These days I fall asleep more easily than I have at any point in my adult life. We're talking minutes, sometimes even seconds, I think. Fifteen years ago, I'd lie awake at night for an hour or more before falling asleep. Maybe it's my age. Maybe it's the work I do now. Maybe it's something else.

But the sleep pattern after that isn't ideal. When I initially fall asleep, I'll be out for two or three hours, and then I wake up. Sometimes I have to pee. Sometimes I have to take some heartburn meds. Sometimes I just wake up for no apparent reason. Usually I don't have much of a problem going back to sleep, but the remainder of the night I'll be up and down every hour or so, which gets annoying. Sometimes, however, I'm up for an hour or two in the deep watches of the night.

What do I do when I'm awake? Most times I just lie there and wait for the return of sleep. But sometimes I read or watch TV. I discovered recently that ESPN-Classic has AWA Wrestling on from 1:00-2:00 in the morning. These are television shows from the 1980s, and while they aren't as good as show from 10, 20 or 30 years earlier, they're far better than what's on these days.

I didn't mean to write about that kind of wrestling in this post.

I don't think that I'm particularly troubled by anything. But then again. . . . Love (and the absence thereof) and death (and the looming nature thereof) and sex (and the absence thereof) and sexuality (and the fluid nature thereof) and taxes (and the taxing nature thereof). Rock-and-roll and wrestling. Work. The mind that should write but won't or can't.

I want to write more here. I need to write more here. And not just about wrestling as wrestling but about wrestling as life.

And so, I'm going to write a series of sketches--about people I know and people I've imagined, about situations that I find myself in or imagine myself in or witness others finding themselves in (or being in without realizing), about dreams and dreams, about my life and the lives of others, about wrestling I've done and wrestling I've imagined, about things I believe and things I don't believe and things in the vast middle between these two.

I doubt that I have many readers here, but if you read and would like to contribute a comment, please do. If you would like for me to post something for you, send it to me at wrestling-life@hotmail.com.

Rarely does it fail that when I get a little downtime from work and life my mind turns to wrestling. I can spend hours thinking, writing and surfing wrestling. What I can't do, of course, is spend hours wrestling. Those opportunities come few and far between, but I tend to enjoy them when they come along.



I recently received a note from a bodybuilder/wrestler that I've been aware of for awhile now. He looks like he'd be fun to wrestle, but I hesitate to contact him. Something tells me that he's just out for himself and what he likes. I don't mind that if it happens that what I'm interested in becomes a consideration as well. I don't know if that would be the case here. So I'll think about it.



Meanwhile, I've been thinking about a former friend that I never got a chance to wrestle. We had a conversation about wrestling one day at lunch, but it never led to our considering actual wrestling with each other. Of course, I thought about it a lot, but I don't know that he ever did. I want to say that he did, but I don't know. Anyway I came across a couple of pictures that got me thinking of him. He's the guy facing the camera here, and I think that my former friend decked out in a pair of black trunks would look a lot like this. Unfortunately, the guy with his back to the camera doesn't look anything like me, so I don't get that easy picture of myself wrestling my big friend.



But I do get the opportunity to see a hint of my favorite hold being applied to this stand-in of my imagined opponent. Again, the man going for the head scissors here doesn't look much like me at all, but I can easily imagine that the big man about to go down in the hold is the guy I wanted so much to wrestle and never did. As I've said here before, I'm sure, I have several men in my life that I'd like to strip down and wrestle. If we were kids together, a good backyard or pool match would be more likely than not when we are together. But as we become adults, regardless of our interests, the notion of doing something like this--of wrestling for fun and the pleasure of the friendly competition--becomes so remote as to exist only in a memory or a dream.

This past week I took an annual trip to Wicked City. The place put on its best face, as usual. It smiles and tells us of its history, its great deeds, its love of justice and truth. I'm sure you know the place.



This is a wrestler who lives there. A friend of mine. While his mask appears to make him dark and dangerous, he is, unlike Wicked City, at heart good and gracious. We didn't wrestle this trip. We had our reasons, chief of which, I think, was that neither of us is particularly interested in wrestling just now. We'll have another opportunity to get together in June. Maybe we'll wrestle, maybe not.



He recently got involved in the entertainment industry--a gay porn company that wanted to feature wrestling and fighting in its films. Of course, he got burned by the company, which is to be expected when dealing with entertainment folk. Anyway, we watched one of these films that he'd been involved with, as the writer of the screenplay and choreographer of the wrestling scenes. This was porn, as I say, so the sex was the object, not the wrestling. Generally nasty stuff, and while I appreciated sharing my friend's enthusiasm for his project (the wrestling, not the sex, which he doesn't seem to like watching either), I don't have any interest in such films for their intended purpose.



