That first day was mostly boring, full of instruction, that is, the basics of a match, how points are scored, what’s legal and what isn’t, neutral, top, and bottom positions, and so forth. At the very end of practice, however, we learned a single leg takedown. It was a start, and already, after learning just one move, I was in love.
Before that day, which is to say, before wrestling, my greatest worldly concern revolved around a constant assault on my own penis while lustily gazing at the pictures in Hustler magazines I’d bartered from older brothers of close friends. But on that day, I’d found something those spread-eagle, sly-smiling girls couldn’t compete with, at least not for the next couple of years. The inherent competitiveness, the discipline I knew it’d take to be successful, the strength of mind and body, the necessity of endurance and balance, raw purity, the fact that it was an individual sport and ultimately all the glory or all the blame would rest on my shoulders and my shoulders alone, ignited such passion that I craved desperately to know everything at once, up front, but yet I knew it’d take a long time at a slow pace. That was the justification I had made up in my mind back then, but really I think it was much simpler than that: Wrestling was the first thing I was certain I could be good at. And I was ready. I even smiled during the extra twenty laps after practice, which turned into thirty when our coach thought we were sandbagging it, smiled even when I thought Jason might vomit.
3
Wrestling is repetition, drilling the same move over and over until it becomes a reflex, until it becomes instinct. That is how you learn and how you become good. You do it and you have faith that you’re getting better. It’s hard to gauge success in the practice room. All you can do is hope your effort pays off. If it doesn’t, then there’s no one to blame but yourself. If it does, then there’s a whole heap of people to thank. In this way, wrestling is like writing.
Jason and I were drill partners from that very first day and would be for the rest of our careers. We learned the sport together and would always walk out onto the mat one right after the other for six straight years. In that time I’m certain I hit no fewer than 6,437 low singles on him in the practice room, probably wrestled a minimum of three thousand matches. I won most of them, but he wasn’t without his victories, too.