FreeCatFights

My name is Callista Quinn, and I am a professional wrestler.

This story is true...except for the parts that aren't. Two of the parts that aren't are right there in the first sentence. My name is not Callista Quinn, but it'd make a bloody good ring name, alliterative, and a touch unusual, without being overtly so. So I'll use it for the time being, even though I don't actually climb into any rings, and haven't for some time.

What is true is that I have been a wrestling fan for most of my life. What is also true is that as of late, it's become a bit of an obsession. Watching it, talking about it, talking about watching it...I enjoy it, but I can't help but wonder if lately, my fandom/fetish/obsession hasn't become tinged with a bitter-sweetness. Regret, even.

You see, what is also true is that I had a chance to make a go of it. No guarantee I would have succeeded, of course. Mathematically speaking, the odds are against it, and the fact that I never tried is obviously a large mark against me having been able to stick to it long enough.

And I wouldn't have had the advantages I obtained from the path I chose. A free ride to a decent school. A career I do quite enjoy, even if it's not the sort of thing you dream of growing up to become. A partner who both infatuates and infuriates me, and knows I'm the sort that needs both in fair measure.

But I can't keep the thoughts of that other life from running 'round my head. I want to curse myself for faithlessness, but the thoughts simply can't be banished. So maybe if I put them down here, with an audience as is wholly proper for the subject matter, then just maybe I can exorcise this daemon from my soul.

Because my name is not Callista Quinn, and I am not a professional wrestler.

And this is not my story.

We'll start with a fair amount of truth, if only to give a proper background. I was born in Salford, England. At a very young age, my family left England, and moved to Chicago, in the United States. For all that my father was a professor, he never lost touch with his working-class background, most especially in his love of sport.

Football, of course. My older brother and I are the fourth generation of our family to support Manchester United, and insofar as our father wanted grandchildren, I'm not so sure his primary motivation wasn't to ensure that there'd be a fifth. But if football was his favourite sport, his favourite programme was World of Sport. Akin to America's Wide World of Sports, World of Sport was a programme that aired every Saturday afternoon on ITV, showing a variety of various British sporting events, racing, darts, snooker, bowls, etcetera, but there was always wrestling.

In the 80s, after World of Sport ended, Dad took it upon himself to obtain VHS tapes of past broadcasts from a catalogue. Unfortunately, Dad's knowledge of European and North American history did NOT extend to such details as differing television formats. The tapes he'd bought were the PAL format used by most of Europe, not the NTSC format used in America.

So, he ordered us a PAL VCR, which came...and didn't work. After some swearing about this from dad, it was my brother who said, "Hasn't the TV got to be that same format?" Dad's face turned an interesting colour. Well, dad saved his pennies, and eventually was able to obtain a 12" PAL TV at what he insisted was a "reasonable price" (mum gave him such a look when he said this...) and THIS time he'd done his research and added a voltage converter/plug adapter and at last we could watch his tapes.

Some of the events interested me, some my brother, some neither, but what would keep us both captivated was the wrestling. That's what we called it: "the wrestling." Alone amongst us heathens, mum hated "the wrestling", and used to give him an earful for letting us watch, until she realised what an effective tool it could be for promoting good behaviour. Cleaned your room? Right, you can watch a match. Hit your sister? No wrestling for you! ("HA!" says my 6 year old self.)

So there were the three of us, crowded around a minuscule screen, watching the greats of British wrestling's golden age. Dynamite Kid, Marty Jones, Mark "Rollerball" Rocco, Sammy Lee, Flying Fuji Yamada, Jackie Pallo, Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, and of course, our favourite, Johnny Saint. Saint, besides being an honourable and fair-minded grappler and a brilliant technician, (and a native Mancunian) was frequently the smaller competitor in his matches, which of course appealed to two young children, (never mind that neither my 6'3 brother nor my own 5'11 self can quite pass for "small" nowadays.)

It was this shared experience of an ex-pat and his two children that helped alleviate some of the homesickness our father never quite managed to excise. Imagine my surprise the first time the name "Hulk Hogan" was uttered to me. I distinctly remember saying the words, "Wait, you Americans have wrestling TOO?"

This is a great, great start to what's going to be a great, great story. I absolutely love the use of foreshadowing and I love the darkness of it all. I'm happy you're here.

An excellent start; you've established your character and setting; I'd never thought that the differences in TV technology would so set a scene. Well done. I'm waiting eagerly for more.

Americans did in fact have wrestling. Quite a lot of it. For the better part of a century, American wrestling was broken up into territories, with the NWA as a loose confederation of the promoters of each territory. Here's an image showing the territory map as it existed in the 1970s. (http://basementgeographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/WrestlingTerritories.png)

As in most cartels, the alliance was uneasy. Throughout the late 50s and early 60s, the organization was plagued with infighting between promoters. One of those, Vincent J. McMahon, promoter of the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), based in New York and claiming a large chunk of the nation's most popular region, split from the NWA.

In the 1980's, McMahon's son Vince McMahon Jr, used the growth of cable television and pay-per-view to take his company nationwide. While many thought he would overreach and burn through his funds, by the late 80s it was apparent that this was not the case. In the days of the territories, regional wrestling promotions would buy airtime cheaply on local UHF television stations, but that wasn't enough any more.

