Joey meets Julie
MERZ,  mrmerz@yahoo.com
A Dark Meeting With a Muscle Woman

People don't believe me that I'm the black sheep in my family.  I 
got good grades in high school, got a scholarship to a good 
college, and now I'm a doctor so they think I must be a saint.  
My brother and sister are saints.  I hear my mother was a saint, 
but she died when I was born so I can't judge.  The rest of my 
family says my father was a saint but I just thought he was a 
tough SOB.  When my mother died Dad had to raise the three of us 
by himself.  He didn't know anything about kids or families.  He 
knew how to box because he had done that for years in the navy.  
When he left the Navy he thought about becoming a pro before he 
got married and had to get a real job.  Raising kids to him meant 
being sure we went to school, got enough to eat, and could take 
care of ourselves.  To him taking care of ourselves meant being 
able to box.  Most kids would get a bike when they turned six.  
We each got a pair of boxing gloves.  Including my big sister who 
was blind from birth.  She had to learn too, and then she did 
most of the teaching for me and my older brother because Dad 
sometimes had to work two jobs and wasn't around much.  

My brother is two years older than me and she is four years older 
than him.  I could never be as good as they were at anything, it 
seemed.  She was bigger and stronger than me until she moved out 
to go to college when I was twelve.  In fact she is still 
stronger than me.  And my brother worked out all the time we were 
growing up to get as strong as she was.  I knew I didn't have a 
chance so I never tried.  My brother started out taking care of 
me when we went to school. Kids picked on me because I wasn't 
very big, and because they thought if they could be tougher than 
Ernie Hunt's little brother maybe someday they could be as tough 
as Ernie Hunt.  Fat chance they could ever carry Ernie's 
jockstrap.  By the time I was in third grade I had a sharp jab 
and could throw a good combination, and that ended kids picking 
on me.  I never really started a fight, but if somebody who 
didn't know any better tried pushing me around I would spend 
about thirty seconds blinding them with jabs around the eyes and 
then maybe ten minutes cutting them to pieces.  It takes real 
power to throw a knockout punch, and I never bothered.  I'd just 
throw punches fast and hard and too many for them to block and in 
a while they were begging me to stop.  Sometimes I'd stop when 
they begged.

I could never beat my brother or sister boxing.  He was just too 
strong and too willing to get hit as he waded in and clobbered 
me.  She was a counterpuncher like me, and she had enough power 
that if I ever led off she could connect and drop me on my butt.  
I could get in maybe three punches to her one, but her one was at 
least three times as powerful as mine.  We wore protective gear 
so we didn't get hurt when we boxed at home.  Ernie says his 
proudest day was when he finally bench pressed more than Betty 
could.  My proudest day was when I taught her to smile.  I was 
about seven and just asked why she didn't smile as much as other 
people.  She hadn't ever seen faces let alone seen smiles and 
didn't know what I was talking about. I showed her with her hands 
what mine looked like and what her face did when she smiled.  I 
told her I liked seeing people smile so from then on she made a 
point of smiling as much as she could all the time.  I could have 
told her anything and she would have done it for me, but luckily 
it happened to be smiles because I was seven.  I haven't done 
anything as good as that since. 

I'm not very close to them anymore.  We get together once or 
twice a year and they write to me, but I have my own life now and 
it feels so far away from theirs and so far away from where they 
think my life is that mostly I stay away.  They hardly know my 
name.  Nobody calls her Elizabeth; nobody calls him Ernest.  
Everybody calls me Joseph except them.

I work nights, mostly.  I'm good at the mechanics of my work but 
I don't much like the bedside parts or the handholding.  I let 
the patients' regular doctors handle that.  Patients come to my 
office, I confirm the diagnosis and we book the treatment around 
the hospital's schedule.  Nights work out easier than days which 
suits me.  I just do my thing, check on them during regular 
rounds, look in at night when I hope they're sleeping and plan 
the next job.  It's almost like working swing shift in a factory.

