Matt Posner's Blog: You've Been Schooled - Posts Tagged "wrestling"

This was the "best story" in my Florida State master's thesis. It's a reflection upon my two years as a high school wrestler, although Carson Bean is not me; he's a far better athlete but with a worse attitude.

This was written in 1991 in a dingy apartment in Alumni Village in Tallahassee, Florida.

The story contains the f-word and other profanity, so kids, and people who don't like reading such language, stop reading now.

The ending originally did not have a period at the end of the last sentence. I have added the period only so no one thinks there is an error.




Head and Arm
by Matt Posner





I'm Carson Bean. I used to wrestle one-twenty-eight for River High School. I stopped the day of the North High match my senior year.

Most wrestling seasons I can't remember eating. You have to be in amazing shape without any food. If you’re overweight when you come in on match day, you have to cut water weight by working out. One of our lightweight wrestlers, Pat Gables, used to come in for match-day morning weigh-in four, five pounds over. The day of the North High match, Coach Schmidt took him out of class and told Raz, the assistant coach, to keep him running in the stairwell to lose the weight. Raz does all Schmidt's dirty work.

I found out what Pat was doing during second period math from Steve Drexel, the loudmouth 135-pounder who wrestles after me in the lineup. When I got a chance, I ducked out of class, saying I was headed for the bathroom, and went to watch Pat run. There he was, brown skin and arms and legs like a chicken's, pacing the stairs panting and squeezing his waist. His curly hair was flattened by sweat, and he was rattling from the plastic garbage bag under his T-shirt and shorts which made him sweat more. Raz was yelling at him. "Suck it up, Pat!"

Pat just groaned, "Come on, Raz, I'm tired."

Raz shouted, "You should have thought of that before you pigged out last night."

I watched Pat dragging his ass up and down the stairs for a while. Raz nodded at me and said, "You make weight?"

"Yeah, Raz."

"Then get back to class."

"Yeah." So I took off. Back to Mr. Wong's algebra class and having to smell Drexel’s goddamn cologne even though he was two seats away. Pat had a real racket going with the coaches. He ate when he wasn't supposed to, and as a reward he got to skip class all day. It pissed me off, so I skipped out of sixth period English and went down to the locker room to stretch out. When I got there the wrestling room was open and Pat was in the tub.

I don't think I saw them use the tub but one other time. Coach Schmidt said it wasn't really safe. Pat must have still been a pound or so over and too tired to run anymore; probably he’d had to beg Raz to let him go in there. I could feel the heat as soon as I walked in. It was a big smooth steel tub, and you filled it up with water as close to boiling as was safe, and then the guy got in to sweat. Pat was lying there in the tub with his mouth open and his eyes shut.
You weren't supposed to go in there by yourself. You had to have a coach around to make sure you didn't faint, so Raz was probably next door in the football room, or across the hall in the weight room. Coach Schmidt said one time that if you fell asleep in the tub and you didn't get out in time, the water would make your skin get loose on your body. I could imagine a guy's skin coming off and all the blood vessels getting ripped, so under the skin it was all blood, just like a piece of meat marinating in a plastic bag.
I sat down on the bench, and finally Raz came in with his stopwatch. Raz used to be a heavyweight, and even as a coach, at about one-eighty, he could still wrestle the two-hundred-pound guys on our team. He had red hair and freckles, and got the nickname Raz 'cause one time he got sunburned and somebody said he looked like a raspberry. When he finally came in, he’d changed to the same River High shirt and the same pair of tan shorts he always wore on match days. I figured that when Raz was wrestling, he probably picked one move and stuck with it, and when it came to life he must have done the same thing, like, he wore the same clothes, ate the same foods, drove the same make of car, his girlfriends all had the same color hair and he met them all in the same singles bar. I'm like that. I just do the head-and-arm every match. If the guy I'm wrestling gets out, I keep doing it till I stick him or he sticks me.

Pat said, "Hey, man, I'm sweating my ass off in here."

"You're so skinny you don't even have an ass," Raz said. “Fucking toothpick."

"Yeah, fuck you, Raz," Pat said.

"You check weight yet?" Raz asked me. He forgot he’d already asked.

"This morning," I said. “I didn't eat anything today."

