The Trainer
by AKA
It was time to find a new personal trainer. My old one was moving away, having grown tired, he said, of the expense of city living and now wanting only to live somewhere with trees and his two dogs, where they could all be happy.
I would miss him, not only for his very worthwhile tips and knowledge about building a better looking (and, of course, healthier) body, but as a friend. He was much older than I was, and had become, I confess, something of a father figure for me - an uncloseted young fag only coming into his own and recognizing that the world would be a better place for me with a little muscle packed onto my bones.
Three years later, and I had to admit, looking into the full-length mirrors at my gym, that the man had done a very good job. Sure, I had done all the work, but it had been his tutelage, patience and determination that had built me into the rugged young man standing proudly in the sleeveless black T-shirt and loose, knee-length workout shorts, his arms well defined and his chest blossoming into two firm plates of brawn.
Finding a replacement would be hard. Did I want another man like him, someone older and wiser in the ways of muscle and men who could guide me and give me pointers not just about proper equipment use and stance, but also about dating, and relationships, and sex? Yes, he was even helpful in that awkward arena, though the two of us had never hooked up. It just didn’t feel right, getting naked with him other than in the locker room and showers.
I mean, sure I scoped him out. The man was fine! And that ass! I mean, it was tempting, for sure, and I think he enjoyed being looked at as much as I enjoyed looking at him. But then he’d laugh, and I’d laugh, and we both knew nothing would ever happen between us.
He enjoyed an open relationship with his boyfriend, another older dude with another amazing body who worked in an office and was as desperate to escape his cubicle lifestyle as his significant other. I had grown not just to like the couple, but to love them as family, and it was going to be hard saying goodbye to them.
Of course, the first thing I did was ask for a recommendation. “Not that I can ever replace you,” I complimented, “but I don’t think I’m quite ready to show up on my own.”
“Still need someone to push you?”
I nodded. “Hopefully someone as hot as you are,” I said. “You know, someone who inspires as well as teaches.”
He smiled. “Thanks,” he said. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I have a question: How big do you want to get?” I started to answer, and he added, “Be honest. We both you know you like muscular guys.”
“Like you.”
He laughed slightly and looked down at himself. “This is nothing. You should have seen me…”
“Back in the day,” we both said. It was what he always said. How hot he ‘used to be’ and how big. Even competing seriously in pro events. I looked him up online, so I actually knew what he looked like back in the day, and the dude was a monster. Huge quads, huge pecs, and I knew exactly where those glutes came from. “You’re not exactly a slouch now,” I remarked, and it was no false compliment.
“I’m serious, though,” he said. “How big?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind getting bigger.”
“How much bigger, though? Just so I know who to recommend to you.”
“I dunno, just… bigger.”
His eyes narrowed. “Some guys get a hunger for it,” he said. “Some guys start getting ‘just bigger,’ but then it’s never ‘just bigger’ enough.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
He stepped back and scanned my bod. I posed a little for him, thinking I was goofing off and he said. “No, really show me. Show me what you’ve got.” I bent my arms into a double-bi and pushed the muscle hard. “Take off your shirt.”
I did. I wasn’t ashamed of my body now, and what we had built together. Only a couple of years ago, I would never take my shirt off in public, and certainly not inside this building filled with muscleheads and gym bunnies easily twice my size. But I had muscle now, I had arms and a chest and was even starting to get a six-pack, if I could just lay off the potato chips. I showed off the body he helped me build, and he folded his arms over his own bulging chest and watched me with pride and, I think, a little bit of wood in his shorts.
So maybe he was watching me as much as I was watching him.
I had to admit that I was enjoying myself, too. Maybe not to the extent that I was gonna pop a boner as I flexed my muscles into relief, but I enjoyed the admiration and the thought that the man who’d given me all this was pleased and obviously aroused by his own handiwork. I blushed, and given that I was naked from the waist up, that was quite a blush. He laughed and adjusted himself, saying, “You definitely have the potential to take things to the next level - if you want to go there.”
I lowered my arms and relaxed, but things were feeling hard and pumped from my flexing. “What’s the next level, and how far do I have to reach to get there?”
“So you are interested?”
I looked down at his hard-on and said, “If I can keep getting reactions like that, I’m definitely interested.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that part. I don’t think I’m the only one suddenly paying more attention around here.”
