I met him in the weight room. Freshman year of college. Steel racks. Wide windows framing New England Fall. Pale faces flushed with exertion. Boys becoming men. I was the strongest I’ve ever been. 5’11”, 185 pounds. And still, he was bigger, stronger. His slightly curly black hair pressed against his sweaty forehead. His chest flexed the fabric of his polyester workout shirt. I envied that. 

“Hi, I’m Evan,” he said, engulfing my hand in his and holding tight — tight. “Are you on the hockey team?” 

“Yeah,” I responded, then waited. It was a stupid question. My shirt had “Wesleyan Hockey” and a logo on the front. “Do you play any sports?” 

“No, I just like to lift,” he said. His eyes were glued to mine. 

“Well, I’ll see you around, buddy,” he said.  

And he did. It was my first year on the university’s hockey team, and I was rehabbing my second and third shoulder surgeries from the summer prior. Which meant I was in the weight room often. And so was Evan. When I entered the athletics center, he would typically find me before I found him. Stride toward me, broad shoulders, swaggering. He’d smile wide to greet me, ask me how my day was, and extend his hand. And I’d extend mine to meet his. Then he’d hold it—hard, always a couple of seconds too long, as if he was trying to tell me something. I wasn’t sure what. I found Evan to be friendly, overly so. I slouched my shoulders after I saw him, the back of my neck sweaty. I struggled to articulate why. 

One day he came towards me, his chest puffed out further than ever. He told me he’d read the essay I published in the campus’s political magazine. It was an opinion piece about the government breaking its word with Indigenous tribes on a land deal back West, where I was from. I was tickled that someone other than the magazine’s editor, or my mom, had read it.  

“You know, I’m a conservative,” he said. “I don’t agree with anything you argued, but I thought it was well-written.” 

“Oh, uh, thanks,” I said. Then Evan asked me to spot him.  

I watched as he benched double what I could. His body shook with exertion as he pushed up on the bar, my hands hovering just underneath it. I could feel the heat of his breath. It smelled rank. He easily managed the lift on his own. I suspected he had ulterior motives for asking me to spot him. That he was showing off.   

At the time, women in the gym largely kept to the cardio equipment, while men took to the weights. The other hockey players and I were there for a utilitarian reason — to become stronger and better at hockey. But there were other factors at play. The weight room was a place of male spectacle, more so than anywhere else on campus. Within its dank confines, we both competed with and tried to impress each other with how much we could lift. This dynamic cultivated a strange blend of admiration and envy, affection and animosity. All centered around one’s body. And throughout my teenage years and into college, hockey coaches — many of them father figures in my life — regularly told me I wasn’t “big enough,” that I had to “gain weight.”  

I ate until I was sick to my stomach. A dozen eggs for breakfast. Extra servings of meat. Protein shakes before bed, sometimes a couple more eggs thrown in raw.  

My body struggled to comply. Burned off whatever calories I consumed. Whatever I lifted was insufficient. I was insufficient. This insecurity was heightened whenever I heaved a barbell above my body in moves that required my entire exertion simply to lift the weight, utterly vulnerable to the other men, their judgements.  

It’s no surprise that such tension could manifest. It was no coincidence that this was where Evan found me. 

*

Soon, I started seeing Evan everywhere, around every corner on our already claustrophobic campus. The dining hall. Foss Hill. The hallways between classes. He’d charge up to me, unfailingly, as if on a rubber band. I don’t know if the handshakes changed or just my perception of them. How he would grab—tight—for a second longer each time. As if trying to tell me something. 

Perhaps I’m reading it wrong, I thought. I stayed polite, friendly. Within several weeks after we’d met, he friended me on Facebook. I hesitated before responding. Were we friends? I saw him often. Thinking about him made me feel vaguely nauseous, but I didn’t want to acknowledge that. For the same reason, I didn’t tell my then-girlfriend Maile about him. I accepted the request. 

The next night, the messages began.   

Oct. 26, 2015 

“Buddy……” 

“Yo” 

“Would you be willing to get a Brazilian wax with me?” 

“No.” 

“Hahah just a straight, nonchalant, ‘no.’ Thanks bro!” 