Someone with cable television, (say, to see the World Cup, and if you'll allow me some brief profanity here, fuck Maradona that cheating cxnt!) and the perseverance to pore through the tv listings could find all sorts of wrestling on! The WWF, of course. NWA, (the name was used by Ted Turner's company, which had wrestling bought Jim Crockett Productions,) The midwest-based AWA, Texas' WCCW, even the odd GWF show from Florida.

WWF was not the best wrestling I'd seen, certainly not up to the high standards of our World of Sport tapes, but it was the biggest. Huge crowds and high-quality production values made it seem like a big deal, even when the matches were mostly squashes. I'd even see the odd familiar face or two, most notably the British Bulldogs, a team composed of British wrestlers David Smith and Tom "Dynamite Kid" Billington, the latter one of the true elite in world wrestling.

There was even a women's wrestling show! Ok, it was apparent even to six-year-old me that the girls on Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling were not nearly as talented as the wrestlers on most of the other shows, but it stuck with me nonetheless. It was a veritable buffet of wrestling, and if the dishes weren't all the highest quality, I still wanted to taste them all! Mum despaired for me.

I was getting close to that age where Mum wanted to go back to school and work full time, (she was in fact a non-faculty lecturer and grad student at a prestigious university,) which necessitated finding me "activities" that would keep me occupied after school. "What about a sport?" she asked.

I answered, "Wrestling?"

"Second choice?" she asked in a flat tone of voice.

"Football, then." To give my mother all credit, she didn't dislike wrestling because of some notion of it being unladylike. She disliked it because she thought it was idiotic. Outside of that, she was happy to provide me with what took my fancy.

This actually made things a bit easier for me at the time, because while mum wasn't taken by notions of what young girls were and weren't supposed to do, other young girls were, and "soccer" was seen as a girl's sport at the time. (I'll give you Yanks this, you are very progressive when it comes to women in sport.)

I don't know if she guessed that my tendency to obsess over one thing would align my sights on this new element or not, but if so, she guessed right. I'd still catch wrestling on TV now and then, but it was eat, sleep, and breathe football for young Callie.

Only problem was, while you Yanks might be progressive about women playing soccer, you don't know the sport all that well. Training was a bit of a joke. The coaches saw the game as running around and kicking the ball, so the training consisted of distance running, and kicking the ball. Technique? We dribbled the ball around stationary orange cones. That'd be really bloody useful if I needed to slalom around defenders standing all in a row who don't move any, but that happens less in actual games than you might imagine.

Tackling was discouraged because we might hurt someone, heading training was the coach gently tossing the ball right at our heads and getting us to hit it back, and positioning and movement were ignored completely. Even at age 7, I could see I wasn't getting as much out of it as I'd hoped. I quizzed my brother, as football-mad as I, and he reported the same.

I talked to my father about it, and he asked if I enjoyed playing. I admitted that I did, and he said I should stick with it. In another year, I'd be in a new age group with different programs, and maybe the training there would be better, and meanwhile, as long as I liked to play, what did the rest matter?

It would be one of the last conversations we'd have.

I'm really enjoying it so far. Sounds like we're about the same age so it's a bit of a trip down memory lane.

It's perhaps a bit of an indulgence on my part to phrase it that way, but then I can't remember the actual last conversation we had. It was a few weeks later, and the content of it would have been mundane morning minutiae, the conclusion of which was me racing out the front door to make the school bus.

That afternoon, around 1:30, I was asked to go to the principal's office. I remember thinking that one of my classmates must have grassed me up as the one who pulled Karen Connolly's hair at recess, but then when I arrived, I saw my brother waiting, looking as confused as I felt.

Heart attack, they told us. A friend of our mother's took us home in her old beige Pontiac Bonneville. I have absolutely no idea why I remember the car make and model, but I do. It's one of the few things from that day that I do.

The school year was a few weeks away from ending, so our mother arranged for us to stay home those last few weeks. Our grades were both excellent, and my mother obtained some curricula from our teachers and promised to ensure that we were taught them herself. She would give us some reading over those weeks, but that was it.

Looking back, I think she just wanted us home, with her.

I didn't learn a lot of what went on with her until later, but she'd been going for a doctorate in political science. She was already having great difficulty with her dissertation, and after dad died, she had no stomach for academia any more.

In August of that year, she put the three of us in the car and we drove from Illinois to California in ten days, (admittedly two of those days were spent on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, I seem to recall some comment from mum about her "having earned it" in the course of the drive.)

We finally did arrive, however. And only a week before all of our stuff! I don't know how it is that a moving truck can be a week late, but it was. Not having changes of clothes was the immediate issue, though sharing a room entirely bare of ought but a couple of mattresses and a single lamp with my brother wasn't much fun either.

Eventually, though, it arrived, and we got to start putting some semblance of a life in order. Just one problem, though. Dad's tapes never arrived. My brother and I went from being two kids who would just as soon do as little of the moving work as we could get away with into a cohesive and efficient unpacking machine, all in search of those tapes, but they weren't in any of boxes.

Eventually concluding that the moving company had lost the box, we immediately set upon mum to try to contact them and retrieve them. She was visibly annoyed by this, but said she'd do it later. "Later" ended up being a time when neither of us were there, something I failed to notice but my brother didn't. Mum reported that the movers checked there truck, but that there were no boxes of tapes in the truck that had carried our goods. I was on the verge of tears. My brother...looked angry.

