The Pilgrims had lots of interesting personal names that suggested characteristics and actions: Hope, Patience, Increase and so on. I was reading a book on history and learned that William Brewster, one of the leaders of the Pilgrims that settled Plymouth, had two sons: Love Brewster and Wrestling Brewster. I'd be interested in knowing more about what that latter name meant to him.

Returning to the summer of 1996, I have one more story to tell. I've mentioned Luke a time or two in this blog. He and I had been in touch for a long time through the wrestling rooms on AOL. We'd chatted for hours and hours, and we'd done a lot of cyberwrestling. Finally in August we were set up a face-to-face meeting and a wrestling match. We were both excited, but for me, at least, the long-anticipated event turned out to be something less than what I had hoped.

My match with J--the attitude of it mostly--had rung my bell a little bit. Again, it was the best actualy wrestling I'd done to that point (all of three matches), but it was the worst personal experience to that point as well. I'm not a competitive man; nor do I ever even fantasize about being mean and tough, much less act that way in real life. So the attitude J brought to the mat (and into my house) had put a damper on the joy I was feeling to be at long last exploring my lifelong wrestling interest.

Add to this the fact that my family had been away from me on vacation, and I was missing them. Add to this the fact that I drove several hours to make the evening match Luke and I had planned.

Other factors played a part as well. As our match drew closer, I learned that the man I'd known as Luke was actually R. And while he had the same size and interests as Luke, R looked different from Luke. The imagination is a powerful thing, and the anonymous venue of cyberspace can allow a good imagination to run wild. Over a period of time, I'd developed such a strong mental image of Luke--based, of course, on his own description of himself--that I found it nearly impossible to shift gears and accept R as the same person.

I'd told myself ever since starting this online exploration of wrestling that it was all about the wrestling and not about the men. My disappointment that R didn't match the fantasy image I had of Luke threw me into a state of confusion. I wasn't supposed to be considering looks, much less be disappointed by them. And although I couldn't really face it at the time, I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that some level of physical attaction existed both as part of and apart from the wrestling. Had I allowed myself to think about it, this could have suggested to me that I was bisexual or even homosexual. I wasn't ready for such suggestions.

These things and the sheer level of anticipation--almost always prelude to a letdown--combined to sabotage our meeting.

We began at Applebees and then went back to my motel. I'd already moved some furniture around, so we started in wrestling. I'm the head scissors guy, and he loves the bear hug. We traded these holds and had a generally good time wrestling. Ultimately our talks between falls lasted longer than the falls themselves, but maybe this was good, as I was getting to know R and letting Luke go somewhat.

We met again the next day for lunch. I was already checked out of the motel, so Rick suggested that we go back to his place and wrestle some. I'm sorry to say that I made up some lame excuse about some work-related emergency that required me to leave town and head home. We had a good lunch and a good conversation, and then I hit the road to drive several hours for another overnight stay and then met my family at their vacation spot the next day.

R wasn't the only person I disappointed that trip. After a couple of days with my family, I was supposed to meet AB, J and another guy in a motel not far from my home. We had a tag-team match planned. But I couldn't do it. I drove home from the vacation spot, spent a couple of hours at the house and then headed out to make the planned match. But about 1/3 of the way there, I stopped on the side of the road and sat there thinking--or, perhaps, not thinking. Telling myself I was too tired from all the traveling to go the rest of the way, wrestle and drive back home, I turned the car around and headed back.

In an IM chat with J that evening or the next day, I learned that AB was angry that I didn't show. I can't blame him. And I'm sorry to say that I haven't heard from him since. I let my online relationship with J fade as quickly as I could, for obvious reasons.

That's enough wrestling, I thought, and that seemed to be the end of it. I'd lived the fantasy a little bit, and I thought I could leave it at that. But seven months later, I found myself on the road and at it again.

My relationship with R changed a good bit after my trip to meet him--from what my relationship with Luke had been, I mean. R and I kept in touch, although neither as constantly nor as intimately as Luke and I. About a year and a half after our match in his city, we met in a little town in between our two homes and had ourselves a fine afternoon of wrestling. And I hope that one day we'll get that opportunity again.

