Synopsis:
A freestyle wrestling match turns sensual.
Author's Note:
This is a high school setting, but all characters are 18 years and older, despite the narrator opening with a childhood memory.
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THE WRESTLING MATCH AT WINTERSET HIGH
Section I.
The clock struck midnight as my mother closed the door of my bedroom behind her. A silent snow fell just outside my window. One might think that my young self wouldn’t dare leave the warmth of her bed sheets in the thick of such a winter. But little did my mother know that we were not planning on going to bed just yet.
“Will, hurry up!” I whispered. “Is it plugged in?”
“Yeah, I think so!”
My best friend William quietly slipped out of his Batman sleeping bag and tiptoed in the darkness to my small Panasonic sitting on my dresser. He was a scrawny, mousey boy with curly, maroon hair and a button nose. But with an unusual furtiveness, he grabbed the remote and fumbled with it until the TV switched on, quickly muting the volume as he did so. Unable to contain my own excitement, I grabbed the controllers of my Sega Genesis out of the basket and popped in the cartridge of the best fighting game ever made: Super Dream Heroes II.
Yeah, that was my jam.
“I gotta have my revenge!” William lisped. “We’re not going to bed until I beat the crap out of you, Toni!”
“Then we’re never going to bed,” I countered with extravagant sass. “Not by playing as Mermaid Maid you’re not.”
“Wanna bet?"
“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes. “She can’t beat Cyborg Butler. He’s got purple hair AND can shoot lasers from his mustache. Can Mermaid Maid do THAT?”
“Just watch me!”
Without being discovered by our parents, we tapped our controllers raw until two in the morning. And the night after. And the night after that night until our progressively heavy eyebags clued our parents to our nocturnal activities. My memories of those sleepovers turned me into the biggest fighting game nerd in town. Eventually, after growing old enough to realize that I couldn’t play games every day, I became inexplicably inspired to be the next best thing. And so, whenever I’ve had a lull in my inspirations; or whenever the pizza and potato chips get the better of my waistline; or whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul, I hit the ring as a wrestler and vent my frustration on the unlucky chap or gal who dares challenge me.
“Oh, damn it all, I’m late!”
Before I knew it, my adolescent life had passed by in a blink. I was now a grown-up whether I willed it or not.
“Shit!”
I swore like a grown-up and hammered the throttle of my purple Kawasaki, engines blaring so loudly that it set off the alarms of vehicles behind me. The streets of my hometown of Winterset—may it be blessed by sunshine instead of snow forever—became as a blur while my varsity jacket fluttered in the freezing wind. Ignoring the sign that read “Speed Limit 35”, I was now the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, and I talked like him too.
“Coach is gonna kill me!”
Winterset was one of those old forest towns back east that had only one major road passing through it. You know the type: brick churches with bell towers, ski lodges, Dairy Queens, mom and pop convenience stores that sold everything from frozen pizza to motor oil, and a surrounding wilderness so verdant and so primeval that we swore woodland fairies lived among us. The highway was a twenty-minute drive down the winding mountain, so one had to travel quite a distance just to reach the entrance of our little town. A person visiting for the first time might mistake it for a Boy Scout summer camp, but in truth it was simply a town for visiting fishermen and lake-goers.
The 19th century spires and red brick buildings of Winterset High School, of which I was now a senior, came into view on the horizon. I wasted no time. My motorcycle
screeched
to a stop as I slammed the breaks and staggered off the seat. I left my Kawasaki fallen at the curb and bolted into the open doors of the gymnasium, flourishing my hair as I slipped off my red helmet.
The building was packed. Crowds of spectactors of every age and vocation spilled over the bleachers like mountains of mice on cheese, their myriad voices and shouts and mutterings deafening to my ears.
In the center of the gymnasium were two circular wrestling mats side by side. Within each ring were two men in spandex singlets—one red and the other blue. With a blow of a whistle, the two men crouched low to the floor like a pair of grumpy grizzlies. Then, they charged at each other, grunting and groping and shoving at each other like wrestlers do.
For a moment, I forgot my tardiness and became mesmerized by the sacred battle that was about to unfold.
Four years.
Four years had brought me to this moment.
Four years of painful homework, grueling exams, and high school drama so outrageous that it could be sitcom-worthy. I didn’t care to admit it, but that four years of being on the wrestling team had transformed me from a little French girl who could barely arm wrestle an infant into a powerful lioness with Olympic dreams. And despite the fact that I was late to the final match of the year, with a possible team scholarship on the line, I could not help but smile that I had come so far doing what I loved so much.
“Toni! Where the HELL have you been?”
I nearly leapt out of my Reeboks. Coach Trilby’s voice rang loud and clear on my eardrums. Her wavy, blond hair and doe-like blue eyes belied her Chef Ramsay-like temper. But I owed her my success and wouldn’t have had her any other way.
“YOU are over thirty minutes late! Unacceptable! Get your damn singlet on right now or I’ll personally vouch for your expulsion!”
“Yes Coach!” I replied, straight as a board.
The acrid smell of old sweat and deodorant filled my nostrils as I entered the girl’s locker room. Crushed soda cans and gum wrappers littered the floor as mold-caked fluorescent lights flickered overhead. For some, this room was more disgusting than the underside of a toilet seat. For me, it was a war room, and I was General Patton.
I opened my locker in the far corner, unlocking the padlock with the same 6-6-7 combination I had since freshman year. Having removed most of my belongings save for my singlet and some fresh clothes, I was already feeling nostalgic. There was a time when this locker was full of Doritos, stickers, and other junk.
But the small mirror that I had glued on the backside of the door as a sophomore yet remained. And when I looked at that mirror, I saw a stranger staring back at me: She was fair-skinned and gray-eyed and full-lipped with a light tan, her cheeks peppered with baby freckles and a small pimple under her lip. She wore glasses with black, elongated rims much like the ones she had in Junior High. Her purple, dyed hair was a tousled pixie-cut with a flourishing mullet. She had not grown as tall as she would have liked, sporting a mere 5’8’’ athletic frame. But her muscles were sharp with a definition that did not overwrite her femininity despite her intense, daily trainings.
That stranger was me. My name was Toni, short for Antoinette, an eighteen-year-old girl and self-proclaimed nerdy wrestler who got into the sport solely because of a childhood video game.
“Hah, you’re a funny one, aren’t you,”
I sighed to myself, defeated.
These days would never come again, would they?
“Toni, hurry! Is your singlet on yet?!” A familiar voice echoed in the locker room.
The face of my best friend Elmasette anxiously popped through the crack of the door.
“Almost!” I responded, pulling my shirt over my head.
