Dwight Strine wanted abs.
He hated how that sounded. The superficiality of it. Dwight found authenticity far more attractive as a creed and compass. He didn’t want to acknowledge that he might be susceptible to the promise of a carved body, the lure of a magazine cover line or the salesy subtitle on a fitness book. Four weeks to a flat, ripped stomach / the easy way to hard abs / 197 body-shredding exercises, one carved belly: YOURS.
Dwight was not the ideal candidate for abs and he knew it. Age 31, past his physical and hormonal prime into the stretch of years where booze and certain foods stuck to a man like ever-thickening coats of paint. Already 237 pounds on a five-ten frame. And this from an online trainer Dwight consulted: “Sorry to say, but not everyone can have abs.” Giving reasons, because science.
Dwight began anyway. He didn’t want what he had. There had to be a better way. A better life.
Planks, hanging leg lifts, TRX pull ins, bicycle crunches.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you trainers you. Dwight knew it was more about weight loss and body fat percentage than 500 crunches a day. He ignored the bent online stuff and went back to old magazines at the library.
your best summer body ever / get NFL tough / get results in 10 days / a six-pack plan for every man / fight fat and win
He’d already beaten the pustular psoriasis, he beat the super gonorrhea and depression, he was part of the intertwined knitted fabric of human destruction, he sure as hell could FIGHT FAT AND WIN.
Squats, box jumps, skater plyos, movements only the Russians, Romanians, and Turks knew, lunges in all directions because if you built the quads, the iliopsoas, the glutes, the biggest muscles in the body, your body will burn more burn.
Ten days later Dwight did not have abs.
But he now weighed 231.
You magnificent bastard.
* * *
Dwight never told anyone what he was doing.
He wasn’t sure why his silence on the matter meant something to him, but it did. The authenticity again. What if pondering his physique counted as authenticity, what if daydreaming of a shredded torso and the admiration of others was part of an intentional life. But what if that was bullshit, his so-called values a lie? What if his pursuit of abs was all truly about who might notice, and when.
Yeah, that was probably it.
Probably, hell. He knew.
Dwight had to this point in his life been a nonfactor in the world. The proverbial cypher who offends no one and impresses even fewer. But he did examine his life on occasion and was not one to buy in on hype and appearances. He was not an early adopter because he was not a sucker. That’s what he hung onto, what elevated him. He believed the ego, especially the male ego, should be silent, an invisible engine driving a man forward. Most men did not subscribe to that. So many strutters out there twirling their dicks, no, he couldn’t be that kind of man. But this … this he could do himself. A gift he could give himself.
Fitness and health and vitality and longevity, oh fuck yourself with all that, Dwight.
Admit you want to finally find out what’s under the flab and flaccidity.
Man, that was exciting. He could finally find out. Who wouldn’t want that?
That could be a new kind of authenticity.
Finding out lit a fire in him that had never been there before.
Do it. Find out.
* * *
“Look, not everyone can have a six-pack,” the trainer said. He worked at the gym Dwight had joined. He was taller than Dwight, leaner, more broad-shouldered, and must have had a very hard time day-to-day not demanding all those around him to suck his cock. He looked Dwight in the eye with complete seriousness.
“Why would you discourage anyone?” Dwight asked.
Trainer smiled. “No, no, no, not discouraging you. Calibrating expectations. The whole six-pack thing is mostly genetics. Lookit me, even I would have to lean-down to a point that wouldn’t be sustainable and even then, maybe. With your body you can get a strong, powerful core without a six-pack.”
Dwight said nothing.
“I see you work,” Trainer said. “You work hard. Let’s do this thing.”
Dwight walked away.
Abs or nothing and this piker wouldn’t even try.
* * *
Dwight set to work. No timeline, just forward, every day. A lifetime spent in an unshaped, unkept, and unadmired body and now he embraced the push. It wasn’t just that his daily workouts excited him and he couldn’t wait to get to the gym. He felt the engagement of muscles in each rep and it felt … right. The mouthfeel of boiled skinless chicken felt right. The collagen peptides and creatine and chia seeds and oats in his smoothies felt right. The calorie deficit was electric in his belly, his metabolic center like an open mouth consuming his fat.
