He Calls Me Butch Monster

A friend of mine, a gym buddy actually, has begun to call me Butch Monster.

The first time we stepped into the gym together this really hairy muscular guy was primping in the mirror nearby as I was going for a locker. The guy said to me, “You’re not going to use that one, are you?”

He had this sort of gruff look on his face, so I figured he was claiming it for himself. He was just messing with me, maybe. Or maybe he was flirting. Either way, he had caught off guard.

Despite his intimidating look, though, I sized up my surroundings. And deciding it was all good, I took the locker anyway.

Trying to cut the tension that still lingered despite his seemingly good intentions, I replied, with a smile and a chuckle, that he had come off just then as some kind of butch monster.

He laughed.

Later as my buddy and I we were doing biceps curls, and without discussing how or why we just started to use this term to refer people who had some sort of indescribable blend of perceived qualities that were hard in appearance and attitude at first but ultimately gave way to gentler qualities.

Over the subsequent weeks, we would apply the term to other characters we’d see prancing around the gym. And later, I don’t know how, this label became some new way for my friend to refer to me in the second person, as in, “Hey, Butch Monster, what time do you want to go to the gym tonight?” or “You’re sweating like a pig, Butch Monster”.

I still don’t know whether I like the term or not.

Oh well. So he calls me Butch Monster. What of it? I’m sure there’s a little butch monster in all of us, don’t you think?

NOTE: The photo attached to this blog entry is of a painting done from a personal self-portrait I'd was taken of myself when I weighed somewhere in the range of 340 to 380 pounds. When the picture was taken I had just moved to South Philly from the Gold Coast of South Florida, and apparently I was fattening up as I grudgingly returned to life in the cold Northeast. The painting's artist is not named here, not because I don't know his name but because the name I have for him may not be one that he wishes to use now, so I'm contacting him and will correct this post later. Anyway, the painting is called Celestial Blue.