Late Checkout

Just this once I'll spare you the personal reminiscences. I have some good ones, though--the seventies, the Rodeway Inn in Tampa, cheap beer, and a born-again football player named Bobby--but, truth be told, they pale next to the fantasies BG East spins regularly in its Motel Madness series. A good case in point, the opening match of Motel Madness 11 has haunted my daydreams lately. Released three years ago, it features two company favorites of mine whom these pages have not touted nearly enough.

Dev Michaels, 5'10", 200#, looks like he stepped right out of a Tom of Finland illustration. He's a natural heel, though he's been a tough guy with a heart of gold too: I'm thinking here of the way he stuck up for his little pal Z-Man a couple of years ago. His jiggly run-in with Kid Karisma late last year may be Dev's definitive statement as a heel, however. Marco Carlow, 5'6", 170#, has made only two videos to date, but both of them burn me up. To a crisp. It's not enough that I'd love to play bongos all over his firm round belly, but also he has this deep chesty voice that can't help but stiffen the hairs on the back of my neck. His undies match against Jake Jenkins last year left stains I still haven't been able to wash out.

The logistics of wrestling on a 54"x75" Beautyrest in a motel room are complex and challenging. There's not even the space that your average wrestling mat provides. The 10-foot inner circle of a high-school mat is surrounded by still enough safety matting to provide for a wide range of motion.  Not the case here, where just beyond the do-not-remove-under-penalty-of-law labels are bed stands and TVs against which one might easily bash a skull. Happily, there's still room enough for bearhugs, armbars, and the sort of tight clenches I consider the prime cuts of wrestling. The restriction of movement then gives us something between wrestling and rough-and-tumble sex, a winning combo to my way of thinking. 

Dev and Marco start out in long pants, but after Dev takes Marco in the first six minutes, he asks, "What's with the jeans?" He need say no more to Marco, who willingly peels the blue denims off, stating that Dev may feel a little intimidated by the smaller wrestler's thickset thighs, whose capacity for murderous scissor holds Dev is about to experience up close. Dev likewise slips out of his camo fatigues. The striptease, though flimsily couched in terms of practicality and sporty nonchalance, adds considerably to the steaminess of the match, on top of the obvious promiscuities implied in the words "motel room."

The view is nice whichever way these bodies turn and twist each other. The battle leads to a climactic sleeper hold (the obvious maneuver for mattress-based combat). It takes the victor two minutes, maybe a bit more, to squeeze the loser into sweet, vertiginous unconsciousness. That's still plenty enough time for writhing, moaning, and grinding. I can play that scene over in my head twenty times in a row and still not tire of it. Pretty much the exact opposite of counting sheep.