Squat jumps, Bulgarian body blasters, Garhammers, Spiderman lunges, deadlifts and dumbbells and death crawls.
He blew through 230, 225.
He followed a tip in one of the magazines about before-after photos. It aligned with his invisible ego-engine philosophy: He didn’t take progress photos of his torso. He took pictures of his face. Dwight started with the puffy beer face, shaved his trendy beard so he could see himself. Really see.
This is me. But it ain’t me, not really me, not just yet.
I’m in there and I will find my way out.
Everything he read about fitness and body transformation was true. Even the weeks when the scale didn’t move, he felt his body changing. Something was always firming up and feeling different. He did stairs two at a time now. And his mind changed as well. His mindset.
new year new you change your body change your life
And the world still did not know what he was doing. He kept silent.
It was all for him.
66 six-pack strategies / firm up flab & sculpt a flatter belly / great abs made easy / muscle genius: the pro plan for ABsolute perfection
After two months, and the scale at 203, Dwight noticed the lump.
* * *
It was not an oh-my-God lump. It was a what-the-fuck lump. A protrusion at the upper right side of his belly, the very first ab if someone facing him started at the top counting left to right.
Dwight had already discovered the joys of what every male fitness enthusiast knew — getting to second base with yourself was irresistible. Heavy petting of your biceps, your glutes, your pecs, oh the pecs. Best tit you’ll ever get your hands on because they’re yours and there.
And so was the lump.
It was below the layer of remaining flab, subcutaneous, not inside him. And it was firm. A protruding knob of muscle. And very hard to unsee.
It did not stop Dwight. But it … occupied him. His hands regularly roamed over his changing body in true affection until they came to his lump. And his hands stopped. An unripe peach, a rubber ball, a knot of mockery.
Down to 197. Still there. Always there.
Fucker.
An imperfection in his perfect progress.
* * *
“It’s muscle,” his doctor said. “Not even technically a malformation. Just … different.”
Dwight held it in and only said, “I finally got myself … moving, right? I’m busting my ass for this.”
Doc nodded. “It’s remarkable, Dwight. You’re the opposite of all my patients. But aesthetic perfection is a crapshoot. Hundred to one. A gift from the gods. A genetic lottery ticket. A freak chance at immortality. Of women, hundreds, thousands of women putting their hands and mouths on you. Men, too.”
But the doctor stopped at the word crapshoot didn’t he?
“Can I have it removed?”
Doc scowled, silence, then said, “I won’t recommend anything when nothing is wrong.”
What he didn’t say was there were doctors who would see the enormity of his deformity. Who would do something about it.
“Dwight, you’re letting one small thing get in the way of what’s already a major victory. Forty pounds down, in great shape.”
“It’s unfair,” he said.
Doc shrugged. “Not everyone can have abs, Dwight. And fewer people can have perfection. Take the win.”
* * *
At 189, Dwight could see some torso definition in the mirror when he flexed. Not there yet. His selfie face was slimmer but neutral.
But the other thing was always there.
By now he’d accepted that this intruding thing was one of his rectus abdominis muscles. An ab among abs. Protruding enough to have its own shadow.
The rest of his body … how to describe a dream? Dwight now looked, dare he say it, hot. His traps and connective neck and shoulder tissue flexed when he moved, his arms had grown bulgy and veiny, his pecs jumpy. He now saw more of his cock in the shower than ever before. He never skipped leg day.
And yet, unfinished. Still around 14 percent body fat.
Planks, jumping jacks, frog tucks, barbell rollouts, kettlebell halos, medball chops.
fire up your fat burners / reshape your body in minutes / ignite your metabolism & burn fat all day / your best body EVER
He rubbed the ab more than he rubbed the rest of himself now.
* * *
“Know what I think?” Fogerty said. Fogerty always said that because he always said what he thought, and he always liked people to know that. Dwight had known him a while but had spoken to him more often since they were both at the gym so much. Fogerty was a freak. He called himself a powerbuilder, some combination in his own mind of powerlifter and bodybuilder. He was doing the opposite of what Dwight was doing, trying to expand, enlarge, engrave his physique. Ever bigger and overblasted. He weighed 252 pounds, five-nine, could bench 440 but not do more than six pull-ups. Fogerty allowed himself straight vodka at certain times like now.
