by Timothy Pauley
"Seven, eight, nine, teeeeeeeeen!" Big Paul
growled as he pumped out his final rep of curls. He quickly dropped the bar on
the bench below and flexed in the mirror. First it was a double biceps pose,
then a side shot, then from the other side. Big Paul loved the mirror. In fact,
he loved it so much that he actually paid other prisoners to run to the weight
room and save that area for him so he could gaze at himself while he worked out
and especially in between sets.
When I got to the Walls the weight room was just a small
expanded hallway with a few pieces of old equipment off to the sides in either
direction. The fitness craze had not caught on yet and there were only a small
group of men who used these facilities with any regularity.
A few years later "Muscle & Fitness" magazine
had helped popularize bodybuilding and the prison caught this trend early on.
They opened a new recreation building and made the weight room three times the
size it had been. They also filled it with new equipment. It was easily the
most expensive and well thought out part of the new recreation program.
Within a couple of years, the bodybuilding and powerlifting
phenomenon had become so popular, even the new weight room was too small.
Prison officials could not have anticipated the quadrupling of popularity for
this area, but it soon became a madhouse of activity, with prisoners squeezing into
every available square foot of space, trying to get a workout.
Recreation staff were always fielding requests for more
equipment but they wisely elected not to cram any more equipment (or people)
into the already crowded weight room. But they still had a budget allowance for
equipment so when a couple of guys requested they mount a mirror on the wall,
it was a done deal almost immediately.
The day the mirror was installed was a memorable occasion.
Instead of enhancing the bodybuilding experience, it quickly became an idiot
magnet. Not only did three different groups of guys all attempt to crowd around
this two foot wide space, but it even attracted idiots that previously had
never been in the weight room. Guys would get done playing basketball, take a shower,
then come in the weight room and try to lean in front of the mirror while they
combed out their eighteen inch afros. It was quite a sight to see all these
people jockeying for position, some with weights in hand.
After about a week I finally warmed to the concept of the
idiot magnet. True, it brought extra traffic into an already overcrowded weight
room, but not to the area I used. In fact, the idiot magnet actually created
more room for those of us who were not smitten with our own image and were
content to workout away from the crowd. We finally reached near unanimous
agreement that idiot magnets were great.
Big Paul's infatuation with the idiot magnet was
unparalleled. At first he tried to push his way to a spot directly in front of
the mirror. He was 6'5" and weighted about 280. This gave him the notion
that others would just get out of his way. Maybe a handful actually did, but
they were replaced by several others who did not care now big anyone was. This
was prison, little guys could kill you too.
After a week of frustration, Big Paul decided on a strategy.
He found a guy who worked near the gym. When recreation was announced, this guy
had a two block head start and could easily claim any piece of equipment he wanted.
So Paul cut a deal. For five bucks a week, Slim would dash to the weight room
and claim the bench directly in front of the mirror for Big Paul.
For the next three months life was good for Big Paul. Each
day he’d take his place in front of the mirror and gaze at his muscles for
nearly the entire recreation period. No days off for him, he was a fixture. For
a guy who worked out so much he wasn't nearly as strong as his size would
indicate and he was very smooth with excess body fat, but whatever he was in
that mirror must have looked fantastic to him because he seemed to have almost
a religious fanaticism about the mirror. On the rare occasion Slim didn’t come
through for him, Big Paul would have something akin to a psychotic episode.
That mirror was as important to Big Paul as most people's first born son is.
Another strange phenomenon in most prison weight rooms is
the calling of attention to oneself. Perhaps it's the testosterone. Or maybe
it's just some inner need for recognition. Whatever the case, many prisoners
like to holler and grunt loudly while they lift. Many even like to throw
weights down, sometimes even from shoulder level. It's almost like they're
saying, "Hey, look at me, I’m a tough guy!"
This is probably one of the reasons the floor of the weight
room was a base of wooden planks covered with thick rubber mats. Instead of the
thrown down weights breaking or cracking the floor, they simply bounced. This
could be humorous at times.