I looked around and realized he was right. My little demo had caused a few of the other gentlemen at my gym to pause in their own on-going pursuit of muscle to ogle mine, and this only served to make me more determined. “I think I’m ready,” I said.
“It won’t be easy,” he warned.
“Nothing worthwhile ever is,” I answered.
He nodded an agreement and said, seemingly satisfied, “Okay, I’ll give my man a call. I should warn you that some people find him a bit….”
“Hot?”
“Intimidating.” Then he paused and added, “And hot. He comes on strong, but he’s a pussycat inside. Well, more like a wildcat. Well, more like a tiger. Well, more like the king of the lion pride with a chip on his shoulder.”
“Jeez.”
“I’m being a bitch. I shouldn’t color your impressions before you have them. But… okay, he’s kinda… big.”
“Big? As in…?”
“As in huge. Everywhere. Like I said, if you want to take this,” he said, gesturing at my half-naked body, “to the next level, he’s the man to do that. And he leads by example. The man is… the man is big.”
“I can handle big.”
“Oh, can you now?” His eyebrow arched, and then he set his rough, callused hands on my shoulders and looked at me with honest care and maybe even love. “I’m very, very proud of you, you know. Of the man you are. The man you’ve become. When we met, you were this small, scared, closeted little dude who didn’t think anyone would ever want to look twice at you, and that you’d be alone forever. But now look at you! Half the guys in here would give their left nut for a chance with you, and your confidence has grown by leaps and bounds!”
I felt a wash of pride and love in return, for everything he’d done for me and everything he meant to me. There was a lot I wanted to tell him, to say how much this all meant, how deeply I felt it, and my eyes were burning with tears I didn’t want to shed. The side of his mouth twisted up and he tilted his head slightly and nodded. “I know,” he said. “I know.”
“You… you’ll keep in touch, right?”
He lifted his hands off my shoulders. “Of course! It’s not like I’m moving to Paris.” That was his dream, the city he loved more than any other. “I’ll email, you’ll call me, we’ll keep in touch. You can parade your army of lovers in my face, and you’ll keep me up to date with your progress.”
“I will,” I said, knowing the first was a jest and the second an order. I had no army of lovers. I may have looked the part, but changing a lifetime of feeling bad about myself and looking the other way when anyone showed interest was a much harder habit to break than snacking on potato chips and drinking an endless flow of Diet Coke. My body had surely changed, but my brain… not so much. I blushed again, because he, alone, knew every truth about me. Every fumbled attempt at love, every pass that I missed, and of course, my on-going fantasy about That Guy in the Lockers, the gorgeous, beautiful, unattainable man who appeared now and again at my gym, my perfect man - and the man I could never even talk to.
Thinking of him now made me want to look for him, to see if he could see me now, shirtless and sweaty, my muscles pumped, my trainer complimenting my progress. Then, in the same instant, I considered how lame that was, and that he didn’t really matter to me, and that I didn’t really care whether or not he ever looked my way.
Lies, again. Oh, well. Progress comes slowly. He’d taught me that lesson, too.
He lifted his hands from my shoulders. “Where did you just go?”
“What? Oh, nowher…”
“Thinking about Mr. Perfect, again?”
“You know me too well. Maybe it’s better that you’re leaving me forever.”
“Drama Queen.” He sighed as he looked at me. “Okay, put your shirt back on and hit the treadmill for half an hour. That’s done for today.”
“I… I really appreciate everything… I mean, everything you’ve done for me… and… everything.”
“Always the master of conversation.” He stepped close and looked me in the eyes. “I want you to do something for me. Will you promise that you will?”
“I guess so.”
“I mean it.”
I shrugged. He was being so serious! “Okay.”
“Go talk to Mr. Perfect. Get a phone number. Have a coffee. I mean it. I think you’ll be surprised.”
“Okay,” I agreed too quickly.
“I mean it,” he said again.
I swallowed hard, Even the thought of doing that made me feel hot and embarrassed and tied up my tongue. But he smiled, seeing my awkwardness, and shook his head. “Some lessons are harder than others,” he said. “And some are far easier than you ever expect.” He slapped my butt and said, “The treadmill, then the showers. You stink like a used jockstrap.”