“r u sure? I have coupons?” 

Oct. 27, 2015 

Him: Buddy????” 

 “No.” 

“Honestly man, I’m just trying to retire with my girl, my husky, and in a house in Norway…you feel me sage?” 

*

In face-to-face interactions, he persistently invited me over to his room to hang out, despite my continued rejections. The next time I ran into Evan in the campus center, I took my chance to address it in the presence of numerous passersby, thinking they would mitigate the potential for any explosive reactions. “Hey man, just so you know, I’m not interested,” I said. 

“You think I’m fucking gay?” he said. I was confused by the intense gap between my perception of his intentions and his denial. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. They hadn’t. 

“I mean… I don’t care if you are. It’s cool,” I said. “I just want to be friends is all.” 

“I’m the least-gay person you’ll ever meet,” he said. Then he strode off.  

The next time we crossed paths on campus, he ignored me, which was a relief. But his disinterest was fleeting. The messages kept coming — and so did the encounters. I started scanning the rooms I entered to see him, and if I did, I tried to duck out unnoticed. But I struggled to evade him.   

Oct. 29, 2015 

“Sage come to my dorm tonight?”  

 An hour later: “Ok way to hurt my feelings…..”  

Oct. 30, 2015  

“Dude…..” 

Oct. 31, 2015 

“way to break my heart again…..” 

Nov. 09, 2015 

“I respect you bro….” 

Nov. 10, 2015 

“Hey Buddy!” 

Nov. 22, 2015 

“I find it quite admirable that you are engaged in the Movember movement.” (This was something he’d gleaned from looking at my public profile. The whole hockey team was participating.) 

Nov. 26, 2015 

“Happy thanksgiving buddy!!!” 

“You too” 

*

Looking back, I have a hard time explaining why I responded and didn’t block him. However curt, I see that my message on Thanksgiving likely spurred him on. Steeped in the subculture of ice hockey, I struggled to distinguish aggression from affection. When a teammate goaded you into a fight in practice, it meant you were playing well enough to warrant his attention. A good firm whack with a stick behind a buddy’s knees was another way to say hello. 

And there was more to it than that: I grew increasingly worried about what he would do to me if I pissed him off. If I spurned him. I pretended nothing was amiss. 

I still had friends who made rape jokes, sometimes ones in which we would be each other’s victims. At the time, I considered such jokes boorish and crude. I didn’t make them myself but I tolerated when my friends did. I came from a world of boys in which they were commonplace, though my understanding of their harm was beginning to expand at the university, where I was an English Major often reading feminist and queer scholarship.  

Another reason: until Evan, I had never felt acutely threatened by sexual violence. I enjoyed the privilege of being a strong, male hockey player. I had been in serious physical confrontations with other men, but not sexual ones, at least on the surface. For all of us, presumably “straight,” rape jokes were a form of affection filtered through the most violent of language. This rupture of language was part of what created Evan in the first place.  

*

After Thanksgiving Break, some of my friends started to notice what was going on with Evan, and their response was unsurprising. They made similar unsavory jokes about him. “Don’t let him get you, Sage,” one of my friends said, laughing, after he saw us interact. “That guy is fucking obsessed.” 

“Fuck off,” I said, and punched him in the arm. I knew they were just trying to draw levity. But the jokes made me feel tense, achy. A broader feeling of spiraling. My stomached knotted up at the gym and campus center—the two places I most often encountered Evan. Though I continued pretending nothing was amiss, I started glancing behind my back while walking alone on campus at night, quickening my pace when I spotted any men I couldn’t easily identify. I discretely swiped away Evan’s Facebook message notifications on my phone when hanging out with Maile. I snapped at my friends for making inappropriate jokes. Even then, I knew my anger was at least partly misdirected. It was Evan I most wanted to shut up.

  

Meanwhile, the flood continued:  

Dec. 05, 2015 

“You are my little buddy” 

Dec. 08, 2015 

“You are my buddy” 

 Dec. 09, 2015 

“Hey buddy” 

“How’s studying going? 

“Bud” 

Dec. 13, 2015 

“hey buddy” 

“buddy?” 