“How many times you hear someone say not everyone can have abs?” Fogerty asked, squeezing a rubber ball with his non-vodka hand as he paced.
“Every day,” Dwight replied. He was buzzing fine, a pleasure allowance he knew he’d have to work off later even though his progress really wasn’t being set back by the liquid.
“Don’t it piss you off people saying you can’t have something?”
“Yeah.”
“Know how I do this?” Fogerty replied, gesturing to his own physique. Then he pointed at Dwight’s face. “Know what it takes to get abs for those who are not supposed to have them?”
Fogerty leaned and pointed. “Rage, motherfucker.”
Leaned and pointed. “Nihilism. Misanthropy. Contempt. Your entire interaction with the world hasta change. An end of the self as you know it.”
“Because no one really wants to execute. People just want to yearn.”
“You want my advice about that fucking ab? Make it bigger.”
“Lean the fuck in.”
“Tattoo it.”
“Name it.”
“Because fuck it. Fuck the ab. Fuck the world, Dwight. I’d take a fuckin’ bat to the world if I could. The world and guys like us no longer deserve each other. So fuck it, Dwight. Don’t hide it. Make ‘em see it.”
* * *
Down to 180. 12 percent body fat. His abs were evident but not yet shredded.
Women noticed him now. A few did, anyway. Only one was hot. They locked eyes once their eyes were finished with the rest of themselves. Nothing happened, she passed by.
If anything had remained locked up in Dwight, that moment with that woman unlocked the rest.
He invaded social media. He walked taller. He presented himself.
At the gym, Dwight performed his ever-deepening ballet. He thought of the slo-mo dancing in Raging Bull, that music, the boxing dance, the physical god, the poetry, the sweet motion in motion in motion, look at me, archetype, godlike and then … someone would see him and the music would stop. Because he was not that. Not yet. Strip away more. It’s in there. There’s more in there we can’t see yet.
His tight workout shirts showcased the ab. He swam shirtless in the gym pool.
And they looked at it. Before they looked at him.
score the six-pack you’ve always wanted: more than 100 core exercises / lose your belly fast: 10 gut-busting 15-minute workouts / attack the fat
ATTACK THE FAT
My God it’s happening. It’s working. I’m doing what no one else can. I’m becoming what almost nobody is.
Why don’t more people do this?
Because they can’t!
* * *
172 pounds. 9 percent body fat.
The outer fringes of shredded. Gorgeous. “You could do porn,” someone said in the gym shower.
Dwight was close now. Crossing the 170 mark and he could stop and assess, measure, see where he really and truly was not just physically but in his soul. Was he still authentic? Could he achieve authenticity with his new body? He was fast approaching the summit of the least conquered peak in modern human existence: Human male perfection. He achieved it all by himself … and he was deformed.
Sometimes Dwight woke in the morning knowing the ab had been whispering to him all through the night. Glorifying itself and telling him more more more there’s always more. And inside its tone was the teardown, Dwight, you’re unworthy.
The ab was an atrocity. Without it, Dwight would be perfect, sporting the ideal six-pack. The combo of grief and rage made a shit stew in him. It wasn’t fair. He’d done what he was supposed to do, paid those very specific and expensive dues, what hardly any people have been able to do. And the whole thing was an abortion.
Always there. The ab.
The cosmetic surgeon turned him down. The man had a six pack himself, but a sloppy sick looking one created surgically from lipo and etching because not everyone can get a six-pack. He wouldn’t remove the ab or mess with it in any way, this is muscle, not like taking out a calcium deposit or fat and I can’t predict what the outcome will be. I don’t mess with muscle, you see.
And Dwight knew the ab had spoken to the doctor. The doctor palpated it over and over, measured it, did everything but apply his mouth to it. The ab mesmerized now. It charmed. What is that, lookit that body, what is that?
