I'm guessing at the date of this next match, but I'm thinking it was October 1998, just a few months after my strange meeting in the choir room of a Methodist church in the South. This October match took place in the southern mountains, near where I was living at the time. On AOL, I'd come across this fellow from Texas. R and I enjoyed chatting online and emailing back and forth, and we really had a strong desire to wrestle each other. But as is often the case--almost always the case, the fact that almost half a country was between us, our getting together seemed unlikely. The match that ultimately developed from this contact was nearly as strange, in its way, as the church match.

At some point, R emailed me--or we talked on the telephone, as we used to do often--and said he was coming up near my area to see one of those big Bill Gaither singing extravaganzas. He would be close enough to come my way and get a motel room for the night where we could wrestle.

The October day finally arrived. So did he. And so did I.

We did some pretty good wrestling on the top of the king-sized bed in his room. I got to play around with my head scissors variations, and he got to do the holds he liked, which I don't remember right now. The only negative thing in the match was that he was a talker and constantly talking through the wrestling. He didn't trash-talk, for which I was glad, but he talked all the same. When he had me down in a headlock, for example, he was constantly saying stuff like, "Wanna rassle?"

Like the big guy from New Jersey that I'd wrestled in the spring and the choir director in the summer, R wanted to wrestle naked after we'd wrestled in our briefs for awhile. I'd become fairly comfortable with this (although as I write, I don't think I've wrestled naked since), so I had no problem with it.

But something different was present in this match. R had brought in a little TV with a VHS player. To my amazement, he had a video tape that was I-don't-know-how-many minutes of nothing but head scissors holds. Couple that with the heightened eroticism of wrestling naked, and I found myself in a new situation. Before when wrestling naked, I was either just trying to survive or afraid of getting caught. The nakedness never really seemed that much different in those cases from wrestling in briefs, and to my knowledge I never got a significant erection.

But again, this was different. At a crucial point, I had R in a figure-4 head scissors, and I sat there leaning back on my hands, his head caught between my thighs and calf and the TV full of head scissors right there in front of me. And suddenly--talk about your significant erections--my penis was hard between the back of R's head and my lower belly. The wrestlers wrestled on TV, head scissors after head scissors. The wrestlers wrestled on the motel bed, R shifting all around and struggling to get out of my head scissors. Too much stimulation!

For the first--and only--time, I ejaculated during a match. I couldn't stop it. And when it happened, I was stunned and embarrassed. I released the hold immediately and lay back, my face burning. R was unruffled. He came up and lay beside me and, mostly through body language, indicated that he now wanted me to jerk him off. I couldn't do it. I was finished. I apologized and got up to go clean myself off.

When I came back, I got dressed. Not wanting to run out on him, I took him out to Arby's for supper before I headed home.

It would be over a year before I could bring myself to wrestle again.

You'll find an awesome figure-4 head scissors at 7:22!

And the hold continues to dominate throughout parts 2 and 3!

I'm wrestling with some different things this morning. Over the weekend, a younger man (39) that I know drowned in a local river. At first, this is all that I knew. But the next morning in the newspaper, a brief front-page story provided more details. Apparently "Gerald" was on the side of the river opposite a campground. No mention was made of anybody's being with him on his side of the river. Several campers saw him wade into the water and start swimming their way. A couple of them reported that he seemed inebriated, which detail, because this was little more than conjecture based, I assume, on his behavior, I thought it rather tacky of the newspaper to print. But print it the paper did. Anyway, in the middle of the river, Gerald seemed to be struggling and began trying to make his way to a rock raised out of the water. He didn't make it. He called out for help and went down. No going once, going twice and gone the third time, as on TV. He went down, and that was it. A couple of the campers apparently jumped into the water, but when they got to the area where he disappeared, they couldn't find him.

The authorities drug the river for a time, but they were unsuccessful. Finally divers went in and found the body some 20-30 feet away from where Gerald was last seen. The current in that section of the river is gentle, and while it probably had little to do with his drowning, it was strong enough to float the dead body beneath an underwater rock ledge.

