Side Headlock
Before there was the triangle strangle, there was the simple side headlock. I love this hold in all its varieties--standing, kneeling, lying. I have loved it since my college days, when my wrestling buddy Dave first snapped my head against his ribs, crushing my left ear against his massive round bicep. I heard his powerful heart pound-pound-POUNDing into my right ear ... a heart so mighty its rhythm coursed through my whole body.
My arms grabbed for balance, my right hand sliding up and down his muscular back, my left hand braced on his smooth belly, while he walked me around the mat. Then, lying, his weight bearing down on mine ... I couldn't help but get hard.
After that, I was an addict, even purposefully letting Dave catch me in that hold, just so I could repeat that experience of closeness I felt the first time. I would reach up and grab the back of his curly hair and yank, just to piss him off ... so that I'd feel that tight crush against my skull ... it's a wonder I don't have cauliflower ears today.
Why did I let myself get caught in such a humiliating hold, in the grip of my tall, strapping friend? To feel the heat rise off his skin? to feel mastered by such a strong and beautiful boy? to feel punished for the desire I felt secretly and guiltily in my heart for him the other hours of the day? just to be close to him, clamped in to him? just to be a part, however helplessly, in the heroic way he held himself, the way he strode, rather than simply walked? to submerge my aching groans into his?
Whatever it was, it's a sense memory I carry with me to this day, some 35 years later, and manage to sneak it into nearly every wrestling story I write.
This is the Ivan Putski I like to remember...beefy and hairy. NOT the Ivan Putski who 'roided up and got a fake tan.
ReplyDeleteWhy did I let myself get caught in such a humiliating hold, in the grip of my tall, strapping friend? To feel the heat rise off his skin? to feel mastered by such a strong and beautiful boy? to feel punished for the desire I felt secretly and guiltily in my heart for him the other hours of the day? just to be close to him, clamped in to him? just to be a part, however helplessly, in the heroic way he held himself, the way he strode, rather than simply walked? to submerge my aching groans into his?
ReplyDeleteJoe,
Such sweet prose.....Coulda substituted I for me, me put himself in these same situations, every once in while me could fight victorious, but generally, me got satisfaction just from the opportunity to roll around and cop a feel off an attractive boy that would be otherwise untouchable except for the testosterone fed need for teenagers to prove their dominance over each other.
Me started this behavior in high school, but surrounded by comely fraternity brothers, me could not help but accelerate his proclivities in college. Me was able to control his urge to pop a boner through years of preconditioning as a result of organized youth athletics that inevitably ended up naked in the shower with your teammates. However, pre cum, easily washed out in the shower, was a problem for the underwear less youth me was, somehow me’s clueless, (or where they?) opponents accepted me’s crotch wet spot explanation as being attributable to having the piss squeezed out of him.
Joe - how did you explain the boner away?
Topher
Well, Topher, others made up the explanation for me: they said that boners often happened in wrestling and that they didn't necessarily mean anything--a simple anatomical effect of "friction" and "aggression." And they were right, except for the "didn't mean anything" part.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes wondered whether the explanation was given so that our matches could continue. And boners didn't ALWAYS happen, so the inconsistency was taken as proof of the standard explanation, perhaps. And, besides, those were the good old days of denial.
The aforementioned Dave took note of them and let me know in no uncertain terms that he knew they did mean something, but because he liked me, just not in "that way," he was willing to put up with them ... besides I was the most easily persuadable sparring partner he had.
And with a few beers, sometimes, but too rarely, old Dave didn't mind a lot of things.
Awright, Joe, no fair! That last one-sentence paragraph about the beers demands an amplification. Just what "lot of things" did curly-haired old Dave not mind? Sounds like there's a bigger story there than you've been willing to admit through the entire narrative.
ReplyDeleteMAwrestler
Not meaning to be coy there, MAwrestler--though, typically, a suggestive aside is much more provocative and interesting than the amplified story--and as noted the "lot of things" occurred "too rarely" to warrant much attention.
ReplyDeleteI will say that the college was a fundamentalist church-affiliated institution, so even the drinking of beer was a taboo being broken. Inebriation, however slight, then, was enough of a setback to our inhibitions to let cutoffs slip off to reveal unorthodox nylon bikini briefs* and some serious dry-humping to commence--to ejaculation and nervous dead silence afterwards, all conveniently "wiped from memory" the next day (oh, the amnesiac power of two or three Budweisers for young repressed Baptists!).
At most this happened six times. Many more times, of course, in my fantasies.
Today, old Dave is a family man (a grandfather!) and the pastor of a church in the southeast, so no forthcoming revelations, unless Dave ever takes it to mind to go on a public anti-gay-rights crusade. His heartfelt (perhaps overly heartfelt) tirades against sodomy from the pulpit are inevitable, even if unforgivable, given his profession and denominational affiliation, unworthy of any response from me.
(*My vivid recollection is that Dave had a pair of skimpy slippery nylon briefs with a print of a tiger pouncing forwards, its bared teeth right at the crotch.)
Nuff said.
ReplyDeleteMAwrestler