Charley Paxos

Strength In Denial

Ronnie Coleman’s Hollywood Fitness and Keto Grill Yonkers—no affiliation with American professional bodybuilder and IFBB multi-title champion Ronnie Coleman; and yes, there have been lawsuits—is, in my considered opinion, the single finest bro gym north of the city, hands down, no contenders.

At Ronnie’s, you know what you’re getting, and bros like to know what they’re getting. I’m always thinking up new marketing slogan for Ronnie’s. I spend a lot of time alone.

The space was converted from a four-story, 1950s cinder-block storage warehouse, a standalone structure built into a hillside sloping down toward the Hudson. The building is as long as it is tall, as tall as it is wide, and painted gold with gold trim for no good reason whatsoever, except, perhaps, because bros love the color gold, or maybe it’s just a big, gold-colored middle-finger to everyone driving by on the Interstate.

There are no surprises at Ronnie’s, because bros don’t like surprises.

The ground floor is mostly cardio equipment—treadmills, ellipticals, steppers—with an area near the back for group fitness classes and other such CrossFit-related nonsense; who the hell has time for strengthening their core? It’s also the level with the men’s locker-room, so that whole area, appropriately, smells like muscle-milk diarrhea, a familiar odor at any gym that has achieved that critical mass of gym bros.

At Ronnie’s, no bullshit, just bros.

The rest of the place is for serious lifters only, a glorious, multilevel clusterfuck of free weights and resistance machines, perfect for any bro that has absolutely no workout plan, other than to train, and then overtrain, until something breaks. And, of course, every wall is a mirror, so no matter what direction you look, you’re admiring your pump.

But the best thing about Ronnie Coleman’s Hollywood Fitness and Keto Grill Yonkers is the bros. Not for nothing, but Ronnie’s is likely the finest assortment of bros you will ever encounter. It’s wall-to-wall bros. To move between sets is to navigate a labyrinth of fist pounds, and if you’re paying attention, every confrontation yields gems of bro-wisdom.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Josh, the roofer who works out in his dirty work boots. “If it’s an isolation exercises, drop the weight and do higher reps.” He pressed his finger into my chest. “It’s easier on your fucking joints.”

Sure Josh is aggressive, but it’s only because he cares so much. He’s a true bro. He’s also six-foot-six and build like a brick shit-house, so bros listen when he speaks.

“You want to buy some Tren?” said Scott, the strength and conditioning coach. “Not that you look like you need it, but I can get you a great deal. Shit’s for real, and it never hurts to be a little more anabolic.”

Scott’s sketchy AF, and his darkweb steroids have killed people, allegedly, but as bros go, he’s alright.

“Protein is bullshit,” said Steven, the sound engineer. “It’s a myth. It’s not real. Have you ever seen a protein molecule? Yeah, me neither. No one has.”

Steven smokes too much weed, but he’s still a solid bro, usually, but not today. Today I asked Steven to for a spot, and in the middle of my last frickin’ set of bench presses, he just ran away.

At Ronnie’s, not everything is as it seems.

I racked my weights. Steve and others were headed downstairs. Then I heard it too. Somewhere up front, past the commercial refrigerator filled with pre-workout drinks, past the check-in desk with the weird lobby boy who also cleans the toilets, someone was shouting, screaming almost. Looking down into the gallery, I saw a crowd forming near the entrance.

“It’s Paul,” said Mark the cop. “Paul’s dead. The vampire got Paul.”

I ran to join them, then pushed my way through the crowd. Beyond the glass doors, I saw gore. It was Paul, the snowboard instructor, dead in the parking lot, his head smashed in by a dumbbell, seemingly dropped from above.

What a waste of a bro!

Others push past me, each jockeying for a better view, but no one stepped outside. The gore was overwhelming. Then Mark the cop removed a gun from his gym bag and un-holstered it. We knew what he had in mind.

“Bro! Don’t!” said Anthony, the delivery driver.

“You’ll be killed,” said Clementine, the exotic dancer—not her real name.

“I have to do something,” said Mark. “I can’t just hide in here.” But as soon as he stepped outside, an industrial air-conditioning unit landed on him.

The chorus of cries that followed was painful to witness.

“Bro! No!”

“Why, bro?”

“No! Bro!”

And there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Apparently, this had happened before, many times, as it was explained to me, but never until now when I was present. It was the reason I hadn’t seen Kenny in a while, and Joey, and Greg. They were all dead. I struggled to get my head around it. The rest of my workout sucked. When I was done, I ran as fast as I could from the entrance to my truck.