Dec. 14, 2015 

A GIF of a chubby cat waiving its little paw. 

A GIF of a cat with a ball of yarn in its mouth, wagging its little tail. 

“U r ma little buddy” 

Then: A GIF of a dog crying with a broken heart throbbing.  

The dog still cries as I look back at the message, eight years later. 

My friend Julia lived down the hall from Evan in Clark Hall, a massive brick dormitory next to Olin Library. Julia was a tall, wide-smiled girl and a close friend. As more and more of my friends saw the way Evan behaved around me, he eventually became a subject of disdain, though we still didn’t talk about it in any kind of thoughtful way. 

“Why are you friends with that guy?” my friend Vabuk asked Julia one night. We were in her room with a smattering of friends late one weekend evening, eating snacks after the parties on Fountain Ave had wound down. 

“Oh, he’s just weird around guys,” she said. “He’s socially awkward.” 

I felt betrayed. But I also questioned myself further. Perhaps she was right, despite the increasing intensity of his messages. Perhaps he was just that—socially awkward. Harmless. Was I overreacting? I couldn’t quash the thought. 

So, I let it continue, though I began to mull reporting him to Campus Safety. My fear was two-fold: If I reported him, how would he respond? I’d seen the way he raised his voice when I first told him I wasn’t interested in him. If I took it a step further and told the authorities, would it push him? And also, would word get out? I was one of the hockey players. I was from Colorado. I was supposed to be tough—independent. For years, coaches and players had hardwired this into my bones.  

And beyond that, if I reported him, I was making it real. Winter break is quickly approaching, I thought. Back home, I would be safe. 

*

And yet, the messages continued. I read them but didn’t respond. I even stopped opening them, hoping he would see that I didn’t. Hoping they would stop.  

Dec. 17, 2015 

“You’re my buddy” 

Dec. 18, 2015 

The same GIF of a chubby cat waving its little paw.  

Dec. 19, 2015 

“Hey bud enjoy your break my man.” 

Dec. 23, 2015 

Again, the GIF of a cat lying on its back, as though waiting for its belly to be rubbed. 

Dec. 25, 2015 

“Soggy sage, I just wanted to wish you a very merry Christmas” 

Dec. 26, 2015 

“Sage” 

Eight hours later. 

“Sage” 

*

Home in Colorado, Evan’s words felt less ominous and more over-the-top. Funny, even. With distance, his menace became harder to remember. I could almost pretend he was a bad dream.  

Then they stopped.  

The day after Christmas was the last time he messaged me. And I spent the rest of winter break ignoring him. I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell my childhood friends. I shuffled it under. I skated at the local rink, churning ice beneath the cool, steel blades of my hockey skates. I stayed in the weight room, heaving iron against gravity.   

When the next semester started, I tried to avoid Evan. During the break, my fear had warped – now I hated him. Hated what he’d done to me.  

Though he’d stopped messaging, he still greeted me enthusiastically, tried to hold my hand in his. I stopped returning the handshake, but I hedged. What would happen if I spurned him completely? I offered my fist to bump. Once or twice, he grabbed my fist in his palm and held tight — tight. Eventually, he returned my fist bumps like normal, like a friend. A small victory, though my unease lingered. He was my shadow for the rest of the year.  

The boy who looked somewhat like me, but bigger.  

*

The next year, I moved into a “single.” It was the first time in my life that I lived without a roommate. My room was in Hewitt, a dorm next to the campus center. That fall I had a small “pre-game.” We packed the room, drinking PBR and Svedka from a shared plastic bottle. Solo cups littered my desk. September in Connecticut. People lounged on my single bed and spilled out the balcony. Warm. Buzzing. I was surrounded by my friends and felt the most at home I’d been on campus.  

And then he was there. 

Inside my room. Shirt stretched at the chest. His arm extended toward mine. I couldn’t slip out the back. I met his handshake and squeezed as hard as I could, nodding at him silently. Trying to hold my ground. I didn’t know what else to say. His gaze made me cold. The old feeling but worse. He knew where I slept. But for now, at least, there were too many people around for anything bad to happen.  

