First Competition

[muscle growth, reality warp]

Stanley shivered with excitement as he got his hand stamped outside the arena where they held the West Coast Bodybuilding Championships. “My first bodybuilding show,” he said to the bulky man at the gate.

“Uh-huh,” the big guy said. “You want backstage access? Extra hundred bucks.”

Stanley nodded emphatically. “Absolutely!” he said. His whole life he had idolized these massive men, achieving so much with their god-like physiques, and now he was going to get to see them in person! He couldn’t wait to get pictures with some of his heroes.

With his backstage bracelet affixed, Stanley cheerily sauntered into the building’s atrium, marveling at the pictures of the massive men on the banners. “Oh my gosh, that’s Markus Chu!” he said, pointing to a life-size image of one of his favorite physique competitors. “And that’s Jarrod Bannon!” he shouted, pointing to the huge cardboard cut-out of the most massive man he’d ever seen online. He looked around, shocked that the others in attendance weren’t dazzled that these superhuman men were actually IN the same BUILDING as they were!

“Wow,” Stanley remarked as he noticed that a lot of the others looked pretty massive themselves. Wide, blocky men in baggy XXXL t-shirts waddled around, their bulked bodies still impressive in their tent-like clothing. They wore backwards caps and ate out of tupperware containers. Stanley walked up to a 6’ tall man who looked nearly 6’ wide as well. He wore a red t-shirt with a black Punisher skull on it.

“When will YOU be getting up on stage?” Stanley said, eagerly sizing up the man’s large frame and voluminous musculature. The big brute rolled his eyes.

“Beat it, queer,” he barked, stomping away.

Stanley shook it off. “Gym culture is very confusing in its admiration,” he reminded himself. “Lauding men’s physiques can be misconstrued.”

As the majority of the crowd shuffled into the auditorium, Stanley headed for the special backstage area. A men’s physique competitor (obvious due to his bright yellow board shorts) was strutting around anxiously, shouting into his cell phone. “Dammit, Gina, I got tanner on my shorts! I need my backup pair!”

After a beat: “The fuck you mean you didn’t bring it?”

Stanley shuffled past the man, taking note to admire his incredibly broad shoulders. His torso was shaped like a triangle! Oh, to be built like that, he mused. He’d been skinny his whole life, and despite hiring a few gym trainers had never achieved more than “lean and ripped”--but by no means had he ever been muscular. One of his trainers said he had a, “body like Jesus,” which was fine, of course, but little Stanley had always dreamt of having MASSIVE SIZE. (Every trainer said the same thing: “Not in your genes, little man.”)

He approached the security guard blocking the backstage area, flashing his wristband. The guard, a short tank of a man filling out his blue polo shirt nicely, smiled at him. Stanley liked his dimples.

“Whoa, bro!” the guard said. “Look at the shoulders on you! You’re wide as fuck!”

Stanley reddened as the man clapped him on his shoulders. “I guess I am sort of wide,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his own t-shirt. It had been baggy minutes before, but now the seams in the shoulders seemed stretched. Stanley blinked, looking down to his wide bone-structure. His surprise that his body had somehow broadened three inches on each side only lasted a moment, fading immediately.

He’d always been this way, he reminded himself. He was average height, skinny, but he had freaky broad shoulders. All of his trainers had always remarked on it.

“Thanks,” Stanley said. “Just bone structure, I guess,” he said sheepishly.

“Bone structure I’d kill to have!” the guard said, waving Stanley past.

The backstage area was buzzing with activity. Some men were using bands to pump up their muscles, pushing blood into every spray-tanned body part hoping to blow it up as big as possible before it was stagetime. Others were shoveling down food from tupperware containers. It looked like a lot of fish and rice, slathered with hot sauce.

“I can’t believe this!” he said, clenching his fists as he passed by a row of tents were bulging men were getting sprayed to a dark brown by tanning guns. “Oh my gosh, Tanner Blunt!” he exclaimed, slapping his hand over his mouth as he saw one of his bodybuilding heroes getting a thick coat of color on his otherwise ivory-colored body.

The bald, goateed bodybuilder heard his name and turned his head in Stanley’s direction. The skinny fan turned quickly, starting to hustle away, but Tanner winked. “Hey, bud, you a fan?” he said in his deep, gruff voice.

