All About Lulu Read online

  I think I was more nervous than Big Bill. I knew the Olympia had become a five hundred–pound gorilla on my father’s back, and I desperately wanted him to win it. Along with Mentzer, he was probably the favorite up until Arnold’s controversial late entry.

  After a five-year absence, with a movie deal pending, Arnold returned to Sydney in search of his seventh Olympia. His appearance made everybody uneasy, and even before the competition began there were whispers of conspiracy, fears that the Olympia might be compromised in the name of boosting the sport’s popularity. But Big Bill kept his eyes on the prize. He didn’t let the Arnold circus distract him.

  In what I can only view as a rite of passage, my father asked me to oil him up before prejudging. I’d oiled up Big Bill before: at Mr. Southwest, Mr. Natural California, a couple of promotional appearances at Lee Dobbs Chevrolet. But this was Olympia, and even the ninety-eight-pound weakling in me was wowed by such dizzying heights.

  In my hotel room, hours before weigh-in, I was presented with a blue poly-fiber sweat suit to match Big Bill’s. I would be lying if I told you I was not proud of that sweat suit. That sweat suit distinguished me.

  Upon our arrival at the Opera House, Big Bill and I left Willow with Lulu and the twins in the lobby, and the two of us alone padded down a long carpeted corridor in our matching sweat suits. And I knew their eyes were on my back—the twins, Willow, and especially Lulu—and I felt uncharacteristically significant carrying my father’s bag down that corridor.

  The green room smelled strongly of coconut and armpits. Nearly every mirror was occupied. We walked the length of the humid room, and my father nodded at familiar faces. Frank Zane, Casey Viator, Danny Padilla. Kenny Waller patted my head as we passed the pit.

  My father took a place in the corner and solemnly began shedding his poly-fiber skin. When he was free of it, he stood before the mirror like a golden god, naked to the world but for a shiny blue Speedo full of giblets. And it was good. Soon he began to stretch and pump his arms and legs until the blood began to engorge the muscles. I stood close by, watching as though it were my job, ever ready with the gym bag, now and again inspecting its contents, folding my father’s sweat suit, rolling up his towel.

  When he was done stretching, he gravitated toward the pit, exchanging a little friendly banter with Boyer Coe and Tom Platz on his way. I followed him at a short distance and took my post, purposefully off to the side, and wore my game face as I watched Big Bill do a set of curls, and a set of bent-arm pullovers, and another set of curls. I told him one more rep. I reminded him no pain, no gain.

  At last, he toweled himself off and said: “Let’s do this thing.”

  As I began to oil him up, Big Bill set his attention to sizing up the competition. Mentzer looked impressive in his black banana hammock. Waller looked pale, but ripped. Dickerson was a monster. But Arnold cast the longest shadow. It was impossible to ignore Arnold—he wouldn’t let you. He made a grand entrance and proceeded like a peacock to strut his plumage all over the green room, trying to throw everybody off of their game. As he made his rounds, mugging while the others prepared, Arnold kept his body covered with a cropped sweatshirt and sweatpants, leaving all but his patented biceps and forearms to the imagination.

  “So, I see Big Bill is Bigger Bill for 1980. Zis is a lot of weight you’re carrying, Bill. I hope you haff definition to match.”

  Big Bill looked straight ahead at the mirror as Arnold circled him, and I was proud of him for that. He acted like Arnold wasn’t even there, like it was just the two of us. “Don’t forget my delts, Tiger.”

  But Arnold was never good at invisibility. “And vut is zis I hear you haff new wife? Congratulations.”

  One thing I was learning about my new voice was that I didn’t have much control over it. “Hey Arnold,” I said, surprising myself. “Beat it.”

  Arnold broke into a wide grin, and set his hand atop my head. “Junior haff big voice. Maybe someday he haff—”

  “Just leave!” I shouted, loud enough that Mentzer, Padilla, and a few others turned to see what the fuss was.

  To my astonishment, Arnold lumbered off with a wilting smile and, for once, I didn’t have sand in my face.

  Big Bill couldn’t suppress a grin. “Easy, Tiger.”

  A half minute later I heard Liam Halstead tell Arnold to bugger off, and I couldn’t help but feel that I’d given him the strength.

  “How are the lats?” asked Big Bill, spreading them like wings.

  “Looking good,” I said. “Remember to stay open when you make your turn. Don’t close up too much, or your elbows will get in the way. And don’t smile so hard. Breathe through your nose. Turn around, so I can get your abs.”

  He turned around.

  “Flex,” I said.

  He flexed. His abs looked great. Six distinct pillows tapering into a perfect V at the waistline. I oiled between the furrows. “Turn,” I said, with an edge of impatience. “Other way.”

  My father complied with a very content look on his face. He winked at me. “Who’s gonna win this thing, Tiger?”

  “We are,” I said.

  And oiling him up, tracing the horseshoe musculature of a tricep, the dimpled crown of an immense bicep, running my small hands over the impossibly hard rubber girth of his upper arms and shoulders, I thought he felt superhuman. His body was impenetrable. For the first time I could almost fathom my father’s unwavering faith in meat.

