It would levitate from his fledgling moustache,
Sprout wings perhaps and hover with pot smoke overhead.
“I am Inigo Montoya…Prepare to die,”
I expected him to add, though in actuality
He asked me to do the honors.
It seemed an unnatural augmentation
Of our friendship—a few steps up from hitching
Rides to campus or corner store and just a hop, skip, and a jump away
From sharing our feelings—
The difference between belting 40 dingers a year
To crushing 70 in consecutive seasons,
To borrow a sports metaphor.
But it was something to do
On a Tuesday night mid-semester, so I played ball, unsure
Of what I’d done to earn such trust.
He pulled his waistband down just enough
And plopped onto the couch
Still giddy, Napoleon complex in full remission—
No more small man’s defense videos,
No more scuttling across dark parking lots
Armed with a cup of coffee hot enough
To melt a face right off the bone,
No more car keys clutched between fingers like makeshift blades,
No more barging through stores as though broaching
Enemy battle lines.
He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see
The needle bearing down at him, swerving
Like a student driver merging into a roundabout,
Wobbling like Captain Jack Sparrow at a sobriety checkpoint.
His eyes bulged the way he hoped
His biceps would once the juice kicked in.
I’d mentioned my hands weren’t the steadiest—
I was studying poetry, after all,
Not bartending or cosmetology; casualties from
An extra comma, while undoubtedly a tripping
Hazard, were few and far between)—
But he hadn’t taken me seriously. Until now.
“Uh, that’s ok, man, I’m good,”
He said, popping up faster
Than Barry Bonds to deep center.
And now he was prepped, this juiced-up flaneur,
For an evening of carnage.
Later that night I woke to the din
Of fists pummeling my bedroom door,
My name garbled by sobs and screams.
Too startled to grab my glasses I opened the door
To see Billy’s face dressed in concussed blur,
Conflation of blood and blue bruises
Into a distressingly floral purplish hue.
“I got my ass kicked,” he explained,
Unnecessarily. Apparently, He’d found the biggest guy
In the complex And went all Waterloo on him, convinced
Of the steroids’ aura of invincibility.
Alarmed at the walking massacre before me
I asked, not known for my calm in an emergency,
“You can’t feel your brain swelling
Like a thrush trying to escape an aviary,
Can you?”
He squinted though ruddy tears, nodded slightly,
Then threw himself onto the mattress
On his floor, slammed fists against
The balled-up blanket, and slept
A pristine sleep untroubled by dreams
Of damsels in distress and kittens stranded in trees,
Steel cage matches and feats of strength,
A costly glimpse of the world as is,
A hard-earned insight that, if choreographed just right,
Machismo makes for some outrageous slapstick.
