I hadn’t been in town very long when I ran into this guy I’d known back in the day. T.C. He’d just been a kid, then – all wide-eyed and full of misdirected passions. He’d do things like put up what he called “installation art” on the University Chancellor’s front lawn – usually under the cover of darkness and typically involving large amounts of prepared paper mache’ toilet paper, stick figures made from the limbs of the big Ginkgo tree in front of the Chancellor’s house, occasional fireworks displays, or random words spray painted in the grass. Words like TYRANT. Sometimes he would spray paint entire phrases like MUSSOLINI WAS A UNIVERSITY CHANCELLOR. Like I said, random shit. And he got away with it most of the time; he was the son of a particularly popular English professor, Dr. Arnie Grimble. And when I say popular, I mean popular with the students. The only reason T.C.’s dad got tenure was that the administration was afraid of a full fledged student uprising. Not that the old man didn’t deserve it; but you can’t ever be too popular with your students or people start to think you’re passing out A’s. But Dr. Grimble wasn’t like that. He was hard. But fair. He also treated his students with respect. And, I suspect the administration was also afraid if there was a student uprising, that T.C. would be at the front of the pack with his paper mache TP and banners comparing the Chancellor – a doddering old man in his early 70’s – to Hitler or Stalin. T.C. didn’t really know history and he wasn’t trying to make a statement. He just liked the effect.
“Hey, man,” he shook my hand and smiled.
I shook back and made some bullshit comment about how much he’d grown. Once the words left my mouth, though, I regretted saying them. Not because they were wrong. He was nearly a head and a half taller than me with broad shoulders and well defined muscles. He’d also started sporting a full mustache and lamb chops that would have shamed Elvis. He looked even less like his dad than he ever did. No, I regretted the words because they made me sound old. I was also jealous of his mustache. I’d finally shaved my beard off because the grey hair was starting to out number the dark brown, and I would be damned if I was going to be one of pathetic assholes who colored their beards. Better walk through life shorn and accept the inevitable.
“What are you doing back in town?” he asked.
“Just visiting,” I answered. “Thought I’d check out the old stomping grounds again.” I hadn’t been back since I graduated. There hadn’t been a reason to go back. I found a teaching gig, got married, had kids. Had a life. “What about you? You still live here, or are you back visiting the folks?”
“Folk,” he answered. “Mom died about five years go. Cancer.”
“Geez, I’m sorry.” And I was. T.C.’s mom was the well known and well liked – particularly by the guys in the graduate program who had spent any time at the house. Lydia. Her name was Lydia. She was nothing short of gorgeous: perfect tits, Marilyn Monroe curves, perfect lips, and an ass that wouldn’t quit. Many of us often wondered how a guy who, thought brilliant, sometimes couldn’t match his socks managed to land a woman like her.
“Yeah, well. She didn’t linger very long. By the time she went to the doctor, it was too late.”
“Still,” I said. Part of me wanted to ask what kind of cancer it was; but then I felt a little stab of shame. What did it matter? Does it matter whether it was breast cancer or a brain tumor? No. But the memory of her was something that lingered for me. Even years after. “So you’re here visiting the old man? Is he still around?”
T.C. nodded. “He’s still around, but I’m not visiting. I live here.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “You’re not STILL in college, are you?”
He laughed. “Fuuuck no, man. I didn’t stay in very long.”
“It would be hard for you to go to school here, I’d think.”
“Oh I didn’t go here,” he sniffed. “I got accepted to a school out of state.”
“Can’t imagine you suffering from separation anxiety.”
He shook his head. “I stuck it out for a whole year. Then I left and didn’t go back.”
“So what happened?”
He handed me a flyer. “This.”
I looked at the flyer. It was an advertisement for a wrestling match, that night at the Hardwood Avenue Rec Center. I must’ve looked confused, because he kept talking. “I’m a wrestler, man. You should come and check it out.”
“A wrestler?” I said “Like Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, shit like that?”
He nodded. “Damn straight. It’s a fun gig, man. High energy. Entertaining stuff.”
“What made you want to do something like that? I mean, I know it’s not real, exactly… but it’s still dangerous, right?”
“It’s as real as anything else,” he said.
“Does the old man go to watch?”
T.C. shook his head and spit on the sidewalk. “Nah. He never has.”
