What follows is an email written to the good friend who holds me in this powerful bear hug. We wrestled on Wednesday, 12 December, and what I write here is in response to that match.

Now, as for Wednesday, I've been thinking about it a lot, and I've come to this sad realization: I'm not a wrestler. Not a real wrestler anyway. I play. I pretend. I don't wrestle. I'm not aggressive or competitive enough to enjoy the kind of wrestling we've done in our two sessions. Don't get me wrong--I like wrestling you. But that's because I like you, not so much because I like the wrestling. Our sessions are great exercise (like you, I'm sore), but like exercise sessions, I find them physically rewarding and beneficial in the results while not all that enjoyable in the process.

So, I must admit to myself that my interest in wrestling has more to do with the erotic than I have wanted to believe. I came to this realization after puzzling over why our--your--pushing the limits didn't have the same effect it did in my match with T***. First, wrestling with you is much more intense; while the wrestling is friendly, it's never easy. The hair-pulling is a good example. T*** had his hands in my hair, and he pretended to use it to slam my head into the pillow turnbuckle or pull me back into a head scissors. Some pulling naturally came along with this play, but when all was said and done only a few stray strands were loosed in the combing. When you and I were in that standing position near the end of our session and you pulled my hair, I thought my scalp was going to pull free. And when I combed out after the shower, a great clump of hair choked up the comb. Who knows how much went down the drain before that!?!

Second, the notion of multiple submissions to a single hold. Again, near the end of our session, why didn't your not letting me up immediately after tapout or "I give" play out the same way it did with T***? I must admit that it's because I didn't enjoy the holds you had me in. T*** wouldn't let me out of my favorite holds. And with him, I was actually able to get him in some of my favorite holds and keep him under control after tapout. You said that you thought your chin bruise might have come from some vicious head scissors. Well, there were no vicious head scissors holds in our match; there was not a single head scissors at all this time except for the ones we posed for the camera. Again, this points to my being nothing more than a pretend wrestler. A selfish one at that. If I don't get my favorite holds, I don't enjoy the wrestling as much (or at all)--I hate that realization.

I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm for wrestling--that "smile." More importantly, I don't want to dampen our growing friendship. But I'm going to have to try to change my understanding of myself as a wrestler--or change my reasons for wrestling--if I'm going to continue to wrestle you. I don't want to get together and dread the wrestling just to get to the good conversation or the breaking bread together. I want the wrestling to continue to be good and enjoyable part of the friendship developing between us. Maybe we can find common ground, alternating approaches or styles with each fall. But as you say, you have no "easy" button, so I don't really think that would work.

I'm saddened and confused here, and I don't know what to do. I still want to think of myself as a real wrestler, as somebody who is into wrestling. And as somebody who is fun to wrestle. But the evidence points to my not being either of the first two, and because of that, I don't see how I can be the other.

It's now 5:00 in the morning, and I'm going back to bed. I think the need to write this note woke me up for the past couple of nights. I'm both glad and sorry to have written it.

This picture is of me working a friend over with my head scissors as we wrestle in a Motel 6. Today, however, I wrestle in another man's home. I'm trying to remember how often I've done that, and I'm thinking that it might be just one other time--an interesting situation, which I'll blog about when I get the time to continue going through my matches over the years.

Wrestling in a motel is always uncomfortable for me at some level. Usually the space isn't very good. I'm always conscious of the noise my opponent is making. (I'm a quiet wrestler.) And of course, two wrestlers meeting for a motel match seems so much akin to illicit lovers meeting for sex.

The man whose home I'll enter in a few hours is a good friend. We've been corresponding for several months now, and we've shared a great deal with each other. We've met to wrestle once--a Motel 6 match, which was fun but not an easy wrestling experience given the space we were in. So I'll go into his place and wrestle him there. He'll have the furniture moved to the walls to clear a space in the middle of the floor. He'll probably have a Christmas tree set up. We're likely to be harrassed by his dog. But most of the uncomfortable connotations of motel matches will be avoided, and both of us are looking forward to that. Although I'm worried about his daughter dropping by, I'm glad to know that his wife, who will be at work, is aware of what we're doing.

We'll wrestle for awhile to work up a sweat and to take off the edge of anticipation. Then we'll stop and, if I can get away from the house with the camera, take a few pictures, action shots that he needs for his Globalfight profile. Then we'll wrestle till we can't wrestle any more. After a shower and a bite to eat, we'll hug and part ways till the next time.

Such a wrestler as my friend is I would like to see every day instead of once every several weeks. We email often, but it would be so enriching for both of us to be able to be in each other's presence on a daily basis--to stop and talk by the water fountain, to take lunches together on the spur of the moment, to shake hands when that need for physical contact with another human being builds to a critical level.

But I don't have a friend like that in my life--except my wife and son, which is a different thing. And because I don't have this friend close, I live with an ever-present edge of tension that is only rarely relieved. This tension doesn't disrupt my life, but it ebbs and flows like the tide, sometimes just a faraway echo in my mind and body and sometimes an overpowering obsession. I've learned to live with it . . . because I must.

Life has been busy of late, and I haven't had much time to think about wrestling. I've been wrestling life in other ways. But this Wednesday, I'll travel an hour and a half (or so) to the house of a friend, and we'll wrestle around the Christmas tree. I'm looking forward to it. This friend and I have wrestled once before, and it was a hard-fought match of several falls in a space that was too little for two big men like us. We're over 500 pounds of man when tangled up together in some hold. I'm looking forward to it.