"Okay, no problem," Raz said. He clicked his stopwatch. "That's ten minutes, Pat. Get out."

Pat grabbed the edges of the tub and tried to pull himself out. He was too weak. "Aw, shit," he said. "Can't do it. Hey, Carson, give me a hand."

I got up and grabbed his forearms and pulled him up. He sat for a minute on the edge of the tub, then slowly swung his leg over. He held my arm, gripping painfully with his bony fingers, as I helped him walk, dripping and naked, to the scale outside in the main locker room. In wrestling, just like in boxing, they weigh you with the kind of scale a doctor has. The scale was shaking at one-oh-seven-and-a-half.

"One-oh-eight," Raz said. "Good job, Pat. Hit the shower."

"Yeah." Pat limped around the corner.
"How about you, Carson?" Raz asked. "You ready for Simpson?"

I had to wrestle Stuart Simpson that night in the dual meet. Simpson was district champion last year. He'd pinned me twice last season.

"I guess," I said.

"You know, Coach Schmidt and I were talking, and we both think you could beat Simpson if you'd just give up on the head-and-arm," Raz said. "I bet you a hundred dollars. You tried it and tried it last year, but it just doesn't work on him. Try some of that shooting I showed you yesterday."

"Yeah." Raz had drilled me and Drexel on an outside single-leg while the rest of the team was running the stairs. You glide around the guy, keep your head up and scoop the ankle and then step back, pull the leg just enough so he loses his balance and goes down on his belly. Then you get on top, control an arm and an ankle, and you have a two-point takedown. You don't have to lock up, so you don't give the other guy a chance to control your body. We drilled, and Drexel got the move and liked it, but for me it was just bullshit. I had to think to do it right, and wrestling isn't about thinking. If you need time to think, you're going to lose. You have to do it, as quickly and accurately as possible. It has to be an instinct. You do it by feel because your body knows the way to move, knows where the other guy's supposed to be and which way you're moving, even knows the way your singlet's supposed to wrinkle and which way your sweat flies off. Shooting just didn't feel right to me. Sure, maybe that's why I couldn't beat Simpson. I hated the way he walked into a locker room, swaggering, his nose up, those proud blue eyes of his. I wanted to pin the bastard, but only my way. Lock up, hook the forearm, and in one, smooth, snakelike strike, your hip goes into the body and your other arm goes around the shoulders and you tilt and dump the sonofabitch over your hip and fall on top, now controlling the arm and the head. Your whole weight goes onto the shoulders and you brace on your legs and you use your feet to steer and stay on top as he squirms. Keep your center of gravity on the shoulders, keep the pressure on, till you hear the ref hit the mat BANG mighty as thunder on a sunlit day, and you are the winner and you have dominated.

"Got to go make sure Pat doesn't drink the shower water," Raz said. I went back into the wrestling room, stripped, put on my spare singlet and a pair of shorts and started to stretch out. I did hurdler’s stretch, and my legs were so stiff that it hurt a lot. To distract from the pain I said my name. Carson Bean, Carson Bean. Carson Bean sticks Stuart Simpson. Carson Bean rubs Simpson's shoulders in the sweat and the grit. Ref checks the shoulders, then BLAM! hits the mat as hard as he can and blows the whistle. Pin! Carson Bean is on top. Brrrrstickem. You punk. Teach you to mess with Carson Bean.

Out of the hurdler's stretch into a full back neck bridge. Up on your toes and the top of your head, get your shoulders as far off the mat as you can. In the wrestling room there was about a third of an inch of carpet between the top of my head and concrete, so the floor was grinding my hair and pressing on my scalp. I arched back with the muscles above the shoulders bunching together, back straining, touched my nose, held it...Yeah. I'm Carson Bean. I'm five and three this season. Carson Bean, one hundred twenty-eight pounds of serious head-and-arm action. Outside the wrestling room, I heard Pat groaning, "I gotta take a nap, Raz."

"Yeah, go ahead, lie down," Raz said.

Scrub.

