I'm sitting in Starbucks--attached to Barnes & Noble--on the north side of Atlanta. Knowing this city a little bit, I'm guessing that some wrestlers are not far away from me here. Atlanta seems to have a lot of them listed in the sites. But I'm not able to meet anybody on this trip, as I'm traveling with a friend. This friend, however, would be a great one to wrestle with, and it was difficult to sleep in the same room with him last night and not say, "How 'bout we wrestle a couple of falls before we turn in?" I tried to work just the word "wrestling" into our conversation throughout the evening--not as easy as it sounds--but got no reaction. I feel certain that it's not one of his interests. Still, he'll always remain one of my dream matches.
At some point, I'll return to the chronicle of my wrestling history, but today I'll just say that I'm missing a friend that I had locally--not in Atlanta, which I'm just visiting, but at home. He contacted me through this blog a couple of years ago, and we got together several times afterward. Last winter, however, after we'd been meeting to wreste for just over a year, we decided to explore a little more eroticism in the match. I'd done this before with other wrestlers, but I'd forgotten how I felt the first time one of my matches took on a more erotic tone. It kind of freaked me out for awhile. I wish I hadn't forgotten this. Like I said, my friend and I decided to let the eroticism of wrestling play out a in this particular match. We mistakenly let it go too far. He didn't seem terribly freaked out as we finished up the match and parted ways, but that was the last time I saw him. He has responded to an email or two since hasn't done even that in several months.
I could kick myself for letting this happen. I should've known better. For years and years I'd wanted a local fried to wrestle. Not only was this guy a friend, he was just the kind of wrestler I enjoy wrestling--big and strong, interested in similar holds and types of matches, interested in similar questions about what wrestling meant to us and why.
Anyway, I wish we could get together again. When I sensed that our last match had made him uncomfortable, I hoped that he would eventually be back when he'd sorted things out a bit. I felt certain that he would, but he hasn't. Now I'm thinking that he probably won't be back.