But I still look for Luke in every wrestler I meet.

Working over a big man with a head scissors. This guy is so much fun to wrestle. He's got great size and skill, but he's gentle and instructive. I've learned a lot from him. He's also courageous, fighting ill ness and injury to keep coming back to the mat. This shot is from our fourth match, and I can hardly wait for the fifth.




More on my wrestling history--including matches with this fellow--coming soon.

Today at the gym I saw a co-worker--the guy from another department, whom I've mentioned before--working out on the weights. I'd just started my walk in another part of the gym when I saw him and decided by the end of the first lap to go down to the weights and begin my workout there. Actually, that's what I'd planned to do and then forgot as soon as I walked in the front door of the place.

Anyway, I finished a lap, grabbed my glasses from the locker where I'd stored my stuff and went back downstairs to the weight area. I got off a "Hello," but that was about it. I was still doing reps when he left the area and went somewhere else.

Oh well, I thought and finished with the weights. When I started back toward the stairs leading up to the track, I looked and there he was walking a lap himself. I went on up, and put my glasses back in the locker and got out my mp3 player.

Just at that moment he came by and spoke. I joined him for a rather slow walk through several laps. We talked about this and that--work, doctors, weight, exercise. I was just about to introduce the idea of wrestling as an exercise idea for two big fellows who need more of a cardio workout than the walking gives when he was finished with his laps.

Darn, I thought. I almost got the suggestion out. I put my headphones on, picked up the pace and walked a couple of miles. Then I ran about a half mile, an activity that isn't friendly to my old knees.

Maybe another time, he and I can pick up our conversation where we left off. I have no idea if he would be interested at all in wrestling, but I know that to lose the weight, he's going to have to get that heart rate up more than his walking is doing. Seems to me that a couple of wrestling sessions a week--even if these began with only three or four falls in a fifteen-minute session--would do us both a lot of good.

Artwork by drumbear@aol.com

On a rainy Sunday afternoon a few days after my match with B, I met J at Applebee's. He and I had been talking online for some period of time. I was a little hesitant about him, but I was excited about the possibility of a third wrestling experience. I went against my better judgment and made the meeting at Applebee's, took him home and wrestled him.

I'd done better than with B as far as hosting the match went. I'd straigtened up a room in the basement and laid out some padding that gave us lots of room to wrestle in.

I didn't like J all that much. He was the youngest guy I'd met, although after more than 10 years, I don't remember how young. In his 20s, I think. At around 210 or so, he was the lightest guy I'd wrestled too. He seemed like a rich kid, kind of spoiled and cocky. If I could have disappeared from Applebee's and avoided spending any more time with him than I had to, I probably would have. But here we were, meeting as we planned, and I took him to the house.

We stripped down--he to gym shorts, I to my no-fly colored briefs--and we hit the mat.

I quickly learned another thing about him that I didn't like. He had a trashy mouth, full of insults and bad language that just came out in a stream--and mostly for no reason.

Now, I know that a lot of guys like trash talk when wrestling, whether it's foul or playful. I let 'em talk, if they must, but it doesn't do a thing for me. I like a little bit of verbal challenge, like "Come on, now, give it up" or simply "You give?" But on the whole I wrestle quietly and prefer that my opponent do the same. I like to hear heavy breathing and grunting. I've wrestled some verbal guys that I dearly love, but I always hope some happy medium between his desire for talk and my desire for quiet will be found without either of us having to say anything about it.

Returning to J, I must say, however, that the wrestling we did was more real and exciting than anything I'd done to that point. We went at it pretty hard, wrestling several submission falls--he won most of them--over the course of an hour or so. Again, memory fails me to some extent, but I remember working him into this one hold to which he submitted. We began the fall on our knees, and when he dove low at my waist, I pitched forward and put my weight on his back, his head at my crotch, my chest weighing down on his lower back. As he tried to press upward, I opened my legs and caught his head between my thighs and locked on a head scissors. Then I wrapped my arms around his waist and cinched in a bear hug. Both holds were tight. He struggled for a while but ultimately could do nothing but submit.