Fifteen minutes later, I grabbed my friend Niko and pulled him into the hall. My whole body sweated. The patterned carpet spun. The buzzing fluorescents, overly bright. 

“Dude, what the fuck?” 

“What’s up, man?” he said.  

“Why did you bring that guy here?” 

“Who? Evan? Should I not have brought him?” 

“No,” said, then paused, not wanting to explain everything. Not knowing how to, anyway. “I just…just don’t ever bring him here again.” 

Niko apologized and promised not to. Of course, it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t one of my close friends. He hadn’t known about the situation. My anger at him was, again, misplaced. But I couldn’t help but feel trespassed. Compromised. That night, I double-checked the bolt.  

*

In the end, life went on. Each day he didn’t show up at the door outside my room, I regained a sense of security. And at the beginning of my sophomore year, I quit the hockey team—a step away from the world of rape jokes and other bullshit—and tried to reinvent myself through academics and different social circles. 

That year on most weeknights, my best friend Vabuk would come over to “beer and chill” on the balcony outside my room. We’d sit in folding camp chairs drinking PBR until sunrise scarred horizon, listening to Ed Sheeran and Passenger songs on our phones and telling stories of home—he, Nepal, and me, the San Juans of southwest Colorado. We were both smart enough to get away with nights like this and still get good marks. And we loved the way booze blurred us. 

Some nights, we joined Jesse and Justin, who lived down the hall, on the balcony. Jesse was a soft-spoken redhead who rolled perfect spliffs that he shared with us on the balcony. Justin was well-muscled, and I knew him, funny enough, from the weight room. He lifted with some of the older hockey players. Both were openly gay.  

One evening we were all hanging out with B., a common acquaintance. He was a drummer, big into the campus’s music scene, one of those rich hipsters from New York City or Los Angeles that as a middle-class kid from the West, I almost universally scorned. B. looked like me, though he was a couple of inches shorter. Sandy blonde hair and Mediterranean skin. I offered everyone PBRs from my mini-fridge, and we sipped them as night settled in.  

“You’re not going to believe this,” B. blurted out when the conversation ebbed. “This guy is fucking psychopath.” 

He pulled out his phone and showed us text messages. And then he was there. Messages from Evan. I laughed uncomfortably. They were exactly like the ones he’d sent me. And it immediately clicked — Evan had a type. 

“It’s really creeping me out,” said B. “I’m not sure what to do.” 

“You know, you’re not special,” I said without thinking. My own intensity surprised me. “That guy did the same thing with me for the longest time.”  

B.’s eyes flashed at me in the dark. I could tell he was hurt. My reaction baffled me; I couldn’t explain it. Was it jealousy? Or perhaps something more insidious, the kind of thing that perpetuates Evan’s behavior in the first place: Because I had suffered in silence, I believed others should, too.  

I wanted to ignore everything about what had happened. The old feeling. A non-event.  

B.’s comment resurfaced it.  

“I’m not showing you because I think I’m special,” B. snapped at me. “Honestly, I’m scared.”  

“No, right,” I said, unable to backtrack. Normally on these nights, I kicked back in my camp chair and sprawled my legs out on the cement balcony, watching students carry too-heavy backpacks back to the dorm as the evening wore on. Now, though, my gaze was locked on B, who’d just done what I’d never been able to: talked openly and honestly about it. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” was all I could muster.  

“Wait, so this guy has done this to both of you!” said Justin, who’d quickly become engrossed in the texts Evan sent B., as if they were a summer novel. 

“Yeah, look,” I said. I pulled out my phone and passed it to the others. Evan’s messages to me stopped shortly before his messages to B. began.  

“This is really sick,” said Justin. “I can report him for you guys if you want.”  

“No…” B. said. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I’m serious,” said Justin. “This isn’t right. I got a kid expelled from my high school who wouldn’t leave me alone. I bet I can get this asshole kicked out, too.”  

“Well, I think he’s harmless,” I said, shoulders hunched like in those first moments after I ran into him on campus, when he wouldn’t let go of my hand. I vice-gripped my PBR can in my palm, nearly crushing the aluminum. “I mean, at least with me…nothing happened.” 

