The low throb of whatever the streaming service algorithm presented as “hot this month” rumbled through the gym’s aging sound system. Some playlist pretending as if it was generated by actual flesh and blood listeners and not the corporate-thumb-on-the-scales selection that had been interpolated from focus groups.
None of us could hear it.
For us, the only sound was the bunch and pull of our own muscles. Our internal soundtrack of from the steel cable whip of our flesh, like the squeaking of full-grain leather, like the grinding pops of glacial icebergs driving into each other. Here in the gym it was the sound of our own breathing, the roaring thump of blood in our ears, the clang of weights falling into the J-hooks when the set was done.
“Muscle Club”, “The Transgender Shield Project”, “Operation Get-Behind-The-Muscle-Tranny”. We had many informal names for it. We’ve all heard the saying that “the first pride was a riot”. We’ve all heard the stories that the first thrown bricks came from the hands of trans folks. Now, near sixty years later, we’ll never definitively know who it was.
A bar clatters into the hooks on the squat rack and I look up at Dee. He’s sucking down lungfuls, the dark-flushed freckles standing out against reddened cheeks. I can see dimples hiding in his patchy ginger beard when he smiles at me through the exertion. Was that a wink?
These days, you arn’t allowed carry a brick to a protest.
I’ve no idea how long Dee’s been on T, but goddamn he’s taken every opportunity to make the most of it. Half a head shorter than me but easily twice as wide.
Late on a weeknight, when this run down gym is only attended by the sort of die-hards who get lost in haze of pre-workout and creatine. On nights like this we convene the “Club”. A loose collection of trans men and women, of non-binaries and agender folks. We gather and pound out sets for the express purpose to turn ourself into bricks.
Cause these days, protests still need bricks.
