How the hell did I get here?

* * * *

I was in Barcelona when I was 19, over Spring Break. My friends and I got on a walking jag, but ended up lost in a bad neighborhood. A few punks emerged from the darkness, made obscene gestures, and said fuck you in perfect unaccented English. I was more scared than I ever had been in my whole life.

I am half expecting that to happen right now. But nobody is around.

When I was in high school, I was a wrestler. We consistently had the best team in the state. So it was senior year, state championships. I’m in the semi finals. I’m going to wrestle this kid from Xavier, and I am sitting there with the assistant coach before the match. We both look at the other kid. Skinny kid, no muscle tone at all, looks like a geek. How does this guy make it to the semi finals?

“Kick his ass,” my assistant coach said.

So the match begins and I am twice as strong as this guy so I do a couple of quick takedowns and already I am up on points. Usually a kid like that gets demoralized. He’s not really attacking, but he’s hanging around, hanging around. We end up on the mat, and he reverses me, and he’s riding me now. I’m so pissed this bastard scored on me that when I escape, I lunge with so much force that my shoulder hits him in the chin. He bites his tongue, and it is bleeding. They stop the match, because of the bleeding tongue.

The crowd is getting anxious, because this kid is bleeding everywhere. And, I come from the powerhouse school that never loses. We have won six years in a row. Everyone already hates us. So I just abused this poor skinny kid and now people are pissed. The referee checks him out and determines skinny kid is all right and the match begins again.

Skinny kid still isn’t attacking, just locking me up, hanging around, hanging around, waiting for me to make a mistake. We can’t do this dance forever, because the ref will call stalling. So I shoot the leg and the kid reverses me and he is riding me, and I can’t get rid of him. It’s the third period and I’m tired, even after the long break to check out the kid’s lip. I try to catch him in a Petersen and somehow I end up on my back, and the place is going nuts. Coach Roy is yelling at me, I am trying to get out of it, and then the ref slams the mat, and the match is over.

I got pinned with six seconds left in the match.

They were cheering, because I lost.

I do a couple of laps around Washington Square Park. Fior D’Italia. My dad took me and my brother there. They used to give discounts to military folks. I wonder if they still do.