Later, in our room, he said, "She's chucked them."

"What?" I asked.

"Dad's tapes. She never liked them. She chucked them in a bin before we left."

"I'll tell her you said that," I said. I don't know why I said that. I think I really didn't want it to be true.

"Go ahead," my brother shot back. "See what she says. You know how she fumbles when she tries to lie." I didn't know any such thing, but it would be years before I'd even mention the tapes to either one of them. Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn't, but if he was, I don't think I wanted to know.

It's one of the easiest things in the world to view one's early childhood through rose-coloured spectacles, but it really felt like a corner had been turned in our family, and not for the better. Mum was always working, or so it seemed. My brother grew restive, then rebellious. Mum quickly learned that if she wanted to dissuade him from a particular action, she was better off evidencing apathy, or even approval, then attempting to forbid him from doing so.

Myself, I turned inward. Being the quiet one in the family made things so much easier. Soccer, (and it was easier to call it that, even though in the stubborn centre of my mind, I still called it football, as dad taught me to,) stayed my outlet, and the level of training was steadily improving. I still watched wrestling, though it felt like American wrestling just wasn't quite the same.

When my brother left home for college, things got a bit simpler, at least for me. We'd moved, and I had a room to myself for a few years now, (thank all the deities in the heavens,) but now, without the air of simmering tension between my brother and my mother, it was quieter, more serene. In that serenity, it felt like I was finding myself, as well.

I'd hit my full height of 5'11, and I'd hit my full development in football, as well. The height was an asset in defence, (I played centre-back,) but I lacked pace, and while I was tall, I was a bit slight, so wasn't able to be a physical force in defence. Worse yet, my technical ability was average at best. Maybe if I'd had better training when younger, my technique might have been better, but at this point I felt like I'd plateaued. At that point, the games weren't fun any more, so after my sophomore year, I didn't join the team again.

I stopped by the office of the coach of the school's wrestling team to ask about a girl wrestling. He said he'd allow it, but he hoped I wouldn't. Curious, I asked why. He said, "Because it'll be a pain in the ass for me, and you won't enjoy it much either."

He followed this by asking "You weigh about one-thirty, I'm guessing?" It was close enough, and I nodded. He explained, "When you wrestle other girls, and there won't be many, you'll be outmatched. They'll be more compact and probably stronger to be in your weight class. The rest of the time, you'll be wrestling boys, and most of the boys in your weight class are going to be freshmen. Half of them will trip over themselves freaking out about where they are and aren't touching you, and about half of the rest will be TRYING to grope you."

He added, "And all of THEM will be more compact, and have more muscle mass as well. The only wins you'll get will be forfeits from boys too embarrassed to get on the mat with you. Now, if you're okay with all of that, and you put in the time and training, that's fine. I'm not gonna be the bad guy, here, and say 'no, girls can't wrestle', but that'll be the way it is."

"You don't sugar-coat it, do you?" I said sourly.

"Nope. If you don't mind me asking, though, why wrestling? What about that interests you?" I don't know why I bothered, but I told him about my dad and his tapes.  He said, "Well, I'm not going to say I know very much about WWF stuff, but my guess is that you need to be in pretty good shape, especially in terms of cardio. Have you considered track?"

As in most schools, the coaches were PE teachers who split their time between multiple team activities. At my school, the wrestling coach also coached track and field, and he put me onto distance running. It was relatively easy to pick up, football's great for cardio, after all, but as it turned out, I wasn't anything special there, either. The difference though, was that I didn't care.

For one thing, I didn't need to be a stand-out to help the team. Our school hadn't actually had a female runner for the 3200-metre distance before, and they were one leg shy of 800-metre runners for the relay as well. All I had to do was place in the top ten in my events, (and there were rarely much more than ten runners competing in the 2-mile,) and I'd score points at meets.

For another, the fact that I could just run and run and lose myself in the act of putting one foot in front of the other, chasing after that runner's high, it felt like...freedom. Freedom from worrying about test scores and homework and family fights and how I was going to come out to my mum.

...oh, yes, there's that.

Before he left for college, my brother had gotten back into wrestling, and had started spending some of the money he made working buying and trading wrestling tapes. Naturally, he made sure to make those tapes available to me, and he also made sure to let mum know he was doing it. I wonder if he was daring her to say something, trying to provoke a fight about the missing tapes, but in any event, she declined the bait.

I think originally he had the idea of rebuilding dad's old library, but then instead of British wrestling, he found himself getting into Japanese wrestling instead. "Puroresu", he called it. At first I chided him for mocking a stereotype, but he insisted that's what they called it. "Joshi puroresu" was supposedly the name for women's wrestling.

Watching the joshi tapes at that age was a revelation. Separate from the wrestling itself, I found myself admiring more than just moves and techniques. I will decline to describe specifics, as we are talking about an under-18 at the time, but suffice it to say those tapes were enjoyed more than my brother would have guessed (or would have wanted to know about.)

