1982 Revisited

I'm deliriously happy this morning to find this video of Kevin Von Erich, 25, 6'2", 235#, beating up Wild Bill Irwin, 28, 6'1", 250#, in Dallas (2 Nov. 1982). Kev was in his golden years--yellow trunks, barefoot, Prince Valiant haircut, not a mark on him. Kev and I were in our twenties then--and his Peter Berlin pornboy looks and Michelangelo physique dominated my fantasies at the starting point of my peak sexual years as an out gay man. In the Reagan years, time travel (backwards, always backwards) was a national obsession. Of course, it was a time of recession, the Unabomber, the spread of AIDS (newly named as such four months before this match), and the British invasion of the Falkland Islands too. But Vince McMahon had not yet devoured regional wrestling, Michael Jackson had just released Thriller, Pee Wee's Playhouse was on TV, MTV was still fresh and wonderful, compact discs were the new tech, my closet was crammed with Perry Ellis shirts and pants bought on MasterCard, and Time Magazine's Man of the Year was a frigging computer! Kevin was the golden gladiator of my dreams, making the fucked-up post-modern world bearable if not actually better.