Duran




My memory moves in forward and reverse. Most of my kinks today originate in imprints from my past. That is, a face I see today can catch my eye simply because it reminds me of, say, an old lover or wrestling buddy. But a recent impression can also propel backwards, highlighting a face, a voice, an expression, a sensation from years ago, giving it an erotic charge it never held for me before. Something I barely remember from high school can flash bright and lucid in the wake of a sensation from just last night, stirring passion retroactively where none had been before. Perhaps memory always works in two directions at once--the old Proustian madeleine effect. Memory is the dominant shaper of my desires and attractions, which, in turn, become enriched and more complex as I grow older.

Chris Duran is a classic BG Enterprise wrestler I barely remembered when I started rewatching an old Musclestuds match the other night. I remember thinking he was hot, largely because he reminded me of paperback illustrators' conceptions of Tarzan that I studied in drugstore racks when I was nine and ten. Even before I watched the old match, I felt a warm sensation just seeing his name on the product cover, even though I could not place a face with the name. The name alone excited desire--and I wondered whether it was stirred by a buried memory or perhaps merely through an association with a sexy Duran Duran video from MTV, decades ago.

As I rewatched the old match, the feeling became more complicated. I realized he vaguely resembles a veteran of the war in Afghanistan currently enrolled in one of my classes, a square-jawed student in his mid to late twenties who writes remarkably well and on whom I have had an inappropriate crush earnestly sublimated since the first week of spring semester. More than once this year I have wondered whether the student wrestled. His build and something about the cut of his cheekbones suggested he might. That's been the extent of the erotic speculation I have permitted myself, regarding someone way too young for me ... probably straight ... and someone whose understanding of syntax should concern me more than his personal life.

As for Chris Duran, 5'9", 185#, he appears in three Musclestuds DVDs currently available at Can-Am. I have two of them now, and ordered the third last night, an impulse buy in response to an overwhelming urge, and in violation of a prepared budget. He was active in underground wrestling in the eighties, or early nineties, I think. He was a heel with a peculiar charm and a solid body, who pluckily tormented the likes of Corby Banning, Maverick, Johnny Olson, and Jimmy Branson. I saw him first on old VHS tapes, now lost. Then I must have forgot him. And now, thanks to Tarzan and my community college student, he regains centerstage position in my wrestling fantasies.

Comments

  1. Chris Duran's match with Maverick was the very first VHS tape I ever bought. The pics were so hot I had to order it. The end of the match with all the drop kicks to the chest and the ab stretch really capped off an awesome match.

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