But just because I'd figured something out, doesn't mean I'd figured out what to DO about it. It was frightening, especially since I'd accustomed myself to my "quiet one" role. Speaking up did not come naturally. So I hid it. My passion for sport actually helped me out in that regard, because if you are a girl who likes sports, you WILL be called a lesbian for it. It was a burden we all shared, and a burden shared is a burden lifted.

Other burdens I just endured. I didn't get TOO much attention from boys, (very few high school boys will attempt to date a girl taller than they are, and most of the rest can be thrown off by the lack of sufficiently large tits,) but without dating or dances, a social life is difficult to maintain. I kept my circle small, and accepted the labels of "quiet" and "shy" without complaint.

I'm completely drawn in. Please, more.

In retrospect, I'm really not sure why I was so petrified. My mother was very liberal, and had expressed support for gay marriage, anti-discrimination laws and such. I don't know if it was the old joke about "would you want your daughter to marry one?" or was it just taking that step of letting someone else know. For half my life, I'd let that "quiet one" status keep things inside. It was a difficult habit to break.

My timing was perhaps less than brilliant as well. A few weeks after my 17th birthday, I'd finally mustered up the courage to talk to her about it. When I got home, I saw her on the phone, saying, "We are NOT finished, here. Do you-" and there was a pause, followed by my mother swearing, (she NEVER swore) and slamming the phone down. Seeing I was there, she said, "You will not BELIEVE what your brother has done now."

"Oh?" I said, wondering if it might not be perfect timing, hiding my revelation amidst whatever he'd done to infuriate her.

"He's leaving school! Says he already has a job lined up in San Jose."

"Well," I said, determined to get this out one way or another, "not to distract you from that, but I've got something to tell you."

"What is he THINKING?"

"Mum!" I said, getting annoyed. I didn't WANT to be the quiet one. I wanted my voice heard. But of course she was so indignant with my brother that I might not even have been there.

"Is his thinking about his future? What about his NEXT job? He won't have a degree, and then-"

I saw red. I stepped forward, took hold of my mother's shoulders, and screamed at the top of my lungs, "MUM WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT HIM FOR ONE SECOND? I'M TRYING TO COME OUT OF THE FUCKING CLOSET, HERE!!!"

In the lingering silence that followed, I can only say that it was quite clear that she'd heard me. My face reddening rapidly, I let go of her, mumbling, "Not quite how I planned that..."

When she finally found her voice, her response was, "Are you sure?" I'm not sure what I would have said back, only that it would have been screamed, but before I could, she held her hands up and said, "Sorry. Sorry, love. Stupid question. You just...caught me off guard."

I crossed my arms, pushed back from the brink of rage again but still irritated. "What, normally you're on guard for one of your children telling you they're gay?"

"I almost might have expected it from your brother," she said. I raised an eyebrow at this. "He's never brought a girl home," she explained.

"He's never brought a girl home to YOU," I noted, then bit my lip, instantly regretting saying that. It was entirely true, but it wasn't needed right now. "Look, I don't want to talk about him. First off, are you okay with this?"

My mother nodded fiercely, possibly out of desire to convince herself as much as me, but that she wanted that was positive. "Yes of course! I love you no matter what." After a pause, "So does this mean YOU have a girl to bring home."

I felt my face reddening again. "No mum. I'm...not out to anyone else."

"Are you planning to be?"

That...was a very good question. "I...don't think so. High school is..." something to survive, something to get past, "stressful enough," was what I actually said. "I'm only there for another year. I think that's for later, for me."

Not that it entirely worked out that way, but in any event, I was to get pulled into something else completely. You see, my brother's job paid well, and he had spare money for all sorts of things, including tickets to a wrestling show that he'd take his little sister to...

You've not anywhere near a fight yet but you've got people enthralled. It's a great story already.

For my brother, wrestling was something that reminded him of our father, so while he'd watch WWF/WCW, it wasn't the sort of thing he sought out. Indy wrestling was what captured him. A small crowd and wrestlers who looked like human beings rather than something out of superhero comic books.

The venues were as varied as high school gyms, county fairs, or sometimes even in the company's training gym itself, although those shows stopped after the city found out about them, citing fire codes and zoning laws. It was too bad, too. Those shows were dirt cheap, and between a train ride, a bus, and a mile's walk, I could get to them even when my brother wasn't available.

Going to those meant I had time to talk to folks. The wrestlers, of course, but also the owner, as well as the students. The shows were pretty much just advertising for the wrestling school, which was how the company made money. During the shows, students helped with things like setting up the ring, selling tickets. Sara, one of the training school's first female pupils, admitted to me that they weren't paid for doing that, and they even had to figure out their own transportation. It was just part of "paying your dues."

Which was the literal truth, as well, as the school charged $5000 plus $20/month for "gym membership." I don't even know what set my mind on that path, but I was immediately doing maths in my head on what this would entail, financially. I would be turning 18 just before the end of the school year. Theoretically I could start training with a parent's permission sooner, but I knew I'd not get that, so didn't factor that in.

Speaking of school, that was going to be a problem. I'd been accepted at a few universities, but none close enough. My scores were good, but you needed better than "good" to get into Cal, and I didn't even bother trying Stanford. The closest was Santa Cruz, and even if I had a car, trying to drive from there to Hayward a few times a week was going to be too expensive.

