Big J walked through the putrid streets of Chinatown, the nauseating stench of dead cats and chickens blended obscenely with the cheap perfume of slanty eyed transvestite hookers. And every few feet a choking cloud of carbon monoxide drenched cigarette smoke exhaled by the busted faces of oriental slaves who spent twenty hours a day slaving over the slop known as Chinese Food and the other four playing Mahjong and picking the lice out of their pubes. In the midst of all this colourful confusion, Big J saw it in a store front window. A man's blonde wig; medium length and parted to the side with a hint of sideburn. Big J entered the shop and was met by a toothless gook who looked about a hundred and ten years old. He wanted fifty bucks for the wig and Big J countered with ten. After some loud bickering the old man said twenty and the two men shook hands. Big J walked back out into the mean streets of Chinatown with a lilt in his step. Excitedly, he entered the Dragon's Chef Authentic Mandarin Cuisine restaurant and stole into the Men's Room. The rancid odor of decades old urine didn't bother him as clumsily pulled his new prize out of it's plain brown wrapping and placed it upon his head. He looked into the mirror and froze. Tom Platz was looking back.
Big J wasn't always so big. As a child Big J-or Jonathan, as he was then known- was neither here nor there. Neither bully nor victim. A nobody who slid through through cracks. Teachers forgot his name and girls didn't know he existed. When he was fourteen all that changed. He discovered a rusty old set of weights as he played at the town dump. He dragged it home to his basement and began instinctively pressing the barbell up and down over his head, and curling it like his dad's prison friends used to talk about. He saved his paper route money and soon purchased a copy of Joe Weider's Bodybuilding System from the local bookstore. He added more exercises to his repetoire of muscle pumping movements: barbell rows, bench presses, flyes, crunches, triceps extensions and Squats. While his buddies at school seemed to focus on bench pressing and curling, Jonathan found he responded quickly to the squats. His thighs bulged bigger with every leg workout, and soon his friends were having to lift the barbell and rest it on Jonathan's shoulders. His upper body development was mediocre at best, yet his legs, or "quads" as he was soon calling them were exceptional. Jonathan changed his name to Big J and devoted his life to bodybuilding. He did it all: the gyms, the muscle mags, the supplements; the eventual introduction to orals and the graduation to the needle. His legs blew up like tree trunks and stretched the limit of his pants.
Then he found himself in the city. It looked promising at first. But then plans fell apart like houses of cards in that unforgiving wind called Reality. First he bombed in a couple of contests. The plans to own a gym crumpled. The hopes of owning a supplement store were dashed. Big J found himself hustling a couple of quick bucks in men's rooms in the back of porn theaters. A setback he called it. Hard times became Big J's companions. He was 25 then 35 then 40 but swore he felt like18. It wasn't over. He needed an angle, he told himself. And he found it. That day. In Chinatown. He found it.
The Tom Platz Wig.
