Days of Wine and Steroids

This had to be mid-eighties when steroids were first becoming popular amongst non-athletic males. I was tending bar and across the street there was a Chicago Health Club. I never went in there as the place wasn't for me. They probably wouldn't let me smoke in there anyways. We would get good looking, fit girls having a post workout cocktail and that was nice. But we would also get young, inflated males who always seemed on edge. Why anybody would want to look like an NFL linebacker to sell shoes or cars or whatever, was beyond me. I don't recall any real problems with them, but the potential was always there. As I understood it, the side effect of the steroids of that time were bad skin, shrunken testicles and bad attitudes. One afternoon, a young barfly named Dave chatted up the overly muscled fella next to him and mentioned the name of a workout enthusiast he knew. The big guy took umbrage and screamed: "HE'S SMALL!!" Uh oh, I thought. Dave was the posterchild of the STYX song, "Too Much Time on my Hands" a song that was popular at the time. "Sitting on a bar stool, talking like a damn fool..." You remember it. Dave was that guy. I had played baseball with his older brother, Chuck, who had gone on in life to become a millionaire in Silicon Valley long before those guys settled on evil agendas in society that they pursue these days. I feared roid rage that day. Thankfully it didn't happen. Whether I settled the guy down or what, I don't remember. I was just glad I didn't have to break anything up, or get broken up in the process. 

Now, one night though, a really jacked and stacked guy came in and sat himself in the far corner of the bar. I had never seen him before. He called me by my real, non-Ferrerman name. People did that because I was forced to wear a name tag, but this guy seemed to actually know me. He introduced as "Jim B". 

"Get the fuck outa here", I said. "No way!" The last time I recalled seeing this particular Jimmy B, he was a skinny freshman in high school like me. He had *fought* my buddy Tommy in "The Hole", the wooded area across from the school where disputes were settled after school. Tommy was no more a pugilist then than I was, but he put Jimmy down in like two swings. Me and my sometimes friend Andy were the next dance on the card, and I guess it was a better fight, but not that much. We fought to a draw and then went for ice cream. I wouldn't say the fans were pleased that day, but the ice cream was good.

So, bigly difference between young Jimmy B. and that night's version. I only half-jokingly asked to see his ID and he complied. I gathered he knew it was because of the change in him (facially too) and not anything to do with drinking age. I mean, why would anyone impersonate him? So, yeah, it was officially him. I wasn't really working that side of the bar, but I felt like I sorta knew the guy, so I may as well chat him up a bit. He was a snotty rich kid in school whose previous claim to fame (other than losing to Tommy) was that he was spared a beatdown by blacks the year we had racial trouble, because the biggest black guy that day's mother was his family's maid. He got a pass. Daddy owned coal mines. This was in the early 70's when that was a good business to be in. 

I got the impression- and still have it all these decades later- that Jimmy B. was on a mission that night. Surely, he had heard I was tending bar in town, and he needed to tell me something special. He did!

He told me that he had done something that none of us (my grade school) boys had done. This threw me. The only thing I could think of was, "Get punched out by Tommy J?" I didn't say that, but I promise you I was thinking it. So, I asked him what that might be. 

"I fucked Wendy S!" he blurted out. I wasn't expecting that. I honestly don't recall what I said in response. Really, what could I say to that? It was so removed from my life that it was ridiculous. Wendy S. was the prettiest girl in my grade school and high school. Honestly, she was probably the prettiest girl in your school too. That's how good looking she was. A wonderful person, a paragon of beauty, grace, intelligence and talent. Wendy had made her share of bad choices in men, but I had not been one of them. If I was supposed to take this personal, I did not know why. Scott, the guy I was working with that night, had overheard much of this. He had a cop's nose for trouble as he was trying to become one, and he asked if I was okay with "that dick". He also asked if Wendy had been my girl. No. That was the weird part. Just a classmate, another that I hadn't seen in years. One of many I had not had carnal knowledge of. I knew that boys and men lie about their conquests. Girls do as well, but that's a story for another day. You can pretty much say you slept with anyone, but unless it was filmed or you made a baby, how were you going to prove it? If Jimmy B. was seeking a particular reaction from me, he wasn't going to get it whether he was jacked and stacked Jimmy or the one Tommy had laid out. I thought the whole thing was bullshit. He soon left, having completed his weird mission, whatever it had been.

I didn't *see* him again until years later when we were on Facebook and it turned out we were both FB friends of Wendy. She had a thread about politics, and his republican ass (pretty safe bet) was pretending to be a democrat like Wendy. I posted something along the lines of, "JIMMY B! I haven't seen you since that night you came into (the bar)! Do you remember what we talked about that night?"

Jimmy did not reply. And, no, I wasn't about to break the story there, that evening on FB, no matter what he might say. Nor was I ever going to tell Wendy personally.  I just wanted to fuck with Jimmy. I prefer to do that naturally, without chemicals   and the relative safety of the internet was probably the best call for all concerned. That exchange was another "Rainsford felt he had never slept in a better bed" moment. I like those.