Mum would pay for room and board, true, but extras would have to be wheedled, and those would be few and far between. Things like a car, (never mind wrestling school,) were right out. So, I did a bit of research.

And then I lied my fucking arse off.

I pleaded indecision, (which wasn't entirely untrue,) but said I was weighing a more traditional education against trying to study drama and acting, (more than a bit of a stretch,) and that I didn't want to waste her money spending a year at an expensive university if it wasn't what I wanted, (an outright lie. I'm ashamed to admit it now, but at the time I'd have gladly had her spend that money if only I could have seen a way to make it work.)

I picked a local community college ostensibly on the basis of its drama program, noting "Tom Hanks went there!" (True, though I hadn't the faintest idea whether the drama program was any good. I just wanted to take acting classes to try to help play a character and cut promos.) I utterly neglected to mention that that college being located in Hayward, mere miles from the wrestling gym.

That summer, I made a few inquiries at wrestling shows of Roland, the wrestling company's owner, and he said that the five thousand could be paid in monthly installments, though he'd charge interest. A few more pointed inquiries got me a commitment to a suitably low rate on those. (I suspect what that interest rate was could be highly variable depending on how savvy the student in question was.)

Roland was a very odd man. Standing a good half of a foot shorter than me, he must have weighed over twenty stone. He'd tried to make it as a wrestler in his youth, and while his then-trainer admitted his student had a mind for the business, he simply lacked the body.

He'd worked as an accountant until his late 30s, at which point he used the money he'd saved up to found a wrestling company. He was a liar, a cheat, and given to bouts of shocking self-centredness. But I'm not sure there's ever been a successful wrestling promoter that that sentence has not described. And while his company may have been small, it ran, mostly profitably, until the day he died, over 20 years after he founded it. It's not stardom, but it's success in my book.

So, I arranged a part-time job to cover the gym fees, signed up for fall classes, (two thoroughly basic courses in history and literature as well as my "cover" class of drama,) and signed my name to become a student of professional wrestling.

Also, there was more lying. Mum, if not entirely pleased with my school choice, at least pleased I was (supposedly) following a path she could understand, (acting being a fine art, and therefore something she could approve of,) had gifted me her old car, (though I suspect the entirely minimal trade-in value a 1987 Chevrolet Spectrum had in 2000 had something to do with that as well.) It was actually MORE expensive then taking buses and trains, I found, but it meant I could keep both my work uniform, ("Would you like chi, er, fries with that?") and my training gear with me without needing to lug two duffel bags onto said buses and trains.

That last prompted questioning from mum, who asked why I needed pads for track. "Track?" I said sleepily. Realising I needed to explain this away, I said, more cleverly, "Oh, I'm not doing track any more. I thought I'd try football again." I was patting myself on the back for that one for weeks.

Meanwhile, I had my training for real, now. They did an "assessment" of you first. Had you do a few lifts, to start. I did al-right with my legs, but my upper body was described as "underdeveloped." My muttered comment, "heard that since I was thirteen" produced more laughter than I strictly speaking would have liked. After that, they had you run around the block until you couldn't.

The pace the male trainer set for us new students wasn't all that fast, and since my legs were as long as his, this was only a moderately fast jog for me. One by one, the students dropped off, leaving just me and another after about a half hour, at which point the trainer stopped us outside the large warehouse-style door to the gym (which gave the gym it's nickname "the garage".) Mike, the head trainer, gave me an awfully funny look when we did.

Bumping was what I went onto next. Take a hundred back bumps your first day. Then take five and come back and take a hundred more. Did I mention this was on a mat? The ring was being used for other things. After an hour of this, I could barely force myself to stand. I asked Don, one of the assistant trainers, if I still hadn't gotten it right. Don cheerfully explained, "Oh no, you had it pretty good about the 10th or so bump."

"Then why the bloody hell-" I started to say, suspecting hazing here.

Don cut me off, "You HAD it pretty good. The ones you've been doing the last ten minutes have been garbage. And the reason we make you do THAT is because you need to be able to bump just as well at the end of a match, when you're beat-up and tired, as you do at the beginning. Any more questions?" I shut my mouth and shook my head. "Good."

Possibly the best thing about that ugly, blocky hatchback, was that the car could (usually) get me to those shows that were farther away. Sara, who had as old and awful a car as I did, would carpool with me, with each of us taking turns subjecting our decaying vehicles to the stresses of driving and California traffic, though sometimes whose turn it was was dictated not by order but by whomever's car WASN'T in the shop at the time, as often as not waiting for us to scrounge up the money to get it fixed as for the actual repairs.

We'd show up, help put up the ring and set up the chairs, and then we'd generally be assigned to the ticket desk under the theory that "pretty girls sell tickets." I didn't mind because sitting with Sara was a treat. She was as Joshi-mad as I was. We'd talk over matches we'd seen, swap tapes we'd acquired, talk ring psychology that was way over our heads, not that we knew it at the time.

Being a mainstay in Japan was her top ambition. I asked her about WWF or WCW, and she said, "WCW will be dead in a year or two. As for WWF, given how they treat women, no, never." Well, she was half right. "Anyway, I'm not pretty enough for them." I perhaps disagreed a bit TOO vehemently there, (I could have easily let myself crush on her if she weren't entirely straight,) but she said, "you're more their type. Skinny." I probably looked confused at that, because 'skinny' was not the shared physical characteristic about women in WWE I most noticed. "Well, of course you'd have to get your tits done," Sara said, acknowledging that.