*
North High showed up at six-thirty. The JV match was supposed to be at seven. Whenever another team comes in I always look them over and guess who wrestles what weight and which guy is JV and which guy is varsity. There are always a few you can peg right away as new guys: tall thin guys, or guys with fat guts, or guys without any bruises on their faces, guys with skin so clean and smooth you know they've been drinking as much water as they felt like and after the match they probably go home and eat doughnuts and drink chocolate milk.
North High’s team stood around really quietly by some lockers talking in low voices. Coach Schmidt, who's short and built and has gray and black hair, knew their coach real well, so they were laughing as they checked over their charts and compared teams. Most of the rest of the team came out of the wrestling and football rooms to look North High over, but a few still hung out, like Pat, who didn't want to get up till he had to. Some of my teammates were still screwing around, telling dirty jokes and all that, but mostly we were real quiet, same as North High was. Funny how you hate guys who are into the same sport you are just because they're on a rival team.

Simpson, who was North High’s captain, had his foot up on a bench by the lockers, showing off his faded blue jeans and his cowboy boot, looking around the room with his eyes like goddamn vegetable peelers.

Finally the ref came in from the side door at a jog, apologized for being late, and we all stripped for weigh-in. We lined up by weight, varsity guy then JV guy. There was that kind of heavy, greasy, tangy smell you get when a lot of guys take their clothes off at the same time, the kind of smell that hits you in the face if you walk into it from fresh air. Then there was Drexel, in line not far behind me, with a fresh dose of his obnoxious cologne. Next to me was Simpson, buck-naked, strutting like a gunfighter. He was better built than me but still came in two pounds under weight.

After weigh-in, we got into our uniforms and went up to the gym. We'd rolled out and taped the mats that morning, also set up the chairs for the teams on either side, and Coach Schmidt had already opened up the folding bleachers, so all we had to do was sit around till match time. Most of the guys pulled out sandwiches and apples and bananas. The bleachers were still pretty empty except for parents of the JV team, sisters and girlfriends, and some football players wearing green North High shirts with the sleeves torn off to show their triceps and the sides ripped open to show their deltoids. The North High varsity came in and climbed up into the bleachers with them. Finally the coaches came up with the ref, and River High’s basketball coach, Dean "Duke" Brunner, in collar shirt, tie, slacks, and sneakers, followed them a minute later and went to the scorer's table. He messed with some controls, and the scoreboards, one on each end of the gym, blared and went on. The coaches gave him the record books to keep score in.

Finally the North High JV came in and warmed up, then took their seats and our guys came in. You can really tell a lot about a guy's attitude by what he looks like running on the mat. If he's got his shoulders out and he's breathing heavy, he's psyched up and wants to fight. If his head's down and he keeps looking side to side, he cut weight last night and he's tired and trying to get his blood flowing. Some of our guys were so out of it they couldn't keep their legs down for the hurdler's stretch. Didn't they know how pathetic they were? Didn't they know they lost matches because they were soft, clumsy, and lax? I'd been sick since seeing Pat in the stairwell, and I'd thought it was just hunger, but I looked at them and I knew it was scrubs who made me sick.

While the JV teams were wrestling, the gym filled up. There were two sets of bleachers, one on each side, and the two football teams sat on opposite sides and taunted each other while most of our JV got stuck. Then all the guys who just wrestled shook hands with North High's JV and went to the locker room to change, and the River High varsity warmed up. As always, I had to spar with Steve Drexel. He's our 135-pounder, tall, thin, strong legs, runs cross-country. He wears that cheap crappy cologne, I guess to cover up his body odor, and it always makes me sick whenever I’m around him. I did an easy head-and-arm on him; we got up and he did that outside single leg Raz had drilled us on.

"Come on, man," he whispered when we locked up again. "Why don't you do one?"

"I don't want to," I said.

"Listen, Carson, Simpson's gonna stick you if you don't."

I head-and-armed him, hard. I heard his breath go out, and he got up coughing and holding his neck. I figured the whole gym had noticed, but I looked around and no one had.

"What's your problem?" Drexel said.

"Just don't fuck with me."

The team huddled up in the center of the mat. We could all hear and feel each other breathing. Scott Bach, our captain, the 188-pounder, gave his usual kind of pep talk. "All right, this is it. Biggest match of the year. We can beat these fuckers, just remember keep your head up and keep moving. By the grace of God, amen." Then, light to heavy, we broke out of the huddle, ran once round the mat and over to our seats.
North High ran in clapping and chanting their war cry. Then, smooth as ballet, they were spread out in pairs throwing moves on each other. When they fell, it echoed in the gym, but after each move, no one ever went down; they hit their switches faster than you could snap your fingers. Simpson went to the center and shouted instructions: "Push-ups! Go! One! Two! Three! Four! Five!"