“No really,” said Justin. “This isn’t right. I can report him without getting either of you involved. Just say the word.” 

B. murmured something in response. Jesse lit a spliff, which we passed from hand to hand, touching paper to lips, the smoke swirling lazily around us in the dark. Spliffs were my favorite, especially ones with more tobacco than weed. I liked how the nicotine blunted the high, made my body feel hazy, and for the moment, not quite my own. The topic of conversation turned away.  

*

I never asked Justin to report him. I’m not sure if B. did, or if he was able to resolve the situation. We never spoke of it again. That night on the balcony was the last I talked of Evan with other men for years. 

As for Evan, I still saw him around campus. For a time, I fist-bumped him and murmured hello. Then one day, we stopped acknowledging each other altogether. Julia stayed friends with him, which I took as a personal offense, though I never told her this.  

It’s been nearly a decade since Evan. In that time, my memory of him has gained a surreality. Sometimes I return to the messages just so I don’t feel like I’m losing my mind. Ironically, what once felt ephemeral became the only record of his hounding I can return to. The messages are undisputable compared to the rest. Memories that slip.  

Today, I have a complicated relationship with the weight room. After I quit hockey, I stopped lifting for several years. I stayed active but no longer struggled against iron such a dank arena. My stomach softened. The definition of my muscles faded. Then, years later as an adult, I started again.  

Part of it was hockey. I’d returned to the sport. I started playing in a high-level men’s league and realized I was nearly as competitive as I used to be. I wanted to be good — strong. And part of it was vanity. I was in my late 20s, starting to feel my age. Backaches. Hangovers. Though I struggled to admit it to myself, I thought if I lifted enough weights, I might be able to regain some former form, or perhaps one even stronger. One who flexes the fabric of his shirt.  

And also, I missed it. Lifting weights is incredibly, beautifully simple. It’s you against iron, over and over. I can do it without thinking. One of the few such things I’ve found.   

Which was what I was doing on a Friday afternoon. I’d finished teaching a writing composition course at the University of Montana. Again, a fall day. The leaves of the non-native oaks breaking yellow in front of the Clark Fork River. I was finishing my fourth set of bench press. 155 pounds down and up ten times. It was still less than I used to lift, but a good day. I shook on the last two reps. Then I racked the bar. 

And then he was there. As if from nowhere. Not Evan, but a man. His hand outstretched. He had broad shoulders but wasn’t as tall as Evan. Black hair falling in a straight line. I was too surprised to know what to do. I met his fist.  

“Nice job, buddy,” he said, holding my gaze a second too long. “You’re looking strong.”  Then he nodded towards the weights behind me. It struck me that he had been watching me lift and I hadn’t noticed. A veiled compliment. But maybe I was reading it wrong.  

“Oh, thanks,” I said. Then clenched my jaw. I hoped he would drift on. I looked around to see if anyone noticed. They hadn’t, or were ignoring it. 

“Are you ok?” he said. Still there. A step closer than I would like. Or maybe I was imagining it. He must have noticed the flash of fear. Or perhaps my face was still flushed from my previous set.  

“Uh, it’s been a long week.” I uttered. A half-truth. I wanted to ignore him completely. I wanted to tell him to leave me alone.  

He grinned at me in a way I thought was greasy. “Just trying to pump it out before the weekend, huh?” 

I grunted. He waited a moment longer. Then: “Ok, well have a good lift man.” He extended his arm again. And again, I met his fist.  

Then he walked off.  

My sweat went cold, clammy. I was scared and angry. And frustrated I hadn’t been able to express myself. My head fogged again. I wanted to leave the gym without racking the weights, bike home, and bolt the door.  

But I didn’t. I finished the last set.  

Then, the rest of the routine. And I resolved to finish this essay. 

Lifting weights is a funny thing. Progress is measured in small increments of weight and gained through hundreds, if not thousands, of repetitions. And unlike a hockey game, it’s not something you can win. No matter how strong you are, there is always more weight to stack on the bar. There is always another rep to attempt. And if you do it right — push yourself, that is — your strength will always fail. But that’s not where the magic is. It’s in that moment when you strain against the weight, not sure you can lift it, and then, for a brief moment, you do.