It was exhausting, but I was managing...or so I thought. My fall quarter grades came in and they were...not to my usual standard. There were only so many hours in the week. I was at the gym twenty, I was working twenty, and school would take me thirty. That would just work, albeit without much of a social life, but it ignored the transportation time between all of these things. And, being eighteen, I wasn't entirely willing to totally forgo that social life.

In the end, there weren't ENOUGH hours in the week. I wasn't willing to cut time from training, I couldn't afford to cut time from work, (that paid for the training!) so the only thing left was school. I'd thought I could coast there, but even in drama class, there was homework and study required, and that wasn't getting done.

Mum was unhappy, but I barely cared. It was...a response she wasn't used to. My brother would yell back. I half-assed some excuses and then went up into my room. It turned out, it got her suspicious as well. Unbeknownst to me, of course.

There were also the bumps and bruises. I tried to play them off as football-related, but after the second black eye, I'd later learn mum wasn't buying it. I can only imagine what it looked like, to her. My grades were shit, I was coming home with assorted minor injuries, and every few weeks I'd go God-knew-where and come home at some ridiculous hour.

The last straw happened on New Year's Eve, 2000.

Things were tough all around. My grades were looking to be even worse, as I'd signed up for maths and science classes in addition to my drama cover. My boss had suspended me after I'd no-showed again. I'd tried to give him a list of dates I couldn't work because of shows months in advance, but he refused to work with me, saying, "If I let you dictate your schedule like that, I'd have to let everyone do that, then what would we have?"

My reply, "A happy work force?" did not endear me to him further.

It was clear I'd have to start finding other work soon, but there wasn't much in the area, and the further away I got from the schools, the harder it was going to make things. Wrestling training was...tough. I was starting to get past the point where I had to beat myself up quite so much, but learning moves was slower than I'd like. Even Sara had about a stone on me. We had some relatively small men, but not THAT small. I had to spend a large percentage of my time trying to build up upper-body strength, (and I bloody hated lifting weights,) and the results just weren't coming.

I had no interest in steroids, but without the muscle mass to throw folks around. then despite being 5'11, it looked like my offence was going to have to be either aerial or ground-based. I had a better knack for the latter, and while mat wrestling wasn't in fashion in America at that time, there was always Japan.

In any event, I'd hoped the Christmas holiday would do me good. Lack of money would be a concern, but maybe I could sell off some pressies, (or hopefully just get a lot of money in gifts,) and meanwhile, I had a break from work. Even better, the year-end show was built around a tournament, similar to ECWA's Super 8. Less great was that the show was out in the middle of nowhere, but as they say, all part of paying your dues.

And there were a lot of dues, because that night fucking SUCKED. Sara caught a ride with someone else, so I was alone for the whole trip. On the way there, I got a flat tire. I had to wait nearly an hour on the side of the road for the tow truck to arrive. The driver helpfully informed me that the spare he put on shouldn't be driven at more than 50mph, or more than 50 miles.

Roland gave me an earful about being late, which I reeeeaaallly wasn't in the mood for, (put me on the bloody card and I'd never be late!) but I bit my tongue and got to work. As punishment, I got stuck at the merch table for the show, and the venue was this weird sports facility that had a set of bleachers in between me and the ring, so I didn't even get to watch the matches. By the time the ring was broken down and loaded on the truck, a dense valley fog had settled.

Now, there was a shorter way to get home, but I didn't KNOW it, and this was before GPS in your smart phones, so when it came to getting home, I had to go the way I know, which was freeways the whole way, so I was driving faster than I was supposed to on the spare, longer than I was supposed to on the spare, and in awful fog for a good chunk of it. I was a nervous wreck by the time I got home.

Mum being in that same state when I arrived didn't help at all...

fantastic story can't wait for the rematch. loved the fight :)

Awesome story

I hadn't even gotten to sleep yet when the door to my room flew open and she came in. For a few seconds there was a lot of screaming, her at me, me thinking someone was in the house, but eventually the volume lowered enough to the point where we could discern each other's words.

"Mum, what the fuck are you DOING?"

"What am I doing? What are YOU doing? Where did you go last night?"

"I told you, I went to the city with some friends."

"And then where did you go?"

"Nowhere."

"Stop LYING to me!"

"I'm NOT!"

"You didn't put two hundred miles on the car going to the city and back!"

"You're checking my mileage counter now?"

"You haven't left me much bloody choice, have you? You don't tell me what you're really doing, you stay out all hours, you come home with bumps and bruises, and you are NOT on the football squad. Callie...WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!"

Mum was in tears. She looked on the verge of outright panic. It broke my heart to realise what I'd put her through. So, I told her. I hoped there'd be some relief in her face, because she must have been imagining so much worse. There was none, though.

"Wrestling. Fucking wrestling..." she said, shaking her head.

"Mum, I..."

"I'll speak to you in the morning, Callista." and she quietly left my room, closing the door behind her.

I did not sleep well that night.