"Yeah, yeah," I said to Drexel. "He can count. Smart guy."

"Man, don't talk to me," Drexel said. "I hope he sticks you."

"Fuck you," I said. "I hope Jenks sticks you, too."

"Well, at least he didn't stick me the last two times I wrestled him," Drexel said.

I should have felt like hitting him, but instead my body got more cold and stiff, and I turned away, and even as I shook my head there was pressure on the back of my chair and a shadow fell over me. Coach Schmidt had his hands on both our seat-backs and was leaning over to whisper at both of us. "You guys got a problem?"

Drexel didn't say anything. I said, "Yeah, coach. I don't want to shoot on Simpson."

Coach Schmidt shook his head. "If you won't shoot on him, at least try to keep off your back."

"Yeah, thanks a lot, coach."

The coach whispered in my ear, "I'm not your mommy, and I don't care about your fucking temper tantrums. You don't want my advice, don't take it, but you’re screwing the team with your bad attitude. Got it?”

He walked away, and I muttered, "Fuck you, coach," under my breath.

North High ran around the mat again and went to their seats. The scoreboard blared as "Duke" Brunner cleared the JV score; the ref went out on the mat, blew his whistle and gestured for the hundred-pounders to come out on the mat.

The match went to the second period. I saw the end; our man, Mick Daniels, was bridging, his thin knees were up in the air, and the ref was checking the shoulder blades with his hand and they were clear and then they weren't and POW! the ref hit the mat and his whistle squealed Both wrestlers stood up and the ref raised the other guy's hand. They shook hands and walked off the mat and Pat Gables went trotting out, kind of awkwardly like he was lame, fit on his headgear and snapped it closed and put his feet on the line.

Across from him was Roger Fisher, who'd been wrestling varsity for North High three years already. Fisher was a blond guy who had so much muscle it looked like his skin might break when he moved. And there was Pat: the only difference between him and a broom was he had arms and legs. Pat had spent every minute he could all day sleeping so he'd have some energy for this match. How the hell was he going to hold out? Good. Stick him, Fisher. They touched hands, a slap not a shake, and the ref blew the whistle. They circled. Pat kept his arms in front of him, moved them slowly, twisted them out of grips Fisher tried. Fisher shot--slid a knee down and forward, reached for Pat's thighs, but Pat stepped back, pushed his head down, kind of jumped or slipped around him. Fisher was trying to keep moving in a circle so Pat couldn't get behind, but Pat was taller and he kept one hand on Fisher's back and with the other grabbed an ankle, put weight on Fisher and broke him down to his belly. Two point takedown. Typical lazy wrestling from Pat--took him almost no energy compared to Fisher's shot. And Pat was lying on him, let the ankle go and got an elbow. As Fisher tried to push up, Pat chopped the elbow in toward Fisher's body and he fell again and Pat brought his other arm up, worming it or wriggling it under the other elbow and across to the back of Fisher's blond head--half-nelson--and at the same time he was holding Fisher's other wrist, stretching Fisher's arm out so he couldn't use it to push up, and Pat scooted his waist off Fisher and began to run the half with his whole body, to turn Fisher over on his back. No way Fisher was going to let that happen. He kicked with his legs so he kept moving the direction Pat was going and Pat couldn't turn him. Pat lost the wrist and Fisher turned his head and peeled Pat's half-nelson away. Pat spun on him trying to get another grip and Fisher was on his knees, and then he thrust up. Pat came up slower holding his waist from behind, heaved and had him in the air and was going to bring him down on his butt and did, but Fisher had his arm back and he switched and now he was on top--two point reversal--and he was strong and he threw a half, caught Pat's leg to throw him over by force. Pat tried to go flat, but in seconds he was on his back bridging and trying to roll to his belly. The ref was counting back points. Pat squirmed to his belly quick enough that Fisher only got two back points. He started to get to his base and Fisher chopped the elbow and broke him down and started to turn him again and then the ref blew the whistle and Fisher got off and the ref signaled for the trainer. Our trainer went scooting out on the mat and bent over Pat, who was holding his waist and writhing around on the mat.