***

On my next visit to Ronnie’s—Thursday, back and biceps—I confronted Renfield, the boy from the check-in desk. He was cleaning the toilets in the men’s locker-room.

“I can’t get up there,” said Renfield. “There’s nothing I can do.”

The door to the roof was locked, and no one had a key. It was difficult for me to understand.

“I told you already,” said Renfield, pushing past me, toilet brush in hand. “There’s no way to get up there. There’s nothing can be done about it.”

During hammer curls, I bumped into Roy, the firefighter. “The door’s locked and there’s no roof access,” said Roy, and he walked away. Just like that, our conversation was over.

During my last set of bent-over rows, I spotted Kevin, the fitness app developer. “It’s Dracula up there,” said Kevin in a whisper. “He can hear through walls.” He was unwilling to discuss it further.

After my workout I returned to the locker-room. I ran into José, the MMA fighter. “If there was somethin’ could be done about it, they’d do it,” said José. “The door to the roof is locked.”

Bros aren’t known for their problem-solving skills.

As José and I walked from the locker-room together, I decide against further conversation on the topic of Dracula, and instead José gave me an account of the tremendous health benefits he’s experienced since eliminating water from his diet. “Water’s poison, bro,” José assured me. When we reached the entrance, I paused, to prepare myself for the sprint from the entrance to my truck, but José did not pause, instead, forgetfully, mindlessly, strolling right through the doors to the parking lot, pausing only to hold the door for me. When he realized I wasn’t behind him, he looked back. Our eyes met as a forty-five pound iron plate from above compressed him into a gruesome pulp.

Despite my shock, I acted quickly, running to the door, to what was left of José, to lean out, just barely, to look up from the spot where the plate had landed. I glimpse a head looking back at me. Quickly the head pulled back from the ledge.

“I saw him,” I said softly, but already a crowd was forming around me.

“He saw him,” shouted Mike, the electrician. “He saw Dracula.”

“Tell us what he looks like,” said Karen, the fitness influencer—Karen has over 40,000 followers now on Instagram.

I had to think for moment; so many eyes were on me. “He looks like a sex offender mugshot of Mark Twain,” I said.

No one was happy with my description, so I tried again.

“He looks like my grandfather, right before he died from anal cancer.”

I could see it in their eyes, it was not the description they expected, or wanted, so I tried one last time.

“He looks like a broken old man,” I said, “defeated, gray, and unhappy.”

“Bro, that is not what Dracula is supposed to look like,” said Patrick, the manual laborer.

“I know what I saw.”

“Then your eyeballs must be broken, bro,” said Jason, the bouncer.

Are bros just stupid, or is something else going on here?

“Just tell us what you fucking saw!” screamed Tangerine, the exotic dancer, not to be confused with Clementine the exotic dancer. Tangerine then threatened me, pointing her fake nails at me as if they were knifes.

“I saw an old man that hates the world,” I said.

“Bro, be serious!”

“Seriously, bro, come on!”

“I saw a miserable old prick,” I said, “filled with sorrow and regret, pain and despair, extreme anguish, frustration, and anger. He looked like he had been weeping, and perhaps, gnashing his teeth. His wife is dead. His children don’t talk to him, or allow him to see his grand kids. He’s been thrown outside, into the darkness. It’s the fate of the wicked. The consequence of a life lived unrighteously.”

Then Michael, by far the largest, most muscular, most performance-drug-enhanced bro to ever grace Ronnie’s, picked me up by my throat and said, “Did you or did you not see Dracula… bro?”

I struggled to speak with his hands around my neck. “I saw our future,” I said. “I saw Josh and Scott, and Steven and Roy, and Clementine and Tangerine. I saw Kevin, Karen, Patrick, and Jason. I even saw Ronnie Coleman. I saw them all, in the fires of hell.”

Michael squeezed my neck harder, but still I could speak.

“I saw you and me, Michael, in the fires of hell.”

Michael squeezed my neck even harder. “Last chance,” he said. I could barely speak now.

“I saw weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Michael tossed me from the entrance. I landed on my knees on the pavement. Then Michael and others held the entrance shut so I couldn’t return. They watched through the glass, waiting for an object from above to crush me, but it never came. I ran to my truck and drove away. Fuck you Ronnie Coleman’s Hollywood Fitness and Keto Grill Yonkers.

Looking back on it now, I can find no reason that I should have been the only one to escape, no prophecy or unique circumstance to set me apart from the others. Yet no one was saved, no evil defeated, and balance was restored to nothing. I can only assume the universe needed a witness to attest to the folly of those bros that came before me, seduced by the promise of glamour muscles.