1
Against Poly Prep and Storm King I was pinned.
Against Dwight-Englewood and Hackley, pinned.
Against Dalton and Trinity, pinned yet again.
I toggled between 121 and 129 pounds, sucking down to the former in the run-up to our dual meets, half starved in the days beforehand.
I took long trips on buses to other schools in other boroughs and states, weighed in, warmed up, and then was, in the sport’s parlance, stacked, dropped, stuck, caught, deckedthe outcome so certain the moment I stepped on the mat it was a challenge not to make the result seem rehearsed.
A sure victory for the opposition, I became known, in the lingo, as a fish.
This being insufferable to me, I ran Central Park’s reservoir on the weekends and, weather and workload permitting, biked to school during the week.
During free periods, it was not uncommon for Tanner, Cliffnotes, and me to abscond to the darkened gym and wrestle.
The mats were hard and cold, the rubber as yet unsoftened by our bodies’ heat.
We shed our blazers, ties, shoes, and socks, and we rolled.
Tanner, at 135pounds, and by far the most talented of our triumvirate, was already a match for most of the juniors.
He nearly touched six feet in height and had possessed, since seventh grade, the plaited physique of a superhero.
Diminutive Cliffnotes, a second stringer at 115, made up for his lack of power with quickness and ambidexterity, shooting a fireman’s carry on both sides with abandon.
When we returned to class, our collars were sweat-dampened, hair wild, and faces still red from our exertions.
After my loss at Dalton, I lay on my top bunk, staring at the ceiling, and on its blank screen I replayed my defeat beginning to bitter end. My escapes were strong, but I had no offense, and this made me passive, especially at a match’s outset.
What I needed was a bigger vocabulary.
In the upper school’s library, a bright, modern space with tall windows overlooking the rooftop tennis courts, I asked Miss Adler, the head librarian, for guidance.
“Well,” she said, slapping both palms on her desk and then popping up from her chair, “exactly what sort of wrestling are we talking about? Is this for a research paper? Wrestling as it appears in ancient art?” A Brit, her white hair was close-cropped; her teeth, yellowed and warped as an old picket fence.
She walked toward the card catalog.
Deb Peryton sat at one of the long tables, her textbook open.
She looked up and gave me a small wave.
Miss Adler said, “It’s quite the sport in India, you know.
If memory serves, the first wrestling match that appears in Western literature is Menelaus grappling with the Old Man of the Sea, book four of the Odyssey, I believe.
Have you read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart ? No? Well the protagonist, Okonkwo, is quite the champion.
What about John Irving’s The World According to Garp ?” She cupped her hand by her mouth and whispered, “A bit smutty, if you ask me.”
By now Miss Adler had pulled out a long wooden drawer from the catalog and was flicking through the cards.
“I just mean the sport,” I said. “The moves.”
“Ah,” she replied, “now that narrows our search. Come along then.”
Call number in hand, she led me to the stacks. The volume Miss Adler pulled from the shelf was exactly what I was looking for: an encyclopedia of takedowns, counters, and pinning combinations. There were step-by-step photographs, progressive sequences that, if I passed my eyes over them quickly enough, gave the illusion of movement.
“Thanks,” I said to her.
Miss Adler smiled, her eyes warmly crinkling. “Happy to help,” she said, before marching back to her desk.
The Ankle Pick, the Spladle, and the Peterson Roll.
The Duck Under, Super Duck, and Chicken Wing.
The Submarine, the Spread Eagle, and the Crossbody Ride.
Every day I arrived to practice with a particular move in mind, determined to hit it on my partner at least once, no matter how badly I screwed it up or in what position it put me.
At home, after a shower and a too-light dinner, after blasting through my remaining homework, Oren and I closed our door and sparred.
Ferren Prep, where he attended school, was a wrestling powerhouse and allowed eighth graders to practice with the high school team.
Oren, big for his age, was also competing at the 121-pound class, and during these sessions he occasionally overcame my seniority and greater power with an arsenal of techniques entirely alien to me, and I was so happy for him that he was winningmy surprise was so completeit made me laugh.
Afterward, he and I swapped new moves we’d learned that day in practice, abrading our knees and elbows on the bedroom’s thin carpet until they were pink and dotted with blood.
“What was that?” I asked. I’d somehow found myself on my back after Oren, just a second ago safely secured beneath me, had somersaulted us both through the air and ended on top.
“The Flying Granby,” he said.
“Teach me,” I said. And then I added: “Please.”
At least three times a week, Coach Kepplemen wanted to roll.
Why did I do this? I often wonder now. Why did I not simply say no? Was it because our ritual, established since seventh grade, was so prescribed in its motionswas, from its start, the normthat I was too fixed in its repetitions to resist?