I've been please that a handful of fellows have stumbled across this blog and commented about it. Other than one comment from a person who found it to be not what he was expecting--I think he intended to post an advertisment for something, but I didn't go back and look--comments have been positive. Men have written that they can relate to my experiences, and I think that's really rewarding. I keep waiting for the man or woman who comments that I'm obviously some sick freak, but he or she hasn't arrived yet--or at least hasn't left a comment yet.

Thanks to everybody who reads these musings and struggles, especially those who leave a note behind.

I guess my life is normal-normal-normal-normal-weird-normal normal. What I mean is that I do normal stuff day by day and night by night, and then there's the wrestling. Take today for example. I spent most of it on a work-related project. When that was finished, I went to the office and emailed what I was working on. That was a little before 4:00.

By 5:00 I was in this man's room at the Comfort Inn—no, he wasn't wearing the mask, just his speedos. The room wasn't large, but the bed was and so we wrestled on it. Seeing as how we didn't have a lot of time, I stripped down and put on my trunks, and we got down to wrestling fairly quickly. It was a pleasant give-and-take light submission style, with basic pro holds—head scissors, headlock, bear hug, body scissors. I didn't keep track of how many submissions each of us squeezed out of the other, and I don't know if he did. After a long stretch of playful but intense falls in which submissions didn't necessarily guarantee release, so we had a nice continuity until we had a good sweat worked up. Then we stretched out on the bed together and talked—always one of my favorite things to do with my "opponents." When we had about 15 minutes before I had to leave, we wrestled that out. During the second series of falls, he got a little playful with me, getting me in holds like a head scissors (my favorite) and working me up toward and erection. I might have let him work it all the way to ejaculation—I had that kind of experience with boyhood friends—but I stopped him. Gently, of course.

By 6: 45 I was eating supper with my son and by 7:10 I dropped him off at a birthday party. Then I went to the grocery store and bought a pint of Ben & Jerry's "Chubby Hubby." (Already eaten.) And now I'm sitting and watching some TV and writing my blog.

I have that pleasant soreness that comes after some fun wrestling. My neck's a little sore after being cranked by a good head scissors and a good full nelson. And my left arm is sore—my friend was fond of, and good at, the chicken-wing hammerlock. He worked it on me almost every time he got me in a head scissors.

So, now another wrestling match is over, and I'm happy and comfortable.

This is me caught in the head scissors of a good friend from just outside Washington, DC.

I just had a birthday, one of those -9 birthdays. The day was quiet and more-or-less comfortable--no fireworks and no meltdowns. So, it was just fine.

I was thinking about friends during the day. A couple of them contacted me electronically to wish me well. But both of them are from out of town, and only on rare occasions are they physically with me. Those friends actually present in my life are colleagues at work and siblings at church. While a couple of these friendships are rich, none are that soul-deep friendship that I long for.

I wonder sometimes if it isn't this wrestling obsession that prevents local friendships from developing into the true friendships that are so sought after. I imagine a friendship in which I can tell my friend everything about me, but I can't do that--not yet, at least--with any of the people who are with me or somehow in contact with me on a daily or weekly basis. And so I walk around with this secret hidden, desiring to share it with somebody but unable to do so. I hold back a part of me, and I wonder if they sense it. Perhaps one or two of them would be close friends but feel some mystery in me that they can't quite ignore or accept.

A few of my online friends, wrestlers like me who feel, I think, a similar longing for friendship, are truly good friends. But our physical absence one from another is the stumbling block we face. We share our secret interest, our secret desire, but we're unable to shake hands or hug or to break bread or go to a movie together. And so these friendships necessarily fall short of what I want--and probably short of what they want as well.

I've said this before: maybe the kind of friendship I long for isn't possible in an adult life filled with family and work and bills to pay. I don't want to believe that. I don't believe that. But at this point, I have no proof to suggest otherwise, only theories and intuitions.

And so I wrestle with growing older, with the absence of friendship (or with the presence of friendship that isn't all that I believe it can be), with my interest in wrestling and all the baggage that entails. And I hold onto the hope that someday some barrier will be removed--be that barrier an internal wall that prevents a friend from knowing me fully or an external geography that separates--and suddenly friendship, rich and rewarding, will be mine and my friend's.

I'm getting better and getting more and more in the mood for wrestling. Missing October's matches was tough, but I might be able to pick up a couple of those in February when I go to Louisville. I hope to wrestle my nearly local friend before that!

A Joke . . . Or Not

A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him.

He asked, "What are all those clocks?"

St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock.

Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move."

"Oh," said the man, "whose clock is that?"

"That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."

"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"

St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life."

"Where's President Bush's clock?" asked the man.

"Bush's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."

A funny thing, this. A thing more frighteningly true than our nation will admit. I think our lies, our national sins, from the current president downward in the socio-political structure and backward through time, must raise a mighty wind in Heaven.

I have to wonder about my fan. How much of what I do is real and how much a performance? I wrestle with life more and more as I grow older, perhaps in an effort to remain alive in all the senses of that word. But any false steps, false smiles, set the hands on my clock to whirling. How many things in life do I claim to feel the correct way about and yet don't really feel that way? Do I really care for the poor and ignorant? Do I really care about those caught up in violence and addiction? I hope I do. I want to believe that I do, but that's not the same as actually doing.

These are aggressive questions and to wrestle with them is to keep open the possibility that I am "actually doing," that I am actively living and caring.

Just some thoughts brought on, perhaps, by a gray day outside my office window.