Fitness for Franklin

A story by Keith Croes

The guy had guts, I'll say that for him (no pun intended). The shape he was in, it took a lot just to come in here. I showed him around that first night. It was the luck of the draw--my turn in the barrel. When he waddled behind me into the weight room, Bucky, the manager, walked by me and whispered, "Get the gross." But I already knew I had a sale. The guy had reached into his gym bag in the lobby and fished out our advertisement, the one that offered six months free on a two-year membership if you joined on your first visit, then asked, "Can you help me?" with a sort of funny accent. During the tour, he grimaced at the sight of some of the equipment. He had a real sense of humor.

He even worked out that first night, if you can call it that, strutting from the locker room into the weight room with an expression that said "I do this all the time," wearing brand-new, snowy-white gym shorts and a T-shirt the size of a car cover. I've always wondered where people like him get their clothes. He couldn't do one sit up, so I had him just kind of roll around, then ran him through some free weights using nothing over ten pounds. After a shower and blow dry, he sat in the office with a big grin on his ruddy face and paid cash. I remember because I didn't have to wait for his credit to clear before I could get my commission. His name was Franklin, Franklin Farley.

When he first arrived at the age of 21, Franklin was a strapping six-footer. Although he was well-coordinated and quick, he had washed out of contact sports in school. His coaches said he lacked the killer instinct. To be fair, he was a late bloomer. And in Franklin's mind, he was as much a killer as anyone. But all of that was unimportant. He was 21 and at his peak, with rippling stomach muscles and wide shoulders, and a zest for life that came uncomfortably close to hedonistic.

That summer he joined a rowdy construction crew, got drunk on whisky for the first time and took up smoking, but he had managed to wangle his way into the hotel and restaurant management curriculum at Penn State and began studies in the fall.

Living in the dorm and eating three hearty meals a day, spending long hours studying with his new roommate, Dwight, a wiry, high-metabolism type from upstate Pennsylvania who enjoyed junk food as much as he, Franklin gained 15 pounds by February, when he met Robin, with her straight black hair and large breasts. For someone who seemed preoccupied with sex, she was all seriousness when she confronted him in May.

"I'm pregnant," she said.

"What are you going to do?" asked Franklin, striking up a Lucky.

"I'm going to keep it."

Franklin had $1400. He finished his finals and sent her $600 together with a note urging her to get an abortion, then went to California to give her time to think about it. Robin used the money to rent an apartment off campus and buy some baby things. Not knowing anyone in California, Franklin slept on the beaches around San Diego and stayed for awhile with two marginally employed long hairs who taught him how to smoke pot through a gas mask. After a few weeks, with the last of his money, he bought a bus ticket back to State College.

Intending to return to school in the fall, Franklin rejoined the construction crew, moving in with Jim, one of the crew members. Jim was a Vietnam vet who had unique work habits: in the morning he'd pop a Black Beauty and at night he'd shoot heroin. Franklin soon adopted the daily ritual and by the end of the summer he'd lost the weight that he'd gained, but he couldn't afford to go back to school. His hair was just to the point where he could tie it back in a pony tail.

"Look, Jim, I don't want to work construction through the winter," Franklin confided one night, lighting up a Kool Mild. "I have an idea. But we've got to cut out the chemicals."

It was a Sunday in late August, and it was the last time Franklin ever did heroin. A month later the two quit their jobs and within two months, after two trips to Tucson, Arizona, they were able to hire people to do the dirty work. In the month of December alone they brought two and a half tons of Mexican pot into the State College area, although about half of it went to Detroit and Washington, DC, and they never had to touch it.

The two found themselves with a lot of spare time, and Jim began to get on Franklin's nerves. Although he couldn't cook, Franklin enjoyed good food and often ate out at area restaurants. Jim ate baked beans out of the can.

"How can you eat cold baked beans?" Franklin wondered.

"I've been eating cold baked beans all my life, asshole. Get off my case."

But something about it always bothered Franklin.

In other ways the two were much alike. During times when things were slow, they both enjoyed "telethons," where they would stock up on beer and pot and junk food and lay around in their bathrobes and watch television for days at a time, never straying farther from the Sony Trinitron than the kitchen and bathroom.

When they were busted in March, agents from the Pennsylvania State Police and the Drug Enforcement Administration told them that theirs was the largest marijuana smuggling operation ever investigated in the history of the commonwealth. They hired a Philadelphia lawyer who would have taken payment in cocaine, had they had any, and lived off their profits until June, when the charges were dropped.