Again, this wrestling was the best I'd done in my limited experience, but the trash talk and the whole spirit he brought to the match had wounded me in a way. The worst result of this was that the following week when I traveled to meet my longtime friend Luke--a wrestling experience I'd been anticipating for a long time--I wasn't excited about it. J's bad attitude put a damper on my enthusiasm, and because of that my meeting with Luke, while satifying on a personal level, suffered on a wrestling level. Strange as it might sound, I got through the match with Luke--which wasn't how I wanted our match to turn out--and then didn't look for any wrestling for a good while after that.

In the latter part of summer 1996, I began to make plans for my second, third and fourth wrestling experiences. Seven months had passed since my first experience with D. I'd continued an online friendship with Luke--a lot of chat along with a good bit of cyberwrestling with him. Through various online experiences, I was beginning to define what I was into and not into and learning to spot the real folks and the fakes on AOL.

About this time I met B, my first "local" contact, who lived in a town just a short drive from me. We arranged to meet at Applebee's one afternoon when my family was out of town for a few days. As we ate lunch together, he unfolded the kind of story that I'd suspected was out there.

B was in his 50s at the time, but he looked younger. He stood around 5'11" and weighed maybe in the 220s or 230s. Just right! He'd been working out with weights for some time and had a powerful body. He was into wrestling, but his interests tended to be toward finishing holds such as the figure-4 leglock. He was also training in one of the martial arts to get more knowledge of working over pressure points and such. If I'm remembering rightly, he won some kind of tournament in Atlanta within a year or two after we met.

B had been married to a woman not too long before this, and he and she had a couple of children together. And during that life he'd been a preacher. His pulpit had been in a Baptist church or in some other Southern evangelical denomination. And from that pulpit, he said, he had preached many a sermon against homosexuality. But as it often seems to happen in relation to such homophobic behavior, he discovered or accepted--through wrestling or some other means--that he was, in fact, a homosexual.

When I knew B during that brief period in 1996, he'd left his family (or they'd left him), but I'm not sure how much time had passed since this event. He did, I think, have some kind of relationship with his children--or was trying to reestablish one. And he was experiencing a relationship with another man, although I don't remember if it was his first or how committed it was at that time.

After he told me the story over lunch, we went back to my house to wrestle a bit. I'd fixed up a place near the downstairs hearth, but it wasn't much good. The space wasn't big, and the stones of the hearth were dangerous. I went upstairs to change into the colored no-fly briefs I used for wrestling, and B stayed downstairs to change. I remember coming down the stairs and seeing him waiting there in his trunks. He looked great. Only, he had on his tennis shoes, which I didn't understand but didn't question. We got a feel for each other, traded some holds, tried out some holds we'd always imagined trying (head scissors for me, of course) and generally rolled around a bit. Not a terribly satisfying wrestling experience, but the story beforehand had made the time worthwhile.

For a while I saw a lot of B in the online wrestling news. I think he participated in a couple of the big gay wrestling events that take place in Florida and Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. I downloaded a couple of pictures of him and still have them on a disk somewhere. But I haven't seen anything of him in a long time now. As far as I can tell, he's not on either of the wrestling directories I'm most familiar with. None of my friends mention him when they talk about those with whom they've been chatting or wrestling. Ten years is a long time, and much can happen to a person.

Most of the time, I'm certain that I'm not a homosexual. Most of the time, I'm also certain that I'm not overwhelmingly heterosexual either. I'm something other than either, and my otherness seems in a constant state of fluidity . . . and a constant state of secrecy as far as my family is concerned. Whenever I'm trying to work out the logistics for a match or I nearly get caught with some compromising materials on my computer screen, I think of B. I wonder where he is, of course, but I also wonder at the courage it must have taken the homophobic family man and preacher either to reveal to all that he was homosexual or to live through whatever catastrophic event outed him.