When Dwight laid down on his bed his belly was a hard undulating expanse of stone and the ab was a temple rising from the desert, Uluru, Devils’ Tower, and they all came to worship now.
The man in the gym sauna, that ab is amazing, lookit it, he touched it, how do you get it to pop like that, I’m dying for that pop. Dwight and the man weren’t caught.
The woman at the nightclub with her manicured hand under his shirt rubbing it rubbing rubbing rubbing trying to grip it tongue in his ear moaning on the dance floor.
The shirt came off and another woman pressed into him so she could feel it against her.
Shirtlessness, another goal achieved, god-level shirtlessness.
* * *
Dwight got a promotion at work, more client-facing opportunities and he had all-night sex with an intern after drinks. She claimed she’d never experienced anything like it and lookit it, lookit it, why can’t I stop touching it.
Most mornings now Dwight woke with people in his bed.
The ab was red and shiny from being rubbed and palpated and loved.
Dwight selfied his face again and saw a sad clown carved from bone.
He worked out shirtless at the gym so they could all watch even though the rules on shirtlessness were clear. No one dared tell him to put a shirt on. Trainer watched closely but kept his distance, humiliated and denied his part in Dwight’s glory.
Bicycle crunches and mountain climbers and burpies til you belch, sleds til you puke. Shadowboxing with dumbbells, rucking around the building with a 30-pound plate in his pack and a kettlebell hanging from each fist.
That Instatrainer’s page still claimed not everyone can have abs, repeat not everyone can have abs and Dwight left his screed in the comments: BUT I CAN!!!
Dwight searched out new techniques. He found a physical therapy cycle for low back pain even though he didn’t have any, a crumpled piece of paper discarded on the gym floor, and he tried the little movements, high reps, 160 reps in less than 10 minutes. Miraculous. His new warmup. His core a machine, 25-pound med balls slammed and side-tossed against the wall and hurled upwards over his head and off the gym ceiling.
He dabbled in average rate of methylation change and epigenetics and his microbiome and he dreamed of energy harvesting from human batteries.
And finally, Dwight broke his one rule. He posted an after photo of his physique.
Because now he must.
The comments came fast.
The very first: “Lookit that ab!”
“Five-pack and a tallboy!”
“What the fuck is that! No, seriously WTF IS THAT!”
“You so abby, you abby someone, abby NORMAL.”
“freak”
“ugly”
“put a shotgun under your chin”
Dwight hit refresh and refresh and refresh again.
But then … a night wore on and another night and his local fans invaded the comments and overwhelmed the haters.
“glorious”
“an inspiration”
“orgasmic”
With one graf in particular from SheGetSheGetSheGetHIGH: “I know this man. I have been with this man. I have seen what he’s become and he is a walking mission statement. He works harder than any of you. He loves harder than any of you. And he WAS you. He decided being like you wasn’t good enough and he changed. And look what he found. Lookit that beautiful perfect thing on his torso. It is everything. It is him. And I will never get over it.”
* * *
A muscle magazine found Dwight. Saw you on social, please let us interview and photograph you. You did it, man, you made yourself. You’re the best story we’ve ever heard and everyone will learn from you.
One day Dwight was naked with a woman in her apartment and she presented him with a shirt. I made this. Snug over his muscles, the shirt had a hole just for the ab, the hole the center of a swirling tie-dyed maelstrom with embroidered crystals and glyphs and when he asked her what they meant she said, “You will decide,” and fellated him.
Dwight knew the ab was a lump of muscle but pictured it full of pus and bean gas and one day it would pop in some lover’s face.
* * *
Fogerty dripped some vodka as he declared.
“You are the One, that thing and you make the One.” Dwight could hear the capital O in Fogerty’s voice.
“The intertwined, knitted fabric of human destruction,” said Fogerty, pacing, pointing. “Everything, our economy, our need, our hope, our society rests on obsessions like you.”
“You are finally at the border where conclusions stop mattering and beliefs take over.”
“You don’t need conclusions anymore. You are a brand ambassador for achievement. A god of men.”
Fogerty slugged down vodka, he hadn’t been at the gym as much anymore, he wasn’t peak powerbuilder anymore. “That thing, that fucking thing in your center, it’s your magnet, Dwight. Who needs a compass when you have a magnet. Everything comes to you.”