I know this drowned man's mother. She is completely devastated, which is understandable. She screams and cries and wants to die, apparently completely thoughtless of the husband and son and grandchildren she would leave behind. But this is the way of many people around whom I've grown up and lived. I don't call it ignorance or selfishness, although these must be in the mix somewhere. Maybe it's some long learned tradition in the vein of sack cloth and ashes and the wailing wall. Whatever its component parts and influences, at its most genuine it seems a witless abandonment of life and reason inspired by a simple and overwhelming grief. Sometimes it seems like a performance for the benefit—whatever that might be—of the pitcher of the fit, but not this time, I think. Hers is raw emotion devoid of reason and driven by grief in its most beast-like form. I shudder at it. Until the beast releases her and reason begins to make its way back into her soul, she is a thing that I can't deal with except to watch in horror.

I have children of my own, and if I should lose one of them I suspect that my grief would attack me in similar ways, although the outward signs of its grip might not be so freely and wildly expressed. What I might dread most of all is facing for years the realization that my child apparently died for nothing—a prey to drunkenness, perhaps, or some moment of "watch-this" machismo. If he should die in such a place and in such a way, I would, of course, prefer him to be in the act of trying to rescue somebody else or to be suddenly and unexpectedly overwhelmed by careless nature.

In late June 1998, I wrestled in the strangest setting ever. Although I can now recall another that rivals it, no other comes close. I was passing through one southern town on my way to another, and I had arranged an afternoon match with J, a fellow I'd been corresponding with online for awhile prior to this. J was married, as I am, and our professions, while not the same, were similar. We're artsy guys.

I rolled into his town in the middle of a hot afternoon and pulled into the parking lot of the church to which he had directed me. Yes, that's right—a church. That was okay with me. I like churches and he worked at the church—not as a pastor or priest, mind you—as a musician. I knew this beforehand, of course.

I sat in my car in an out-of-the-way area of the parking lot, and in just a few minutes I saw him come out the door and head over my way. I don't remember specifically now, but I think I was expecting him to get in my car. We'd do the usual, I guessed, which was to drive to some little motel and get a room for a couple of hours.

But he surprised me. We would be wrestling in the church! More specifically, in the choir room!

My throat felt a little tight as we walked through the darkened hallways to the second-floor room where the choir rehearsed. J must have seen the tension on my face.

"Nobody's around in the afternoons during the summer," he said. "This'll be okay."

The choir room was about what you'd expect in a medium-sized suburban church. It was large, with flat floor space leading from the door to the raised seating where the choir members arranged themselves to sing. To the right was a room used for smaller rehearsals and for musical ensembles. Part of the open space near the entry was taken up by a grand piano. The other part was our space for wrestling.

Nervous and jumpy, I took off my clothes and lay them neatly on top of the piano. I don't remember where J put his clothes, but we were soon both decked out in our colored no-fly briefs and getting down on the floor to wrestle. Unfortunately, we then discovered a problem. The carpet, in order to be durable under the constant movement of many feet, was that chew-your-butt-up variety that we quickly learned would give us carpet burns way too easily.

We couldn't wrestle. Not really. So we settled for the next best thing (in my book). We took turns putting our favorite holds on each other. We did lots of scissors holds and headlocks and bear hugs. J had thing for holds like the camel clutch and the Boston crab, so I let him put those on me to his heart's content. He also badly wanted to wrestle naked, which I agreed to, even though it made me nervous again.

The image that still hangs with me after these 11 years in a head scissors he wanted to put me in. As you might expect from reading this blog, I was more than willing. I lay on my right side. He sat in front of me and wrapped his thighs around my head and leaned back on his hands to apply pressure. J is 5'10" and was at that time around 225 pounds. So, as I lay there being worked over by his head scissors, my ears stoppered by the pressure of his thick thighs, I faced directly into his basket, above which was a solid and heaving belly, good pecs and a grin of enjoyment. I also enjoyed the hold for several minutes, my left hand now on his right thigh, now on his full belly, no on his strong chest. Delicious!