I'll stick to wrestling . . . if I ever get back to it.

Strange how the world can change without our knowing it. On 15 February 2008, I was traveling with a group of colleagues to a conference near Nashville, Tennessee. Sometime during that day, some few hundred miles away, one of my childhood heroes, Johnny Weaver, died. And I didn't know it until today. I did a search on YouTube, looking for any new Weaver videos that might have been posted recently, and a memorial video came up.

I never met Weaver, of course, but I hold so many pictures of him in my mind. Pictures from the wrestling matches on TV through the late '60s, the '70s and the early '80s. Pictures of him wrestling live in high school gyms near where I grew up.

Weaver was my grandfather's favorite wrestler, and possibly for that reason he was mine as well.

http://johnnyweaver.blogspot.com/

Yesterday, I wrestled with this man in the black singlet, the third time we've wrestled. As usual, our conversations between falls and over lunch were great. And I think we both enjoyed the wrestling, even though our time on the mat was shorter than either of us wanted. If I counted correctly, we wrestled some five or six falls to submission, most of them fairly short.

The last time we wrestled, which was 12 December, I left thinking that I wasn't much of a wrestler, that I didn't even enjoy wrestling. M had punished me every fall with takedowns into powerful holds that I no skill either to escape from or counter. So, I submitted. And submitted. And submitted again.

M and I talked about that match via email quite a bit and came to some understandings, and I came up with the idea to wear my wrestling mask in an effort to allow me to forget fears of my hair being pulled and to instill in me, perhaps, a little more attitude and aggression.

So, yesterday, as I drove to his place, I kept telling myself to get a good workout. I told myself to stop playing and wrestle.

When I arrived, we each dressed out in the same gear as in the picture above. Except that I wore my mask. It worked. I didn't worry about my hair. The mask stayed on reasonably well. And I wrestled harder than I had before. These elements came together--with, I suspect, a little easing up from M (although I couldn't really tell if he was easing up or not) to make our match much more even than the one in December.

Here's what I remember:

First fall--This one actually went on the longest, and both of us were fairly winded when it was over. M called this one a draw when he had me on my back well off the mat. I had him in a body scissors, but given the position I was in, I didn't bring much power to bear on it. He was on his knees and between my legs, but he loomed over me and was mostly in control. I somehow kept him from pressing his advantage to a submission hold, and he pulled out of the weak scissors and moved away.

Second fall--from a standing position, he fairly quickly had me down and in a headlock. Or it might have been closer to a chinlock. Anyway, a bone in his forearm pressed painfully hard agains the right side of my jawbone, and I submitted pretty quickly. My jaw is sore today.

Third fall--I think we began this one on our knees. After a few attempts to lock up, I reached through his defenses and took him in a pretty good headlock. I rolled him down to his back and cinched it tight. I don't think he was in pain, but he wasn't really going anywhere, so after a few unsuccessful attempts to break the hold, he tapped out.

Fourth fall--If I'm remembering correctly, this one when much like the second one and ended with a similar hold--and a similar pain.

Fifth fall--This one began standing, I think, and seemed as if it would end like the third fall. I think I took him down and into the same headlock, and I thought I had him again. This time, however, he surprised me. Just as he has me in the picture above, I had him. But he worked his right hand under my chin and pushed backwards. When let go of the clinch with my right hand, holding him in a one-armed headlock and trying to push his hand off my chin, he caught my right hand in his left and kept pushing both my arm and chin backwards. I still held the headlock for a few breaths and struggled to regain my balance and leverage, but it was not to be. He was quick! Before I knew what hit me, his legs had exploded upwards and pulled me back into a powerful head scissors. My head was sideways between his knees, my face toward his powerful calves and locked ankles. I love a good head scissors, and this was a good one! He could have held me like that for a long time and the forced me into submission. But he put so much into the hold that I thought I felt my bottom teeth grinding against one another and shifting out of place! I tapped out pretty quickly.

Sixth and final fall--I think he took me down from a standing position and was working me into another of his tough headlocks. The mask allowed me not to worry about my hair and pull out. I got him off balance, I think, and tried to get him in a head scissors. But the angle of attack was bad and his arm half blocked me, so I couldn't lock it in. He pulled free and pushed me back, but somehow in the process left his head open and somehow I locked on one of the best head scissors holds I'd ever applied in the heat of a fall. I had him cleanly, and I had him good--he flat on his back and trapped, I on my left side with his jawline and chin tucked neatly into the crook of my right knee and my right foot locked tightly behind my left calf. I pulled his left arm toward me, pinned it under my side, and he wasn't going anywhere. In just a few moments, he tapped out.
More than my jaw is sore today!

This powerhouse is working me over! How can I apply a good scissors hold when my legs are cramping up after something like this?