The Trainer

THE TRAINER

By Jamie Lake

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Prologue

C
hris knew he shouldn’t be doing it, but he couldn’t help himself.

He held his breath as thick soap slid from the man’s tanned, muscular shoulders to delve between his ample bubble butt and
then swirled down the drain below.

Just moments before, Chris had been drinking coffee with his assistant and friend Jessica in the cool morning Costa Rican air. She had gotten up to take a phone call, and Chris was left to peer around his new neighborhood from his third
floor balcony; he never expected to end up spying on what had to be one of the hottest naked men in all of Costa Rica.

Even the hot steam coming from the shower couldn’t shield his perfectly-sculpted torso and every bronzed knob of his abs. The distance did nothing to diminish the size and shape of his behemoth tool and full lips.

Chris licked his lips as the man, whoever he was, soaped up his armpits, his square pecs, and his thick, sexy neck. He had shaggy light brown hair that clung wetly to his shoulders and over his ears.

The man began soaping up and fondling his big balls. It was a little difficult to tell:
was he getting an erection? Oh, God yes, definitely.

The thick meat lengthened and drooped downward in the hot water and steam, and he gave it a few teasing jerks until it was fully stiff, arching up and over; but the cock was far too big and heavy to point anywhere but down at the ground. Chris was, by now, also hard as a rock, his own cock aching to be released.

He felt wrong doing it, watching this perfect stranger jerking off; but in all honesty, it was the hottest thing he’d ever seen.  And God, it’d been so long since he’d had anybody.

He needed someone: he craved for someone. How he longed to be in that shower with him, shoved against the shower walls or bent over while he slid his tool in between his cheeks.

The palm trees and ferns that grew all around the houses in his neighborhood gave him a little bit of cover from being spotted, or so he thought. The macaws and finches flashing their bright wings and squawking in the branches made a neighbor on a balcony the least interesting of all the things to see out the window. Chris felt as if he was hidden, even though he was in plain sight.

He watched as the man continued to gently stroke himself, throwing his neck back, moaning, almost ready to explode.  His eyes squeezed shut, ready to ... but then suddenly, he opened his eyes and looked up, out the window, directly at Chris.

Chris felt a chill run up his spine.

“Fuck
.” he cursed, and dashed out of the sight.

Had he been caught watching him?

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THE TRAINER

CHAPTER ONE

“
W
hat’s wrong with him? Is he a special kind of stupid or somethin’?” she said. Chris laughed, mainly at how well her lilting Cuban accent hid the true rancor behind her words. He leaned back in his desk chair and looked out the window, shaking his head. Jessica, his assistant, had a way of bluntly saying what everyone else wanted to, but in an unfiltered way: she was talking about Chris’ ex, Tim.

“Seriously, he’s so stupid for dumping you
, Chris.”

She sipped her
cafe con leche
and twisted a freed lock of her hair around one finger. Barely five foot, Jessica was no taller than she was wide, but she didn’t hide her figure: a tight black skirt wrapped her Venus-statue thighs and  giant hoops hung from her earlobes. Many people in the writing profession would have their assistant  tidy up and dress a little more conservatively, but Chris liked her flair. She had a way of being unapologetically herself, and she flaunted a bravery that he wished was more common in people, including himself.

She stretched back
on his office couch and let out a yawn, her feet barely reaching the floor when she sank back into the furniture. They looked out the window at the clear, tropical sky and the palms gleaming in the Costa Rican sunshine.

“You need anything else, honey? I gotta run in a few minutes.”

Chris took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his strawberry blonde hair as he swiveled in the chair to look at his sticky notes neatly lined on the bottom of his computer screen. His second-to-final revision of his endless novel was due today at his publisher’s. Her question forgotten for a moment, he remembered for the tenth time that week that he really did need to get a haircut: yet another clamoring task for which he had no time. Realistically, he’d be spending every hour between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. drafting, revising, and polishing his novel until its publication deadline in three weeks.

“Yes
. One thing, Jess. I’ve been having a hell of time looking for a personal trainer who speaks English. Know anyone?” Chris asked, brushing the lint off his pressed shirt. Even though he worked at home, he still liked to keep a professional work ethic; in spite of all of his ex, Tim’s poo-pooing his potential as a writer, he dressed as if he was working at a firm or something so that he could treat his work as professionally as if he was in the office. As Wayne Dyer said,
our intention creates our reality
.

“Why don’t you just go to the gym down the street?” Jessica asked.

Chris shook his head. “I don’t like people staring at me and seeing how out of shape I am.”

Jessica cackled in her typically sardonic way. “Oh, yeah, cause you
're such a fat ass.”

“Look, I’m straight skinny
, but gay fat,” Chris murmured. “You still don’t believe me? Go look around next time you’re at Peachies gay bar,” he started.

“Y
eah, yeah, I get it,” she said, waving a long-nailed hand.

He stared out the window again. God, it was a beautiful day. Not that any day here wasn’t. This time of year, Costa Rica was especially bright and lush. Green mountains surrounded his condo, their narrow spines cutting into a stainless, cloudless, ocean blue sky. The perfume of lime and mango trees wafted in the windows, and the chatter of tropical birds could be heard muffled in the verdant gardens below.

Jessica said nothing, staring at her feet a while chomping on her gum.

“Oh, I know
.” she suddenly shouted. Someday, her sudden outbursts might give him a heart attack.

