He had the look of a bull. Wide muscular shoulders, short stocky legs, an earring in the nose and wet shiny black hair slicked back. He huffed and puffed, snorting the air, inhaling and exhaling loudly. He was just another sweaty male pumping iron. I stood at the entrance to the weightlifting room and watched as his stressed biceps slowly curled a barbell under his chin. He was all quivering lips and popping eye sockets - a bull conditioned to take pain. I wasn't lifting a finger, leaning against the door frame, day-dreaming about my once athletic body. 

For three months I had been showing up at the gym to shoot hoops, take steam baths, saunas and whirlpools. But never entered the weightroom. The men and women in there were cut up and powerful, like models for Italian masters. My body didn't fit there. The mirror in front of me reflected all the poised posture of a sway backed mule. In full view of all, in this mechanical courtyard, I tried to relax but instead wrestled with indecision. Could I risk taking on weights? Assault myself with steel right here in this maze of polished poundage, pulleys and bullies? 

I decided to go over and talk to the Bull. 

"Excuse me, you seem to know how to use these things," I said awaiting to be bullied back onto the basketball court. 

"Yeah, I love these machines," the Bull answered in a soft voice of foreign origin. 

"Any tips on how I could cut loose the ole muscles and get back into pumping iron?" I asked awkwardly shifting from foot to foot. "I haven't touched weights since college." 

"Let me tell you a story," the Bull said, wiping chalk form his hands with a powder blue towel. "There was this guy who lived on the outskirts of a small village full of very big and strong men. He wanted to get in shape but was intimidated by the powerful look of these men, especially when he went into town to buy feed and supplies for the farm. He felt he didn't have a chance to attract a woman with his meek physique. A strong body meant good stock. Not that he was ugly, but he lacked the masculinity that he thought women from his village admired," he said. 

I winced a little. 

"So he shied away from talking to anyone, especially women," the Bull continued, wiping chalk from his legs. "But one morning the man sprang to action, hefting a calf to his shoulders and started to walk up the hill behind the barn. It was a mighty struggle, but he managed to reach the top. 

"He was so exhilarated that he carried the calf up the hill the next day and the day after that and soon it became a ritual. He never noticed he was getting stronger because each day it was a little easier for him to get up the steep slope. In a year, the calf was a full blown cow and he was no longer small but a full-blown man with the strength of a horse." The Bull said flexing his biceps. 

I nodded and he went on. "Seeing his strength, the man went back into town and struck up a conversation with the beautiful young woman who sold him beets. She wondered why he'd decided to talk with her after so long of time. He told her the truth. He'd been too timid and skinny to believe any woman, much less her, would find him attractive. Seeing him so honest and vulnerable, she smiled and opened up and told him she had liked him even when he had no muscles and now she was happy to find out his true feelings. He asked her to marry him and she agreed right then and there and kissed him." 

I smiled and stood a little straighter. "The only weakness the man had was the one inside his head, and a good body counts only when you're carrying a cow up a hill," the Bull concluded. 

from the artist's book Palm Trees: drawing lines in the sand by Jerry Beck, Underdog Press, Boston, MA, 1996, p. 54