I must admit, I was astonished. His physique was great, his training and diet were flawless, and there was a good chance he’d take the Mr. New Jersey Title. I don’t know how he was making such progress while drinking a substantial amount of alcohol every day; common knowledge suggests this is an impossibility. Yet when he took a baggie of “vitamins” out of his pocket, it was clear that all the ancillary drugs were offsetting the extra calories from the booze. “Watcha got there?” I enquired. “Cytomel, 200mcg/day. I just finished up two weeks of clen at 120mcg/day, now I’m tearing through this Dexedrine at 80mg/day, plus there’s a bunch of other shit I throw in there for good measure.” “Oh, I see,” I replied, “you must be from the Hot-Stuff school of supplementation.” But the outdated reference went over his head. Gazing out at the rough surf, he says to me, “It’s so beautiful, the green and yellow hues radiating off the surf. The colors, they’re so bright it’s overwhelming.” Yet all I saw was a gray, dreary, and cloudy ocean; no colors to speak of.

“I’m so fucking ready,” he shouted, turning what few heads were in the arcade. “The show’s this Saturday, you’re coming right?” “Oh yea, I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” I replied. And in all seriousness, I wouldn’t. I’d be kickin’ myself in the ass for years if I missed seeing this delusional kid posing in a complete state of psychosis, and what may result. I had to ask, “so you still drinking your wonder-supplement?” He replied, “every hour baby, religiously. I don’t even feel the alcohol anymore, but something else is building, welling up inside me like a demon and I fucking love it. It’s like I got an “S” on my chest, ya know?” Obligated to speak from experience, I advised him, “Just keep in mind: Christopher Reeve had an “S” on his chest too, and yours is about as real as his was. Actually, his actions were more Incredible Hulk than Superman.

Contest day upon us, my wife and I sat in the fourth row with Mykel’s parents and his fan base of sixteen through forty year-old women. During the initial pose-down, Mykel was on point: Hitting every pose, making the striations and muscle fibers dance poetically under the hot lights of the stage. But he still had that crazed look in his eyes. When another competitor stepped into Mykel’s spotlight and tried to block him out, I assumed he would do what any other bodybuilder would: return the favor and cut back in front of the other contestant.

But Mykel just stood there, he stopped posing and looked like he was about to start crying. After a few seconds of looking like a lost, little, puppy-dog, he got back into the routine, and actually advanced to the finals. On stage by himself, working all the poses he’d been practicing, Mykel’s physique looked great. Although his eyes did not. He had that “thousand yard stare” I’ve seen in some of my Marine buddies. The judges were about to announce a winner, and all the competitors were on stage.

Then it happened: As the MC started to address the crowd, Mykel shouted: “There’s no way I can compete with all these demons! It’s not fair. They all have demonic metabolisms and demonic leptin sensitivity. THAT’S NOT NATURAL!!! They should be disqualified. YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF FUCKING DEMONS!! You’re behind this aren’t you, ‘Mr. M.C.” with your fitness model groupies hanging at your side, YOU’RE A DEMON TOO!” Mykel grabbed the MC by the collar and threw him to the other side of the stage. “Hey mr. Light-man, you better turn off these fucking green and pink and yellow lights that keep following me or I’ll knock your teeth so far town your throat you’ll need to stick your toothbrush up your ass. At this point even I turned red with embarrassment. Yet Mykel was far from feeling embarrassed, shamed, or even a little out of line. He was babbling incoherently about green demons fixing the contest, all the while continuing to pose. The other competitors stood rigidly in a state of shock. Mykel had the best physique out there, and was bound to win if he wasn’t so convinced that the NPC was affiliated with Satan’s minions.

After three minutes that felt like an hour, security placed Mykel in cuffs and escorted him off stage kicking and screaming: “DEMONS… 666… the mark of the beast, they’re all goddamn BEASTS!” when he passed our row he cried out franticlly, “Vic, Allie, Johnny Dio, c’mon guys help me. They’re gonna lock me up with the demons, they won’t let me have any Absinthe. They’re gonna cut off my dick and open my brain, PLEASE HELP ME!” Once again rage gave way to incessant sobbing, and he was hauled off to the county jail in his posing trunks.