The other moment I remember best is a sudden sound at which we sprung up from whatever hold we were in—naked by this time—grabbed our clothes and stepped quickly into the side room. A minute or so passed and nothing more happened. J stepped out in just his jeans and cautiously went to the door. There he discovered that the noise we'd heard was just some pigeons nesting in the eaves.

After we'd wrestled our fill—such as the wrestling was—we dressed and went back outside. At my car, we shook hands, and I drove out of town and made a few more hours down the road before I stopped for the night.

On 16 March 2007, I blogged about a wrestler who had died. His name was Bill Hughes, and I don't remember how I became aware of him, when the first email passed between us or who sent it. We had your typical email friendship. We never met in person, but I felt sad when I learned of his death.

I felt something different this past weekend when I learned of the death of another wrestler. My friend Ed. As with Bill, I don't remember when I first found myself in touch with Ed. I think he was living in Memphis but was at the point of moving somewhere else. Oklahoma maybe. I never met him in either place, and we didn't really keep in touch very well. But then he moved again, this time to Indianapolis, a city where another of my good wrestling friends lives. With two of them there, I had a goal to work towards, and eventually I made it there to wrestle them. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Readers of this blog will know that my favorite hold is the head scissors. They probably get tired of being reminded of that. But that was what brought Ed and me together. That was his favorite hold as well. Once my Indianapolis trip began to come together, we emailed each other often to suggest variations of the hold that we might try when I arrived. We were quite excited.

When I arrived in Indianapolis, my schedule demanded a doubleheader. I wrestled my friend Larry first--our fourth meeting, I think. We had a great time as usual, although he was somewhat handicapped by an injury and was also in recovery from a serious health issue. We'd been wrestling for an hour or more when Ed called. He told me that his dog was terminally ill, so he didn't have a long time to wrestle. That was disappointing for both of us, but I understood. Larry and I were still wrestling when Ed knocked on the door. The two of them knew each other, so we had a nice little visit. Before Larry departed to leave Ed and me to it, he took this picture of me working Ed over with a head scissors.

I remember that Ed and I created a little video of our wrestling. When the clip was finished, he hovered over my shoulder to watch it. He was sweating a great deal--both of us were--and he kept wiping the drops from where they fell on my shoulder or thigh. We had a great time that evening and both looked forward to wrestling again--a longer meeting this time.

But then I got Larry's call this weekend. He had tried to call Ed for the first time in a year or so. The man who answered told him that Ed died back in the winter. We don't know how. He was a strong sixty-something, as you can see in these pictures. I'd been afraid that something had happened to him. We hadn't emailed in some time--almost exactly a year--but I'd emailed him just recently to check in. When I didn't receive anything back from him, I was uneasy, but I hoped he was just busy.

Here's the brief text of my last two emails from him:

"Sure wish I had ur head in a good fig 4 scissors..... damn" (7/8/2008)

"Louisville might be doable, M.... I look at the pic of you in my head scissors from time to time and have good memories.. I love that action and I know you are about as hooked as I am.... Nothing like two big men going at it and having a good bonding session based on this masculine, primal and visceral action.....!!!!" (7/9/2008)

In the March of 1998, I returned to Ohio for more wrestling. (I blogged my original trip on 4/6/2007.) I wrestled K again, but an added attraction was available this time. The fellow I'd chatted with on the computer during my first trip, the fellow who told me about K and helped me get in touch with him, was also in the area. He and K lived together. As things worked out, I would get a chance to wrestle both of them on the same visit, although we wouldn't be in the room at the same time, which was something I'd always thought would be interesting—to watch two other me wrestle right in front of me.