  I stayed backstage beside Big Bill until the moment he was announced. As the applause set in, he straightened up and drew a shallow breath.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said.

  I patted his backside like Waller might have. “Remember. Stay within yourself.”

  He smiled. “Gotcha, Tiger.”

  The new and improved Big Bill Miller glided onto the stage as if he were skating on Vaseline. At center stage, he spun around ninety degrees, faced the audience, and stood at ease for the briefest of moments. Really at ease. Grinning like Ronald Reagan on Thai Stick. Though his skin was stretched beyond all capacity, like a mutant blood sausage, he looked comfortable in it for the first time ever.

  Then the music began: something from Bach. Big Bill didn’t hurry, he didn’t force anything. He bowed his head and slowly exhaled, then rose up again like a sunflower to face the sea of flashbulbs. He stretched his arms out to embrace eternity, then eased them back in like he was gathering up the universe, and when he had the universe in his grasp, he closed his fists upon it and sent it crackling down his forearms to his biceps, which swelled until it seemed they would burst like supernovas. His transitions were seamless. Front double bicep melted into side chest melted into back lat spread. He made his mandatory poses look like tai chi. What’s more, he invented poses, or I should say Willow invented poses, poses that didn’t have names like “front double bicep” or “back lat spread,” that had names like “starry bowl of night” and “valley brimming yellow with mountain lilies,” and that looked just like they sounded. When Big Bill left the stage, both at the prejudging and the main event, he got a bigger ovation, more oohs and aahs than anyone, even Arnold.

  Backstage, Big Bill was ramped up, couldn’t sit still long enough to watch Corney or Platz follow on his heels.

  “Relax. We got ’em,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “Sure. You heard them.”

  Big Bill leaned into my assurance like it was a campfire. “I think you’re right, Tiger. I think we got ’em this time.”

  Had I been picking them, I would’ve picked Big Bill first, Mentzer second, Dickerson third, and Zane fourth. Arnold would’ve finished sixth behind Boyer Coe, maybe even seventh behind Roger Walker.

  When Zane was announced at third, I quickly made the adjustments. Mentzer second, Miller first.

  Big Bill gave me a wink, then held his chin up to greet the news.

 
I prayed that I would not hear his name next. I grabbed his hand and squeezed. It was Chris Dickerson, another surprise at second.

  Big Bill gave my hand a squeeze, and looked impressed, and avoided looking at Mentzer as he rocked back and forth on his heels.

  Tough luck for Mentzer, I thought. It was his last shot, and he finished out of the money. Though watching his reaction from twenty feet away, I could see, unmistakably, that he still thought he’d won it all.

  But I knew differently.

  There are moments when realities collide, when expectations become so real that there’s no telling them apart from the future. Always in that terrible instant of contact, there’s a chill that shoots through you, almost like a shiver, or a bolt of electricity, and something is lost irretrievably in that moment. For Mike Mentzer, it was his shot at ever claiming an Olympia. For Big Bill Miller, it was something else entirely. I wish I knew what. But when Arnold was announced as the winner in the Masters Division, something was inexplicably lost between my father and me. We would never again capture the intimacy we shared in those hours before the ’80 Olympia.

  Big Bill was irritable for the rest of our stay in Sydney, spitting vegemite into napkins, complaining about portions, refusing to walk through the Royal Botanic Gardens. Willow tried to finesse his ego-bone back into place for the next two days, but her patience had worn thin by the afternoon of our departure, and when he started grumbling about the length of the check-in line at the Sydney airport, she let him have it in front of all of us.

  “Damnit, Bill, since when did you ever have any trouble moving on? Tell me that.” She blew a few frizzy strands of hair out of her face, dragged her suitcase forward a foot or so, and growled in frustration. “You’re so damn quick to just forge ahead at every juncture, until the minute your damn ego gets involved, and suddenly you’re incapable of forward propulsion, Bill, you’re spinning your wheels in the mud. And the rest of us are tired of getting spattered.”

  But it didn’t stop. Something had burrowed its way under my father’s thick skin. It soon penetrated the muscle and began to fester there. I’d always assumed it was failure in some shape. With hindsight, I see it probably had nothing to do with his disappointment at the results of the 1980 Olympia. It was probably just guilt.

  Forever

  For all his improved posing and posturing, I don’t think the discomfort of living was ever any less acute for Big Bill. Willow taught him poise, but she could not teach him finesse. Because, more than anything else, he liked short endings. Whether they were happy or sad, he liked them abrupt. He liked to avoid confusion. And nowhere was this more apparent than in his relationship with Lulu, where everything ended in yes.

  “I’m asking you, because I already know what Mother will say. Can I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can William?”

  “Yes.”

  Yes, Lulu, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Not because it’s a good idea, not because you earned it, but because, well, it’s short. Nobody argues with yes. In this way my father failed Lulu as a stepfather. He assumed no jurisdiction over her beyond the word yes. What did he deny her by never saying no? Suspense? Dialogue? I can’t say for certain. Maybe just the knowledge that her life was somehow conditional.