I was jogging on the treadmill when he walked in. Of course, he would. Timing was his thing - at least, in my mind it was. He would time it so he could torture me like this. Time his entrances and exits. Time his locker nudity, his showering and toweling off. Not that I was obsessed with him, of course! Lord, no! But, Jeez, the man was perfect.
I knew his name, because my old trainer had found out about him. I mean, if one of your students or clients was going on and on and on about someone - to the point that it was interfering with lessons - anyway, he’d found out about the guy, and I knew his name, but in my head I always called him Mr. Perfect.
He wasn’t huge, but he was… perfect. And I knew because I’d seen it all. Scoping out his workouts. Watching him change from the corner of my eye. Sneaking peeks in the showers. C’mon! I’m a gay man with a beating heart and an active libido! And a guy needs some whack-off material, do he not?
If I described him to you, you probably wouldn’t agree with me. Everyone has their own idea of perfection, right? And my perfection may not be your perfection, so rather than bore you with the details of his beauty and magnetism, I’ll let you slide your own Mr. Perfect into his Nikes and you can imagine yourself watching him, the way he moves, his smile, his eyes, his ass. Mr. Perfect has an aMAZing ass.
Did I mention I’m an ass man? Maybe you got that impression already. Sure, I can admire a nice chest, nice arms, well-worked abs. But there is something about the ass, isn’t there? Like there’s power there. And getting that nice ass, that takes work! God, how I knew that. How many squats was I doing every week? And those backwards leg things with the cables. I didn’t even know what that torture was called. Plus, the hardest part is you can’t even see your own ass! You’re working your… ass off to get a nice ass and you can’t enjoy it!
Not like arms. Every guy does his arms. But my old trainer, he taught me well. “It’s the legs,” he explained. “Guys ignore them, concentrating on their arms and chest and all this,” he said, indicating his upper body. “But it’s the legs. Trust me. Work the legs.”
He was right, of course. And he was his own best advertisement. I did mention his ass, too, did I not? I think that was one of the main reasons I hired him. I wanted that ass.
I mean… sure, I wanted it. He is fine! But I wanted it myself. I wanted that beautiful, powerful, muscular set of bowls mounted on my backside. I wanted that proud strut, that two-mounded high-puckered stride where the two brawny bubbles rise and fall, kissing their round contours together like an invitation. I wanted that ass.
Mr. Perfect, now that was an ass! Yes, yes, his face was gorgeous, and perfect hair, and always smiling and exuding whatever it is that men like him exude. Perfect men and their perfection.
I’m obsessing again.
He walks in, ignoring me completely. Everyone knows him, and he knows everyone. He smiles, he waves, he greets his friends and associates and ignores me, and why not? Have I ever had the courage to just go talk to him? To just, like, introduce myself, tell him my name, have a fucking conversation with him?
Of course not. Because when I see him, I get tongue-tied. When I am near him, I shake and sweat. When he looks at me, I look away because I am not worthy of him. The man. That perfect man.
Luckily, I knew that I didn’t exist for him so I had no fear of anything happ…
Then he turned around.
He looked at me.
He looked directly at me.
And he started to walk over. He was digging in the pocket of his track pants, smiling up at me, and then he pulled out his iPhone and was thumbing around the screen. “Hey,” he said. Then he held up the phone screen toward me. “This you?”
It was me. Me from earlier, without my shirt on, flexing for my trainer. My mouth fell open and I swallowed hard, as all the words I had ever learned or spoken in my entire life vacated my brain. I looked from the screen to him, to his face, to his eyes, to his smile. He took the phone back and looked at the picture of me that someone in the gym had taken and sent him. One of his many friends and acquaintances. And then he looked at me again, and his gaze moved up and down my sweaty body as I continued to jog as if my brain had left control of my body to my legs. He said, “Looking good.” He wiggled his eyebrows and his smile quirked into something else, something suggestive and filthy. “Looking very good.” He paused, then he added, “My name’s John.”
I swallowed hard, and hoped my voice didn’t crack like a schoolboy facing his first crush. “Thomas,” I said, then, “Tom.”
“Which is it, really?”
“Thomas,” I said, finally.
“You’re finishing up just as I’m getting started,” he said. “My timing is all wrong today.”
I smiled, a little out of breath from my running as well as the excitement of Mr. Perfect speaking to me out of the blue like this. “Yeah,” I agreed, because my brain decided to stop working or something.
