I will explain how F. got his extraordinary body. Once again I will explain it to myself. HOW JOE’S BODY BROUGHT HIM FAME INSTEAD OF SHAME: headline on the back of an American comic which we both read one afternoon when we were thirteen. We were sitting on some trunks in an unused solarium on the third floor of the orphanage, a glass-roofed room dark as any other because of the soot deposited by a badly placed chimney – we often hid here. JOE’S BODY was the concern of an ad for a muscle-building course. His triumph is traced in seven cartoon panels. Can I recall?
1. Joe is skeletal. His legs are piteous sticks. His red bathing suit is the baggy boxer type. His voluptuous girl friend is with him. Her thighs are thicker than his. The calm sea beyond contrasts with Joe’s ordeal. A man with a grand physique is humiliating him. We cannot see the torturer’s face, but the girl informs Joe that the man is a well-known local nuisance.
2. A tiny sail has appeared on the horizon. We see the bully’s face. We appreciate his beery chest. The girl friend has drawn up her knees and is wondering why she ever dated this no-assed weakling. Joe has been pulled to his feet by the bully and now must sustain a further insult.
3. The sail is gone. Some minuscule figures play ball at the edge of the sea. Seagulls appear. An anguished Joe stands beside the girl he is losing. She has put on her white sunhat and has turned her tits from him. She answers him over her right shoulder. Her body is assive and maternal, low-breasted. Somehow we have an impression of stretched muscles in her abdomen.
JOE: The big bully! I’ll get even some day.
HER: Oh, don’t let it bother you, little boy!
4. Joe’s room, or the remains of it. A cracked picture hangs askew on the green wall. A broken lamp is in motion. He is kicking a chair over. He wears a blue blazer, tie, white ducks. He clenches his fist, a clawlike articulation from a wrist thin as a bird leg. The girl friend lies in some panel of the imagination snuggling in the bully’s armpit, winking out a thousand shameful anecdotes about Joe’s body.
JOE: Darn it! I’m sick and tired of being a scarecrow! Charles Axis says he can give me a REAL body. All right! I’ll gamble a stamp and get his FREE book.
5. LATER. Could this be Joe? He flexes a whole map of jigsaw muscles before his dresser mirror.
JOE: Boy! It didn’t take Axis long to do this for me! What MUSCLES! That bully won’t shove me around again!
Is this the same red bathing suit?
6. The beach. The girl has come back. She is having a good time. Her body is relaxed and hips have appeared. Her left hand is raised in a gesture of surprised delight as her vision of Joe under goes a radical transformation. Joe has just thrown a punch which lands in an electrical blaze on the bully’s chin, knocking him off balance, knitting his eyebrows with amazed pain. Beyond we have the same white strand, the same calm sea.
JOE: What! You here again? Here’s something I owe you!
7. The girl touches Joe’s memorable biceps with her right hand. Her left shoulder and left arm are obscured by Joe’s massive chest but we know that she has shoved it down the back of his tight red bathing suit and is working with his testicles.
HER: Oh, Joe! You ARE a real man after all!
AN ATTRACTIVE GIRL SITTING ON THE SAND NEARBY: GOSH! What a build!
THE ENVIOUS MAN BESIDE HER: He’s already famous for it!
Joe stands there in silence, thumbs hooked in the front of his bathing suit, looking at his girl, who leans lasciviously against him. Four thick black words appear in the sky and they radiate spears of light. None of the characters in the panel seems aware of the celestial manifestation exploding in terrific silence above the old marine landscape. HERO OF THE BEACH is the sky’s announcement.
F. studied the ad for a long time. I wanted to get on with what we had come for, the scuffling, the dusty caresses, the comparison of hair, the beauty of facing a friend and binding two cocks in my hand, one familiar and hungry, one warm and strange, the flash along the whole length. But F.’s eyes were wet, his lips trembling as he whispered:
– Those words are always in the sky. Sometimes you can see them, like a daytime moon.
The afternoon darkened over the soot-layered glass roof. I waited silently for F.’s mood to change and I suppose I fell asleep, for I started at the sound of scissors.
– What are you clipping out there, F.?
– Charles Axis thing.
– Bet your fucking life.
– But it’s for thin guys. We’re fat.
– Shut your fucking face.
– We’re fat, F.
– Smack! Wham! Pow!
– Fat.
– Socko! Sok! Bash!
– Fat fat fat fat fat fat fat!
I lit a stolen match and we both huddled over the comic which had fallen to the floor. At the right-hand side of the ad there is an actual photo of the man who holds the title “The World’s Most Flawlessly Formed Man.” Oh! I remember! In a flawless bathing suit he stands on the clip-away coupon.
– But look at him, F., the guy’s got no hair.
– But I have hair. I have hair.
His hands are fists, his smile is Florida, he does not look serious, he doesn’t really care about us, maybe he is even a little fat.
– Just inspect this photo, F. The guy is soft in the gut.
– He’s fat, all right.
– But –
– He’s fat. He understands the fat. Use your eyes! Look at his face. Now look at Plastic Man’s face. Charles Axis wants to be our uncle. He is one of us slobs who dwells pages behind Plastic Man. But can’t you see that he has made his peace with Plastic Man? With Blue Beetle? With Captain Marvel? Can’t you see that he believes in the super-world?
– F., I don’t like it when your eyes get shiny like that.
– The Fat! The Fat! He’s one of us! Charles Axis is on our side! He’s with us against Blue Beetle and Ibis and Wonder Woman!
– F., you’re talking funny again.
– Charles Axis has an address in New York, look, 405 West 34th St., New York 1! Don’t you think he knows about Krypton? Don’t you see him suffering on the outer limits of the Bat Cave? Has anyone ever lived so close to fantastic imaginary muscles?
– F. !
– Charles Axis is all compassion, he’s our sacrifice! He calls the thin but he means both the fat and the thin; he calls the thin because it is worse to be fat than thin; he calls the thin so that the fat can hear and come and not be named!
– Get away from that window!
– Charles! Charles! Charlie! I’m coming, I’m coming to be with you at the sad edge of the spirit world!
– F.! Uppercut! Sok! Thud!
– Puff! *##! Sob! Thank you, my friend, I guess you kinda saved my life.
That was the last time I ever equaled F. in a physical contest. He gave Charles Axis fifteen minutes a day in the privacy of his room. Fat fell away or turned to muscle, he increased his chest measurement, he was not ashamed to strip for sports. Once on the beach a huge man in a very white bathing suit kicked sand in his face as we sat sunbathing on a small towel. F. merely smiled. The huge man stood there, hands on hips, then he performed a little hop and jump, like a soccer kickoff, and kicked sand in his face once again.
– Hey! I cried: Quit kicking that sand in our faces! F., I whispered: That man is the worst nuisance on the beach.
The bully ignored me completely. He seized F.’s thick hard wrist in his own massive fist and yanked F. to a standing position.
– Listen here, he snarled, I’d smash your face … only you’re so skinny you might dry up and blow away.
– Why did you let him shove you around?
F. sat down meekly as the man strode away.
– That was Charles Axis.
– But that man is the worst nuisance on the beach.