Back in January of 2007, I blogged about a match I'd wrestled with Rick in late summer 1996. As I wrote then, various circumstances left me disappointed with this meeting. For one, I had ridiculously high expectations. After that summer, R and I remained in touch, and sometime later, we met again.

It was winter, and I'm thinking that it was, perhaps, January 1998. Both of us slipped away from our daily routines and drove a couple of hours to meet in the middle between where he lived and where I was in school. I was still new enough at wrestling that every match involved some new experience. The new thing when R and I met this time was that it was the middle of the day, so we had to get a motel room in which to wrestle.

We met in a parking lot, talked between our open windows for a few minutes and then picked out a motel. R had to go up to the desk and register for a room, and then he had to let me know where it was. This was long before I considered having a mobile telephone, so I sat in my car and watched him register. (I don't remember asking if he'd used his real name, if he'd paid cash or credit. I wonder about these things.) Then when he came out, I simply followed him around to the back side of the motel. I remember as I pulled out of the parking space that I could feel the desk clerk watching me pull out and follow R. I wondered what he thought was going on and what he might do about what he thought was going on. This stayed in the back of my mind the entire time and kept me somewhat on edge with the expectation of somebody coming to the door, perhaps especially of some law enforcement officer coming to the door.

Inside the room, we did the usual moving of furniture and spreading of the "mat." Then we changed. I'm sure I wore a pair of lowrise briefs, but I don't remember the color. R wore regular briefs.

This time R as he was without expecting him to be "Luke," the online persona I initially knew him as. And there in that room with R, I enjoyed the wrestling we did. My best recall--probably seriously flawed after more than 10 years--is that we wrestled about 10 falls and that I won six or seven of them. R might remember different results. For a long time, this match stayed so fresh in my memory that I could remember every submission hold, mine on him and his on me. But all that's gone now. The one thing about the wrestling that I remember with any clarity was one submission where I got R in what I think is called an "Iron Cross." That was cool.

The main good thing I remember about the day is that I felt our previous meeting had been redeemed. R and I could get together and wrestle as who we were, and "Luke" wasn't around. I felt that we reestablished something that day, even though we've fallen way way out of touch since then.

I'm glad to say that I'd like to wrestle him again one of these days. We live in the same basic region, so it's possible.