K is a big fellow like I am—weighing in somewhere in the upper ranges of the 200s. We wrestled again during this trip and had a fine time doing so. Like before, I was unable to get a single submission from him. Nothing stops him, it seems. Nothing I can do, at least. We wrestled, we talked, we wrestled some more. It was on this trip that he told me one of the most interesting things that I've heard from another wrestler, something that has haunted me in the years since. He was talking about when he learned that he was gay. It's a simple story with complicated consequences (at least in my view). He was dating this girl, and he was spending time at her house, like daters do. Maybe they were getting along all right—going out to dinner on the weekends, going to movies, maybe over to Cincinnati to the amusement park, sprawling and cuddling on the couch to watch TV. The things that dating people do, you know. My guess is that at some level he felt comfortable with this "normal" experience.

But she had brothers. Maybe he knew them from high school or work or the local bar. Maybe he just met them when he first came to pick her up. I picture it like this: as he grew more comfortable being in their home, he began to horse around with these guys, these brothers of his girlfriend, and this horsing around included some wrestling in the back yard. But what K discovered was that he had a strong physical reaction to this wrestling, different from and stronger than the reaction he had cuddling on the couch with their sister. As might be expected from a smart man like K, this situation—reactions, feelings—wasn't swept to some dark corner of his mind, nor did he try to ignore it altogether. Eventually, as he analyzed it, he came to the understanding that he was gay. How his life progressed from his time in that house to our wrestling on the motel floor, I don't know. But I enjoyed the time we spent together, and I learned a lot about wrestling life from him.

Something different happened with J. He and I had been online friends for some time. We shared a lot of interests and similar professional situations. We had chatted online for a few years and done some fun cyber-wrestling. But when we met in person I couldn't enjoy wrestling him. I had tried to convince myself that I was a wrestle-anytime-anywhere-with-anybody kind of guy. Such a guy, I believed, without a physical agenda or preferences for certain looks and such, couldn't be in it for anything but the wrestling. To that point, however, I hadn't wrestled anybody under 200 lbs. J weighed in in the 170s. He was all sharp points, all bones and muscles without any of the big belly and big thighs I associated with wrestlers from my days of watching it on American Saturday mornings. J was a good wrestler, but try as I might, I couldn't enjoy wrestling him. It wasn't being stabbed by his points—knees, elbows, etc. I recognized that I had a wrestling fantasy and along with this recognition came the realization that I had a body type I liked to wrestle, which in turn suggested that I had a body type that I was attracted to.

This hasn't led me to conclusions and understandings K came to partly through wrestling his girlfriend's brothers. Maybe I'm not gay. Or maybe I'm not brave enough or honest enough to follow through with considering the full implications of this. Maybe it's just as simple as having a wrestling fantasy and that big men fulfill that fantasy, which is all in fun (with a little homoeroticism thrown in). Maybe not. Maybe it's far more complicated than I'll ever understand.

An Email

Here's an email that I wrote this morning to a friend of mine. Like many friends I have these days, I've never met this man. We communicate solely via email and blog. These are means of communication for which I'm grateful, but at the same time it's a shame that we might never meet in person.

Great to hear from you, Xxxxxxx. I hope life is going well for you in every way, and I'm glad that you're still checking out the blog and keeping in touch from time to time.

The play has bogged down for the moment but only because I've been getting back into a mystery novel I've had under construction for some time. Although I don't always write about wrestling, the novel features a good bit of it as well. I'm currently at around 207 pages.

I agree about the intimacy issue. Wrestling is an intimate activity, no question about that. The assumption often is, then, that to enjoy that intimacy outside sanctioned events--organized wrestling bouts, amateur or pro--suggests homosexual activity or, at least, homosexual desire. But to me this isn't the case. To enjoy wrestling, to enjoy the intimacy of physical contact with another man, isn't, for me, homosexual in nature. I recognize the obvious homoerotic in wrestling, but I understand that as being different from the homosexual. In fact, much pro wrestling foregrounds the homoerotic, and fans are, oddly, either oblivious to it or, what's even more intriguing, comfortable with it.

Interesting stuff to think about!

All best--Xxxxxxx