“Uh–yes!” he said, waving emphatically. “It’s probably not a good time to get an autograph,” he said as the spray-tanner continued the darkening coverage of his enormous, veiny quads.

“Not really,” Tanner said with a beefy shrug, “but thanks for the support!”

“Your calves are unreal!” Stanley blurted out, blushing at the admission.

Tanner smirked, licked his lips, and turned, stomping his foot down. He presented a thick, diamond-shaped calf for Stanley’s enjoyment. Every part of Tanner’s body was unreal, but it was so rare to see that bodypart so well-developed that the thick slabs of muscles below his hamstrings were all the more impressive.

“Wow!” Stanley said. “Amazing!”

Tanner’s eyes fell to Stanley’s khaki pants. “What about you? Looks like you have some decent calves under there,” he said.

Stanley shook his head. “Oh, no, I don’t…” he said, reaching down to yank up his pants leg to demonstrate. As he lifted his pants leg he revealed a thick bulge the size of these brutes’ forearms.

“Jesus!” Tanner said. “You got me beat, buddy!”

He gave Stanley a thumbs up. What could be better than that, Stanley though. Sure, an autograph would have been nice, but having a pro bodybuilder–one of his favorites!--complimenting his calves was unbelievable! He felt an extra stomp in his step as he walked around after. “I forgot to ask him if he has as hard a time buying pants as I do,” he said, adjusting the cuffs of his slacks as they bunched around his massively developed calves. “Damn these freaky genetics,” he said, borrowing the phrase used by every trainer who ever got a look at his swollen, vascular calf muscles compared to the rest of his comparatively skinny body.

Stanley froze when he saw another physique competitor he’d idolized for years, Mackenzie Lott. “Big Mac!” he whispered quietly, not wanting to interrupt the young man’s focus as he hit a pose, twisting his torso to show its symmetry and aesthetic perfection. He was nowhere near as big as the bodybuilder, but his body was so FLAWLESS! Especially his abs, Stanley thought. He watched Mackenzie proceed through his routine a bit more, quietly hanging back to avoid being noticed. These athletes were laser-focused on their show. They weren’t all guaranteed to be as kind as Tanner!

Just watching the deep creases between his ab muscles, their blocky, swollen perfection like raised cobblestones, gave Stanley a charge. They were even more impressive in person! As he walked away, Stanley felt a tightness in his stomach. A hand ran to his belly–was it something he ate? He groaned as he felt his abdomen clench, but as his hand ran across his torso, he sighed as he felt his own well-developed abs. As he raised his shirt, a passing fan remarked, “Man, yours are almost as good as his!” while pointing at Mackenzie.

Stanley paused, glancing into a mirror, and shrugged. “I think, abs-only,” he mumbled, “I have him beat… but he wins everywhere else!” The funny thing was, Stanley never even did situps to get his ridiculous midsection. His last coach took a look at Stanley with his shirt off and laughed at his veiny eight-pack and defined obliques. “With a core like that, you don’t need me!” he had joked.

Stanley turned a corner and nearly crashed into a wall of shiny, obsidian flesh. It took him a moment to recognize the massive being as a man squeezed into tiny, bright pink posing trunks. He looked up to see Leo Bailey, who, at 5’8” tall, certainly wasn’t the tallest athlete, but he looked to be the thickest. Leo was stomping around, swinging his thick arms confidently, as he surveyed the competition.

“Damn!” he said, digging his thumbs into his posing trunks. “Where’s the competition at? All you guys look like amateurs. I thought this was supposed to be a National show?”

The other competitors ignored the tank of a man, but Stanley couldn’t help but notice Leo’s enormous chest muscles.

“What’s up, buddy?” he said. “You like the pecs?” he made them bounce. Stanley felt faint as he watched them crunch into hard masses, then relaxing into soft, bulky flesh again.

“Jesus,” Stanley remarked, unable to take his eyes off the powerhouse of a man. “Your chest is… unbelievable! I bet you can do the water bottle trick, right?” Immediately Stanley chided himself for making such a lame statement, but Leo just pounded a fist against each pumped muscle and started scanning the crowd.

