I felt inspired by the guy’s achievement. But what really struck me was that he was wearing glasses. They were distinctive; a little tinted. I associated glasses with intellectuals: teachers and priests. Yet here was Kurt Marnul lying on the bench with his tank-top shirt and tiny waist, an enormous chest, and this huge weight above his chest—and he had on glasses. I kept staring at the picture. How could someone who looked like a professor from the neck up be bench-pressing 190 kilos? That’s what I wrote in my essay. I read it out loud and was pleased when I got a good laugh. But I came away fascinated that a man could be both smart and powerful.
Along with my new interest in girls, I was more conscious of my body. I was beginning to pay close attention to sports: looking at athletes, how they worked out, how they used their bodies. A year before, it meant nothing; now it meant everything.
As soon as school ended, my friends and I all made a beeline for the Thalersee. That was our big summer hangout; we’d swim and have mud fights and kick soccer balls around. I quickly started making friends among the boxers, wrestlers, and other athletes. The previous summer, I’d gotten to know one of the lifeguards, Willi Richter, who was in his twenties. He let me be his sidekick and help with his work. Willi was a good all-around athlete. When he wasn’t on duty, I’d tag along as he worked out. He had this whole routine of using the park as his gym, doing chin-ups on the trees, push-ups and squats in the dirt, running up the trails, and doing standing jumps. Once in a while he’d hit a bicep pose for me, and it would look great.
Willi was friends with a pair of brothers who were really well developed. One was in university and one was a little younger. They were lifters, bodybuilders, and the day I met them, they were practicing shot put. They asked if I wanted to try, and started teaching me the turns and steps. Then we went up to that tree where Willi was doing chin-ups again. All of a sudden he said, “Why don’t you try?” I barely could hold on because the branch was thick and you had to have really strong fingers. I managed one or two reps, and then I slipped off. Willi said, “You know, if you practice this the whole summer, I guarantee you will be able to do ten, which would be quite an accomplishment. And I bet your lats would grow a centimeter on each side.” By lats, he meant the back muscles just below the shoulder blades, the latissimi dorsi.
I thought, “Wow, that’s interesting, just from that one exercise.” And then we followed him up the hill through the rest of his routine. From then on, I did the exercises with him every day.
The summer before, Willi had taken me to the World Weight Lifting Championship in Vienna. We rode up in a car with a bunch of guys, a four-hour drive. The trip took longer than we thought, so we only we got there for the last event, which was the super-heavyweight lifters. The winner was an enormous Russian named Yuri Vlasov. There were thousands of people in the auditorium yelling and screaming after he pressed 190.5 kilos, or 420 pounds, over his head. The weight lifting was followed by a bodybuilding contest, Mr. World, and this was my first time seeing guys oiled up and pumped and posing, showing off their physiques. Afterward we got to go backstage and see Vlasov in person. I don’t know how we got in—maybe someone had a connection through the weight lifting club in Graz.
It was an adventure, and I had a great time, but at age thirteen, I didn’t think any of it had to do with me. A year later, though, everything was starting to register, and I realized I wanted to be strong and muscular. I’d just seen the movie Hercules and the Captive Women, which I’d loved. I was so impressed with the star’s body. “You know who that actor is, don’t you?” Willi said. “That’s Mr. Universe, Reg Park.” I told Willi about my essay in school. It turned out that he had actually been present when Kurt Marnul set the record in the bench press. “He’s a friend of mine,” Willi said.
A couple of days later, Willi announced, “Tonight Kurt Marnul is coming to the lake. You know, the guy that you saw in the picture?”
“Great!” I said. So I waited around with one of my classmates. We were swimming and having our usual mud fights when finally Marnul showed up with a beautiful girl.
He wore a tight T-shirt and dark slacks and those same tinted glasses. After changing clothes in the lifeguard’s shack, he came out in this tiny bathing suit. We were all flipping out. How unbelievable he looked! He was known for having gigantic deltoid and trapezius muscles, and sure enough, his shoulders were huge. And he had the small waist, the ridged abdominal muscles—the whole look.
Then the girl who was with him put on her bathing suit—a bikini—and she also looked stunning. We said hello and then just kind of hovered, watching while they swam.
Now I was definitely inspired. Marnul came to the lake all the time, it turned out, often with the most fantastic girls. He was nice to me and my friend Karl Gerstl because he knew he was our idol. Karl was a blond kid about my size and a couple of years older whom I’d introduced myself to one day after noticing that he had built up some muscle. “Do you work out?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I started with chin-ups and a hundred sit-ups a day, but I don’t know what else to do.” So I’d invited him to work out every day with Willi and me. Marnul would give us exercises.
Soon a few more men joined: friends of Willi’s and guys from the gym where Kurt worked out, all of them older than me. The oldest was a heavyset guy in his forties named Mui. He had been a professional wrestler in his heyday; now he just worked out with weights. Like Marnul, Mui was a bachelor. He lived on a government stipend and was a professional student at the university; a cool guy, very political and smart, who spoke fluent English. He played an essential role in our group because he translated the English and American muscle magazines as well as Playboy.
We always had girls around—girls who wanted to work out with us or just fool around. Europe was always far less puritanical than the United States. Dealing with the body was much more open—less hiding, less weirdness. It wasn’t unusual to see nude sunbathers in private areas of the lake. My friends would vacation at nudist colonies in Yugoslavia and France. It made them feel free. And with its hillsides, bushes, and trails, the Thalersee was a perfect playground for lovers. When I was ten or eleven, selling ice cream around the lake, I didn’t quite get why everyone was lying around on big blankets in the bushes, but by now I’d figured it out. Our group fantasy that summer was that we were living like gladiators. We were rolling back time, drinking pure water and red wine, eating meat, having women, running through the forest working out, and doing sports. Each week we’d build a big fire by the lake and make shish kebabs with tomatoes and onions and meat. We’d lie under the stars and turn the skewers in the flames until the food was just perfect.
The man who bought the meat for these feasts was Karl’s father, Fredi Gerstl. He was the only real brain in the bunch, a solidly built guy with thick glasses who seemed more like a friend than a dad. Fredi was a politician, and he and his wife ran the two biggest tobacco and magazine kiosks in Graz. He was head of the tobacco sellers’ association, but his main interest was helping young people. On Sundays he and his wife would put their boxer on a leash and walk around the lake, with Karl and me tagging along. You never knew what Fredi was going to come up with next. One minute he’d be talking about Cold War politics, and the next minute he’d tease us about not knowing anything yet about girls. He had been trained in opera, and sometimes he’d stand at the edge of the water and belt out an aria. The dog would howl in accompaniment, and Karl and I would get embarrassed and walk farther and farther behind him.