He might catch me before school started, explaining he wanted to discuss my match, go over a few things, although I knew what he really wanted.
We agreed to meet in the front hall at my next free period. He spotted me as I came around the corner and, before turning to walk, nodded his head, an indication that I was to follow. We made our way toward the lower school, though not exactly together. A long, carpeted corridor joined Boyd Prep’s modern wing to the Old School’s ancient edifice, and here Coach Kepplemen walked ahead of me by a good ten paces, past the basketball court, the cafeteria, and the wrestling gym, so that it would not be obvious to any passersby that we were headed somewhere together. Oh, how dutifully I played along, certain that he was listening to my footfalls, sure that if I were to stop in my tracks the slack between us would go taut. Not that I ever stopped.
Today he wore navy-blue sweatpants, a Boyd Wrestling shirt, and Tiger wrestling shoes. Kepplemen had a distinctive gait.
He walked turned out, as my mother might say, his feet set in second position, and this made his shoulders, which sloped left to right, seesaw, their metronomic tilt accentuated by the position of his arms, which he held out from his sides as if tracing the outline of a fat man’s body. We briefly entered the Old School’s high-ceilinged main hall, its marble floors and brownstone walls cool as a cathedral’s. Picture its vaulting main hall, hear the vibration of accumulated sounds: the scuff of boys’ loafers and girls’ Mary Jane heels, an almost articulate spurt of vivid laughter. We hung a sharp left, ducking down a stairwell, also ancient, its stone banister palmed smooth by several hundred years of contactBoyd was one of the oldest schools in New Yorkour descent lowering this melody’s volume. It terminated at the school’s weight room, a dim, nondescript space which consisted only of a multistation Universal machine.
It also housed the building’s boilers. Here the heat was dry and oppressive. The far walls, shrouded in darkness, were marked by several arched entryways, as in catacombs.
Their apex was maybe four feet high, all of which were bricked off except the one in the room’s farthest corner, which was provisionally barricaded with a wooden pallet, its solid top painted black, which Kepplemen approached and then slid aside. Bending down, he entered, disappearing into the darkness, me following. A single dusty bulb came on, Kepplemen releasing its pull chain, and then he turned and slid the pallet closed behind us.
In this nether, not even used for storage, the low ceiling was cupped.
Still bent, Kepplemen proceeded deeper into the gloom.
He ordered me to turn off the light, and I obeyed.
Being his height, I too walked bent; like a blind person operating by memory, I proceeded in pitch-blackness until another bulb came on.
We arrived in what felt like a corridor or chamber.
Its size was indeterminate; it was impossible to tell much beyond the bulb’s weak illumination and directly beneath which was a section of wrestling mat.
Its rubber was desiccated, puckered and cracked.
Kepplemen, I was sure, had dragged this down here.
He, too, had gone looking for this placeI did not make the connection thenas Naomi had the Dead Street.
I knew the drill from years of practice.
I stepped out of my loafers, pulled off my socks.
Removed my tie, shirt, and belt while Kepplemen, who was already kneeling, watched.
I too kneeled, across from him, fists to thighs.
In this moment, I could always feel just how deep beneath the ground we were, the entombing silence of the building’s ancient weight.
Kepplemen said, “Okay,” and at this we tipped toward each other and then locked up: ear pressed to ear, palms clamped to each other’s necks, hands pinching triceps, our bodies forming another arch in that low-slung space, a headless creature rising on four legs.
Kepplemen was chronically unkempt.
His cheeks were always rough with stubble, his wispy salt-and-paper hair mussed.
He did not start the day thus.
When he joined us at our lockers, when he sat on the floor with us in the hallway before the first-period bell rang, listening to our banter, relaxed enough to occasionally join in the conversation or pumping his foot while we joked, his hair was neatly parted, perhaps still shiny from his morning’s shower.
But by now he had rolled with at least one of us and by day’s end several more.
He smelled of deodorant and cheap detergent, and beneath that, an odor that was enfolded and in transformation, like the yogurt that hardened at its container’s rim.
Even at fourteen, after two years of wrestling under his tutelage, I felt myself to be his physical equal.
I experienced no fear of being overmatched or overwhelmed, but I suffered instead the vague, humiliating sense of being subjected.
The ceiling’s height forced us to spar from our knees.
The mat’s dimensions, no bigger than his king-sized bed, limited the moves we might attempta Snap Down, a Russian Tie, an Arm Drag.
Kepplemen initiated these with a great grunt.
Each of these I easily countered, and then I’d reverse our position, which I knew he wanted, and assumed control, crouching behind him, my palm to his belly, hand to his elbow, chin buried in his shoulder, pelvis to his ass.
