Page 28 of Playworld
A sure victory for the opposition, I became known, in the lingo, as afish.
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, at135pounds, 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 theOdyssey,I believe. Have you read Chinua Achebe’sThings Fall Apart? No? Well the protagonist, Okonkwo, is quite the champion. What about John Irving’sThe 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, “nowthatnarrows 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 werestep-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 winning—my surprise was so complete—it 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 motions—was, from its start, the norm—that 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 Iwas 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, aBoyd Wrestlingshirt, 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 contact—Boyd was one of the oldest schools in New York—our 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 walkedbent; 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 place—I did not make the connection then—as 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 beingsubjected.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 attempt—a 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, chinburied in his shoulder, pelvis to his ass. At this he went still and would let me execute a sequence of pinning combinations—a Half Nelson, an Arm Bar—giving 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 wereIwho’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 torso—my whole body’s weight—draped 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.