One night I got off work around midnight and went to a tavern for 
a couple beers before heading home to my apartment.  I go to an 
old neighborhood bar that's catered to industrial workers since 
Prohibition ended.  I shoot pool there and have a couple beers 
and swap lies with the other regulars until two.  They know I 
earn my living with my hands but I've avoided details and nobody 
presses for details in that sort of place.  The last few years I 
lived at home it was just me and Dad.  He was already getting 
sick so he couldn't work as much and couldn't do the physical 
things he had enjoyed before like sparring with me or working out 
at the gym.  So he taught me to play poker and he taught me to 
shoot pool, just so he would have somebody to do those things 
with when he got sicker.  Being good at math made me a good 
percentage poker player, and he taught me to bluff.  I liked 
geometry so I understood pool, and he taught me to use just 
enough power to make the shot I wanted just like in boxing.  He 
was always a good teacher.  I paid part of my way through medical 
school playing guys who had rich parents but didn't have good 
teachers.  

I had cleared a table when a woman I hadn't seen in the place 
before put down her quarter.  Doctors can pretty much have our 
pick of women because we make good money and there are always 
nurses and groupies around.  Never in the world would I have 
picked her.  She stood about five feet three and was very broad 
across the shoulders.  She had on a bulky field jacket so I 
couldn't see much detail.  Her breasts made little tents in her 
snug t-shirt so I knew she wasn't wearing a bra but looked pretty 
firm upstairs.  She parted her hair in the middle and it was sort 
of streaky, dirty blonde held in a pony tail by a simple rubber 
band.  Her brows were dark and heavy, her features broad and 
thick.  They looked smooth like water had been eroding and 
smoothing them in a river over a long time.  I had seen that sort 
of face on boxer friends of my dad and guessed it was a lot of 
hard knocks that had worn off her sharp angles.  She had thick 
hands that looked strong.  Her butt was kind of wide but flat-
sided and her thighs in her tight blue jeans looked strong.  I 
guessed everything would look strong if I could see more, but I 
wasn't planning on it.

We started shooting and she bet me ten dollars on the game.  She 
almost won.  We had been talking a little during the game.  While 
she seemed reasonably articulate she also was even less willing 
to talk about herself than I am, which is always a come-on for 
me.  I offered to buy her a beer if she wanted to join me and she 
accepted.  We got our beers but hadn't gotten as far as 
introductions when she looked at me and said, "Want to arm 
wrestle for the ten dollars? Double or nothing?"

"Is this how you always pick up guys?" I asked.  Ten bucks isn't 
worth five minute of my working time, and I figured if she was so 
eager she was pretty confident.  Ten bucks might be worth a 
little conversation so I was trying to get one started.  She 
looked surprised, then pissed that I would say something like 
that.  But she didn't get up and leave.  

"Is that supposed to be a crack?" she asked, her eyes narrow and 
suspicious. 

"Come on.  First you try to hustle me at pool then you want to 
out-muscle me.  Why don't you just relax.  I'm Joseph.  I haven't 
seen you here before.  That's a cue for you to say something 
now."

"I'm Julie.  I just got into town.  I'm looking for a job."

"Nice to meet you, Julie.  What sort of job?  What do you do?"

 "Anything.  Anything but office work.  I hate to type and I hate 
to sit at a desk.  Maybe something outside, like construction.  
I'd like to be a cop but my references aren't very good.  Maybe I 
can find a security job.  I was an MP when I was a soldier."

"A soldier?  And they didn't like how you did the job but you 
think the police have lower standards?"

"They didn't like that I roughed up a couple drunk jarheads, and 
some other things.  I probably wouldn't make it as a cop.  
Civilian crooks have more rights than the military ones and have 
lawyers to protect them from their punishment.  Do they serve 
food here?  I haven't had dinner yet."