At this he went still and would let me execute a sequence of pinning combinationsa Half Nelson, an Arm Bargiving one quick tap to my hip, leg, or the small of my back to indicate that we should reset.
The dust we’d kicked up hazed the bulb above, its glow haloed by this fogged nimbus.
I was content to think of nothing, especially time, but Kepplemen had a keen internal clock. He ended each session similarly.
“Get me,” Kepplemen said, and then caught his breath. “Get me in a headlock.” Then he rolled onto his back, an act of accession, as if it were I who’d given the command. Lying beneath me, he reached both arms up and then waved me in, that great beaked nose of his half hiding his open mouth, upon which I scooped his neck in my arm, cradling his head beneath my biceps, and then clasped my hands, ramming my knee to his ear to reinforce my grip. My torsomy whole body’s weightdraped perpendicularly across his. He bucked below me, bridging his neck, once, twice, as if to wriggle out while I held on, but this was not his intention. Soon his leg found mine; soon he used this hook to plaster himself against me. I was always surprised, as he thrusted, at how furious I was, how determined to hold him there, to make it cost him. And soon, like some creature whose bones had gone soft, he melted in my arms.
We dressed afterward. Or I did. Usually with my back to him. Although on occasion, as today, I’d glance over my shoulder to see Kepplemen facing the corner, neck bent, chin tucked, waistband stretched from his hips as he wiped his crotch with great care and then deposited the towel on the floor. And my great shame was strangely somehow for him. Of which I could not speak. To anyone. To my parents. To Elliott. Certainly not to my friends. Even later, when I joined Cliff and Tanner in the front hall and they asked, “Where were you?” I need only reply, “Kepplemen.” Not even so much as a nod from them. Which was the trick, or the spell. Which was the only power we had. Because he was the only word for it we knew.
On Tuesday night, Mom made roast chicken with steamed artichokes and sweet potatoes. I was just on weight, so when she served me, I asked for a wing, and that was it.
“Are we going to do this again this year?” Mom asked.
“I have a match tomorrow,” I said.
Dad, who’d made fast work of a whole leg, was attacking the drumstick’s bone, biting off the knuckle’s cartilage. I was so hungry I wanted to cry. “That reminds me,” he said, “I got you guys a present.” He pushed back from the table, disappeared to his room, and when he returned, he was holding a pair of cowboy hats. “They’re Stetsons,” he said after handing them to us. “Those are eagle feathers in the brim, by the way.”
“Is that legal?” Oren asked.
“Maybe they’re ostrich,” Dad said.
Oren, donning his, considered himself in the wall mirror approvingly.
“I did some spots for Billy Martin’s Western Wear,” Dad said. “The reps gave them as a gift.”
“So you didn’t really get us these,” Oren said.
“What difference does it make?” Dad said.
“That,” Oren said like Yoda, “is why you fail.”
Because of the hat, it was easy to spot Oren among the spectators before my match the next day. He gave me the thumbs-up just before I stepped on the mat. About a minute later, when I was on my back, I also noticed upside-down Mr. Fistly, seated in the second row, legs crossed, watching. It was a strangely intimate moment, like we were having a conversation with another person lying on top of me. He shook his head, disappointed and unsurprised, right before the referee slapped the mat.
“Buy you some ice cream,” Oren said when he met me in the front hall.
We stopped at Baskin-Robbins and then entered Lincoln Towers at Seventieth Street, cutting through the block-long parking lot that ran between the rear of several apartment buildings and the storefronts on Amsterdam. I’d finished my double scoopOren was still working on his conewhen I spotted a figure on my right, racing crouched and sneaking toward us alongside several cars, and before I knew it, one kid had grabbed Oren while the other sprinted between a pair of cars and tackled me. He sat me on the cold concrete, his arm laced over my throat.
“Give us your fucking money,” he said. The one next to Oren patted him down and then took the wad from his pocket. “Take whatever you want,” I said, because I was practiced at this, “and then leave us alone.”
Oren was crying. The second guy frisked me and, finding my wallet empty, tossed it to the ground and then smacked my mouth before they trotted off. I propped myself on my elbow and spit blood. Oren knelt beside me.
“Security!” he screamed. “Security!”
After I got up, I tried to calm him down, but he was inconsolable. “Just let them go,” I said, and put my arm over his shoulders. We proceeded like that to the security guard’s booth on our block. I was giving the guard the lowdown when we saw Mom, Dad, and Al Moretti walking toward us from our building.
“What happened?” Mom asked, with real concern.
“We got mugged,” I said.
