Today I was walking at the gym during the lunch hour. From up on the elevated track that runs around the wall above the weights and exercise machines and ball courts, I was looking down on the folks working out below. I didn't have my mp3 player and was somewhat bored, so I was watching everybody else and listening to the country music radio station the staff had playing.

About the third lap, I noticed this guy walking on a treadmill. He was a big fellow, and my first thought was Good for you, guy. Get yourself in some shape and live longer. My second thought was Hey, that looks like W, a guy who works where I do but in a different department. I didn't have my glasses on, so I couldn't tell for sure, not for another couple of laps at least. Once the light played tricks on me, and I thought I saw, as I passed above and behind him, some golden brown hair on top of his head. No, that's not him, I thought. W wears his thinning dark hair trimmed close. Then, as I came around one side and could see a bit of profile, I felt fairly certain it was him. Not until he walked away, however, was I convinced. He has a distinctive walk, a posture that leans back somewhat, perhaps to counterbalance his belly.

W and I have been on a couple of projects together, but I don't know him that well. I do, however, have what I call a "wrestling crush" on him. I'd love to get him into a pair of wrestling trunks and get on the mat with him. He's roughly my height but a good bit younger and, I guessing, 50 pounds heavier. But he's shaped like one of the old-time wrestlers, and that's what caught my eye the first time I ever saw him. He's quite the bear.

These wrestling crushes have been the most difficult things to deal with over the years. I see a man or know a man whose shape and bearing resonates with my wrestling desires, a man whose body I'd like to see nearly naked and feel in contact with mine. And I can do nothing but obsess and fantacize. In the online environment, the men I meet come already interested in wrestling. The wouldn't be in the places I meet them if they weren't. But out in the real world, wrestling life is completely different. Asking a man to wrestle with you isn't like asking him to have lunch or shoot some hoops. On the one hand, television wrestling has made the notion of wrestling seem so stupid to most of us. On the other hand, our culture has become so paranoid about same-sex contact that wrestling--for most everybody beyond the teenage years--is seen as far beyond the limits of acceptable behavior. I've had--and I have--wrestling crushes on men who I'm almost certain would wrestle if the subject could ever be broached, but I've never found the courage to approach them. Some, I think, feel the same way I do about it, which makes it doubly difficult to give voice to the desire.

And so, W walks away from his treadmill, to the dressing room and then out into the world, and I keep walking 'round and 'round.