"Kitchen closed hours ago.  I know a pretty good all-night place 
if you'd like to go there.  I'll buy."

Now she looked even more suspicious.  "What are you after?  Are 
you some kind of freak hitting on me?  It won't work.  I can take 
care of myself.  I told you I was a soldier."

"I don't doubt you can take care of yourself.  I'm just asking.  
You can arm wrestle me for dinner, but not inside.  I don't need 
that kind of attention."

She finally agreed and we went out to the parking lot.  We leaned 
on the hood of my Honda and locked hands.  I was surprised her 
arm was as long as mine although she stood a head shorter, but 
not surprised that her palm was rough and her hand solid.  I said 
go and tried pushing her down.  I hadn't expected to win but I 
was surprised that I couldn't budge her at all.  She let me push 
for a little bit to show me I couldn't move her, then she powered 
me down and held my hand there.

"Not bad," she said.  "Better than I expected.  So now you have 
to buy dinner."

She followed me to the diner in her battered car.  When we got to 
the booth I asked if I could hang her jacket up along with mine 
before she sat down.  She gave me a challenging look and slowly 
removed her coat.  It was what I had expected, but more so.   The 
sleeves of her t-shirt were so tight on her huge upper arms they 
looked like they had been painted onto her skin.  Thick veins ran 
up over her biceps, and wide triceps ballooned out from the backs 
of her arms.  At rest her arms didn't hang straight down but were 
bent like she was always in a wrestler's position.  Fine downy hair 
covered her thick forearms.  Without the arms to demonstrate her 
composition you might think the bulges on her chest were ample 
breasts, but I knew they had to be massive pectorals with small 
breasts mounted low.  The t-shirt showed a curving taper from her 
wide chest and her back to her tight waist where it was tucked into 
her jeans.  Her expression was daring me to make a comment or 
betray some reaction, but I kept my poker face as I sat and 
pushed aside the menu.  I tried not to think about feeling her 
strong, big arms and seeing her flex them, so I sat and kept my 
face plain and pleasant.

"If anything sounds like it might be greasy, it is.  If it's a 
vegetable it will be overcooked.  I like the meat loaf, they can 
fry a reasonable steak, the chili is good and medium hot, and 
chicken takes forever but is worth the wait," I told her.  

She finally dropped her defiant stare to look at her menu.  When 
a waitress came I ordered the meatloaf and Julie said she would 
have the same. "So why did you become a soldier?" I asked.

"They said they'd make something out of me, give me a chance.  I 
signed up when I was 17 and did two hitches.  After I got in I 
found out they wouldn't let me go into combat, so I got into MP's 
because I could learn more about fighting and taking care of 
myself there.  I even got my GED while I was a soldier.  I'm not 
stupid.  I know I need an education to make it in the world."

"And now you aren't a soldier any more.  But I think you still 
you would like to be.  What did you do wrong?"

Her fists clenched and the mountains of muscle on her shoulders 
bunched up, the cords in her neck stood out like ropes.  "You ask 
too many questions. I wanted to be all that I could be.  I wanted 
my family to be proud of me."

Weakness washed over me as I looked at her incredible power 
pulsing across the table from me.  "Where are you staying 
tonight?  Do you have a place?"

"I sleep in my car.  Tomorrow I'll start looking for a job, then 
I'll find a room."

"It's late.  I have a couch you can sleep on for what's left of 
tonight."

"What are you after?  I don't have much money to pay you.  What 
do you want?"

"You were a soldier keeping me safe.  I want to do something to 
pay you back.  It's just a couch to sleep on tonight."

"But I don't know you.  I don't know anything about you.  I can't 
just let you take me to your house."

"It's just an apartment.  You don't have anything to worry about.  
I'm an honest person who just wants to let you sleep on the 
couch.  I have a job at the hospital.  People let me help them 
there because they trust me.  You can trust me, too."