* * *
Dwight accepted an invitation to attend a queer underground art rave where he stood nude on a platform while below him dozens of men stripped down to leather straps and codpieces and easels and brushes painting their impressions of him and the ab. Later Dwight fell into them in darkened rooms and deafening music. The following night the paintings were shown at a nearby gallery and he attended in a black blazer and jeans and no shirt. The woman who owned the gallery told him, “You and your thing are the thing.”
Split-stance cable chops and medball rotations and dumbbell seated twists and stability ball reaching crunches and three rounds on the canvas heavy bag, bare fists and torn knuckles.
great abs made easy / blast fat in just 10 minutes / top 5 flat-belly foods
He spent a weekend in an apartment with four female roommates going bed to bed being naked with them and he held the hair of one of them as she puked and he let the ab touch her bare skin while she hung over the toilet. She started laughing when she felt it. It was all okay. Everything he did was okay.
Dwight starved himself and carved himself, shedding calories, shedding empty food, selecting only nutritionally dense mouthfuls, and if he could have, he would have hand-wrapped each protein molecule in its own spinach leaf.
He went to his doctor more to show off than anything else. Doc said to him, “You’re down to 165, don’t lose another pound.”
“Look at me,” Dwight said.
“I am. You have to see the mirror, not just the scale.”
“What’s my blood say?”
“You’re healthy. Technically.”
“Then I’m healthy. I’ve made peace with my deformity. Look at it.”
* * *
A Hollywood producer, the guy who made Romper and Stomper and Chomper, wanted to Zoom. Maybe there’s something, he said. Saw you in the magazine, saw your Insta. You’re so imperfect you’re perfect. Maybe you’re an anti-hero, anti-establishment, untouchable. Unconquerable. And not a whiff of CGI. I think you’ll be fucking loved. Yeah, he said. Maybe there’s something.
Dwight received death threats from men who wanted to cut off the ab and sell it. A man from Kansas City wanted to eat it. Rumor had it the cosmetic surgeon who turned Dwight down had created a solid silicone implant the same dimensions as the ab; three successful surgeries so far. Dwight received pleading notes from others on how to do what he did. Why can’t they have the ab? He did podcasts and more interviews. He put his name on a ghostwritten foreword to the 10th anniversary reissue of The Men’s Health Big Book of Abs. A 17-year-old boy hung himself from the side of a high school because he couldn’t get abs like the ab. Dwight’s employer gave him a leave of absence at full salary for as long as he needed to do what he needed to do. But come back, they said. Your job will always be here, they said. (And with many interns, his boss whispered in his ear, hand gripping Dwight’s elbow.)
And Dwight realized he was there, finally there.
He now lived with complete authenticity. With complete intentionality. Everything he did he’d considered first: Is this me? The ab guided him, brought him love and touching and money.
He told people he thought about pushing his life even further, what else was within reach cuz my grasp is longer and stronger than I ever thought. If I can do this what else can I do?
But inside he had no other ideas or plans.
Dwight was perfect but he was not okay. And never would be because none of us can be. Like the special shirt with the hole that woman made, the ab rose up and pushed through the intertwined, knitted fabric of human destruction. And Dwight knew he could never truly live up to the ab’s promise. The fraud collapsed in on him.
He whispered into his attorney’s ear as they spooned naked one morning. “It’s a lie, I’m a lie, I hate it, it’s a fucking deformity, I can’t stand how I look, I just wanted abs, I just wanted—”
And the attorney scrambled away from him to the other side of the bed. “They will kill you if you say it. I will kill you if you say it again. You can’t. You can’t, Dwight. I have never felt something shatter my cynicism so utterly, do you understand me? I was unreachable and look at me now! That thing is every blessing incarnate. Even if you aren’t.”
She composed herself and slid back over to his side and touched him and said, “It is you now.”
whittle your waist / a sexy, sculpted stomach in just 4 weeks / lean hard abs that can take a punch
* * *
Three days later, Dwight skipped leg day.