“Who’s got a water bottle for big Leo?” he said in his deep voice. A woman pulled one from her bag and he popped his pec shelf proudly before setting the water bottle comfortably on top of it. “Yo, watch this!” he said, taking the water bottle into his hand again. He grabbed it by the cap and flipped it into the air. It somersaulted up, then down, finally landing upright on Leo’s chest. Those nearby started cheering and clapping, Stanley included.

“Damn, son, I bet you can do the same thing!” Leo said, giving Stanley a thump in his own chest. “Look at those big muscletits of yours! Don’t be hiding them in that shirt, buddy!”

Stanley tilted his head to the side, embarrassed at the attention. In an instant, his chest had inflated until his t-shirt was squeezed to capacity. He looked like he was smuggling two melons under there! But just as Stanley noticed the discomfort, he suddenly remembered that he’d always had a big chest. “Honestly, my chest just grows like crazy,” Stanley said as Leo reached out with a bottle and set it on Stanley’s chest. The fully-clothed man flexed his pecs at the last minute, providing the perfect shelf for the water bottle.

“Better watch out for this guy!” Leo said, slapping Stanley on the back so hard he toppled forward (sending the water bottle to the floor). “This guy’s got pro genetics just waiting to be unleashed! I’ll be looking for you in a couple years, brother.”

Stanley had a spring in his step as he walked away from that interaction. “Pro genetics,” he said aloud. Sure, he’d always had great abs, huge calves, and broad shoulders. Back in high school, the football players had laughed when Stanley had asked to use the gym, but a month later he broke the team’s bench record, mystifying all of them as the skinny geek with the disproportionate chest easily out-pressed them. Still, he’d never thought of himself as having good genetics, just a strange mixed bag. His trainers had never known what to do with him.

He was so lost in that train of thought that he nearly ran into a man bent over down the hallway. The big behemoth was flexing his huge lats as he rapidly pulled dumbbells off the floor, giving his magnificent back the pump it deserved. Stanley was shocked when the man stood up; it was his old trainer, Eddie Cruz!

“Whoa, almost didn’t see you there!” Eddie said, looking down at Stanley as he hit a lat spread that seemed to make him double in width. “Damn, Stanley, so good to see you again! I’d give you a hug, but I’m kind of… oily.”

“No worries!” Stanley said, admiring the 280 pound monster of a man. Eddie had always been kind to him, focusing more on form than heavy weight despite the fact that Stanley had always wanted to add more plates. “You look HUGE! Twice the size of last time I saw you!”

Eddie shrugged. “Been working hard!” he said. “Glad you’re here, though. I need a little extra oil on my back. You think you could…” He offered Stanley a small bottle of oil and turned. Stanley looked up at the massive array of coiled muscles, so wide it looked like you could project a movie on it. He started to sweat as he started rubbing the muscles down with slicked fingers. Feeling all that mass rippling under his touch… it felt electric!

“Damn, who’s your buddy?” said a voice with an Australian accent. Stanley turned to see a short blonde man approaching. The blonde wore board shorts, clearly a physique competitor (and thus nowhere near as massive as Eddie) but his deltoids were SWOLLEN, like big meaty caps at the tops of his arms.

“Oh, hey, Chris,” Eddie said. “Chris, this is Stanley, my old client. Stanley, this is Chris Placette, the self-proclaimed ‘Thunder from Down Under.’”

Stanley extended a greasy hand, then shifted to a fist that he bumped against Chris’ own sledge-hammer sized mitt.

“Damn, looks like Eddie shared with you all his back-building secrets!” Chris remarked, clapping Stanley on his lats.

Lats… Stanley had lats… he had big, wide, flared lats, straining at his shirt. He looked down at himself, shocked at how wide he was, and heard his shirt starting to tear.

“Damn, Stanley, might need a bigger shirt, you fucking monster!” Chris said with a whistle.

“Yeah, this guy’s deadlift form has always been perfect,” Eddie said, beaming proudly over his former student. “Once he got it down, I couldn’t stop him from growing. He just blew up!”

Stanley shook his head, confused for a moment. He had stopped training with Eddie because the bigger man didn’t believe he followed his diet; he just wasn’t growing. No, wait, he thought. We stopped training together because he moved two hours away–and I was really bummed because of all of the progress I made with him!

“His shoulders, though,” Eddie remarked as Stanley felt his width grow further, accentuated by what looked like football pads under his tattered shirt. “That was all him. He grew those after we quit working together.”