She agreed for one night only.  After we ate she followed me home 
and parked her car on the street.  She took a sleeping bag and a 
duffel bag from her back seat and followed me into the building.  
I led the way to my apartment.  When we stepped inside she stood 
in the doorway, surveying the scene.  My father was in the navy 
and would have insisted our house always be "shipshape" with no 
clutter even if we didn't have a blind person living there.  I've 
always lived the same way with a minimum of furnishings and 
everything kept where it belongs.  In the living room I have the 
couch, a leather Eames chair with a reading lamp, my desk with 
the computer, and a tall bookcase.  The dining table is small 
with four chairs around it. I could afford a bigger place, but I 
don't want the bother of caring for a big apartment or a house.  
Julie seemed to approve and stepped inside to drop her sleeping 
bag on the couch and her duffel nearby.  I pointed out where the 
bathroom is.  I told her I would be up reading a while in my 
bedroom if she wanted to use the bathroom now and turn in.  

Without answering she paced around the room a little, checking 
things out.  At the bookcase she spotted the thick anatomy book 
in the center of the shelf and pulled it out.  She leafed through 
it, then looked at me through narrowed eyes.  "I know about books 
like this.  Do you use this book?"

"Sometimes I need to use that book.  But I don't do any bad 
things with the book."

"Are you a bad person?"

I let her question hang. "I told you I work at the hospital.  
It's just what people look like, especially what they look like 
inside where we can't see them. The doctors study the books to 
see how things are supposed to look so when they work on somebody 
who is hurt they can make things all right again.  When I look at 
naked people it isn't bad, it's just something I do for my job."

She put the book back and finished her circuit of the room.  I 
didn't think she was going to sit down with me there so I got 
ready to go to bed.  "I'll get up about ten tomorrow, then I'll 
go to work."  She still hadn't sat but was standing by her bag 
when I went into my room and closed the door.  I lie awake 
thinking about her big arms and picturing the rest of Julie's 
strong body sleeping in the next room.

I heard her moving around when I awoke the next morning.  After 
putting on a robe I went into the living room to see her doing 
push-ups.  She finished counting twenty, then shifted her balance 
and did five more with each arm.  She was wearing the same t-
shirt as the night before and men's boxer shorts.   Her legs were 
unshaved, blonde hair shimmering on her thick calves.  Her legs 
were thick but short in proportion to her torso and her massive 
arms.  She shook her arms out a bit, then did another variation 
where she balanced on one leg and one arm and did five more with 
each arm.  I hadn't seen that before but it must have been very 
strenuous the way her arms exploded from the effort.  She shook 
out again and had started situps when I went into the bathroom to 
shower to hide my erection.   When I came out she was doing 
handstand push-ups in a corner.  She still hadn't spoken, so I 
told her good morning when she came down from doing those.  She 
looked at me suspiciously, then walked over to the doorway into 
the bathroom.  Instead of going in she jumped up and grabbed the 
top of the door frame and began chinning herself with just her 
fingertips holding on.  She did a few, then dropped off and 
worked her fingers like they hurt from holding her weight.  I 
told her I had a chinning bar in my room in the doorway to my 
closet.  She could use it after I went to work.  She just nodded.  
When she was chinning herself I noticed little round scars on the 
backs of her thick hamstrings.  From when I had interned in 
hospitals I recognized them as old cigarette burns, probably from 
when she had been a child.  I went into my room and dressed, my 
hands fumbling and shaking from wanting to feel her strong thighs 
and her arms.

After I got my newspaper from the lobby I told her all I had for 
breakfast was cereal and some fruit.  She was welcome to join me 
or help herself after I left.  She nodded again and did another 
circuit of her exercises, this time without the chinning.  As I 
was going out the door I asked if the army had found out she had 
taken shots to make her muscles bigger.  That finally made her 
talk.

