This picture is of me working a friend over with my head scissors as we wrestle in a Motel 6. Today, however, I wrestle in another man's home. I'm trying to remember how often I've done that, and I'm thinking that it might be just one other time--an interesting situation, which I'll blog about when I get the time to continue going through my matches over the years.

Wrestling in a motel is always uncomfortable for me at some level. Usually the space isn't very good. I'm always conscious of the noise my opponent is making. (I'm a quiet wrestler.) And of course, two wrestlers meeting for a motel match seems so much akin to illicit lovers meeting for sex.

The man whose home I'll enter in a few hours is a good friend. We've been corresponding for several months now, and we've shared a great deal with each other. We've met to wrestle once--a Motel 6 match, which was fun but not an easy wrestling experience given the space we were in. So I'll go into his place and wrestle him there. He'll have the furniture moved to the walls to clear a space in the middle of the floor. He'll probably have a Christmas tree set up. We're likely to be harrassed by his dog. But most of the uncomfortable connotations of motel matches will be avoided, and both of us are looking forward to that. Although I'm worried about his daughter dropping by, I'm glad to know that his wife, who will be at work, is aware of what we're doing.

We'll wrestle for awhile to work up a sweat and to take off the edge of anticipation. Then we'll stop and, if I can get away from the house with the camera, take a few pictures, action shots that he needs for his Globalfight profile. Then we'll wrestle till we can't wrestle any more. After a shower and a bite to eat, we'll hug and part ways till the next time.

Such a wrestler as my friend is I would like to see every day instead of once every several weeks. We email often, but it would be so enriching for both of us to be able to be in each other's presence on a daily basis--to stop and talk by the water fountain, to take lunches together on the spur of the moment, to shake hands when that need for physical contact with another human being builds to a critical level.

But I don't have a friend like that in my life--except my wife and son, which is a different thing. And because I don't have this friend close, I live with an ever-present edge of tension that is only rarely relieved. This tension doesn't disrupt my life, but it ebbs and flows like the tide, sometimes just a faraway echo in my mind and body and sometimes an overpowering obsession. I've learned to live with it . . . because I must.