I received word last night that an old friend of mine died last week. We were friends when I was in my late teens and early 20s and he was in his early 30s. I suppose that it was with him that I made the first of my few failed attempts (all have failed) at bringing my "Normal" life and my wrestling life together. This was in the years when the days of playful, seemingly innocent schoolyard wrestling were past. I knew that wrestling meant something more to me than a game of pick-up basketball or touch football. But this was also 15 years or so before the cloak of anonymity offered by the Internet made discussing wrestling—and eventually actually wrestling—with other men relatively easy. This friend was a bit smaller than I, but he was athletic and had a fairly good wrestler’s build—strong legs, that belly I associate with the old pros. He was easy to picture in trunks and boots, and when I needed an image for my fantasies, his was one that I often called upon.

This failed attempt I mentioned happened one week when his wife and children were out of town on vacation and I was staying with him at his house. We’d been out to eat late one evening, and as we were crossing the parking lot to his car for the ride home, he mentioned how tired he was. I blurted out—masked as a joke—that I’d hoped we could wrestle a couple of falls when we got home. He just laughed and said he wasn’t up for tangling with somebody my size.

That’s all there was to it. But I must’ve been serious, for the moment was one I remember to have been prefaced by a breathlessness of anticipation followed by a lightning-quick sting of disappointment. The attempt to be fully myself with this friend failed. Now I recall only one or two other instances in the 30 years since when I veered close to this moment with another friend—also failures. I know I should stop hoping that such a transcending of boundaries will take place, but from time to time words about wrestling a couple of falls hang on the tip of my tongue when I’m with certain good friends who suspect little or nothing about the sublime passions and ferocious obsessions that haunt my love for them.