They were broke. Jim went to work for a wholesaler in Tucson, hauling turquoise, tapestries, and velvet paintings up from Arizona. Franklin joined the Air Force. He was 23 and back to 220 pounds.

Frankie took to me right away, maybe because he could tell I enjoyed a challenge. When I look at customers, I don't just see "the gross," the bottom line, like Bucky always says. I see human beings trying to better themselves. I don't ignore them after they join, like some of the instructors. I determine their goals and put them through their programs, giving them as much help as they need. These are bankers, clergymen, lawyers, engineers, salesmen--and they're all the same to me. I don't even know what Frankie did for a living and I don't think I ever asked. A weight room is a great equalizer. In a roomful of men in their underwear, there's no class, no status, except one: fitness. And Frankie was in worse shape than anyone I'd ever met.

He adjusted his workout schedule to my work schedule, coming in Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons, at least in the beginning. Right from the start he was religious about it, never missing a day. To tell the truth, if he hadn't been so determined, I'd have lost interest quickly because I find it hard to respect someone who has let himself go to that extent. But Frankie was different. It was as if he had gotten the body by accident and knew exactly what he had to do to get rid of it.

And I think he knew even before I told him. We sat in the instructors' office that first week and he explained his goal: to weigh 200 pounds by October of the following year. I found out he smoked and told him to quit. I gave him the literature on our pretty standard dietary plan. Then I recorded his measurements. He had a 52-inch chest and a 60-inch waist. And we had 14 months to lose 180 pounds.

The Vietnam War was winding toward its inglorious close when Franklin entered the service. After basic training he was assigned as a supply clerk to a base in Bangor, Maine, where he met a WAF named Cindy. They were married within a few months and moved into an apartment off base.

Cindy, a lovely blonde whose thoughts sometimes seemed to wander in circles, was devastated in January when Franklin's pay was garnished. Hearing that Franklin had joined the Air Force, Robin had contacted the service and filed for support for her son, who was just over a year old. Franklin told Cindy all about it and, instead of fighting it, accepted the $100 monthly deduction. Although he outwardly feigned resignation and disgust, in his heart he was glad that he was doing something.

A kind of home life descended on Franklin and Cindy. Franklin had become good friends with Dave, an airman who grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and who got Franklin out of the house now and then. Drugs were not a problem, as Franklin had decided that he'd done about everything and wasn't interested in doing any more. But he was soon drinking a six-pack of beer a day, and was still smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. It didn't help that Dave was single and as wild a partier as Franklin had ever known.

Dave and Franklin had worked in supply together for about a year when Dave leaned over his desk and nodded at a WAF named Sheryl, who was taking inventory down the long rows of shelves.

"She's hot," Dave said. "She wants you and me to come to her place over lunch. What do you say?"

Franklin had never cheated on Cindy and in fact had enjoyed her healthy appetites. But he had never been satiated when it came to sex. He always found it an irresistible temptation and knew he always would. He nodded.

Afterward, he felt rotten for weeks and avoided Dave and Sheryl as much as possible. It was another six months before they did it again, and he felt just as rotten the second time.

About six months before Franklin's tour ended, he, Cindy, and Dave met in Franklin and Cindy's apartment on base, where they had moved a year before. Franklin would be leaving the service first, Dave about a month later, and Cindy about a month after that. They decided that Franklin would find a two-bedroom apartment in State College and they would share it, using the GI Bill to go to school. It would be Franklin's second year in hotel and restaurant management. When the fall semester started, Franklin was 26 years old and weighed 250 pounds.

A week after Franklin and Cindy's third anniversary, a girl walked up to him and Dave as they stood ordering Heineken drafts in a bar.

"How would you guys like some entertainment?" she asked. "I'm a stripper."

"She's a stripper," said Dave.

"Pleasure to meet you," said Franklin, inhaling a Marlboro.

They called their friend, Tony, who said to pick up some beer and bring her over.

Franklin awoke next to Cindy the following morning, sat straight up in bed and said, "I think we better separate."

Cindy nodded and confessed her ongoing affair with Dave. She packed and left the next day, and Franklin moved in with Tony.

A year later Franklin met a waitress named Kathy and they lived together for several months, until Franklin made love to Kathy's sister, who was visiting for the weekend. Kathy worked Saturday nights. That Sunday morning the story spilled out of him as easily as gin had flowed the night before.

