My Naked Buddy

I hit the jackpot. At my latest job in the corporate world, there’s an executive class gym for the people who work in the building. Given the cost of gym memberships, it’s no small windfall.

On my first day there, I was pleased to see it was under-used. I only ran into one other guy, though, as it happens, he was more than enough.

“Hey, buddy!” he says, swaggering over to me. Every gym has one of these Hale, fellow! Well met! types. And I don’t doubt their sincere enthusiasm, I’m just unable to match it.

“Hi, there.”

He lifts his massive, noise-cancelling headphones from his ears to his temples to talk to me.

“Hey, I’m Billy. Great to meet you!”

“I’m Adam. Nice to meet you too.”

“You new here? Haven’t seen you around yet.”

“Yeah, I’m new to the building, but I’m a five a week guy, so you’ll see me around.”

“Gotta stay on it!”

“You bet.”

“All right, buddy!” Billy sticks out his fist for a bump, and I oblige. “Hey, I’ll be right over here if you need anything, buddy.”

Billy puts the headphones back on and sings a few lines that I don’t recognize as he heads back to the weight rack, and I soon discover that he’s an all-around vocal guy. Billy is doing deadlifts. If you don’t know what these are, it’s easy to picture. Imagine standing in front of a big barbell, bending over, grabbing onto it, and standing up straight so that the barbell is now at about waist height.

Billy’s makes quite a production of his lift. He walks up to the barbell rolling his shoulders and giving himself a bit of a pep-talk, “Come on, man! Come on, bro!” all of it overly loud with his headphones blocking out all sound. He bends over and grabs onto the bar huffing and puffing like he’s in the delivery room preparing for a contraction. His entire body tenses as he lifts, the barbell rises slowly, Billy lets out a primal cry like a Spartan going to war, and when he completes the movement, he releases the barbell. It hits the floor with a resounding, and very satisfying, boom.

Every gym also has a few grunters and droppers. Billy’s a two-for-one. Actually, as I was going to find out very soon, Billy’s a three-for-one when it comes to gym stereotypes.

I did a few light sets, took a short run on the treadmill, and went to check out the changing facilities. All good on that front: private shower stalls, soap provided, towel service, apart from an extremely cramped and narrow locker area, it was top notch.

Sitting down on the bench and leaning over to undo my laces, I heard, “Hey, buddy!” ring out over my daily news feed that’s playing in my wireless earbuds. “How’s the workout, buddy?”

Clearly, Billy does not remember my name. And I’m guessing he will never remember my name. I’ll be “buddy” to Billy for all time. I’m guessing that’s his thing: everybody is Billy’s buddy. We are all buddies in Billy’s eyes, all equals. Like he is the Lord, and we are his flock.

I popped out my earbuds and said, “Oh, it was all right. How about your—” I stammered as I looked up from my sneakers.

Billy is standing less than a foot away from me. Billy is stark naked.

“Uh…” I said, standing to my feet, increasing the distance from my nose to his knob from six inches to a cool twenty-four. “I… uh… yeah, how about you. Good day?”

“PRs, buddy! PRs!”

“That’s great, Billy,” I said. Most guys will do some busy work as they have these locker room exchanges, continue to dress, or undress, run a comb through the hair, or apply the pit stick. But not Billy. Billy gives you his full attention. Billy stands full facing.

Every gym has a few of these dudes who experience some mysterious elation in peacocking around the locker room in all their natural glory, and Billy is one. Billy is beaming with joy.

Don’t get me wrong, Billy is a fine specimen. He’s probably about 35, 6’3”, and a trim 210 pounds, all muscle. And, as a millennial, he keeps himself real tidy down under. So there’s plenty of people who’d love to swap places with me, standing before this happy, sweaty man, it’s just that I’m not the right audience.

I begin to undress for the shower, and subtly rock back a step to put a skosh more distance between me and Billy’s business. But in telling me that he’s hit some “PRs” today, Billy is letting me know that he’s hit a Personal Record with all that grunting and bellowing he was doing in there, and to follow gym protocol, I must acknowledge this achievement.

“Nice work, Billy,” I said. “Saw you rockin’ the deadlifts in there. You join the four-plate club today, or something?” This was a mistake.

Billy’s face lights up, “Oh, buddy! I’m right there,” he exclaims. “I’m just right there! You know what I’m talkin’ about? ‘Course you do!” And Billy begins an excited monologue about his entire deadlifting routine.

See, what I’ve done is disclosed that I’m at least an intermediate level Gym Bro with my casual inquiry about joining the four-plate club. Lifters have shorthand ways of talking about weights and benchmarks. A “plate” refers to a 45-pound weight that slides onto an Olympic bar. We also might call these weights “wheels,” “discs,” or even “pies.” An Olympic bar also weighs 45 pounds, so one bar plus a plate on each side is 135 pounds.