  But then, maybe that’s not fair. Maybe I’m not qualified to make that judgment, having asked Big Bill for so little, and having accepted no so readily my whole life. Probably I should be thanking him, because if he’d been any more of a father to Lulu, she would have only been more of a sister to me, and as it stood, she was so much more. Without her, I may just as well have been silent, because most people could not seem to hear my voice. Often when I spoke to the twins, they looked at me like Saint Bernards. I’ll admit there was a genuine eagerness to connect in those big, dull eyes—a light of recognition that flashed now and again, causing them to tilt their heads in wonder—but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t speak Saint Bernard. I couldn’t speak Big Bill, or even Willow. Couldn’t speak gym teacher, or math teacher either. I could only speak Lulu, and through Lulu I could speak to the world.

  I was willing to share anything with Lulu without fear of shame or betrayal. There was no secret that I could possibly keep from her, nor she from me. And finally, one evening in the trophy room, where we congregated under the pretense of Scrabble, beneath the waning light of dusk coming through the window, Lulu showed me everything without embarrassment. Lifting her blouse over her head and deftly unclasping her bra, she revealed to me the milky-white protuberances budding beneath her blouse. She let me run my hands once over them, let me heft the plumpness in the palm of my hand and run my thumb over the impossibly soft pink skin of her areolas until the nipples began to rise. Nothing that came before had ever prepared me for such a thrill. And more thrilling still was the promise of more—a lifetime of more.

  Before I knew it, it was over, and she was fastening her bra. “You still haven’t showed me yours,” she said.

  “It’s not the same,” I pleaded. For, indeed, there remained one diminutive hairless secret, which I was loathe to reveal, the same secret that inspired my tardiness to swim meets, which found me straggling into the locker room three minutes after the bell so that I could undress in solitude.

  “It’s easy just showing me your boobs,” I observed. “It’s different with mine.”

  “I’ll show you more, then.”

  And so my fate was sealed. Lulu kept one eye on the doorknob as she unzipped her jeans and leaned back against the dresser. She slid the dark denim down with her underthings, over her knobby knees, until the cloth was gathered about her ankles and I could see a little spotting on her underpants, which I knew to be period blood. Numb with expectation, my eyes sought hers for approval, and when it was granted, I got down on my knees and gazed upon the downy hair of her lap. It formed a lovely letter V, cleft down the middle by a fleshy delicate thing, an exotic fruit I’d only dreamed of. I was so close to her lap that I could actually inhale the odor of it, the faint muskiness of a perfumed neck on a hot afternoon. I knew its softness without touching it. I did not even attempt to touch her, though I suspect that Lulu would have allowed me. I wanted to savor that for later. And that, my friends, is the mark of innocence. I could’ve kneeled there the rest of my days looking and smelling, and probably would have, had Lulu not prompted me otherwise.

  “Get up,” she said, pulling her pants up, her gaze still split between the door and her jeans.

  And when the time came for me to hold up my end of the bargain, the blood went out of me, and I wanted for the life of me to disappear.

  “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” she said.

  “But I do. It’s just that . . .” Ever so deliberately, as though I were undressing for the gallows, I unfastened my jeans. “It’s really small,” I cautioned.

  “So?”

  “I mean, really small.”

  “Just show me.”

  When at last I exposed my willy to the cold air, I clamped my eyes shut, and when Lulu did not laugh, or gasp at my abnormality, I unclamped my lids to find her kneeling before me, gazing in wonder at my boyhood, which began to swell under the force of her gaze until it stood at attention like a link sausage. I flushed in an instant. Lulu tilted her head and inspected it from different vantages, but she didn’t touch it.

  “I think it’s pretty,” she said, with a smile.

  Is it any wonder that Lulu earned my undying devotion? She had only to read my goose pimples, or the furrow of my brow, to know precisely what I was hoping or dreading. We sat side by side on the school bus, we ate lunch together, we made covert trips to the bathroom for the purpose of exchanging intelligence, and when we arrived home from school we passed the afternoons together in the trophy room, or in the backyard wher
e the wind stirred the pampas grass. Did our friends think we were odd? We didn’t have any friends. I was friendless by definition, and Lulu was friendless by choice. Don’t you see? She chose me. And for that, I was forever grateful.

  Even as the fabric of my new family began to show signs of wear—even as Willow and Big Bill began to fight over everything from Reaganomics to Ragú, as the twins learned by painful degrees to covet their precious autonomy—Lulu and I grew together like two stalks into one plant. We invented our own language, in which every word was spelled out so that only we could understand it, and when spoken aloud the vowels were represented by a succession of exaggerated blinks, or squints—one blink for A, two blinks for E, and so on through I-O-U, and the consonants were symbolized by the first letter of the most beautiful words we could think to begin sentences with, sentences that sounded like spells or incantations, made up of English words and Spanish words and French words we didn’t even know the meaning of, and it didn’t matter, so long as they rolled off our tongues. If ever I were to summon the courage to tell Lulu I loved her, I would tell her like this: Blink squint blink, lullabies from the womb, blink squint blink squint, velvet throne of the goddess Inana, squint blink, Yoruba’s black as night. Blink, squint squint blink. Blink squint blink blink blink.