"How did you know that?  I had to be strong to be a soldier, and 
I was little and weak when I joined.  I exercised like they 
taught me.  Then I heard the shots would make me strong so I used 
the medicine.  When I got caught I stopped, but then I got weaker 
again so I had to take shots.  The third time they said I 
couldn't be a soldier anymore.  I exercise like before but I'm 
not so strong as I was when I took the shots."

"You said you wanted to make your family proud of you.  Were they 
proud that you made yourself so strong and that you were a 
soldier?"  

"I don't know.  I don't talk with my family now.  And now that 
I'm not a soldier they wouldn't be proud."

"Will you be here when I come home tonight?  You can stay if you 
don't have another place, aside from sleeping in your car."  She 
stood in the middle of the room, her huge arms pumped and 
crawling with muscle, her legs throbbing with power, looking 
absolutely lost.  My legs were turning to water as I looked at 
her incredible physique straining against her thin clothes.

"I have to get on soon.  Find a job and a place to live," she 
finally said.   I came back in and got the extra key to give her.  
Then I left for my office.

I stopped on my way home that night to buy some groceries.  Julie 
was sitting cross-legged on the floor in her jeans and a 
different t-shirt, looking at some job applications.  Her 
sleeping bag and duffel bag were neatly stacked in a corner, the 
room showing no other sign of her presence.  I cooked dinner for 
two, simple meat and pasta with a salad, and set two places at 
the table.  She hadn't spoken the first time when I told her she 
could come eat.  "I can't pay you much for the food," she said 
when I invited her again.

"You're my guest.  I want you to have dinner with me.  We could 
arm wrestle again and then you could win your dinner."  I 
wondered if she would let me wrestle against her again, this time 
with her arm bare and her great biceps on view for me.  My 
erection was returning as she stood up.

"Why are you doing these nice things for me?  You don't even know 
me.  You don't know anything about me.  Do you think you can make 
love to me if you give me dinner?  I wouldn't let you do that."

"I told you, because you were a soldier.  People should do nice 
things for you.  I didn't think you would let me make love to 
you.  You're a good person starting out to make a new life now 
that you aren't a soldier anymore." 

"Is there something I can do for you?  To pay you back?"  She 
came to the table and sat across from me.  I served her and 
looked at her heavy smooth face and her wide shoulders.

"You could show me your exercises.  You did some this morning I 
haven't seen before.  I'd like to learn them."

We talked a little about where she had looked for a job that day 
and where she might try tomorrow.  She cleaned up the dishes and 
then we each went to bed.

When I came out the next morning she was already up, her sleeping 
bag rolled and the couch made up.  "Do you want to exercise with 
me?" she asked as she tucked her hair through the rubber band.  I 
could see the smear of hair in her armpits when her arms were up 
working on her hair.  Again she was wearing boxer shorts and the 
t-shirt from the day before.  I had dressed the same way.

"Yes.  Do you start with pushups?  I usually do thirty in the 
morning, then situps."  

"First I stretch to get warmed up.  Like this."  I followed her 
through a series of standard stretches, stealing looks at her 
body as various parts moved, as different muscles stretched and 
contracted.  Each muscle was large and defined.  Veins began 
pushing to the surface as her blood warmed and pounded.

"Now pushups," and we both laid down and started moving in 
unison, up and down.

"Can you do them one-handed?  A lot of people can't, but I can," 
she told me and did her first sets of five with each arm.  I was 
able to copy her this far with my right arm but couldn't do five 
with my left.  Then she showed me the variation where she was 
balanced on one arm and one leg.  I tried, but I couldn't hold 
the position and didn't have the strength to push up with so much 
of my body concentrated onto one arm.

"You're so strong," I gasped as I gave up.  Finally I had to ask, 
I couldn't stop myself any longer.  "Can I feel how strong."

She looked at me strangely, then stood and bent her arm to flex 
it.  The biceps erupted into a mountain crossed by thick veins, 
the triceps powering out below her arm in a thick belly.  I 
reached for her arm and found it as hard as I had imagined it 
must be, too large for me to put both hands around so I just 
wrapped them as far as I could reach across the peaked top.  We 
locked eyes for a moment.  "Would you like to see more?" she 
asked.

