Body by Harry Crews

Author:Harry Crews [Crews, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780671758523
Google: B60FAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0671758527
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 1990-01-15T08:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

The lobby of the Blue Flamingo was very busy when Russell Morgan, his huge head stuck forward on his thick neck, came stalking in. He was scowling and his eyes, pinched into a squint, glanced fiercely about. Contestants of the Cosmos, men and women, paraded about in skintight, multicolored shorts and shirts, their eyes hungrily bright, tossing their beautifully maned heads like exotic animals in full rut, but all the while studiously indifferent to one another, seemingly indifferent to everything except that which was contained within the limits of their fine, unblemished, and deeply tanned skins.

Beyond the swinging glass doors, cars already had their lights on as they pulled up. And the front desk was crowded with people checking in, three of whom were judges for the Cosmos show. Russell recognized them, powerful men with huge shoulders and tight narrow hips, dressed in conservative business suits. Russell had competed against all of them at one time or another in the long ago time when winning the world seemed not only possible but inevitable. To speak or, for that matter, to even nod to one of them would have been very bad form, but doing such a thing never crossed Russell’s mind.

Just seeing them made him want to slap the shit out of somebody. Not only was it unfair, it was totally unjust for men to judge women in competition bodybuilding. As soon as he saw the three men across the lobby, he recognized them as judges. That was all those particular three men ever did, besides running gymnasiums of their own. There would be four other judges, making seven in all, and Russell would have bet a quart of his blood that at best only two of them would be women. Since the high score and low score would be thrown out on the judges’ cards and the middle five averaged to determine the winner, that further stacked the deck against the women judges. It was very bad for the future of female bodybuilding and could eventually kill it, or so Russell was convinced.

The winners of female bodybuilding contests ought to have the kinds of bodies that women across the country admired and wanted badly enough to drive them into gymnasiums like Russell’s Emporium of Pain, drive them there and make them willing to pay the price, mentally and physically, to get such a body.

But men—especially men who themselves had spent their lives in weight gymnasiums and in competition against other men—could only see size and thickness and mass. Consequently, there had been women bodybuilding champions who were downright scary, women who if you put a sack over their heads, stripped them to the waist, and stuffed their posing briefs so they looked like they had a dick and balls, the result was the ripped and muscled body of a man. Where is the little girl in Peoria, Illinois, who wants to grow up to look like that, goddammit? Where is the mother in Peoria, Illinois, who would suggest to

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