Wrestling in the Spirit

I always thought of myself as a spiritual person. I could feel that so strong in nature and with friends (although, sadly, not so often in church) and when I was playing or listening to music. Part of this feeling of spirituality was a decent prayer life. I was consistent and serious in my prayers, and I tried to keep them alive by not praying by rote or habit.

But more than a decade of education that took much of my non-physical energy (and much physical energy as well) wore away my sense of spirituality. I don't know if it did so by not leaving enough energy to focus on the spiritual or by leading me into spirit-numbing doubt. Possibly it did both. And my prayer life suffered as my connection to my spiritual being weakened. I found myself slipping into prayer as mindless repetition performed as a duty. Such prayer was so ineffective that I woke and worked and played and slept without any conscious prayer at all.

I'm beginning to recover my spirituality to some degree, but my prayer life has yet to be much affected by this recovery. But something happened this morning that might, if I can hold on to it, reawaken me to the efficacy of prayer.

I was up early and in my favorite local park walking and running before sunrise. About halfway through my workout, the sun cleared the mountains to the east. I had a little less than two laps to go when I noticed a young man on the park's grassy knoll. He wore a dark red short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans that had not faded. His brown hair was down over his ears and a fashion that struck me as very 1970. He stood with his shoes in his hand and stared at the sunrise. He moved forward toward the edge of the hill and stared at the sunrise. He crouched on his calves and stared at the sunrise. All the while moving forward until he was at the point where the knoll turns downward and falls away in a hill toward a small pond and the lower parking lot. Here he sat down. He sat there with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

I'm not good at intruding on people's solitude. Even though I felt this young man was in some kind of distress, I didn't make any special effort to come nearer to him, letting myself fade downward along the paths to the parking lot. I got in my car, started the engine and swung around toward the exit.

But I stopped at a point where I could see this young man through the trees, see him where he sat there facing the sunrise. I could think of all sorts of things that might be troubling him--a death in the family, a great decision to be made, the loss of a girlfriend or boy friend. It could be anything.

And then I started to pray, and I tried to do so in earnest, with an open spirit that would allow my prayer to go outward instead of just circling around inside my skull or remaining squeezed inside my heart. I prayed for this young man's comfort, for God or an angel to be close to him, close enough that he could feel the presence.

Just then, as I was praying, a woman walking her dog--she could've been in her 20s or her 40s--left the path and approached the young man dog first. The young man reached out and appeared to put his hand on the dog's head, and the woman stood there a leash apart from the the two of them. She seemed to be talking to the young man, but I was too far away to say for sure.

I thought this was good. A dog to break through to a troubled heart. I wondered if the young man and woman knew each other. I wondered if they were strangers. I thought her much braver than I, especially if she didn't know him. I thought her smart to lead with the dog.

I thought her an answer to prayer. And maybe an answer--or the beginning of one--to my prayer problems.

Next Wrestling Events

After a summer without wrestling (my last match was in May), I've made a couple of good new contacts. One fellow is from St. Louis, and we've been communicating on and off for a couple of months now. I'm hoping to meet him in his town toward the end of October. More on that later.

I've met another online wrestler just in the last few days, and we've already struck up an interesting acquaintance. And we have a match scheduled--Friday, 5 October--in his town, about an hour-and-a-half drive from me. Our interests in wrestling are similar, but we have one big difference: although I haven't wrestled all that much, I've been wrestling for over 10 years now; he's a novice, as far as the physical act goes, but if he's anything like I was, he's experienced in his mind. I'm going to try and keep aware of his newness, helping him into this great experience.

Next: More of Antaeus

Despite the facts that I have this strange obsession with wrestling and that this seems--from time to time, at least--to suggest my having a different sexuality than any that would be strictly or loosely called "normal," I'm a relatively regular 48-year-old man. I have family--immediate and extended. I have an extensive but not a fancy education. I have a career I love and in which I struggle to go through the normal steps of progressing "up the ladder." I generally like people, and they seem, generally, to like me.

This week I'm losing a friend. Actually, I think I lost him a long time ago, but this week he's moving away. Having lost him before really losing him doesn't mean, however, that we've not been friendly. We have. It's just that the depth of friendship we might have had never developed, and when it didn't, it stopped growing and progressing altogether. So, we've been friends but more of the acquaintance side of this reality than on the intimate side.

Sure, I always wanted to wrestle him. He's thick and strong--at least 275 pounds, I'd say--and his coloring is such that he'd look beautiful in a pair of red wrestling trunks. And it's true that I've met few men in my life that I just feel like pouncing on and holding (wrestling or otherwise). I've always suspected that he would be interested in me this way too, if certain restrictions and taboos were done away with.

That aside, I always thought that we were kindred in a lot of other ways. We have similar educational experiences in our fields. We have philosophical and spiritual similarities. We have families.

Not long after we met, we spent a year having lunch together almost every Wednesday. These lunches ran long, as we ate (something we both love to do) and talked about this and that and everything else. (We even talked about wrestling on more than one occasion.) I had him on my calendar for infinity, and I thought he had me on his.

But then the lunches stopped. He couldn't make it one week. He couldn't make it the next week. Gradually I came to the realization that he couldn't--wouldn't--have lunch with me again. I took him off my calendar and told him, jokingly, that I was doing so. He said, jokingly, that he didn't want to "break up." But the lunches never resumed on a regular basis, and now, although we've seen each other at least once a week, it's been well over a year since we at lunch together and really talked.