"I want to see it all," I whispered, and she pulled the t-shirt 
over her head.  Her pale body was what I knew it would be, plates 
of muscle built up in layers that seemed to vibrate with power 
even when she stood still in front of me.

"Now you," she said, and I pulled off my own shirt.  "You take 
care of yourself.  You're like Daddy was.  He took care of 
himself too.  Last night you said I was a good person, but I'm 
not.  I made Daddy want me and now I can see I made you want me 
too."  She was looking at the erection straining against my 
shorts.

"Yes, I do want you.  And you are a good person.  But if you 
aren't ready we shouldn't.  Show me your muscles instead."  She 
flexed and let me squeeze her arms and feel the heavy ropes of 
muscle along her shoulders.  I stepped behind her and ran my 
hands over the rolling strength of her back.  On her back I saw 
more of the old burn marks.  Tears were starting to burn my eyes 
as I touched the old scars.  She broke her pose and walked into 
my bedroom.  

I followed her to the chinning bar across the doorway into my 
closet.  "We should do more exercises.  We aren't done."  She 
started chinning herself, moving up and down ten times like a 
piston.  She held her legs steady as she cranked off the pull-
ups.  After ten she began shifting side to side so first her 
right arm did almost all the work of raising her weight and then 
her left.  Her biceps bulged and her wide back crawled with 
muscles boiling beneath the skin.  I stepped in and caught her 
when she lowered herself to the bottom of her cycle.  I wrapped 
my arms around her with one hand between her legs and the other 
cradling the soft breast that lay on top of her hard pectoral 
plate.  I held her and she let go of the bar to let me feel how 
heavy she was, how solid and strong.  She bent her head back and 
rubbed it against my cheek.  

"I don't like seeing the burn marks on your back.  Somebody hurt 
you terribly," I said and rubbed my cheek against her hair.

"Mother had to.  I was bad and she had to punish me sometimes.  I 
made Daddy want me, and then I didn't keep our secret so the 
police took him away.  Mother cried all the time because he 
didn't live with us anymore.  He never hurt me.  I should have 
kept our secret, but I didn't.  Or I should have run away so he 
wouldn't want me anymore.  I only ran away from home after, 
because Mother was so sad about Daddy and me.  After a while I 
became a soldier so I could learn to take care of myself and make 
them proud of me again."

I set her down but kept my arms wrapped around her broad, solid 
body.  "They should be proud of you.  You made yourself strong so 
people won't hurt you anymore.  Don't ever let anyone hurt you 
like that again."

She turned to me, looking at me with shining eyes.  "They can't 
hurt me."  She clenched her fist and slammed it into her stomach, 
then slammed her chest.  They were solid blows but a little 
tremor in her breasts was the only reaction I could see.  "You 
could hit me and it wouldn't hurt.  I'll show you," and she stood 
there tensed, waiting for my punch.

"I could never hit you.  I want to take care of you, I'd like to 
teach you to smile.  When I was growing up my father told me I 
should take care of my blind sister, but I never did. I never 
took care of her and she always had to take care of me.   She 
couldn't see my books but she helped me learn to read and spell.  
She would cook dinner for me.  The only thing I ever did for her 
was show her how to smile once.  I want to see you smile, too."

Julie was crying now.  "Are you really this good?  I know you 
have another secret.  Men always have secrets."  

Great sobs were shaking her body.  I wanted to reach for her 
again but her question made me stop.  She was seeing the secret 
that I had kept hidden in my heart for my whole life, the one 
that was stronger than anything my brain could say or believe.  
"I'm not a good person.  I killed my mother.  And then when my 
father got sick I tried to take care of him but he died, too."  I 
wanted to take care of Julie, but I knew inside I could never 
take care of anyone.  I would always need someone to take care of 
me.