He stepped closer, putting his hand on my treadmill. “It’s funny. I see you every morning. But I never really...saw you before.” He narrowed his gaze and his eyes scanned my whole body again. Then he met my eyes again and said, “What’s your number, Thomas?”
“My number?”
He smiled and I melted - all except my dick, which somehow managed to surge from steel to diamond hardness. “Your phone number.” I blinked in uncertainty, had I heard that correctly? He wanted my number? But I gave him my digits and he nodded, seeming to memorize them instantly. After another direct scan of my body, he said, “It was nice chatting with you, Thomas. I hope I’ll see more of you.”
“Yeah,” I said again. “Me, too.”
He smiled. At me. Mr. Perf… John. Then he turned and walked his perfect ass toward the locker room, nodding a few greetings to some other guys before disappearing.
Fuck, I was horny. I tried to think if I’d been this aroused when John was looking at me, and wondered at the same time if I cared. The timer on the treadmill was counting down and my cool down was nearly complete. I realized that I would be walking the length of the gym with a boner sticking straight out of my crotch unless I could also cool down my libido. Maybe all I needed was a smoothie, a short sit in the common area with a tall protein shake.
Just as the treadmill slowed to a stop, my own phone started vibrating in my shorts. I nearly jumped out of my skin, but the sensation of shock managed to deflate my prick enough that when I walked toward the smoothie bar, phone in hand, I didn’t quite look like a dowsing rod in search of a warm, tight hole. The number on the screen was unfamiliar, and didn’t link to any of my contacts. “Hello, this is Thomas.”
“Hello, Thomas.” The voice at the other end sounded absurd. It was as if I was speaking to a boulder. It was the voice that a mountain range would own.
“Hello?”
“This is your new trainer. My name is Jove.” I felt slightly dizzy, suddenly. Perhaps I had worked out too hard.
“Joe?” I repeated it, wondering if I had mis-heard the name.
“Jove,” he said again, and spelled it for me. As each letter entered my ear, my heart pumped blood into my muscles. And my cock.
“As in ‘by jove?’” I asked.
“That’s correct. I understand you want to move to The Next Level.” His voice pushed inside my head and seemed to expand, like light entering a darkened room. I heard those capital letters distinctly. The Next Level.
“I… guess so.” This was a weird conversation, and my head was already spinning due to the loss of blood I had experienced when John made my cock inflate to such grandiose proportions.
“There’s no guessing involved, Thomas. Either you do or you don’t.” His words were strong and powerful. He was commanding me.
“I do,” I confirmed. Images of men with hard muscles started flipping through my imagination, like a catalogue of masculine perfection. Biceps and pecs and abs. Thick and hard. Pushing against the skin with their might.
And the asses. All the fine, powerful, muscular asses.
“What are you willing to do to get there?” I felt the muscles along my arms sing with strength. I felt the weight and mass of my pectorals. My ass was tight and high and round with power.
“Willing to do?”
“Yes,” he answered, simply. My nipples tingled. My cock pulsed. Hard.
“Anything,” I volunteered. Then I thought about John. I thought about the reaction I garnered by taking off my shirt and flexing. I thought about the other men I saw around me, with their bulging beauty and sense of overwhelming power and masculinity. “Everything.”
“Excellent,” he said. “We start tomorrow. Meet me at the Atlas Gym at 5 AM.” I was being inflated with power and strength. I was growing bigger just standing there.
“Atlas Gym?” That was a place for the hardcore bodybuilders. That was a no-nonsense iron and steel church, where the worshipers and deities of muscle met. “5 AM?”
“I’ll see you there. Do not be late.” He hung up.
I realized I was standing in the aisle staring at my phone. The sweat was cooling on my skin and my clothes were clinging to my body. I looked up and some guy was smiling at me as he approached. He was looking at my body - at my cock. I was hard again. Raging hard. He winked and grinned and nodded, approving of my inadvertent and overt acknowledgment of my own male prowess and sexual excitement. “Looking good,” he said. He brushed his hand against my prick. A tingling heat filled my body. I had never felt so alive and powerful. I didn’t know who the man was, but I knew very strongly and without a doubt that I could’ve taken him then and there, ripping him free of his clothing and fucking his ass with my powerful, godlike cock and he would’ve thanked me and begged for more.
I looked at my phone again. The number was still there. I added it it to my contact list under the name Jove.
I was never so fucking horny in my entire life.