The Tales of Orange Roughy, Roughly -
Dan Duchaine's slightly fictionalized version based on his time with Denise -
"Okay, before I tell you about the worst, I gotta tell you the middle one, which was worse than just bad. This happened about ten years ago, during one summer in Venice when a bunch of amateur bodybuilders were all dieting for their various contests. And for some weird reason, most of the supermarkets were selling this fresh white fish called orange roughy, with seemingly no fat in it (more on this later), very cheap, less than two dollars a pound. Chicken and turkey were both double in price.
My friend Gail ate at least two pounds of orange roughy a day, along with rice and lettuce. She kept trying to tell me that there was something weird about her diet, but for some reason, I wasn’t listening closely, but we (notice the plural) were about to find out how weird.
Near the back door at Gold’s in Venice was THE mirror. Every gym has one. The mirror that had the tiniest bit of flattering distortion, and the natural light hit the spot just so, so all the precontest bodybuilders would show off in front of it. And of course, all the gym members would gather around behind the posing bodybuilder, looking in the mirror, too. So one day, Gail was there at the mirror. Gail was a lousy bodybuilder—narrow shoulders, wide hips, never-could-get-cut legs. But she had outstanding abs. Killer abs. The perfect six-pack. You could place a quarter in her abs, and she could hold it there above her navel in that vertical cut. Gail would always throw one ab pose in at the end of a workout, which always ended with ab work, to show off and impress all the newbies in the gym. Right hand behind her head, left hand hiking her T-shirt up to below her tits. Gym shorts rolled below the navel. Left leg out, off to the side. Crunched down hard. The classic ab shot.
If, when she crunched the ab shot, all you heard was the fart sound, I would’ve never remembered it. If it were only that fishy smell when she broke wind, I wouldn’t have remembered it. No, it was worse. A small crowd was gathered around, and she crunched the ab shot. As farts go, it wasn’t terribly loud. And as fart smells go, it wasn’t terribly rank, but usually only my two cats could generate that kind of fishy fart. No, what made this fart memorable was the totally unexpected small stream of undigested orange roughy fish oil dripping down the back of her right leg from under her pant leg. I came to the rescue. Some bystander yelled, “Yo, your steroid shot is leaking.” If only... “Gail, take my sweatshirt.” “I’m not cold,” she said. And I whispered into her ear: “Gail, you just blew a wet fart down the back of your leg. Wipe it up, tie the sweatshirt around your waist, and walk away. I’ll stand behind you.” And we did. As we walked away, she said, “I told you something was weird. At least I wasn’t in bed this time.” Gail stayed away from the mirror for a while. And switched to chicken."
BeefHeavyWeight's Version -
"Plain and simple. Early 90's. 1st room of Golds Gym , Venice. Soon to be IFBB pro Denise Rutkowski is training for the USA to be held in Santa Monica. She finishes her workout and decides to start an impromptu posing exhibit for the camera of the late schmoe/musclemag columnist Steve Neece. She strips down to her hotskins lycra outfit and starts hitting some compulsary poses for the camera and a small crowd of onlookers including me gather around her by the open air fenced portion of the room. She gets around to hitting a very intense front ab shot , grimaces, farts and BANG!!!! Out leaks what looked to be a half gallon of smelly butt water that looked like salmon oil. And yes it smelled like eggs and farts. Many acted like they didnt notice but she knew what happened. She put her clown pants back on in a hurry and off she went.
You see.....back in the late 80's and early 90's the California trend of dieting on a fish called orange Roughy was the big craze in Venice. It started in 88 when the Olympia was in LA. British great Brian Buchanin was into eating 5 plus pounds of this high protein fish per day. And so it caught on like a wild fire in Venice. And yes...it had a bad side effect of causing a leaky and smelly oily butt water to drip out of your anus if you moved the wrong way. But boy did it build muscle. Anyway...true story. Maybe that is why she retired after one olympia showing."