“Damn, buddy!” Chris said, comparing his shoulders with Stanley’s. “Pretty much the same size as mine!” he said proudly. “Glad we’re not competing against each other today!” he said.

“Yeah, Stanley, if you still need a coach, maybe we can do an online thing?” Eddie said.

Stanley was confused again. He’d asked Eddie to do online training and he’d said he was too busy… no, that’s not right. He and Eddie had stayed in touch the whole time, throughout his other coaches as his body had grown into what it was now.

“Sorry, Eddie,” Stanley said, “I just prefer in-person training, y’know? It’s better to have someone right there in my face, yelling at me to lift more.”

“Jesus, you lift much more, you’re gonna start knocking us off our pedestals!” Chris said. “Fucking massive, this guy is.”

“Just gotta work on those legs,” Eddie added. “Which, by the way, I can help with anytime.”

Stanley nodded, taking it all in. His legs were always so stubborn to grow, despite the rest of his well-developed physique. He hated how massive he looked in a sweatshirt, while his jeans always hung off his unimpressive lower body. He insisted all the time that he did leg day–but no one believed him!

The emotional shift from Eddie’s compliments to his criticism of Stanley’s legs was a little too much of a drop for the poor guy. He wished Eddie good luck, thanked Chris for his kind words, and headed down the hallway.

“Maybe it’s time to get out to my seat so I can watch the show,” Stanley said, regretting having chosen such a small shirt. “I gotta go through my wardrobe and toss out all this old shit,” he said. “I look like a big dummy wearing ripped clothes like this.” Just as he was heading for the hallway leading out to the auditorium, he saw a massive, stunningly handsome man strutting by in a track suit. Stanley froze in his spot: that was Kenny Chu.

“Good god,” he said, marveling at the gargantuan proportions of the man. He was just so BIG! He would have thought, after having been surrounded by all these hyperdeveloped freaks that he would have become desensitized to size, but Kenny Chu was a MONSTER!

“Kenny!” Stanley called out, but the herculean beast was on the phone. Whether or not he actually heard and was ignoring him, Stanley would never know. It didn’t matter; what would he have said, anyway? Mr. Chu, I watch videos of your leg workouts to pump me up for leg day! Good god, it looked like he had a small cow stuffed into each of his pants legs. Even in sweats, his quad muscles were STUNNINGLY massive. He had to roll them around each other as he walked; he had the muscleman waddle, more than anyone Stanley had seen that day!

Stanley gasped as he felt his feet sliding apart as his thighs swelled. His pants were uncomfortably tight, almost painful, but then… POP! They split open. The relief was short-lived as he felt cold air all over his lower body. He brushed off the remains of his shirt, then pulled away the shreds of his pants. He slid his feet out of his shoes, staring down at his own muscle-pumped body. It looked unfamiliar for only a moment, until he remembered that he had been building this physique for years.

He’d always been big, although recently he had added an exceptional amount of size. Everyone told him he was a freak. He was the next big thing in bodybuilding.

“What are you doing out here?” said a gruff voice. Stanley turned to see Jarrod Bannon approaching in shiny white posers. Jarrod was a Master’s competitor, showing at age 50 the benefit of muscular maturity. While the other men Stanley had seen all day brought size and conditioning to the table, Jarrod’s physique was on another level, finely sculpted and developed over three decades of professional-level competition. Despite his weathered face, the 50-year old had shaved his white hair into a mohawk, a further, “Fuck you!” to the younger bucks who thought that the older man couldn’t hang with them.

Stanley froze, feeling out of place in his underwear. No, wait, he wasn’t in his underwear… he was in posing trunks. He reached down to feel baby-blue posers snugly fitting around his waist, hugging his junk and barely covering his massive ass.

Jarrod grinned at Stanley like he was seeing an old friend. “You gotta get tanned up, big man! These guys all want to see you pose!”

“They want to see me pose,” Stanley repeated, dazed. He knew it was true, but it still felt like an incomplete truth. He couldn’t seem to remember why…

“You’re not going senile on me, are ya?” Jarrod said, giving Stanley a shove. He felt the force of the blow, but held his ground. That couldn’t be right, though, could it? Could Stanley just shrug off the strength of this mammoth of a man? Jarrod hooked a massive arm around Stanley’s neck and started to corral him down the hallway toward the tanning tents. “Us old guys gotta stick together,” he said.