So I told him I’d check it out, though I had didn’t really have any intention of going. He told me to hang around afterward and then we’d go get a beer. I was trying to picture him flying around a ring, bouncing off the ropes, throwing even bigger guys down on the mat. It was difficult to imagine. Yeah, he was bigger. And he had clearly bulked up. But a wrestler?
The campus was pretty much how I remembered it; it was one of those places that never really changed. I’d heard through the Alumni newsletter that they were going to be building a new dorm, and additions to the student union were in the works. There was no evidence anywhere in the middle of campus, though, that anybody was building anything. Maybe it was just all talk. Maybe the funding had fallen through. It was a private university, so all the money had to come from alumni and whatever other sources they found to keep the doors open. Nearly all of my teaching experience had been in a public university. Big campus. Big expectation. And, like every state school, it had reputations for being a “party school.” The new buildings on my campus were paid for with matching funds from the state. Tax payer money. Building brand new buildings that would look good in a brochure or on a web-based virtual tour, while entire programs and colleges were being cut off and allowed to die from academic starvation.
Why had I come back? I wasn’t even sure. I was never the sort of guy who went to reunions. I made sure I kept myself in the Alumni Listing, but I never contributed money. An image of Lydia slid into my mind. It was summer. She was wearing one of her bikinis – the blue one the matched her eyes. A bunch of us were grilling out at the lake. Dr. Grimble was off manning the grill and drinking shitty beer like it was water. The other graduate students were hanging around, playing frisbee. A couple of the girls were sun bathing, and a few of the guys were focusing their attentions on them. Lydia pulled me asked and asked me if I’d ever seen this one part of the lake. “The rocks,” she told me, “are fantastic. You can see the history of the world and soak your feet at the same time.”
I walked by the house. Lydia’s house. I had planned to stop in and see my old professor; but I wasn’t sure that it was appropriate. I hadn’t called ahead; though maybe if I had, I wouldn’t have gone.
The whole trip was a last minute decision; I packed a bag, left a note for my wife, and headed out before she got home after picking up the kids from day care. That the only way I could get out of the house without an argument. That was all we’d been doing for months – since the cutbacks were announced. The work I’d ever known was academic. But she wanted me to go out and get something else. Anything, she said. I could be a dishwasher for all she cared, she said. At least I’d be contributing. I didn’t feel like trying to explain what I didn’t really understand myself – the urge to visit the old alma mater. I didn’t feel like talking about it when she tried to call my cell. I didn’t feel like arguing with her about the simple fact that there was no money for any kind of trip – which meant I was using credit cards for everything. Gas. Food. The cheap ass motel at the edge of town where all the high school kids went after the prom. I was decimating our collective credit rating, and I didn’t give a shit. Just more bills to avoid paying. About half way there, I decided to stop and see Arnie Grimble. And Lydia. But, I think it was mostly to see Lydia. Running into T.C. on the street was something I hadn’t counted on. I also hadn’t counted on Lydia being dead.
I stood in front of the house for a couple of minutes; then I kept walking.
Later on that day, I was lying on the bed in my room and staring at the television. I should’ve gone up and knocked on the door, I thought. I should stop in any say hello. I wondered if the house looked the way that Lydia had kept it. Her tastes were eclectic and kitschy. Interesting. Handmade trinkets from Barbados. World music on the stereo. Intentionally mismatched dinnerware. When Lydia cooked, it was always some exotic dish from some foreign land. Most of the time she wouldn’t tell us what it was until we’d had at least two bites of it. What about Arnie? I thought. How’s he handling it? How could he handle it? How could anybody? I tried to imagine what I’d feel like if my wife went through something like that. Cancer. What a horrible way to go. The cure was as bad as the disease, and if one didn’t get you, the other probably would.
I closed my eyes and dreamed of Lydia, and that day by the lake. The place she showed me was secluded; we were out of view from Dr. Grimble and everyone else. She soaked her feet in the cool water and talked to me about the rocks. She was fascinated with fossils, she said. It was interesting to think that all we ever really know about the past is the garbage we leave behind.
“Garbage?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she smiled, snuggling up close to me. I could feel the heat emanating from her body. “Garbage. Old bones, broken pots. Garbage. We know more from old garbage than we do from all of recorded history. Manuscripts get destroyed. Libraries get razed and burned. But nobody worries about what gets thrown out. Garbage.”