The next morning I woke up to the smell of food in the house. Crawling out of bed, I went downstairs to find a veritable banquet on the dining room table. Apparently mum hadn't slept well either. She brought in a coffee cake and a pitcher of juice, set them on what little empty space there was, (she had to move the dish with the potatoes a bit,) and nodded to me.

I noted, "Unless you're bringing a dozen people over for an intervention, I think you've made too much food."

She ignored my attempt at levity and started filling her plate. After an awkward moment, silence punctuated by the clink of silverware against china, I began to do the same. After about five minutes or so, she said, "Your brother would always confront me with his defiance. Hiding yours was something I was not ready for."

I grit my teeth and said, "I have been trying for years to make clear to you that I am not a miniature girl version of him. I've done everything but scream it in your face, and since that's HIS way, it seemed counter-productive."

"Indeed. Well, I imagine you know I can't support this...dreadful mistake."

Setting my fork down, I answered, "Whether or not it is a mistake has yet to be determined, but yes, I knew you would not support it. That was rather the point in hiding it."

I'm not sure I can convey the emotions being thrown about whilst accurately translating the discussion. Being a family headed by two academics, this was how arguments happened, in ostensibly civil language with vitriolic subtext. Her opening salvo was an accusation of cowardice. My reply was denigrating her parenting acumen with regards to me. Behind the precisely chosen words, we were spitting pure venom. It's no wonder my brother favoured just screaming.

"Well, one way or another, that's done with. The question is how to proceed. It seems to me you cannot further your education and attempt this...folly...simultaneously."

"Yes I can."

She looked at me sharply, "You've yet to manage it successfully."

I answered, quite reasonably, I thought, "That's because I've had to work a shit job to pay for it. If I didn't have to do that, that's hours more in the day I could devote to school."

"So you admit that you've prioritised rolling around on mats over your future."

I could feel my teeth clenching. If she got me shouting at her, that was her way of "winning the argument." She hadn't learned from Nathan's departure what a pyrrhic victory that was. "I admit I have prioritised wrestling over school, yes. What I am saying to you is that for a small amount of money, I wouldn't HAVE to."

"So you would make them equal priority?"

"Yes!"

"So instead of wasting your time at community college, you would actually attend one of the moderately prestigious universities you got accepted to? Because that would actually be making your education a priority. Continuing where you are and simply performing better would be placating me while altering nothing."

I tried to think of something, anything. San Jose State? It was close enough to...no, blast. Mum was an academic snob. A state college would not do for her. I tried to stall by taking a long drink of orange juice, but Mum wasn't waiting for me.

"I won't have it," she said, setting her fork down and lifting the mug of tea up. "You must decide. If you make the correct decision, I'll support you. I won't support you ruining your life. If you feel compelled to do so, you can do it somewhere other than in my home." Her pronouncement thus made, she left the table, mug in hand.

I sat there, a table full of food I had no appetite for in front of me. Two roads stretched out before me. One was clearer than the other. Go to school, work at it, have time left over for myself, maybe start actually LIVING some. Come out of school with a degree and not a penny of debt. It led to a good life. A career, a partner, a shared home.

The other path...A career in wrestling was an uncertain one, especially for women. Even for male wrestlers, you could point to names, guys who'd made it big, were on tv, and they ended up broke with broken and battered bodies.

And there was zero guarantee I could even make it big to begin with. WWF wanted plastic barbies. I wasn't that. Japan liked big foreign wrestlers for their local heroes to overcome, but I'm not sure I'd fit that bill, either. The indies and Europe were dicey, and the money wasn't great at either of them.

And, incidentally, I'd be starting on that road broke and homeless. It was clear which path was the better bet. But this time, when I went upstairs and went in my room, it was not to weep at a dream slipping through my fingers. This time, it was to pack. I filled a suitcase and a duffel back, took them down to my car, and set off down the road not taken.

The first step was to figure out how to get a roof over my head again. A couple of the long-timers would crash in the Garage, but that wasn't an option I wanted to take for several reasons. There was another option, also a bit distasteful for a couple of reasons, but as a temporary solution, it was probably as good as I was going to find.

I debated calling first, but it was Sunday and a holiday. He'd never be up before noon. Anyway, it's not like I had a better plan B. My few friends from high school were scattered about at their own colleges, and I'd put little enough time into trying to make new ones at college.

On the way south, I stopped at the fast-food restaurant that had been my employer, went inside, proverbial hat in hand, and told my boss I'd be a good girl from now on, and could I please come back to work. He gloated a bit, said he would think about it, and would give me a call later in the week.

The little git was so chuffed with himself I was able to nick a few breakfast sandwiches and several bottles of juice before ducking out the back and passing them out to the usual collection of homeless people there.

I went back to my car, took my uniform out of the suitcase, deposited it on the strip of grass in front of the restaurant and lit the fuckin' thing on fire before driving off. If I wasn't going to let my mother run my life for a free ride through college, I bloody well wasn't letting some arsehole assistant manager with a Napoleon complex run it for eight bucks an hour.

I have to admit, I was singing happily as I kept going. After a half-hour of driving, and a few hours letting myself work up a worry again, I shook my head and got out of my car, heading up the stairs to knock on the door of my brother's apartment.

He opened it, a sleepy expression on his face, wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt reading 'DBAs do it on tables'. The shirt must've been a XXL at least. Given what I'd come for, I really should have said something other than, "My God you've gotten fat."

