The Offensive Line (Patreon)

I got to hand it to them, it was pretty cunning for a bunch of meat heads to time it so the mind control would wear off mid play. I attempted to bliz a gap, but was too slow and got tackled from the side. As I crash to the ground, sweaty, exhausted and in training gear, everything snaps back into place in my mind. “Fuck! Hogs, you must be the worst linebacker trainee ever” I hear Ty shout at me.

I remember the first day of training. Well, I’ve always remembered it, but now that I wasn’t going on autopilot anymore, I could understand it. It was a Tuesday. The track & field training schedule overlapped with football practice on Tuesdays. I was about to do a 1500m practice run when the jocks passed by in training gear. We had our usual back and forth with insults, where we matched every crude spar from them with a witty retort. I told them I was used to literally run in circles around them. That’s when Ty, though I didn’t know him then, came up to me and did something. Did he touch me? Whatever he did, that was when I lost my mind. He told me to run to the locker room, get in gear as quick as I could and return to him.

I sprinted into their locker room, and there, clearly laid out, was a complete set of football gear in my size. I didn’t question why it was there or who it belonged to. I did as I had been told, stripped naked and put it on. I could run fast, but I wasn’t used to football gear, so it took some time. Feeling a bit of panic with all that clumsily wasted time I rushed as fast as I could to the training field, where I found him.

He looked almost surprised to see me, as if he didn’t expect me to show up. But quickly he, Mike and Hunter turned into all smiles, and started to explain exercises for me. It was the hardest I’ve ever worked out, up to that point. I could see it really pushed them too. Despite the grueling workout, they looked like they were about to burst out laughing at any point.

I was drenched in sweat and exhausted when we finally gave up. Ty put his arm around my shoulder and declared that we were now athletic bros. I should join them at the gym next morning.

I did, and again Ty, Hunter and Mike showed up to help me put my program together. Even though this was weights I found myself worked as hard and as sweaty as the day before. They all helped with what exercises to do, what areas to focus on, how to improve my form. “Now do a wide grip. You’ll hit different chest muscles. You want to get massive.” Mike told me.

As we were leaving Ty came up to me. “Hey, I was thinking it would be great if you could join us for all our training. I can talk with coach Daniels so you can join us, kind of as our trainee. No need for tryouts. You just need to tell coach Adams you can’t do track anymore. Say you want to be with your friends.” I agreed of course.

Within the week I was fully booked. 2 hour practice after school Monday through Friday and gym time one hour each morning with at least one of the guys through all seven days. Hunter helped me calculate proper calories and macros. “There should always be proteins in your system. The body should never be like ‘I want to build muscle, but I have nothing to build with!’. Don’t give it any excuses! Also, make sure you get 8 hours of sleep. Dream about muscles!”

Already by the third week we were starting to see results. Ty wanted to measure and keep track of my progress. It was like having a private army of personal trainers. Mike was constantly coming up with new challenges in the weight room and Hunter had taken upon himself to be in charge of my meals and supplements. Ty didn’t want to burden me with any such research. “You got plenty of catch up to do on the game” he had said. I spent all time outside of class and training just watching hours upon hours of football. Turns out they taped way more than Superbowl.

Although I sensed coach Daniels was hesitant at first, he was warming up to having me as an extra during practice when he saw how quickly I was progressing. Often I had to stand in as opponent in many of the exercises. It was after one such session of brutal tackling Ty pulled me aside. “Bro, coach will never tell you this, but you need to up your headbutt game.” We went to the boxing part of the gym, empty by now, and he guided me through exercises with a punching bag. I would do forehead headbutts, sideways headbutt and finally just run into the bag, head first. “We need to add this to your exercise rotation. You want to be a muscle head, not a meat head”, he joked. “You should buzz your head, so you look the part.”

By the second month it was obvious to anyone that I was rapidly gaining muscle. I carried a pack of boiled eggs everywhere so I could eat one each hour, as a protein boost. Ty convinced me to go with athletic clothes all the time so I could get in some body weight training between classes. It was for the best anyway, since the new supplements Hunter found made me sweat like a pig all the time. Somewhere there was when the nickname Hogs stuck. “You need to really want it. To desire muscle.”, Ty had coached me. “Think about muscles the next time you beat your meat. It’s arm day today, so get some pictures of really beefy arms before you wank.”

A quarter in I had abandoned my old wardrobe completely. I wasn’t just wider everywhere, but all the hormones had made the last flickers of puberty make a final surprise push. Everything went a tad taller, longer, deeper, and bigger. To my face mum and dad were nothing but supportive of all the sudden changes, but I overheard them argue. I’m not sure who was on what side, or if any of them were on my side, but dad ended it with “If this is his rebellion, let him have it.”

All of this flash before me in a moment as I crash to the ground on the field. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to be a muscle head. I don’t want to be massive. I don’t want to be on this field, in this gear, in this body. I want nothing more than to run off the field into the locker room and throw away all the sweaty, smelly gear and never touch it again. What really matters, what really changed, I can’t get rid of. I want to get out of this disgusting body.

Ty, Hunter and Mike all stand around me. “So, who is running circles around who now?”

They ruined my athletic career. With the clouds lifted I can see they didn’t even try to make me a good player. They just made me into some slow, massive, smelly clod. Had me stagnate to the academic bare minimum for half a year. And all that to make a grammatically incorrect one liner comeback? Yet, what hurts the most is that 30 seconds ago they were all my friends.

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