Trenbolone and tuna shakes

Terry got me into lifting. I was seventeen and skinny and he busted my balls about it. “We’re gonna have to put some meat on you if you wanna hang out with me.” We went to Bally’s. You had to be eighteen to sign up, so I wrote 1980 as my birth year instead of 1981. They made a copy of my driver’s license and didn’t look at the date. Years later, when I stopped paying and it went to collections, I looked into whether the contract was even valid since I was underage when I signed it. Legal genius. Never followed through on that.

Sometime in the days following my literal first-ever-in-my-life training session, Terry gave me a blister pack of Anavar. Maybe Dianabol. He told me to take one before I lifted. Like a fucking preworkout. One blister pack. ANADROL, that’s it. A blister pack of fucking Anadrol. Pretty sure it’s the most toxic of all of them. Maybe ten tabs. That was the entire “cycle.” “Just to get started.”

Years later, I found the sheet of paper where he wrote my workout plan.

Monday — chest.
Tuesday — back.
Wednesday — legs.
Thursday — shoulders.
Friday — arms.
Saturday — TRAPZ.

With a Z. I don’t remember much about those early days, but I remember the first time I felt it working. I was walking in the back door of my childhood home at 6642 Maple Lane Drive in Tinley Park. I grabbed my right bicep with my left hand and there was something there. I had never felt muscle on my body before. “You’re gonna get so many chicks, bro.” We did hundreds of curls in Terry’s bedroom. 21’s — bottom half for seven, top half for seven, full range for seven. We thought we were doing something. I guess we were. That shit was sweet. Chicks never came though.

Then it gets blurry for a while. I found T-Nation. Westside Barbell. Strongman. Some dude named Brad posted a picture of himself flipping a tire on the T-Nation forums and looked so badass that I started looking into strongman training. I went without steroids for a stretch. Didn’t know how to get ‘em. Then I figured out how to order them on the internet. There were sketchy, by-invitation-only forums with listings. You paid by Western Union or by putting cash in a birthday card and mailing it to some dude. I did both. I’d check the mailbox at 19624 Ridgemont Drive in Tinley Park, waiting for the package.

At some point, I heard about Trenbolone Acetate. I don’t think people were selling it pre-bottled like they do now. Because I probably would have just ordered it from them. But that’s not what I did. I ordered Finaplix-H from a cattle supply company. Finaplix-H is pellets that cattle ranchers shoot into cows with a gun to make them produce more meat. Then I ordered a “conversion kit” from someone else. Vials, solution, filters. Maybe a coffee filter. I did the whole thing in my bedroom. Dissolved the pellets in the solution, filtered the chunks out into a clean vial. Then you inject that into your body.

That’s how I got my tren. Back in my day, kids. It was this glowing golden copper color. I’d inject into my triceps and immediately taste pennies. Sometimes I’d cough right after the injection. Like, bad. I did this to myself on purpose, every other day, in my childhood bedroom.

It worked. I got fucking strong. I never felt big enough. Still don’t. But years later, I saw a picture of myself in my mom’s bathroom — the one with the purple walls — and I was huge. Probably 235 at 6’2”? Lean. I didn’t see it at the time.

My dad would get so pissed. I’d bitch and moan when he asked me to help him in the yard, then he’d see me with his wheelbarrow, loaded with 45lb plates and his bricks, walking up and down the sidewalk behind his house. I used the cracks in the sidewalk to count reps. Shrug and hold for 5 cracks. No shrug for 5.

“Sorry pops, can’t do it. Training trapz. Then I gotta recover to pick up special workout rocks on Saturday.”

I drove out to central Illinois to train at Tony Soucie’s house. He was the state president of some strongman organization. He had everything. Atlas stones, farmer’s walk implements, log press, a car deadlift jack, and this thing where you hold a huge bar in a front rack and it’s connected to a central post so you just walk in circles. I loved going there. I got pretty strong on the farmer’s walks. Maybe 275 in each hand for fifty feet. There and back, I think. But my favorite set of any exercise I’ve ever done was deadlifting 500 pounds for 5 easy reps in his shed.

After those sessions, I ate like I was trying to die. Two Chipotle burritos. A California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizza. Whatever else. But the one thing I’ll never forget: the tuna shake. Two cans of tuna in a blender. The first time, I tried blending it with Diet Pepsi. Too foamy. Didn’t work.

Eventually I figured out the trick: orange juice. It looked like blended salmon. Thick. Orange-ish. It mostly tasted like orange juice. Thick orange juice. It didn’t go down easy, but it also wasn’t as bad as you’d think. 72 gramz of protein.

My sister still talks about it.