In hindsight I was always destined for a career in sport and fitness. My granddad had been a professional golfer, dad was a representative football player, and I had an obsession with fitness growing up -- not just in the sports of white privileged males. At school I'd taken the physical education options and I was in the premier sporting teams and athletics squads. So when I finished school it was natural to progress to a qualification in personal training at a local college.
When I finally graduated as a qualified Personal Trainer I felt on top of the world! Compared to my nerdy friends who pursued academic options, the physical life was the best. The endorphins of a solid workout meant that I was always on a natural high. I perennially felt healthy as I'd get a solid eight hours when the body demanded an overnight recharge. And with a toned body and obvious muscles, the females always paid me plenty of attention. I wasn't heavily built, but I had that natural healthy kind of sporty figure that seemed to appeal to girls from all walks of life. Spunky Sam they'd call me!
Soon after graduating I managed to land a job as a Personal Trainer at a gym close to home. It was a 24/7 facility, and it was staffed with plenty of experts: cardio trainers, class leaders, physios and other sports scientists. I started out at the bottom of the food chain as a PT. Essentially my job was to try to hook newcomers into lucrative gym plans, and then upsell my PT services for a generous commission. My friend Kevin was employed at about the same time, and between us we'd try our best to entice newcomers.
I distinctly remember a gang of gorgeous girls coming to join the gym soon after I started. They were a friendship group of four black girls straight out of college and while they were all slim and physically attractive, it appeared that college life had taken its toll, as the hours in the library had left them without much muscle or definition. It offered a great opportunity for Kevin and me to take a group of exercise virgins and convert them to the ways of gym life.
I was assigned to guide them on a tour of our facilities and I introduced the group to the pool, the weights, the machines and the floor. I talked them through the available group classes and demonstrated how some of the most common exercise machines worked. Then, of course, I put on pressure for private sessions, but they were not so sure on their preferences, and being straight out of college they didn't have a lot of money. So they giggled behind their hands, thanked me for the tour and set out to pursue their own fitness journies at the gym.
As a PT there is plenty of downtime, and you get to see the habits of customers and dynamics between them. One of the girls dropped out of the gym within the month - that's pretty common. The pair that were the closest friends and most sociable quickly discovered aerobics and spent their time exclusively in floor classes. But the fourth girl, Lauren, became obsessed with lifting and strength. That was the area that I looked after during daytime hours while my friend Kevin generally minded the nearby treadmills and cardio machines.
Lauren was a deeply attractive girl with perfect skin, a slender waist and breasts to die for. She had a gorgeous face with a button nose and hazel eyes that shone with energy. Her height was around 5 feet 6 but that was before adding the extra 6 inches that came from her frizzy afro hairstyle. She would wear body hugging outfits that didn't reveal much skin, but fitted tightly to her curves and I would enjoy watching her exercise, eyeing her ass as she worked out and imagining the candy that lay beneath the outfits. Occasionally I'd catch glimpse of a subtle camel toe in her spandex, and I'd have to turn away lest the bulge in my pants betray what I was really thinking.
Between sets, Lauren would come over to chat with Kevin and me. I was a new employee at that stage and the gym's policy was to avoid fraternizing with clients. With time I'd realise that the policy was just lip service to comply with state laws. It turns out that clients who are attracted to their instructors are happy clients, and happy clients keep on paying, and that keeps the owners pleased. But at the time I was really just focused on keeping my new job and whenever Lauren would flirt, I'd find an excuse to reset the machines or tidy up the free weights.
Over the next couple of years I watched from the sidelines as Lauren became more confident in lifting and her physique evolved. She transformed from a thin slight frame into a strong babe with powerful limbs and defined muscles. She was sturdily built, but she maintained an appearance that would fit in amongst any crowd - unlike many obsessed lifters who bulked up way too much and turned into mountains of meat! While I engaged regularly with Lauren and assisted her professionally from time to time, the truth was I found her attractive and wanted to get to know her better. But in the early days of our association I'd taken my position of aloofness and it would have been too weird to change it now.
Over the same two years, my job at the gym gave me access to many beautiful and fit girls. I started off very shy and restrained, but with each new arrival I would grow in confidence. As time went on I became quite forward with new customers and probably overly flirtatious and possibly inappropriate at times. I had more than my share of dates and sex with girls of all backgrounds. By the end of the first couple of years on the job, the only tricky thing was managing so many girls at once.
Kevin was also in the lucky situation to have exposure to many girls, but he was probably not as successful as me romantically. He'd often come asking about this girl or that, and I would talk about my encounters and share with him tips and advice.
I came to date and fuck every type of girl - all ethnicities and body types. And I managed to see and study every type of pussy. Thin narrow slits, fat puffy labia, ruffled pussy lips, luscious flowing flaps. And I loved to play with every type of clitoris - tiny ones hidden under little hoods, submerged ones that remained beneath the flesh or long and dangly ones that I could lick.
They were great days! But then the pandemic arrived.
At around the time that the pandemic hit, Lauren left the gym. It's pretty normal practice to switch gyms after a couple of years. Sometimes people move out of town. Sometimes people move on to more specialized training. In the maelstrom that was the pandemic, customers churn accelerated. I heard a rumor that Lauren moved to more serious lifting gym but I never really followed up. Kevin told me a few weeks later that Lauren had come to say goodbye, but I wasn't around at the time -- perhaps I was not rostered for that day.
My position at the gym became more and more tenuous as the state of the economy declined. I lost clients, the whole gym lost custom and soon my manager told me that I'd be stood down. But the big boss of the gym provided a sweetener to my redundancy -- she said I could keep my free membership for a couple of years and when things picked back up I'd be top of the rehiring list. I continued training for a couple of months but Kevin and I both lost motivation and dropped out. We moved into a flat together and substituted the gym with extended months confined indoors watching Netflix and playing Nintendo.
Eighteen months passed since my dismissal, the pandemic began to wane and the economy bounced back. I still didn't get outside very much, but Kevin and I started exercising our free entry to the gym. There were no evident job prospects, but one of the instructors told me about a volunteering opportunity at the State body building championships. "It's not paid of course, but it'll give you exposure and show you're still doing things in the fitness sector. Plus there will be plenty of contacts and maybe good networking that leads to something?" Kevin and I both signed up. And with only a week to go we hit the gym hard to try to get rid of some of our COVID flab.
The day of the championships arrived and we caught a bus across town to the hosting stadium. We strutted into the forum and together we laughed at the large banner strung across the entrance: "Female BBC 2022", and in smaller font "State Female Body Building Championship 2022". We sniggered at how many of the contestants might be getting "BBC".
It was strange to be out of the apartment again, strange to be catching buses, and even stranger to mingle amongst crowds of people. I didn't realise how insular and isolated Kevin and I had become over the last year or so. I looked down to see a belly looking back at me and realised I'd let the pandemic get the better of my physique too!
We headed straight for the front desk to pick up our volunteer packs with an arm band, ID badge and some instructions. There was still a while before our shift started and in the mean time we meandered through the event. On the outskirts of the foyer, contestants in regular clothes loitered around, presumably waiting for their timeslot. Although the clothes covered their torsos, you could tell straight away that they had extreme physiques. Even their faces looked muscular and well defined. But the arms and legs definitely gave it away with bulging muscles and skin glistening with the hues of fake tan.