“I’ll ask my neighbor down the street
. Mason. Old friend. He’s been next door for like 400 years. He’s got a killer body and he was a
futbol
coach for a while. He also trained a few people over the years, too. You know, like 30-minute Abs or Buns of Iron or whatever you
gringos
call it. Me? I like my ass. More cushion for the pushin’, baby.”

Chris laughed.

“Alright,” Chris said. “How much does he cost? You think he’s expensive?”

She shrugged, “Don’t know. Can’t cost that much. Besides, he just lost his job ‘cause of his fucked-up ex girlfriend. Don’t get me started on
her
. I know he could use a little extra money.”

“Okay, ask him, please,” he said, patting his tummy.

“Okey-dokey,” she said, popping another bubble. “See ya, babe.”

She gave him a peck on cheek as she headed out the door.

“Bye hun,” Chris said absentmindedly.

Jessica came over to help him with his writing when really,
all she just wanted was to gossip and talk shop for hours. He supposed he needed some kind of social connection, even if she was the only type he could find. How had he built an entire life around one person?

Three years he’d been with Tim--a century in gay years--and it had ended miserably. Chris had been heartbroken, and even though everybody said each day would get easier and easier, the opposite had been happening. He had been spiralling, each day succumbing more and more to a feeling of spun-glass fragility and inner emptiness. He put up a brave front when he was out in public, which was rare nowadays; however, when his assistant was gone and his housekeeper wasn’t in the house, he often found himself stuffing his face with chocolate or fried plantains or ice cream
: any indulgence was better than crying all the time as he had been. Tim had slowly beaten him down over the years, abused him verbally, destroyed whatever natural confidence he had.

He
'd started as Tim’s houseboy when he was in college.  The older man was a successful freelance programmer who made his first million soon after Chris moved into his large townhouse in southeast Portland. Tim had utterly controlled him: his blue eyes mystified people and lit up like starry skies when he spoke. He was tall, broad-shouldered, strapping with a very natural-looking musculature, and blessed with a thick head of wavy brown hair. He looked like he walked out of a damned shampoo commercial half the time.

When they moved to Costa Rica, contrary to anything Chris could have imagined
, hot, eager boys of all sorts of races and nationalities seemed to line the streets of San Jose just waiting for a strapping
gringo
sugar daddy like Tim. In spite of his awareness that it wasn’t helpful, Chris felt his jealousy growing as soon as they moved there, and his insecurity and suspicion irritated Tim to no end.

The condo, his parting “gift” to
Chris (at least until the end of the year), was nothing to him.

After losing the tone and perfect youth of his undergraduate body, the breakup not only left him beaten down
, but isolated. He had moved to Costa Rica but did not have any real friends here; nor could he speak Spanish well enough to hold a conversation to make them. Months had passed, and although he wondered at first if he and Tim could somehow mend things and come back together, each week that passed seemed more and more like the lifeblood of that possibility draining into a gutter.

Chris cleared his throat, shook his head, and tried to focus on the page of his novel in front of him: it was a thriller set in Portland, where he was
originally from. Wet, cold, dreary: nothing like the tropical paradise around him, but the perfect setting for a hard-boiled thriller. No love story. He had enough romantic drama going in his own mental storylines. As he stared at the glowing page, however, his hope of being distracted by his work was once again foiled. Chris found himself replaying the old tapes: scenes of the life he lived with Tim, memories of all his expectations, and of all his hopes and dreams.

He thought about just moving back to the States
and trying to break out on his own, but Chris was as stubborn as he was skeptical of his own chances. He wasn’t a quitter, and promised himself one more year just to see if things got any better. However, his hopes of meeting somebody new seemed to be getting slimmer as he was getting fatter; he’d really let himself go the last few months, and Tim’s constant acidic criticisms of his body weight, appearance, and even his face had left him with a completely skewed and horrendous picture of himself.

Although Chris was still a sensitive, bright, beautiful young man in the prime of his youth, he could see none of those things in himself. His self-image had been poisoned, and he sought the cure in all the wrong places
, including the dust at the bottom of the bag of potato chips that he was one step away from turning inside out and licking clean. He absolutely couldn’t avoid it:  he had to go to the grocery store.

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CHAPTER 2

C
hris would walk. He needed to lose every pound, burn every calorie he could, starting today. Costa Rica was hot, though. Really hot. He remembered it every time he stepped out the door and felt that humid, blast-furnace heat. On their shared landing of the condominium, of course, Mrs. Berliner was sweeping. Sweeping the landing. She was always sweeping the landing. Once, Chris had even caught her holding the broom in one hand and a glass in the other. The thing is, the glass was upside down. She had been listening through the door to Chris and Tim fighting.

“Oh Chrisss
.” she said, as if she was surprised to see him. Her German accent made her sound like a villain from a children’s cartoon. She was always wearing a stunningly-dated outfit: usually a pastel pantsuit with huge lapels, an ascot, and a pair of cat-eye sunglasses. Where on earth did one find cat-eye sunglasses in this day and age?

“Good morning, Mrs. Berliner.”

“Ohhh Chris, You look so goot,” she said, peering over her sunglasses.

“I’m sure,” he said. “Listen, I’m going out to the shop
. Do you and Herman need anything?”

“Oh no. Oh no
, no, no,” the German expatriate said, laughing as if the idea that Chris could help her was absurd.  “But listen, we were goink to have dinner Thursday with a lot of coworkers of Herman’s. We want to know if you and Timothy vould like to come by.”