Showdown at 24

His name was Bud, and he talked to himself while lifting weights. At 340 pounds, his constant babbling was a breach of conduct according to gym membership rules. But what could everyone do but avert their eyes and plant a pair of earbuds deep into their auditory canals? Bud babbled. He rambled and stammered and rabbled and yammered. He was 6 feet tall and 340 pounds. He bench pressed four hundred pounds and he couldn't keep his mouth shut. In a gym, a factory of clanging machinery, optically expanded by mirrors, every corner duplicated and reflected elsewhere, he couldn't be missed. Through the haze of sweat and spit and rust, one would often see him squat the equivalent of a car as if raising a child onto his shoulders – all the while saying things like "there's no way he could have have got her pregnant on purpose! No way! To put her on the spot? To force her into marriage? No friggin' way!" He would grunt and howl and do extended countdowns "Five! Four! Three! Two! One!" and then he would emit a gutteral growl while offering two burnished, 100 pound dumb bells toward the heavens. "No friggin' way!" he would continue. "But how about a Lemon Meringue Pie? How's about that? Whisk the shit outta the eggs. Sugar. Flour. Cornstarch. Lemons! Come one, let's do this! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!" The gym rats ignored him. He could bench, squat and curl more than any of them. They were sure he had the liquid ferocity of anabolic steroids coursing through his veins, and surely, his larynx. Any confrontation would lead to a verbal and physical pummeling. He was a creatine snorting, muscle milk guzzling madman. It was better to leave him be.

Not for Skinny Dix, also known as Dixon Jones. 120 pounds of clothing and bones. His socks hung loosely around his ankles. He skulked throughout the gym like a malnourished hyenna, slipping between the sated lions, scavenging for scant ten pound iron plates for his wrist curls. He wore a headband to hide his receding hairline and wrist braces for support along his forearms. "Hey Skinny Dix," others called out "You on roids?" Skinny Dix scowled, "You maybe! Not me!" And he would go on benching a naked 40 pound bar, curling 10 pound dumb bells and doing 5 pound tricep raises, all with the intensity of a body building competitor.

The more Bud spoke to himself, the more Dixon became agitated. Through a set of his calve raises, tip toeing through fifty pounds, he could hear Bud's meaningless blather. "Red state. Blue state. Bipartisanship. Sinking ship. Come on. Five. Four. Three. Two. One."

One day, Bud moaned and growled his way through a 500 pound dead lift. It was more of a struggle than usual, perhaps due to his verbose monologue "All the world extinct, a post human intelligence is curious about its ancestors. This post human being recreates the universe in an advanced super computer — an ancestral simulator program. All our world is a pixelated simulacrum. Pixeleted by way of molecules. Governed by a set of predetermined rules. Math. Science. It all falls into step. Think of the implications. Man, what to do if it were true. Come on. Five. Four. Three. Two—"

"Shut the hell up for a minute!" a lone voice sailed over the rows of cybex machines. Instantly, the clatter of the weight room vanished. All of its plates, bars and dumb bells were securely returned to their places. All the surrounding machines went idle and the space around the source of the lone complaint cleared out.

"Thank you!" Dixon called from the preacher bench, two ten pound weights on each end of a bar. He began his curls, huffing and puffing quietly as if he were blowing out a succession of single birthday candles.

Bud dropped the weights to the floor, and its impact could be felt throughout the weight room. He turned around to face Dixon. "Who tell me to shut up?" He asked himself. "No friggin way."

"That was me," said Skinny Dixon. "You talk too much. It's annoying."

Everyone braced for the worst. The intensity in Bud's eyes was enough to bend a spoon. He could have collapsed the gym like a black hole. Instead, Bud turned back around and continued with his set. "I guess I was bein' inconsiderate to my neighbors," he said over his shoulder. "I never realized I rambled so much. It's just a nervous tic, see. Just something to get me pumped up. I apologize." He powered the 500 pounds over his head, then dropped it to the floor again. All of the loose weights in the gym rattled. Dust fell from the light fixtures. "But you didn't have to be so rude about it," said Bud. He never said another word after that.

The next day, Dixon Jones had his membership revoked and he was blacklisted at all the other gyms on the island. He is now 10 pounds overweight. He does 100 jumping jacks a day at home.