But for regular lifters, the weight of the bar, the weight of the plate, and the fact that you’d always put a matching number of plates on each side of the bar is all assumed. And we all count in 90-pound increments like Rain Man counts cards.

• One plate: 135 pounds

• Two plates: 225 pounds

• Three plates: 315 pounds

• Four plates: 405 pounds

If you’re adding by 90 after that, you’re probably in competitions. So if you overhear somebody at the gym say, “Hey, Jones, what’d you hit on chest last week?” and Jones goes, “Three wheels,” you know that Jones bench pressed 315 pounds last week.

We also add up the smaller 25 and 35 pound plates without missing a beat. In everyday life, Jones might not be able to solve for 15 + 9 without a calculator, but he’s a mathematical wonder in the gym. You ask him what two plates and a thirty-five is, and he’ll spit out “295!!” while you’re still going, “Hmmm, so that’s five times 45, and the two 35s would be…”

So by asking Billy if he joined the four-plate club, I just told him I know the lingo, and I can accurately gauge a likely benchmark lift for a guy his age and size. It was a clarion call on a dog-whistle.

I meant it as a friendly inquiry that would let Billy know I like the gym too, but Billy’s looking at me like, Did we just become best friends?

He’s getting more and more animated, which can be rather alarming when someone’s stark-raving naked. Well, not entirely naked. He’s still got the headphones perched on the top of his head, churning out hip-hop music loud enough for both of us to hear it as a soft underscore to this precious moment.

Billy’s now regaling me on how he likes to go light for a few days and then really shock his system with a heavy lift. And I’d love to tell you that by maintaining a job interview level of eye contact I didn’t see his wiener down there, but that’s not how eyes work. You still clock everything going on in your field of vision whether you want to or not. And I could still see Billy’s tally-whacker bee-boppin’ around like it was trying to find the beat.

I continued listening and giving the appropriate Yeahs and Uh-huhs while getting ready to make my exit to the showers. That’s when disaster struck.

I accidentally knocked my access badge onto the floor. It’s my last thing to get into my locker before I can go, and it’s sitting on the floor halfway between Billy and me.

If Billy doesn’t see it, maybe I could just leave it there until I get back from the shower. Otherwise, I’ll have to bend over and pick it up with him standing right there, and I begin to pray: Dear, Lord, if you are willing, take this cup from me...

But Billy goes, “Hey, buddy. You dropped your ID badge. Don’t wanna lose that, hey?”

Very well, Lord, not my will but thine. I executed a very careful deep knee bend to keep my head well-away from any collision hazards.

“Say, buddy, if you got the time, I’m goin’ to Jugo for a post workout if you want.”

And I think, Yeah, Billy, that’d be great. Then I could picture your wang waggling in front of me while I suck down a protein shake. Fun. But what I said was, “I’ve actually got an 11 o’clock to get to, so not today.”

“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Gotta make the green, buddy. What were you workin’ in there today?”

“I was on back and bis. Pull day as the kids say these days.”

“Right on. Right on. So what’s your deadlift at, buddy?”

“You know, Billy, I don’t really have a clue. I don’t do big deadlifts. I’m not really solid on the technique, and I don’t want to get injured. So I do them in my interval training. Lot of reps at a low weight. Like, hundred pounds, or even less.”

Though I didn’t know it, this was a masterstroke. Billy’s face fell. He looks at me as though I’ve just kissed him and handed him over to Roman soldiers in Gethsemane. I had held myself out as a Gym Bro with my talk of “plates,” but I was clearly not the genuine article.

See, deadlifts are kind of a big deal. It’s the exercise where you can lift the most weight. You set up in front of a floor to ceiling mirror and stare at your reflection as you do it. You can watch that steel bar flex in an arc under the weight at each end, and every muscle on your body will peek out to say hello. Narcissus himself couldn’t ask for more.

I can see that Billy is grieved on my behalf and embarrassed for me that I’m not pushing those PRs on deadlifts, but he is gracious despite his disappointment. “Yeah, well… you know… you gotta do you, right?”

“That’s right.” And that’s an exit line if I ever heard one. I straddled the bench to get to the other side rather than edge around Billy. I’m in a towel, but there’s still no reason to risk crossing swords. I’d nearly made my escape when Billy called again.

“Hey,” he said.

I turn around and see him standing there with his fist out, awaiting a goodbye bump.

“Don’t leave me hangin’, buddy.”

Interesting phrasing, Billy. Interesting phrasing, indeed. One hand firmly gripping the towel around my waist, I reach out and bump with the other.

“Right on, buddy. Right on.”

I fled to the shower in hopes of cleansing off sweat and the memory of the last five minutes.

As I shut the door to the stall, I hear another door open. Someone has entered the locker room, and over the rush of water from the showerhead, I can hear Billy’s voice ringing out joyfully: “Hey, buddy! Didn’t see you in there today! How you doin’!?”

Billy has found another member of his flock, and as I adjust the temperature, I can hear him preaching the good word of PRs and deadlifts.