The pain was so sudden and sharp that I flinched and cried out. It happened so fast, I didn’t see what the coach had done. When he felt me flinch, he stopped, but he still had hold of my wrist. Coach Dearborn knew how to control your hands—when he had your wrist, you weren’t getting it back. “That was a rotational wristlock, Adam—it causes radioulnar rotation,” he told me. Now he did something a little different. The pain was as sudden and sharp, but it came from somewhere else in the joint of my wrist. Once more, the coach stopped hurting me, but he still held my wrist. “That was a pronating wristlock, Adam—there are also supinating and hyperflexing wristlocks, but you get the idea, don’t you?”

“I get it,” I told him, and he let my wrist go. “Are they aikido techniques?” I asked him, rubbing my left wrist.

“I don’t know much about aikido, but it strikes me as unrealistic,” Mr. Dearborn said, lighting a cigarette. “Wristlocks in wrestling are submission holds—you make your opponent yield to the pain. Submission holds, like choke holds, are illegal now, but they used to be legal,” Coach Dearborn told me.

“I don’t suppose you would have shown Mr. Barlow any illegal holds—no choke holds or submission holds, no wristlocks,” I said.

“Mr. Barlow is a good teacher, Adam,” Mr. Dearborn said. “Good teachers are also good students—if you like to teach, you like to learn. Mr. Barlow has made himself a model student of the sport of wrestling, not just the moves and the holds but wrestling history—including the rules, and the changes in the rules.”

“It sounds like you showed him some submission holds, maybe wristlocks,” I ventured to say.

“I don’t recall the context, but I’m pretty sure the subject of wristlocks would’ve come up,” Mr. Dearborn said. He took a long drag on his cigarette. He could see I was still rubbing my left wrist. “There’s ice in the training room, Adam—about twenty minutes before practice, put some ice on that wrist.”

“What would you say if I told you Mr. Barlow sometimes dresses as a woman—what do you know about that?” I asked him.

“I’ve heard of it,” Mr. Dearborn said neutrally. From the way he said it, I couldn’t tell if he meant he’d heard of Mr. Barlow doing it, or he’d just heard of cross-dressing in general.

“I didn’t think Mr. Barlow was doing it outside our faculty apartment—I don’t really know if he is the small, pretty woman in those parking lots,” I told Coach Dearborn.

“I think Mr. Barlow is one of the best guys at this school,” Mr. Dearborn told me.

“I think so, too—I just worry about him,” I said.