If the Jersey Shore had a spirit animal, he would be it. From his artificially tanned face to his green eyes flashing, he looks like a Greek god as he extends his massive hand. My new roommate is at least a foot taller than me, wearing a black tank-top that barely fits him, and our height disparity is made more apparent by the fullness of his blow-out, carefully gelled even at this early hour. I suspect correctly that the first thing he does in the morning is fix his hair.
“What’s up, bro? Call me Gooch.”
We introduce ourselves and I observe the updates to the room since his recent arrival. It’s become a lot redder on his side of the room, particularly in the form of Ferrari’s. Ferrari posters, Ferrari model cars, a throw pillow with the Ferrari logo. I don’t bother to ask him what his interests are.
“So, I heard you did too many sit-ups and something burst inside?” I ask him jovially. This joke goes way over Gooch’s head, gets caught in his blow-out maybe.
“Nah bro. My appendix. It almost killed me,” Gooch informs me woodenly. “But I’m all good now. You ever have your appendix explode?”
“No, I haven’t. I heard you only get one.”
“Sucks bro,” Gooch says, shaking his head. I can’t be sure if he means the pain sucks, or that the fact that we only get one appendix gets him down, but I assure him that he won’t really need it to survive.
“It’s like, one of those organs we have leftover from our evolution. Back when we used to eat sticks and stones and shit, from being hunter-gatherers.”
“I’m Italian, bro,” Gooch says. There isn’t a hint of irony.
“Right, me too,” I reply, and his expression transforms into one of total bemusement. He looks closely at my Asian face and nods.
“Nah bro,” he laughs. Then frowningly he asks, “For real?”
I nod and smile tightly. We begin to discuss workout methods and I make friendly comments on his rigid alignment of protein supplements and GNC vitamins along his closet floor, appreciating in a Confucian way the straight lines and anality of which he organizes his things.
We end up doing push-ups on the floor. I’d been doing sets over the summer and can do up to fifty at a clip. We take turns on the floor, and after a few rounds of grunting and telling each other to “Get it” and “Push through the pain”, I decide that the Gooch and I are going to get along just fine.
The accelerated heartrate does something to Gooch, because after we finish off a few sets, he tells me that he wants to check out the gym. I’m invited to come along, but I decline, noting that I should find some posters for my side of the room. He flashes a grin and crushes my shoulder and says that he’ll see me later.
I envy Gooch’s simplicity, his apparent ability to settle on the things he likes without wondering what people think of him. He’ll study to become a physical trainer and fly with a smooth arc in the sky and help the world to be a better place alleviating one pulled hamstring at a time. Meanwhile, I’ll be somewhere under a bridge, overthinking every stroke of paint I make, worrying that it sucks, wondering if it’s all one big mistake.
Gooch will have gym bros to hang with and bimbos throwing themselves in his direction, so there’ll be little to think about outside his routine.
He’ll rise with the sun to hit the gym before class, consume gargantuan amounts of food at the dining hall three times a day, and finish off the evening with a little TV before bed at ten.
His life will be clockwork and generally free of vices. He’ll take the weekends off to return to his hometown in Avalon, a private little enclave by the shore to enjoy Mama Gooch’s homecooked lasagna, because his biggest problem as a freshman will be the disparity between real Italian food and what the dining halls inaccurately label as “pasta”—more like soggy noodles and sauce—and he’ll continue to hit the clubs on the Jersey Shore, same as before.
Through September and October, there’ll be a few dedicated faces still deep in the disco trenches, flailing in front of fog machines, and spinning in swirls of trailed-in sand. Gooch will be among the other fist-pumpers as they twirl shirtless and buff, expressing themselves with glowsticks and blow-outs and frosted tips.
The November chill will come as breezes from the ocean mark that end of the season and the dancehalls thin out almost as if the clubbers suddenly awaken and recompose themselves after falling asleep on the bus.
The season will edge closer to the holidays, and Gooch will search for a girl or two to take with him into the winter seasons when the clubs finally shut their doors, like a hangover from Tiesto to Oakenfold, easing up on the gas of his G35, finally settling into a rhythm of more dating and less dancing—unless it’s the slow kind—and then eventually dumping them both when springtime comes again.
Like a farmer knows when it’s time to harvest, an irresistible instinct to go from bulking to cutting will return to prepare Gooch for summer once again.