He and his wife blame his background. As a child, he lived in a situation in which he moved ever three or four years and never formed deep friendships. Maybe that's the case. And yet he can talk a good game of friendship and make a good sermon about loving and caring for one another. So, I've never trusted this explanation.

But without accepting that that is the case, how am I to explain why "[w]e keep the wall between us as we go"? I have wanted to blame his wife, to believe that she was jealous of our friendship. Even though she and I have a friendship of our own, I don't completely discount the possibility of her being behind all this. I have wanted not to believe that he simply went far enough with me to discover that he didn't really like me or that he didn't really want to spend any more time with me. But without an explanation as to why everything stopped--more or less--what else am I to believe?

So, he's loading the truck today. I offered my help, but he never responded. Maybe he has professional help, maybe not. I'll see him one last time tomorrow, and then I expect that to be it unless, as he's not moving that far away, we meet by chance at some place or other. He says we'll keep in touch, say a lot of good places for lunch are along the way between where I live and where he's going. Past experience and my need to protect myself emotionally won't allow me to believe him.

I try to rationalize all this by telling myself that married adults, men who have wives and children, can't have the kinds of friendships we did when we were young or when we were not so young but still unmarried. Maybe that's the case. But it seems to me that I see friendships like this might have been--friendships between men in full-blown adulthood--among others with whom I'm acquainted. So that rationalization provides little comfort. And so ultimately, I think, the failure of this friendship to become what it might have been lies with the two of us as individuals. Maybe both didn't want it to an equal degree. Maybe neither was capable to an equal degree. We've come to lump-in-the-throat time--for the past we've had, for the past we didn't have, for the future we might have had, for the future we won't have.

Who was it who said--is it somewhere in Lewis Carroll?--something to the effect that it's a poor memory that works only backwards?

So, goodbye. Goodbye, friend.

Last night went well--not exactly according to plan but close enough. The city and its environs were slowed down by rain, so B was a little after 6:00 arriving. I'd already dragged furniture here and there around the motel room to clear a space by the window. I pulled the middle cover off the bed and spread it out for a mat. When Bill got there, we chatted for a few minutes, then changed and started wrestling. He's a great big man--6'2" & 275 or so, I'm guessing--and lots of fun to wrestle. I got caught in some good head and body scissors holds, and I caught him in a couple as well. I'm sure he's a much better wrestler than I, but he made sure that we stayed about even. I thank him for that.

In between falls, we talked a lot about a lot of things, from gay line-dancing to local food to accents to teaching. I enjoyed myself, and I think he did too.

A, the other wrestler for the evening's event, got caught in horrible traffic and was also late. When he got there, the three of us talked for almost an hour before any more wrestling took place. We talked politics and the local road system, among other things. B & A are entertaining together, and much of the time I just sat and listened and laughed.

A and I wrestled three falls. Like B, he worked at my pace and experience level and even let me win one submission from him. A is tough and fun to wrestle, and I think that if I were able to get with him on a regular basis, I'd be a much better wrestler very soon.

My falls with A were followed by a couple of falls between B & A. These two guys know each other and are obviously comfortable together. I enjoyed watching them wrestle, although it wasn't all that I expected. Because they know each other so well, they each know what the other likes. A lot of the action I couldn't see and didn't really need to see. I could tell what was going on, and while it held a certain level of excitement of them, it didn't do that much for me. So my longstanding fantasy of watching two other men wrestle right in front of me didn't turn out just like I'd hoped. But, then again, it isn't all about me, is it?

All in all, I had a great evening with these two new friends. They made me laugh, and they wrestled me in just the right way to allow me to feel like I could wrestle a little bit too. And they provided me with some much needed company in the middle of a lonely trip.

I'm traveling again, and that usually means that I'm wrestling again. Two fellows are coming by this evening. They're friends, and we're all getting together in my hotel room for some grappling. One will arrive at 6:00, the other at 7:00.

I've never had three together before. I'm looking forward to wrestling both of these guys--not at one time, I hope. I'm also thinking that I might have another fantasy fulfilled here, that of sitting close up and watching two big men--neither of which is me--wrestling.

About 6:00 this evening, I met up with an old friend made through wrestling, and we went back to his place. There we talked awhile before we changed into our wrestling trunks and put on boots--both of us in black trunks and black boots. Then, with our gear on, we watched some wrestling on video.

It was getting on toward 8:00 before we finally hit the mat. We wrestled around for fifteen minutes or so--pro style with some good solid holds but no pain. C---- knows I like head scissors, so he made sure that he put me in a couple and that I got him in a couple. He felt good, and I enjoyed the contact.

Then we just lay on the mat and talked about what it's like to be gay (C----) and straight (me) and grown men into wrestling.

Then we were both starving, so rather than do any more wrestling (having grown cold and stiff while talking) we headed out to eat. Over our meal we talked about books and writing and work. We're just normal guys and friends.

Not too long ago, I received a comment from somebody who stumbled across this blog and thought its title meant I would be trying to analyze my life--and nothing actually to do with wrestling. Obviously that was the wrong impression but an understandable mistake, as we often use wrestling as a metaphor for any struggles we have in our lives.

I'm going to keep writing about my wrestling here, but I'm also going to go more into my life. Here in this seemingly anonymous space I can write about the things that I can't write about in my other blog--wrestling (of course), but personal struggles with relationships, work, faith and so on.

As for the immediate "wrestling life," however, I'm on the road and meeting an old friend on the mat tomorrow evening. I'll write about it here when it's over.