"Give me a break," I said. "I'm sick of Pat pulling this shit."

"Man, shut up," Drexel said.

I did. Up in the bleachers, North High's football team starting chanting, "Poor baby! Poor baby!" as loud as they could. Finally the trainer scooted off the mat and Pat crawled to the center of the mat and got in the down position, on all fours, his hands in front of him and in front of one line of tape, his knees behind another line, and the ref checked him and then gestured and Fisher got on top, one hand on his elbow, the other on his belly, the ref checked that, stepped back, and blew the whistle.

Fisher broke Pat down again, moved his other hand off his belly and got an ankle, but Pat sat out, Fisher lost the ankle and went back to the belly and tried to get him down on the side where he had the elbow, Pat tried a switch and screwed it up and he was on his back again. He bridged up, shot his free arm through and he was on his belly too fast for back points. He got to his base and sat out and reached around behind and caught Fisher by the back of the head. That was the desperate, knob-knuckled grip that had almost bruised me when I helped him from the tub to the scale earlier, and I knew Pat’s fingers wouldn’t slip, that he was clutching so tightly that Fisher’s skull could be warping from the pressure.

"Don't reach back!" Coach Schmidt bellowed, but Pat knew what he was doing and in a minute so did I. It was some crazy move he got at wrestling camp. I don't know how he did it, but somehow he pulled Fisher over his shoulder to his back. It was slow, Pat was pulling, he had his back and his triceps into it and Fisher’s greater strength should have let him break free, but finally he slid across Pat's shoulder and Pat got a leg and cradled him up, clasped his hands together, got a wide base with his legs and Fisher with all his muscles couldn't get out. He rolled and he bridged the best he could with just his neck and one foot, but I could tell, everyone could tell, Pat had him. It was nice and slow. Pat got his three back points and then settled in to wear Fisher out, used his weight instead of his muscles as much as he could. The ref checked and checked. I felt how my teeth were locked and my hands were wet. I wiped them on my singlet and Pat had his weight on the guy and I rubbed my forehead and Pat had his weight on the guy and I ran my hand through my hair and Pat had his weight on the guy and the ref slammed the mat and blew the whistle and Fisher was stuck. Pat let the cradle go and just lay there. Fisher got up and was massaging the back of his neck and Pat was just lying there like a pulped fruit.
And it hit me how wrong that was. It was wrong, Pat the lazy fuck lying there like he was dead. What an insult it was to Fisher and Coach Schmidt and Raz and the trainer and the rest of the North High team, an insult to me and to everyone. He was laughing at everyone, like he did it all without anything to do it with. He was weak and useless and he'd won anyway and he was laughing while he lay there, laughing and slapping us in the face It was wrong! Didn't anyone else see it? Didn't they see, the jeering football teams and the JV guys limping back into the gym with cokes from the locker room soda machine and "Duke" Brunner who didn't know how to dress and the fat parents losing their hair and wearing cheap jewelry and all the girlfriends and sisters in their shorts or jeans and loose school-colors T-shirts, didn't they see him laughing at them, laughing at Fisher, laughing at me?

"Pat!" I shouted. "Pat, get up, you lazy fuck!" I got out of my chair and ripped off my loose headgear and threw it at him where he was lying on the mat. "Get the fuck up!"

Drexel got up too, and he grabbed my shoulder. "Cool it!"

I brushed his hand off. "Don't touch me."

And Pat was slowly getting up as I pushed Drexel and he fell back over his chair and his own loose headgear fell off and bounced and he hit the hard court shoulder-first and got tangled in the folding chair as it closed up. The 121-pounder who had been sitting on my other side grabbed me and I elbowed him in the gut. I saw Coach Schmidt running toward me and the ref coming off the mat, and Scott Bach, the captain, who was twice my size, was coming too as Drexel wormed his legs out of the chair and rolled free. Pat was limping off the mat with a dumb, puzzled look in his watery eyes, and I heard the noise in the bleachers grow louder and when they grabbed me I looked over at Simpson.