Steroids and Mustangs

I was dating a Russian bombshell at the time. Total knockout. The kind of woman that makes entire rooms shut up when she walks in. Eleven out of ten. Ice queen face, legs for days, attitude sharp enough to cut a man’s throat. She had flown in to spend a week with me, and everywhere we went, men openly fantasized about her like they forgot I existed. I can’t blame them, but still, it was irritating as hell.

During that period, I was deep into bodybuilding. Not natural. Not close. I was running enough gear to tranquilize livestock. I had two sports behind me, years in the gym, and at that point I was sitting around 230 pounds and eating like a starving bear. Between dating a foreign goddess and trying to maintain mass, I was basically living two full-time jobs.

Bodybuilding wasn’t just lifting. It was eating. Constant eating. And that’s where things got messy.

See, at the time, every restaurant that had an eating challenge was like heaven to me. Free meal if you finish it? Done. A T-shirt? Even better. I needed the calories anyway, and the challenges at least made it fun. But the thing nobody tells you about that kind of lifestyle is that eventually your stomach hits a wall. One night I crushed some massive challenge meal and felt like I was going to die. There wasn’t any space left in my body. I was sweating meat.

So I finally said screw it, stuck a finger down my throat, and RUUUH!, immediate relief. It was disgusting, but holy hell did it work. After a few more incidents, I got so good at purging that I didn’t even need my hand. All I had to do was concentrate for a second, and I could projectile vomit like a biological superpower. No one needs that skill, but life gifts you strange things.

Flash forward to when my girl was visiting. After a week of fancy restaurants, I needed protein in bulk, not tiny overpriced plates made by chefs with opinions. So I took her to Golden Corral. It’s not fancy, but it’s a buffet. It gets the job done.

We parked a couple spaces away from a black Mustang. I got out, walked around to open her door, because yea, I’m still a chivalrous bastard even on steroids. As soon as she got out, the guy in the Mustang got out too, and this motherfucker was eye-fucking her so hard I thought he was going to sprain something. Full-on sexual laser-beam stare. She hit him with that cold Russian “I will end your bloodline” look, and asked, “De fuck you looking at?”

But he kept staring. So I walked up.

He asked, “What you gonna do, white boy?”

And right then I knew if I beat his ass, I’d go to jail. And I couldn’t leave my girl stranded. So I swallowed my pride and said, “I’m gonna take my woman inside and eat. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

She took my arm, we went inside, and I tried to ignore it. But the longer I sat there eating, the more pissed off I got. My anger meter was climbing fast. I couldn’t fight him, but I damn sure wasn’t letting it slide.

Then I had an evil, beautiful idea.

I stopped eating the normal stuff and switched to dairy. Every dairy item the buffet had. Mac n cheese. Mashed potatoes. Soup. Cheese sauce. Ice cream. Milk. Pudding. If it came from a cow, I swallowed it. I ate until I physically couldn’t move without feeling something creeping back up my throat.

We left the restaurant. I opened her door, got her in the truck, then pulled forward a bit. I got out and walked straight toward that Mustang like a man with purpose.

I focused. Mouth salivating. Stomach churning. A little sweat on my upper lip.

And then I unleashed holy hell.

I vomited all over the driver’s door. Then the windshield. Then the hood. Three full rounds. It was so much food that I had volume left over. It covered the door handle. The cracks around the window. The entire wiper area. Texas heat was over 100 degrees, and that black paint job absorbed heat like Satan designed it. My vomit practically reheated itself on contact. It was foul. It was glorious.

I stood there laughing like a psychopath, admiring my work, when Katya yelled, “WHAT DE FUCK!”

That only made me laugh harder.

I wanted to stay long enough to watch the guy come out and try to figure out how to open his door without touching the vomit. Would he try the wipers? Would he scream? Would he try to scrape it off with napkins? Would he cry?

I’ll never know. She insisted we leave.

And to this day, I still think about that man walking toward his freshly shellacked Mustang in the Texas heat. The sun-baked golden crust of my revenge.

Sometimes justice comes in strange forms.

And sometimes…revenge is better without fists.