Stanley opened his mouth to object, but then he felt it. It was like a migraine at first, a powerful pressure behind his eyes as decades of new memories settled into place, but as it died out he relaxed. He resisted Jarrod’s pull as they passed a mirror. He needed to get a look at himself.

At first, he was stunned at the face that looked back. It was blocky, angular, clearly the chiseled visage of a purely muscled athlete, creased with lines typical of a man Stanley’s age–50 years old–although Stanley was undeniably much more attractive than most 50-year-olds. His short hair was still brown, thankfully, a fact that he loved to rub into big Jarrod’s face. His old lifting buddy had gone grey way back in his thirties!

As he passed the other bodybuilders, they all turned and regarded Stanley with a note of reverence. Eddie pulled his buddy Chris over to introduce him. “See, this guy used to be my coach!” Eddie said about Stanley.

“This guy coached you?” Chris said, pointing at the massive slab of muscle as a fresh coat of tan was sprayed on his rock-hard physique. “This guy’s a freaking BEAST!”

“He sure is,” Eddie said proudly. Stanley tried to process the fact that he was bigger–both more heavily muscled AND taller–than Eddie now. Hadn’t Eddie been bigger before? That didn’t make sense, though.

Fully tanned, Stanley pulled on his poser and prepared to step out on stage. Honestly, he’d only agreed to do this guest pose for the money, and because Jarrod had asked him to show up. He was considering retiring from competition again, but he found himself thinking about it every year nowadays–until he got out on stage, hit a pose, and heard that crowd go crazy. Then, he would wonder how he could every consider quitting this life.

Out on that stage, he watched the way the crowd seemed hooked on every pose. They loved watching him show off his body! It felt so natural to him. He’d been practicing these poses for decades. He couldn’t remember his life before he’d felt comfortable on a bodybuilding stage. The best part was when he finished and turned away, noticing all of the competitors, still anxious for their own performances, watching him with admiration. A short black guy with huge pecs told him how impressive he was. A bald guy introduced himself as “Tanner–” something or other. He had nice calves, and Stanley remarked on them, making the guy’s day.

He even got a solemn head nod out of Kenny Chu, that “new freak on the block” everyone was talking about. It was nice to stand next to the guy in person to see what all the fuss was all about. Stanley didn’t have the heart to criticize the younger man just before he competed, but this Kenny Chu wasn’t all that much bigger than Stanley was. They were pretty evenly matched, although Stanley’s smaller stabilizer muscles were more prominent from his decades of consistent hard work. “Only place he’s freakier is in the trunks,” Stanley remarked, noticing Chu’s enormous bulge.

“Actually, the fuck am I saying?” Stanley said as his own trunks stretched to their limit as his cock and balls expanded. “My dick’s bigger than his anyday!”

As he was walking offstage, he saw some scrawny physique competitor in yellow trunks yelling into his phone. “Dammit, I got third place because YOU didn’t bring me new trunks!” he said, pacing around angrily.

Stanley snatched the phone out of the little shit’s hand. “You got third because you don’t work hard enough, and you have a punk-ass attitude. Judges can see that shit. Train harder or quit the sport.” The much smaller man looked shocked as Stanley roughly handed his phone back. Stanley just stomped away, still wearing nothing but his too-small trunks (with the tip of his dick pointing out the top, although no one had the guts to tell the most enormous man in the building that his cock was showing).

Outside, some thick meathead in a red Punisher t-shirt approached with his phone. “Uh, any way I could get a picture with you, sir?” he said.

Stanley instantly knew he didn’t like the guy, although he couldn’t put his finger on why, exactly, he felt so strongly. “Photos are 200 bucks,” he barked, “but in your case, I don’t take pics with fucking pussies. Beat it, fatass,” he said, strutting proudly.

He paused to see some garbage on the ground. It was a strain for him to flex his bulky body to pick it up, but he did it anyway. His cock fully popped out of his tiny trunks as he stood back up, but he just chuckled and tucked it away again. The trash was actually a wristband, the kind people paid for to get backstage. His first instinct was to crumple it up and toss it away, but for some reason he wanted to keep it.

“A little memento of the show,” he said as he walked out of the arena, glancing up at a massive photo of himself hanging above the entire congregation.