"Why?" Kathy demanded through her tears.

"We were drunk."

"You...pig."

Franklin moved back in with Tony. Tony was also majoring in hotel and restaurant management and also attended summer semesters, but now had a part-time job as a bartender at the Scorpion. When an opening came up for another part-timer, Franklin signed on, and he and Tony spent every spare hour on one side of the bar or the other in clubs all over State College. They saw it almost as part of their curriculum.

By that time Franklin had taught himself to cook, and he and Tony had little trouble luring hungry coeds to their apartment with promises of exotic meals. Franklin was a witty, if huge, host, weighing in at 290 pounds when he got his degree. He was beginning to discern a pattern to his life: he always weighed about ten times his age. He was concerned about the future implications of that, but not overly so.

It took Frankie only a month to convince me that we actually had a chance. He worked like a maniac, huffing among the muscle-heads in the weight room like a glazed doughnut in a box of granola bars. I know he was working through a lot of pain at first, too, because that amount of blubber doesn't bounce around on your frame without tearing things up inside.

I remember telling him about the different medical and surgical treatments available for obesity, but he had a thing about doctors. He said he'd never been to one except for a physical he got when he entered the service, and that he'd never been x-rayed except for his teeth, and he wasn't about to go to a doctor now.

We took measurements once a week. After about three months I found out he was coming in for aerobics on my days off and had started jogging each morning. I got him to ease up every other day to allow his body to come back and put him on an amino acid-vitamin supplement. The man was insane. He was starving himself and he looked a little peaked there for awhile, but after four months the color returned to his face and in December he broke the 300-pound barrier. He brought me a Christmas present for that--a gold cigarette lighter. I found out later the thing's worth more than a thousand dollars.

Franklin's first job in his new career was as the assistant manager of the bar and restaurant of the Hyatt in downtown Philadelphia. Six months after he started, the manager was arrested for prostitution, and Franklin did so well filling in that they gave him the position permanently.

He had a knack for making people feel at home, and the kitchen crew loved him. He wasn't above pitching in during a crunch and his unique menu ideas, communicated in the most diplomatic of terms, were credited to the head chef, who did little to make anyone think otherwise. But his good work was noticed by those around Philadelphia who make it a business to notice such things.

About a year after he started at the Hyatt, Franklin married Jill, one of his waitresses, and when their son was born eight months later he was managing Le Bec Fin, one of the city's best restaurants.

Sampling at the restaurant, making glorious meals at home for Jill, with his belly hanging far out over his belt and his breasts flabby against his rib cage, Franklin realized for the first time that he may be damaging himself beyond repair. Sometimes he could feel a snapping in his extended stomach, as if bands of tissue were giving way. Simple chores were becoming difficult, and tasks that once required moderate exertion left him breathless for hours, his heart struggling back down to its normal speed, which itself was quite fast.

But the filet mignon was still as tender, the sauces as exquisite, the wines as heady, the desserts as sweet. And the cigarette after dinner and after sex was just as obligatory. And besides, Franklin thought with a certain uneasiness, there was still time.

Financed by a silent partner, Franklin bought his first restaurant when he was 34, and a year later he bought out his partner, none of which was enough to stop Jill from packing up her things.

"Why?" he asked, lighting a Carlton.

"Look at you! You're a pig."

"I was heavy when I met you."

"And you're heavier now. You always said that you'd get back in shape. I can't stand it another minute."

Based on his current income, Domestic Relations suggested that support payments should run around $1400 a month, which was fine with Jill. And Franklin took it well because it was probably for the best.

Over the next three years Franklin gained weight and prospered, opening up several restaurants in the Philadelphia area. His rotund form became a familiar figure at the opera and the theater and at most society functions, and society responded by bringing many Diners Club cards to his restaurants, which grew into regular stops on the circuit.

What he lacked in physical attractiveness, he made up for in money, and he denied himself few pleasures.

When the call came, as he knew it would, Franklin was rich.

By April Frankie was coming in four times a week and weighed 250 pounds, which sounds like we were almost there, but those last 50 pounds I knew would be the toughest. I don't know what the October deadline was all about, but when Frankie said he had to lose the 50 pounds by October, he meant it. We had six months, period.