It was not uncommon at all to see guys limping out of the
weight room. It was usually the screamers too. They'd finish a set, then throw
the weights out of their hands at whatever height they happened to be at the
conclusion of the final rep. Often these discarded weights would hit the floor
and bounce several inches. Sometimes that could result in the second touchdown being
right on someone’s foot. Usually this was the person who’d thrown them in the
first place, as he would be the only one in the room not paying attention to
where the rebound was going to land. Initially this would cause instant
laughter from around the room, which would often set the screamer off into a
tirade. That would lead to even more laughter because what is the guy with the
recently broken foot going to do? Chase you? Beat you up? The typical response
was to tuck his tail and slink off.
Big Paul loved to throw the weights around as much as
anyone. But at least he paid attention to where his feet were. A man of his
size had no trouble wielding the biggest dumbbells in the room, which were
ninety pounds each. On his last rep, Paul would growl loudly, pitch the dumbbells
as high in the air as his spent arms would heft them, then lift his feet off
the floor to avoid any embarrassing situations. We all learned to respond to
this routine. When the growl came, everyone within ten feet watched to see
where the dumbbells would fly.
It was a cold December day. I happened to be doing squats
that day so it was all the more important I pay attention to Big Paul. He was
doing dumbbell bench presses with the ninety pound dumbbells. Even though I was
more than ten feet away, I was not about to be the victim of some freak
accident when one of those chunks of iron took a wayward bounce in my
direction. Each time Paul let out his end of set wail, my eyes would find the
dumbbells as quickly as possible. There were very few people in that room who
did not do this.
On his fifth set, Paul was particularly pleased with himself
and growled even louder than normal. As he prepared to rid himself of the
dumbbells, he put a little extra oomph into this thrust and I watched as they
sailed past his feet. From the moment they hit the rubber mat, nearly everyone in
the room knew what was going to happen next, including Big Paul. I watched as
his face contorted into a look of complete horror as the dumbbells bounced off
the floor and flew toward the mirror. It was almost like slow motion. But
nothing could stop them. First one, then the other sunk into the glass panes
with a satisfying thunk.
Instantly lines shot up to the very top of the mirror. In
the blink of an eye the mirror had become covered with lines and distortions
where the glass had shattered in predictable fashion.
At first I thought Big Paul was going to start crying right
there in front of us all. His face could not have registered any more distress
than if his first born child had just fallen out a tenth story window. The room
went completely silent in a matter of seconds.
Big Paul sat on the end of the exercise bench for a long
time, staring into the broken shards of mirror that were now only held together
by a wooden frame. It was almost as if he was trying to will the damage to be
undone. Slowly the rest of the guys in the weight room went back to their
routines. Soon the room was full of the usual sounds of normal activity. Paul
remained frozen for nearly twenty minutes before he finally pulled his shirt on
and shuffled out the door.
In the weeks that followed, a decision was made by
recreation staff that this mirror would not be replaced. They directed a couple
of us to tape up the part where the dumbbell hit and leave the rest until such
time as it actually started to fall out. That took months, but at the first
sign of missing fragments, the frame was pried from the wall and the mirror was
no more.
During this time Big Paul continued to work out in front of
the mirror. He could often be seen trying to adjust his body position to enable
him to see more of himself in whatever fragment he'd chosen to focus on. But it
just wasn't the same.
Soon the crowd in that few square feet of the weight room
was no longer highly congested. Paul had it all to himself. I missed the idiot
magnet and even though the breaking of the mirror had been hilarious, I
couldn't help but feel a little sorry for Big Paul. Had he seen some outside
threat directed towards his mirror, there is no doubt Paul would have defended
this with great ferocity. How could he have known that all the while he was
looking at the threat in the mirror?
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Timothy Pauley 273053 A316 Washington State Reformatory Unit P.O. Box 777 Monroe, WA 98272-0777 |
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