She laughed, and stood up. I thought, a little disappointed, that she wanted to go back. Instead, she looked around, then looked down at me and smiled. “I think I want to go skinny dipping,” she said. “I bet the water feels WONDERFUL.” And before I could answer she had untied her bikini top, letting it fall beside me, and stepped out of her bottoms. Then she jumped in, laughing. She came up out of the water gloriously wet; it was deep enough to jump but shallow enough to stand. “Come on in, Ray” she called. The water slid off her skin and back into the lake, and for an instant, I envied the water. I was about to slide in and join her when she shook her finger at me. “Tsk tsk tsk,” she said. “We’re skinny dipping, remember?” I’d been naked in front of girls before; but for some reason, I was nervous when I stood up. I looked around to make sure there was no one around, and, almost in a single motion, dropped my shorts and jumped in, washed in the cool lake water and the sound of her giggling laughter.
Some noise on the television woke me up. I woke up to a too cool but clearly bloated Lee Marvin yelling at a very young Charles Bronson in The Dirty Dozen. I looked over at the clock. 7:00. I sat up and looked around the room. Food crossed my mind; I hadn’t eaten anything since the morning. As I slid my shoes on to run out and get something to eat, I glanced at the bedside table and saw T.C.’s flyer. According to the flyer, there was going to be food and beer. I had enough cash left for the door. And I did tell him I’d show up. It wasn’t like I had anything else planned.
The rec center was easy to find. There was a small crowd of cars, so I found a spot easily. I paid the door and walked in. A crowd of around 50 people were there, with more trickling in. It wasn’t Madison Square Gardens – but it was a bigger crowd than I had expected. I made my way back to the concession stand, where I bought myself a hot dog and a beer, then I found a seat. I looked around for Arnie, but he wasn’t anywhere in the crowd.
When the show started, the crowd was on their feet yelling. Sometimes they’d cheer. Sometimes they’d boo. They always cheered for the Good Guy and always booed the Bad Guy. Up close it was obvious that most of the body to body hits weren’t really hits. But it was interesting. I’d watched wrestling a few times on television when there was nothing else to watch; but you don’t really get a sense of how orchestrated it all is until you see it up close. You understand, of course, that it’s not real. But it didn’t matter to anybody in the crowd. They yelled and cheered and through popcorn. They called out moves for the wrestlers to use, with names like the Puxatony Pile Driver and the Grand Slam Head Ram. The Bad Guy wrestlers jeered when they were winning and insulted and egged on the crowd, only to ultimately be beaten by the Good Guy and have slink off in humiliation.
The main event was between Gorgeous G and Tommy Knocker. Gorgeous G made his entrance the way All Good Guys did and jumped into the ring. Then the announcer called out Tommy Knocker, The Bad Guy. When he made his snarling, yapping, yelling entrance, I saw immediately that it was T.C. He dressed in black spandex bottoms, so all of his tats would be exposed. His hair was spiked and he had dark paint under his eyes. He was egging on the crowd beating his chest and insulting everyone. The crowd seemed to have it for him. But that only seemed to encourage him. When he stepped into the ring, the first thing he did was head butt the ref and throw Gorgeous G against the ropes.
Of course, T.C. lost. The final move happened when Gorgeous G lifted T.C, above his head, spun him around, and in a seamless move, pile drove him into the mat. The screamed and chanted “G Force Slam,” over and over. But instead of slinking off humble and defeated, T.C. refused the help of his “manager,” a beautiful blonde with a perfect tan and too good to be real tits and walked out on his own.
I waited around for him to come out. As the crowd trickled out and the cleaning crew came in to break everything down and clean everything up, I looked at the floor. It was covered in sticky split pop and puddles of warm beer, pop corn, half eaten hot dogs and nachos. Garbage, thought. For a second I tried to imagine what the Roman Coliseum must have looked like after the gladiator fights. Empty wine skins and chicken bones mixed with blood and piss? I thought about Lydia. Something about all of this would have appealed to her. I tried to imagine what she might say, but all could think about was her eyes, the feel of her skin, the image of her rising out of the water, the feel of her lips, and sounds she made while we fucked. When T.C. came out, he was smiling the way he used to smile when the University Chancellor called Arnie about the latest vandalism of university property. We went to a bar one town over and had few beers. We talked about the match. About the back in the day. About Lydia.
When I got back to my room, I noticed there were 20 new calls on my cell phone. They were all from my wife. When I called to make sure it wasn’t something with the kids, she started yelling at me. I wasn’t in the mood for an argument, so I told her I just needed some air and that I’d be home the following day. The next day, I checked out of the motel and drove home.