“Haven’t seen you at the gym,” he said to Fogerty while sipping a heavy beer containing more calories than his breakfast. It might as well have been a milkshake. Fogerty had switched from vodka. The big man was no longer as big. Dwight didn’t ask but he estimated Fogerty at 233 now and deflated.
“I’m off the needle, I need a break, it’s just not sustainable, I want to enjoy my life,” Fogerty said among other things. And then he said, “I can’t have what you have.”
Dwight put his beer down. “Hell, I couldn’t have what I have and now I have it.”
Fogerty waved at the air like the words could be flicked. “I know so much more than I used to know and what I know is the world’s given us a sweet taste for sour shit. We’re all just eating shit, Dwight.”
The big guy winked. “But you keep going, man, it’s important probably.”
* * *
Blistering day on Manhattan’s west side. Shards of sun off the Hudson as Dwight stood on a platform. Before him on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Intrepid stood more than a thousand spandex-clad people waiting for the music to start, waiting for Dwight to lead them. He’d never led anything. All he had was his setlist, a list of exercises he would cycle through, increasing stages of intensity for one hour. Seven cameras and two drones. A total-body workout class en masse with he and the ab guiding them all. He’d gotten the invitation to be flown in and do this live on social for a silly amount of money. His first time in New York.
He tried to do what the books suggested, be present, be in the moment, but all he could think was not everything needs to be meaningful, not everything must be a growth opportunity, why can’t some things just suck, I can’t even be good at feeling bad and the music began and his hosts barked happily into their headsets and everyone moved in glorious unison, high knee footsteps stomping on the tarmac and soon they all glistened in the sun. Dwight forced his smile and sincerity and he felt like he was making simultaneous eye contact with all of them. All staring at him through their breathing and smearing sweat and bouncing bodies.
And then they chanted.
Over the music, to the beat: Lose the shirt lose the shirt lose the shirt.
His hosts beamed at Dwight, nudged, gestured, and he pulled the sweaty shirt off careful not to yank his mike and battery. They saw it and they cheered. One of his hosts roared with joy and approval as he reached in and rubbed the ab.
The workout played on, the eye contact the smiles the panting, and Dwight saw each rivulet of sweat pouring off every single person, gallons of it, lickable, it could feed him, quench him, he could drink it til he puked, til he blossomed.
And as he saw the jubilation in their faces he also saw the savagery. The threat underneath. They could so easily reach out for him but not to touch the ab, to peel his flesh and pull his heart loose and eat it all and curse his fucking name because his flesh has no flavor because it has no fat.
Only then would they cut the ab free. Release it finally and leave him behind.
He must never stop. None of it can ever stop. The Intrepid workout may have been his best ever. He flexed and gyrated and took them to heights. Every new moment a new orgy.
The ab gleamed over its smaller abs in the summer sun.
* * *
Dwight continued to walk through his new life. But he didn’t speak as much. He marched along and surveyed everyone he met like he did in New York, seeing their need and their deprivation and their inability. It occurred to him, that no, he couldn’t burn it all down. Not now. But the ability to burn it all down, to destroy all their dreams, was a beautiful new bulge — on his ass because he kept this in his back pocket like a detonator. When it came time to destroy their world, he had the weapon. His fraud, his misery, his deformity, his dismissal of ever-deepening every-second growth, and his syphoning of their riches into himself to feed the ab. He had to admit it was unique. He had to admit it was power. He had to admit that his beautiful, attached, depraved and desperate attorney had been correct that morning. To tell the truth was to destroy. And it would give them all reasons to kill him right back. Having that power was new nourishment and allowed him to see the reality of his world.
Maybe he could find good. Or at least savor the bad. For a while.
Dwight stopped skipping leg day. He went back to the religion of the gym and practiced like a pope. The producer promised a story meeting very soon. A New York editor he met on the Intrepid offered him a six-figure book deal while still sticky in his hotel bed. He slept with five new lovers this past week, women and men. He moisturized the ab twice daily and the ab remained shiny and red and abominable and abdominal and the thing they all really wanted.
Dwight understood their want.
Everyone can be fitter stronger faster better. But not everyone can have the ab.