“Muthafuckers,” Al said. “Were they Black? How old were they? Did you give the policeman a description?”
“They got all my money,” Oren said. He was still crying. “And one of them punched Griffin.”
“They should’ve taken that hat and done you a favor,” Al muttered.
“It’s a Stetson,” Dad said.
“Stetson, schmetson,” Al said. “What’s he trying out for, the Village People?”
Mom hugged Oren while he wept. Dad, taking my head in his hands, turned my face side to side and then folded back my lip, tilting his chin up like a doctor. The performance was for Al, who was laughing, and infuriated me. “You’ll live,” he said.
The security guard pressed his walkie-talkie to his chest and said to Mom, “I’m filing a report.”
“Under control, then,” Dad said. To Mom he tapped his watch face and said, “We have a reservation.” Then he started up the street with Al.
“There’s pizza upstairs,” Mom said to us, walking backward, slowly, to indicate she was sorry, her hands in her long coat’s pockets. “Dad made a Caesar salad.”
The pizza was cold, the romaine soggy, and Oren, still blubbering, wrapped four pieces in tinfoil and then heated them in the oven. He served us and sat down and covered his eyes and started crying again. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” he said, and was so distraught he excused himself and went to our room. There were times, as now, when Oren acted as if he’d failed me in some far more essential manner than the circumstance, when half the time I felt like I’d failed him, and this mystery made the gulf between us seem even more unbridgeable than the fact that we no longer spent our days at school together.
At the next afternoon’s practice, I was sparring with Tanner, on bottom, so I hopped into the Flying Granby position and rolled over my shoulders, but he caught my trail leg and stuck me on my back. I was in such a tightly inverted pin that I gagged.
Kepplemen blew his whistle and everyone froze.
“Hurt!” he screamed. “Don’t you ever let me see you do that move again! Do you understand?”
When, I wondered, would I stop tearing up whenever an adult yelled at me?
“Because I will throw you out of this fucking gym if I catch you trying that bullshit. Are we clear?”
In response, I shot Kepplemen my death ray. It was his Kryptonite, making him think we didn’t like him, although I sometimes suspected he knew that I mostly didn’t. Instead of waiting for my concession, which he could tell wasn’t coming, Kepplemen blew his whistle again, and practice resumed.
Perhaps I was still upset that Kepplemen had humiliated me, or that I sucked ass at wrestling, but when I spotted Naomi’s car on my way home, I felt as if I’d summoned her from some secret part of my soul.
“I’m getting my butt kicked,” I explained to her. We’d been parked on the Dead Street for maybe five minutes, and I’d already spilled my guts about everything. “In middle school we were all mostly the same size, but now everyone’s so big and good.”
“Better, stronger, faster, huh?” Naomi said.
“If I could just win once,” I said.
“You will,” she said.
Naomi was thrilled to see me. When a car passed in the opposite direction, the headlights revealed her giddy expression.
She giggled once the darkness cloaked us again and then leaned forward to muss my hair, which she gathered in her fist and pulled me toward her to inhale my scalp, to kiss my temple, my cheek.
I was still scurfy with sweat. “You taste like you’ve been swimming in the ocean,” she said hungrily.
When I did not reciprocate, she sat back against her door and smiled, and as if by some trick of the dimness her features were separate unto her, floating like a lily pad.
That she had missed me so much made me both glad and uncomfortable.
“My first tournament’s this Saturday,” I said.
“Oh yeah? Where’s that?”
“Friends Academy.”
“The Quaker School? On Long Island?”
“I guess.”
“Huh,” she said, and considered this for a moment. “Your parents ever come watch you?”
“Dad’s not much into sports.”
“What about your mother?”
“She doesn’t like it. Both times she saw me last year the kid I was wrestling got hurt.”
“You mean like bad?”
“One broke his wrist. The other guy some ribs.”
“Mr. Ferocious over here,” Naomi said. She gave my shoulder a gentle push and then, resting her hand there, shook me.
I went rag-doll limp and smiled, which encouraged her enough to embrace me. She did this with a great bustle at first.
She bunched me to her, so that it all seemed nearly innocent. It bothered me, this attempt to disguise her intention, and she may have felt me withdraw, because when she pressed her lips to mine, she said, almost petulantly, “Kiss me back.” And I remember thinking I had violated the rules between us, because I did one of the only decidedly cruel things to her I would do that year and which I still regret, since I already knew the answer to the question I asked.
“Where are your daughters?”
Naomi tensed. She sat back, slowly, and then looked down at her manicure.
“They’re performing tonight,” she said softly. She glanced at her watch, even though they wouldn’t be done for another couple of hours. “I should probably get back,” she said, and then slid the key into the switch and started the car.