I had no idea what to expect from Badger after that introduction and his demonstration of his immaculate squat technique. I guess lesson 2 was "Throw out your preconceptions, they won't help you here!"
He trains 3 times per week and it just somehow became obvious that my life as well as my body was intertwined with his. My training was entwined with his. He more or less adopted me and if there was ever the faintest shadow of a doubt that I would fall in with what was expected, it never showed in his face. The requirement was never spoken, but as if, in an instant, I had become the missing component in his life and the process of being absorbed into his being was as simple and totally natural as having our bodies connect for the first time. It was nobody else' business.
There were no external influences on our behaviour, just instinctive responses to one another and he seemed as genuinely in awe of me and my reactions, as I was of him. As if, like me, he had never had an overwhelming experience of love, lust, and it's accompanying feelings of rightness and fulfilment. As if, like me, he had made a transition into another set of feelings and sensations for the first time. I was simply swept along by it and my past disappeared as I entered the bubble, overwhelmed by this gargantuan present that blocked out everything else.
Right from the very beginning, everything became simpler. I grew in every way. We ate together, slept together, I learned to work with him from the very basics of his craft, like an apprentice and we trained in that intense, disciplined way his first lesson at the gym had begun my transition. He was interested in eastern spiritualism and that deep connection between pupil and master. He would smile and laugh at my naive mistakes in all of these things and for months I saw nothing else but the pleasure he derived from my progress towards him.
Anyone who has ever pushed weights with any serious intention of getting bigger, will have had some experience of the addictive quality that the aches and pains and hormones of recovery that follow a great workout and lead into the next. Any serious effort towards building your body requires that you get over that pain, savour it, learn from it. Adding into this equation, not only a massive increase in the expectations of my training from a greatly superior trainer/training buddy but being around someone who was far more demanding in terms of the intensity and frequency of my sexual activity and suddenly I was in a different league. My body ached all the time, my balls ached all the time, we would eat and sleep whenever we weren't working, working out or fucking but it was like a a perfect mechanism. There were expectations that I just had to fulfil.
So when Dan and Big John showed up at St.Mary's one afternoon, after not seeing them for some months, without my knowing, they immediately noticed I had changed. Physically and in attitude. So absorbed was I in our curls and tricep extensions, I didn't see them come at all, in even though, as usual in the afternoon, the place was quiet. Then, between sets, I caught site of Dan's familiar frame reflected in one of the mirrors nearby as he reached for a towel. He raised a hand to acknowledge he'd seen me and I instinctively returned the gesture into the mirror. Thoughtlessly, I was distracted, not knowing how Badger would react. It had never occurred to me to tell him about previous experiences and acquaintances at this gym or any other. He just looked down at me and winked and we got on with the workout but he could tell that the pin-sharp focus of my concentration was slipping. He said "Well, aren't you going to introduce me?"
We broke off and the big man followed me over to the bench where John and Dan were working when I could see they'd reached the end of a set. We shook hands warmly and I introduce Badger and both the off duty police officers acknowledged that they had seen the man before. Even on a busy evening session, in a gym packed with big, serious guys, you're going to notice Badger. He had transcended the point at which he could no longer blend in in a room full of naturally proportioned humans, a development that many take on for the wrong reasons, but with his bristling, dark beard, his intense black eyes and that stripe of white in his hair that gave him his name, he was never going to go un-noticed.