Short story

“I want your arms.”

From the mouth of a guy at the gym. Nice guy. Late thirties, Jewtalian looking. Friendly in an I-think-you’re-cool-and-don’t-necessarily-want-to-blow-you kind of way. Genuine enough, you know?

I give him some lifting tips, eating tips, tell him to holler at me if he has any questions.

“Definitely, man.” Lingering smile, eye contact. Maybe he does want to blow me.

But maybe he’s just nice, right? Not every guy in West Hollywood can be gay. I google him to see if he works in the industry. Maybe I can pass him a script. Maybe he knows somebody. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but this is a six-degrees town. Everyone is connected to everyone. It’s a high school.

And he’s a literary agent at CAA.

No fucking shit. This is what I love about the gym: it’s its own society with its own set of rules, own caste system. The richest most, powerful executive in the world can come into the gym and envy a construction worker. The gym levels the playing field for the common man.

I head out to the floor to help the trainer with closing duties and the agent comes over to me.

“Can you show me what you do?”
“Sure.”

Show him some skullcrushers, barbell curls, all that. I ignore the homoeroticism of it all and tell him I’ll write him out an arm routine. But I don’t get to finish it.

So the agent gives me his email. Phone number.

“Drop me a line.”

The next day, I write him out a long, detailed email with a routine and nutrition info. Eat this before you go to bed, eat this when you wake up, etc. In-depth shit.

Receive an email back:

WOW! Thanks for writing so much! I really appreciate it! I’m buying you a drink sometime! LOL!

Wait. LOL? A literary agent uses “LOL”? Not to mention a disturbing amount of exclamation points and staccato sentence structure?

But maybe it’s just an unprofessional email he wrote on the fly. From his Blackberry.

I write back:

Not a problem. We’ll definitely grab some drinks. Looking forward to it.

Get an email back:

Awesome!! Do you have a Myspace?

I can hear a toilet flush in my soul. Same name, same age, but in no way, shape, or form a CAA literary agent. His Myspace confirms it. In the Heroes section of his profile:

The makers of KY Jelly.