Assistant Managing Editor Bess Winter:
“Why haven’t we had more fiction about extremely online fitness addicts?” is not something I’d ever asked myself until I’d read “I’m Stronger Than the Romans,” but it’s a question that haunts me, now. The ubiquitous Liver King, Kayla Itsines and her cult of high-ponytailed HIIT femininity, lovelorn bodybuilder and steroid abuser Rich Piana: these pixel-powered fitness gurus, and the people who follow them, are the stuff of Greek tragedy. Or, if you prefer your classical references Roman, bread and circuses. Parker Wilson’s growing body of work (no pun intended) about athletics and queerness is one to watch.
Listen to Parker Wilson read “I’m Stronger Than the Romans”:
I’m Stronger Than the Romans
This body is built from YouTube tutorials. These menisci aren’t ancient and no doubt far from Jurassic. They were built with the help of fiber optics. You think a caveman could do fifty burpees? Get real. I drank a protein shake and did sixty, easy. I learned my plyometric moves from a guy on Instagram who studied the body in the abstract through three-dimensional reconstructions of ACLs and LCLs, then said do these little jumps like this and, like magic, you’ll be able to do more little jumps. I’ve worked my way up to two hours of little jumps every day.
My doctor told me the back was made for quadrupeds. Well, doc, because of TikTok, I can walk upright, and I roll my back out with a foam pad made from popcorned petrol at a factory in Singapore. My brain would be nothing without its microplastics. What, you think the Romans could do fifty seconds of pulse-squats, back-to-back? Think again. They’d be lucky to make it to the Colosseum’s nosebleed section on a bowl of blood pudding.
I’m only getting stronger with every pixel I ingest. You don’t get glutes like these with an unstable Wi-Fi connection. People say to me, You don’t see the Spartans swinging kettlebells, do you? See the band of Thebes sweat through boomerang Pilates? I said, That’s right. And that’s why they’ll never break a six-minute mile. They couldn’t tell the difference between a hashtag and a zigzag. Just imagine how much tighter Jefferson’s jawline would be if he could have googled mewing. Instead he was off riding horses bareback to cure his diarrhea. How does something like that make it into the annals of history, anyway? I’ve found the best cure for the runs is about two hours of doomscrolling interspersed with reverse sumo squats, then you can get back to the mewing, back to being the pinnacle of evolution, like me.
Parker Wilson is a writer and editor living in Manhattan who exercises more than he writes. He is a recent MFA graduate and spends his free time running in Central Park and losing pickleball games. He has work published or soon to be published in Bruiser, Bristol Noir, MiniMag, Defenestration, and MIDLVLMAG, among others.
