A Show of Muscle : After months of training and dieting, 65 deeply tanned souls hand over $15 to be judged : for 90 seconds in the light of a high school auditorium. The light is strong.

Suzanne Hix dipped a finger in an old ricotta cheese container and extracted a homemade mixture of three parts pure maple syrup and one part peanut butter. She licked the goo and waited for an energy fix to juice her already jangled nerves.

In a few minutes, the 33-year-old Van Nuys mother would be on stage competing in her first body-building contest against some of the best bodies in the Valley.

While her husband, Peter, sat nervously in the audience with a telephoto lens on one knee and little Petey, 4, on the other, Hix was getting ready to put her rejuvenated body on public display.

After her son was born, she says, “I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, ‘Things can only go downhill from now on. I better start doing something.’ I hated aerobics, so I wrote my brother-in-law in Chicago and he sent me a 35-page letter on exercises to do in a gym.”

Six months ago, Hix decided to go into competitive body building. She practically dropped out of family life but achieved the results she wanted. Her sleek, tightly strung body, devoid of fat after intense dieting and muscle training, was at her command.

On orders from trainer Ray Storti, she had eliminated protein and sodium from her diet for the last three weeks. Her skin had molded itself to muscle and her veins became were standing out like blue highways on a road map.

Hix, slender and attractive, was among 65 contestants, 15 of them women, who paid a $15 entry fee to take part in the eighth Golden Valley Physique Classic at John Burroughs Auditorium in Burbank. As contests go, a veteran body builder said, “This is one of the best local shows around, but Mr. America it’s not.” Still, competitors such as Hix had spent weeks taking pain and discipline seriously and learning all the nutritional techno-talk.

“The diet was especially grueling,” Hix said. “Carbo loading. Carbo depleting. I had to cut out everything you could possibly enjoy in life. I didn’t eat with my family. They were on their own. Training was really tough. I train at Gold’s Gym. You can’t be a weenie there. You’ve got to put out. Two solid hours of body building every day. An hour on the bike. A half-hour tanning. But I peaked perfectly.”

Hix meant that her quest for body beautiful was timed to end on the day of the contest. But until Storti offered to be her trainer a few weeks ago, she never thought she’d be on schedule.

“I weighed 120 1/2 pounds,” she said. “I wasn’t able to lose any more weight. I had given up all hope of making the 114 1/2-pound (lightweight division) limit. But Ray found out I was eating too many complex carbohydrates. In three weeks, I wound up losing 8 1/2 pounds, mostly water. “

Although the finals weren’t held until 6:30 p.m., the contestants had to arrive at the auditorium by 9 a.m. to go through prejudging. It’s called prejudging because the winners were picked then, but not announced to anyone until the evening competition, a standard practice at body-building contests. So a contestant had only the morning session in which to sway the seven judges; the evening performance was only for show.

When Hix and her family arrived at Burroughs Auditorium that morning, she went backstage to the area designated as the “pump room” and warmed up with the other contestants, men and women. Muscles and veins were pumped up in light workouts. Then skin was coated with a heavy layer of oil to accentuate the rippling flesh. A sign warned contestants: Caution--oil up on canvas only. Contestants favored Baby Oil, Wesson Oil and Keri Lotion. Nobody fessed up to using 10W-40.

Because oil will mat hair down, all contestants, even men, had shaved their torsos. Most of them had also painted on their tans, using a stain called DyoDerm.

“You brush it on two days before, three or four coats,” said Rob Nebeker, a 19-year-old from Huntington Beach. “Problem is, you can’t shower, so you wind up washing your hair in the sink.”

As Hix inflated her muscles by doing isometrics, others hoisted barbells, watching their efforts in mirrors. In a scene the Greeks would have appreciated, the highly sculpted bikini-clad contestants glistened under florescent lights as they fine-tuned their bodies. But the reverie ended as Kent Kuehn entered the room.

“Let’s listen up,” said Kuehn, a large, foreboding body builder who was acting as stage manager for the contest. “I’ve got your instructions, and I’m going to go fast, but tonight I’ll go even faster. By 8:30 I want to be out of here and in a restaurant eating dinner. So put your oil on, your briefs on and your numbers on your right-hand side.

“Better put on two coats of oil. I want you to shine. There’re two dead spots on stage. The lights are hotter in the middle than on the ends. If you don’t have enough oil on, you’ll look flat.”

In the auditorium, a small audience, mostly friends and relatives of the body builders, watched the prejudging. Steve and Laurette Sigman of Simi Valley were there to cheer on friends from Mapes Gym.

Steve, a heavyweight body builder who placed third in a recent Mr. Ventura contest, was taking time off from competition because “it’s physically draining to compete, and the diet is hard to stick to--without fats, it’s just not satisfying.”

Laurette, taking photos from the seats, enjoyed having her husband on the sidelines. “Four days before a contest, I’ve got to shave his legs-- oooooooow !” she cringed. “I don’t even shave mine.”

Steve was sympathetic. “Wives and girlfriends have to be especially understanding,” he said. “When a contest comes around, you develop tunnel vision. All you see is the contest. That’s our only driving force. I know I become very selfish.”

“I’ll say,” Laurette interjected.

Wolf Whistles

She pointed her camera back to the contest. Groups of contestants paraded onto the bare stage according to their weight class and were given instructions by chief judge Steve Stover. They were graded on body symmetry, muscularity and presentation. Wolf whistles greeted the women.

