9 June 1932

Ed "Strangler" Lewis (trunks) vs. Dick Shikat (tights)

Part 2 of a 2-part match on YouTube

As my friend pointed out about my Saturday morning wrestling post, neither wrestler in the Royal/Angel match could manage a head scissors, my favorite hold. Here's a video that's somewhat older than the era to which I was referring. But it captures the ambience even better perhaps--and there's a good head scissors within the first five moves!

I miss Saturday morning wrestling on television. Throughout my childhood and up until the time I was in college, watching wrestling on the local NBC affiliate was a ritual with me. I didn't grow out of it, obviously; the programs themselves either disappeared or changed to something I no longer enjoyed.

I'm in my 50s, and, like I said, back in the late '60s and throughout the '70s I watched wrestling on a local channel. This was before the coming of cable TV, of the big promotions and, ultimately, the downfall of the wrestling I loved. The program came on at 11:00 every Saturday morning, not prime time. I remember how I could hardly wait for the cartoons to finish and the wrestling to begin. The matches were filmed in a regional television studio, not in a huge arena. Along one or two sides of the ring, a few benches of spectators watched; often they appeared to be a troop of Boy Scouts or a 4-H Club.

This wrestling--while filled with good guys and bad buys, faces and heels--had a certain innocence about it. In its small setting, described by the voices of familiar ringside announcers, the wrestling also had a certain intimacy about it. I sat on the edge of my seat, waiting for my favorite wrestlers and my favorite holds. Exciting stuff! When my favorite wrestler got somebody in my favorite hold--or when some wrestler got him in that hold--I pulled a pillow onto my lap and tried not to look all hot and bothered. Usually I was watching alone, so it didn't matter.

I can't stand today's TV wrestling. Even the local stuff that shows up on independent channels at 3:00 in the morning is just a cheap imitation of the big cable shows. I've discovered some of those old matches on YouTube, and it's to these that I turn on such a Saturday morning as this, when I'm more or less alone in the house and in need of some wrestling nostalgia.

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.

My last wrestling match was just over a month ago. It was a good one—the two pictures that made up my last entry are from that event. Whenever I have a fulfilling tussle like that, I’m okay to return home, where I don’t get to wrestle, with my wrestling desires satiated.

But then, after awhile, I can feel the need to hit the mat with another fellow and wrestle as long and hard as we can. Even though it’s been only a few weeks since my last match, I’m feeling the need again. Because I have no ready opportunity to wrestle where I live, I’ll have to wait until somebody passes through—which almost never happens—or until I travel somewhere. In the meantime, I know I’ll be doing a lot of thinking about wrestling.

And so it was last night.

I drove from my town to a nearby town to work on a project with a couple of friends I hadn’t seen in awhile. They are husband and wife, and I have at various times had a crush on both of them. As I traveled an easy four-lane, I let my mind wander and wonder. I thought of friends that I have here at home, some that I see regularly and some not so regularly. I thought in particular of those male friends that I love and would love to hit the wrestling mat with. But that’s more easily fantasized than done. And I wondered if that desire of mine manifests itself as a barrier in our friendship. Do these friends sense a level of reserve in me—or even suspect, at some level , my desires—that keeps us from fully enjoying one another?

As I drove, I thought back to the day before and the late afternoon telephone call I received from one of my great wrestling friends. This man knows about my wrestling desires. He shares them. To a great extent, he understands. If he lived closer to me or I to him—in my experience, never the case that I’ve lived close to a wrestler I really connected with—would we share a friendship richer and more rewarding than I now experience with the good friends around me? Or would that friendship be too rich and rewarding, so much so that it would threaten the life I’ve constructed?

I suppose that between myself and this wrestling friend, who is gay, I also construct barriers. My reserve in his presence—and in the presence of others like him—is different. While I’m afraid to let my friends at home know about my wrestling because I fear their thinking me a freak of some sort, I’m afraid to be completely comfortable with my wrestling friends because I fear I might act on sexual tensions that our wrestling passion can so easily generate.

I see no way of being truly at ease in any company. And so I suppose the best thing is to enjoy my friends—non-wrestlers and wrestlers alike—to the fullest extent that I can.