Competition

Mr. Bunny Teeth, the name I personally christened him with, is a Singaporean guy who's a first year student in my university. I know this because he's worn his Singapore Navy singlet reminiscent of his National Service days and I've seen him around first year lecture areas.

So Mr. Bunny Teeth, or BT got his name because he has two front teeth that are like huge spades; they jut out of his mouth in the most peculiar manner and whenever he smiles you get to see the resemblance of a cute fuzzy animal with two long ears and a bushy tail.

Think HUGE two-front-teeth.

Then again BT has a very peculiar jaw line and lips that remind me of a constipated horse, so I wouldn't exactly consider him cute and fuzzy.

I enrolled in the gym around March this year, just a month after commencing my first semester and he enrolled at around the same time. Both of us were enthusiastic lean hardworking kids who woke up one day thinking, yeah, I'm going to pump iron so that I too can have man-breasts to impress the world.

Like really, his body wasn't any better than mine. Slim at the sides, skinny twig-like arms, spindly legs; duh, of course I've checked him out. What are you supposed to do in a gym apart from working out, stare at the ceiling??

BT and I have never talked to each other. We simply see each other regularly at gym in the evening and we do pretty much the same workout; lat pull downs, bench presses, incline dumbbell bench, seated row, seated bicep curl, pectoral fly, squats, calf raises, one arm row... the list of exercises that we share in common just goes on and on.

He started out just as light as I did, around 20kg on the bench press, so I reckon his upper body strength was no greater than mine.

Soon we were progressing towards more advance workouts, varying the types of exercises we did such as using the Swiss ball and crunches on the incline bench. Every time I looked a him I felt he was constantly feeling lost; like his mind was never fully focused on his workout. He would wander around the gym, looking for a nice spot to put his water bottle, hand towel and gym workout table. Occasionally a long water-fountain break but nothing major. His rests between sets ranged from 2 minutes to around 5, and I was probably doing 1.5 minutes at most.

We came to a point where we started experimenting with other forms of exercise; he had supervision from his personal trainer and I had mine, so we started to diverge into more advance workouts and the intensity kept increasing as the months went by, adding more weights, adding more sets.

We started off pretty similarly, with similar goals in mind; to achieve the perfect body that everyone would ooogle and gooogle over.

BT went back for the winter break because I noticed his absence when I was working out during those few weeks. This coincided with the time I got a part time job and also trips to Perth and the like, so my gym routine became more and more incoherent. I was feeling extremely tired after work and study, and even more so with the bloody student union commitments (being part of the committee) so naturally I stopped going to the gym as often as I did in previous months

Today, after more than 3 months since I last saw him, BT was working out in the gym at the same time as me.

He had a bloody huge chest.

And a huge fucking pectoralis major, biceps, and triceps.

What's more, he had developed his latissimus dorsi so much to a point that you could see the ripples forcing its way out of his ultra-tight Adidas shirt to suggest whatever underlying was good and yummy.

He had a new haircut to replace his dorky NS-style crew cut, and he definitely had a new pair of runners. Like, my mouth was opened so large, I could have swallowed an elephant and not have noticed.

BT. The horse faced boy. Ripped, muscular, and grunting with every lift of the 20kgs PER ARM he carried while doing dumbbell bench.

Immediately my attention was drawn to my own scrawny figure in the mirror; not only did I have a relatively flat chest, I also had little bicep-tricep muscles to show off. My back was certainly as flat as an airport runway, a 777 would have no trouble taking off and landing across it.

And the most embarrassing thing was that in my hands were two 15kg dumbbells, doing a dumbbell bench press. He was doing 25kgs.

It dawned to me how much I've slacked, how far I've been left behind, how little sleep I must have been getting, how poorly coordinated my meals were and how much junk food has passed through my gut since we started off as equals. To me, the competition was great, and I felt like I was at the bottom of the ladder.

Talk about insecurity.

I think I must have been staring at BT so hard that he started to give me the raised-eyebrow look so I abandoned my pursuit of another set at the bench area and ran towards the other edge of the gym to do some lat pull downs. Lo and behold, 5 minutes into the workout and the rival is opposite me, doing twice the weights I am doing, grunting twice as hard as I am grunting, and having 5 extra reps than I have. Hello, don’t you get me, STAY AWAY! Obviously, I felt he was trying to intimidate me, but maybe it was just all in my head.

At that very moment, I felt as though whatever self worth that I had left was thrown onto the floor and crushed by a stampede of angry rhinos.

I mean... What the fuck

I spent $90 today buying groceries and supplements for the next week. And I pushed myself so hard in the gym, my arms hurt like crazy. They're about to fall off their sockets.

I'm insecure. I can't overcome the insecurity so I'm pushing myself like I always do.

Because that's the only way I've been trained to deal with it.

Push harder.