The thing is, Frankie was building muscle. He was six feet tall anyway, and a muscular six-footer is going to weigh 200 easy. I suggested he just stay on his diet and quit the workouts, but he wouldn't hear of it, said he wanted to reach 200 in the best shape of his life, that he was going to teach that filet mignon a thing or two. So I tried to wean him off the free weights and onto the Nautilus, which worked pretty good, though every now and then I'd catch him on the bench pumping up. The other guys were starting to look at him kind of funny. He was actually beginning to look like a human being.

Every now and then he'd say something strange. One time he was wrapped up in the ab machine, straining away, and I heard him say, "That goddamn Bloy-puss." And once he dropped a weight on his foot and hollered, "Fizz-butt." That's what it sounded like, "Fizz-butt." I guess it was his native language, whatever it is. I remember thinking he had an accent when he first started, but after awhile I could hardly hear it.

The World Headquarters of the Triamnian Earth Expedition was hidden off the furnace room of the Baltimore Aquarium. Franklin took the Washington Metro from Philadelphia, dreading the face-to-face meeting with Bloipus, the expedition commander. It was worse than he expected.

"Fizbut," Bloipus cursed, "this is the perfect place for you. You're a goddamn whale!"

Franklin tried to shrink in his chair, but only succeeded in wriggling like a Jell-O salad. Bloipus, whose Earth name was Joe McDonald, had finished near the top of his class at Yale and had become a leading entertainment attorney. He was wearing the Triamnian commander's uniform.

"Look at you," he shouted. "Fifty of our best young men and women are sent to this planet to live among its inhabitants and this is what happens. How could you do this?"

"I've lived among its inhabitants. I have much to report."

"That's all we're supposed to do--report. You've consumed the entire planet! The scientists could slice you open like the Great Pyramid and find all sorts of archeological treasure. You might contain a 1959 Dodge complete with fuzzy dice. Fizbut!"

Bloipus paced behind his desk, his hand stroking his square jaw.

"Perhaps the body they made for you was defective." He gave Franklin a withering stare. "You're the largest human I've ever met. And I represent Dom Deluise."

Franklin's face flushed with anger. "Look, I've done okay, hot shot. They wanted us to live our lives with no special advantages, to live as the Earth people. I've done that. They wanted us to report on life here. I've lived life. I've been happy, I've been sad. I let it all in. Would they have wanted me to become a monk?"

Bloipus sat at the desk. "You let it all in. Well, now you're going to have to let it all out. There are weight restrictions, you know."

"Weight restrictions?"

Bloipus looked pained. "Weren't you listening, Garboilus," he said, using Franklin's Triamnian name. "We only have so much fuel." He leafed through some papers in front of him. "Your limit is 210 pounds. If you show up at the launch site one ounce over 210, you're not going back. You have, what, a little more than 14 months. Do I make myself clear?"

Franklin nodded his three chins.

The boys really started to watch Frankie about August. He'd come trotting into the club in his new body, smiling and joking, then whip through his program, benching 350, 400 pounds. I just couldn't keep him away from the free weights. I really think he could've competed if he'd kept it up. Definitely. At least in his age class.

He referred a lot of people here--some to me, but a whole lot of women, pretty girls, and even his ex-wife, who had to go to the women's side of the club. No commission for me, but I don't care. I guess he must've worked with the public. But I don't ask people what they do, just what they eat. And most people peter out after a while anyway. They come here a lot at first and then less and less until they disappear for good. Most people, anyway.

The end of September he weighed in at 210 and looked incredible. I remember he stood on the scale and smiled, and said something about how he could get away with it but wanted to reach 200. Right away I told him that he was looking good and that there was nothing magical about losing another 10 pounds, but he shook his head and said that the extra 10 were for good measure. The last time I saw him--the second week in October--that's what he weighed, 200.

We had sort of a party around here that night. He went through the Nautilus once, then sat around and talked with the guys in the weight room. He seemed sort of, I don't know, nostalgic. He never said a word about going away, but I guess we all kind of knew it. Anyway, we weren't surprised when he never came back. On his way out the door that night, he handed me $1000 in hundreds in an envelope.

I guess his disappearance is a real mystery. But I hear he took good care of his kids. At least that's what his ex-wife told one of the girls. She has a boy and there's another one someplace else.

It's a shame, though. He bought that two-year membership, but never got to use the free six months.

THE END

MORE STORIES BY KEITH CROES

keith@croes.com