“A quarter turn to the right, please,” Stover said to a lineup of six lightweight women, including Hix.

Peter Hix snapped a photo and Petey’s mouth dropped open in surprise as his mother flexed her stomach muscles.

“Will the three girls on my left change places with the three girls on my right,” Stover instructed. “Lats spread please . . . intercostals . . . side chest . . . one calf showing double biceps . . . “

Waiting to go on stage, middleweight women practiced a pose or helped one another slather on the oil. Kuehn hovered over them like a doting stage father. “Watch that gum, honey,” he said to a blonde. “Anybody need a towel? Anybody thirsty?” He lifted a plastic container. “This is Diet Rite soda with lemon.”

Ann Reynosa, a California State University, Los Angeles student from Sylmar, needed help with her bikini. Although she was competing for the first time, she knew enough body-building tricks to spray adhesive photo mount on her hips to keep the bikini high on her sides for a sleeker line. But she needed an adjustment, and Kuehn was happy to assist. He tugged on the strings behind her back and her bikini bottom rose a few inches.

“Not quite that tight,” Reynosa told him. After finishing what turned out to be a first-place performance, she was unhappy about her bikini. “The adhesive didn’t work,” she said. “I think I flashed the judges.” Then she went back to the pump room and rewarded herself with parts of a Snickers and Nestle’s almond (“I’m only allowed one candy bar,” she said, “but after dieting for so long, I had to have the taste of two, so I ate half of each.”)

In the audience, Aram Nersesian was sitting back, enjoying the morning performances. A former mechanical engineer, Nersesian is president of the Power Source, a prominent muscle shop in Burbank, and a sponsor of the contest. In 1979, Nersesian originated the Physique Classic, staging the first one at a Burbank Elks lodge. As he watched a lineup of nine middleweight men on stage, he expressed satisfaction with the quality of contestants.

No Embarrassment

“Nobody is going to embarrass himself,” said Nersesian, a former Mr. America and Mr. California. “Sometimes in a contest, at least one guy will be embarrassingly bad, like he walked in off the street. But look at those guys up there. The worst is the sixth one from the left. He’s not totally developed yet, but compared to the average guy on the street he looks great.”

Although he was able to relax during the morning session, Nersesian had a jumble of responsibilities at night, the most nerve-wracking of which was to direct the show. Connected to his subordinates by a head-set walkie-talkie, Nersesian stood in the wings and coordinated the lighting and music technicians. The stage was dressed with yellow mums and a large banner. About 1,200 fans filled the auditorium. Suzanne Hix was in the pump room getting energized on maple syrup and peanut butter and noting, “There seems to be a lot of tension backstage.”

Out front, the tension was being broken by the appearance of the “mystery poser.” As the lights came up slowly and steam rose dramatically off the stage, Dennis Vero kneeled with his back to the audience, a dark cape hiding his body. Then, accompanied by the music from “2001,” he unfurled his 6-foot-8, 185-pound frame and revealed--the world’s wimpiest body builder. Wearing glasses and a loose-fitting brief, the balding Vero broke up the crowd with a comic posing routine that had been choreographed by Nersesian’s wife, Debi.

When Vero exited to thunderous applause, Nersesian expected the real show to go as well. But it didn’t. The first 30 minutes got off to a rocky start. Unlike the morning session, the evening show featured 90-second routines set to music. Each contestant brought his own cassette, which was supposed to be ready to play the song at the punch of a button. But nobody checked the tapes. So the music either didn’t play or played too soon or not soon enough.

The audience squirmed when Rob Nebeker, waiting for the music to begin, remained frozen like a statue for an embarrassing 30 seconds. He finally began posing without the music, which finally jolted through the speakers halfway through his routine. He was cheered for his plucky attitude.

Boos for the Cues

But when the foul-ups kept happening with subsequent contestants, the crowd began to boo. Emcees Paraquat Kelly, a disc jockey, and actress/stunt woman Spice Williams were losing control, bringing an unrepentant Nersesian out to the podium.

“I’ve got the best music system money can buy,” he lectured the crowd. “It isn’t our fault these (contestants) didn’t cue their music. They were supposed to.” After things finally began to run smoothly, Kelly told the crowd, somewhat sheepishly, “We’ve got it together, huh?”

The crowd was ultimately convinced when a 26-year-old middleweight named Julio Maldonado was awarded the trophy as the overall winner in the men’s novice division. It was a popular and obvious decision even to an inexperienced eye. Maldonado’s dark complexion highlighted muscles that were popping through nearly translucent skin, and every fiber in his upper torso stood out when he did a pose called the crab. No one could match his build.

Maldonado’s victory stoked the fans and touched off chants of “Julio!” But the display of affection seemed a little excessive, even for a body-building crowd. Maldonado later explained that as a Los Angeles city firefighter, he had felt obligated to invite 65 of his colleagues as well as 40 or 50 relatives. They were all happy to see that his diet--three pounds of fish every day for three weeks--had put muscles, not scales, on his body.

At intermission, while Kelly and Williams were sailing Frisbees into the audience, Suzanne Hix was stretching out in a hallway, awaiting show time. Her husband and son were sitting second row, center. When his mother finally ran on stage and flowed through her routine, Petey got off his father’s knee, stood up and clapped.

And when she won first place, he had found a new role model. Muscle Mom.