He gave me a bemused look, answering, "I love you too, sis."

I winced and said, "Sorry, sorry mate, just...well you kinda have."

"I don't deny it," he said dryly, shaking his head, "Oh, last night was the tourney, wasn't it? How were the matches?" He paused and said, "Wait, why are you....oh, she found out, did she?" My brother was many things, but slow of wit was not one of them. I nodded and opened my mouth, but he said, "Wait, let me guess. Ultimatum?" I nodded again. "Not surprised. Well, not by her. A little surprised you told her no. You never wanted to stand up to her."

"Not precisely correct, brother dear. I never wanted to take a side in your fights with her. Is it all right if I come in?"

"Oh, sorry, of course. And of course you can stay, too." I have to admit I let out a sigh of relief at that. Gotta give the lad credit, he knew how hard it would be to ask, so he saved me the need. Closing the door behind me, he moved a pizza box off of the couch, set it on top of another pizza box on the floor, apparently to give me space to sit down. I declined to comment, since I had bigger problems right now than crumbs on my arse, and sat. "So what's your plan?" he asked.

I'd had some time to think about this, and while it was easier said than done, the idea was simple. "First, find a job that I can live off of. Second, find some apartment situation, probably with room-mates. In the meantime, I can cook and clean to earn my keep here."

Nathan frowned. "I don't need a live-in mother, Callie."

"I didn't say you did. I said you need a cook and a maid. I swear you've gained three stone the last few months, and this place is a shit-hole."

Nathan looked at me oddly, "And this is the quiet one, talking."

"You always wanted me to speak up, well I'm getting in the habit."

"You know," he said, "you don't have to do it the hard way. I make bank. If our company takes off, I'm gonna be able to retire in five years when all my stock options vest. Let me give you the..."

He stopped as he saw me shaking my head. "I know you've a good job, but putting me up for a year or two? If your company DOESN'T take off, you'll be fucking glad you held onto that money. Anyway, Mum was right about one thing. I have a choice: her way or my way. It isn't my way if you're bankrolling it."

He seemed to accept that, and it was a good thing, too. There was another reason, one I didn't want to tell him. His fight with Mum and my fight were two separate things. I was here because I needed to be, not because I was taking sides with him against her. I would crash on his couch, and pay for it with housework, sure, but taking money from him would be losing my fight and winning his.

"Well, if you won't take money," he said, "will you at least take a referral?" I raised a querying brow. "We're going the whole 'real office' route at work, so we need an office manager-slash-receptionist-slash-whatever-needs-doing person, filing, typing, et cetera. You can type at least forty words per minute, right?"

"Well gee," I said sweetly, "I wasn't doing all that well in maths class, but seventy-two is more than forty, right? Tee-hee!"

Nathan gave me a sour look but went on. "My boss was gonna just go to a temp agency and set up a temp-to-perm thing, but they're really expensive. We're using a lot of our cash flow to move office. Be nice if we could just hire direct. It'd be an eight to five gig, so your evenings'd be free for training, and of course your weekends for the shows."

I agreed to interview, and asked him where he kept his vacuum. After sheepishly admitting he didn't have one, HE agreed to go buy one.

It took me most of the week to get his apartment into liveable status, and while he complained about my propensity for including "too many vegetables" in the dinners I made, ("It's a fucking salad, you big twat!") he admitted it was a nice change from pizza and fast food.

That Friday, I had an interview...of sorts. Apparently the company only had one boss, the company founder, and he did the interview himself. The first question he asked was, "If you were marooned on a desert island with a hatchet, a ballpoint pen, and a badger, what would you do?"

"Is he just fucking with me?" I thought, but I endeavoured to answer the bizarre question. "Kill the badger with the hatchet, use its skin as a sail and its intestines as line, and chop enough wood to make a sail boat. The boat's not going to be big enough for ME, of course, but I'll use the pen to write a note on the sail."

He chuckled and said, "And you think that'd work?"

I said, "Probably not, but a million to one shot is better than a million to nothing, isn't it?"

He laughed, "So your brother told me about you and wrestling. Is that your million to one shot?"

"I'd hope the odds aren't THAT poor," I said with a smile.

"So if I hire you and you get a call and it's the WWF calling, I'm going to need a new office manager, right?"

"Most likely."

He laughed again, "No no no. You're supposed to say, 'Oh of course not. I'd love this company too much!' or something like that."

"Why?" I said, putting on a mock-innocent face, "Does this job require me to bullshit you?"

He hired me right on the spot.

No offense to the fine authors on this board - there are some spectacular talents here -

but reading this is like going through a stack of Archie comics and finding Watchmen.

You come into a pile of media expecting one thing, and you find something thats technically in the same genre but on a whole different plane entirely.

Ouff... quite a roller coaster here! I must say I'm hooked!

It's rare to find a story here that can capture your interest so fully and without any action yet too! You've weaved the diary so skillfully that the reader is too busy being engrossed by the characters before they can even remember that they're on a fetish fight forum!

Marvelous work  :D

x G x

The job, like the company, (and for that matter, the CEO,) was a strange one. Even the mundane elements of it were subject to odd quirks.

Task one was to keep the office supplied with stuff. Not computer stuff, the IT guy did that, but other stuff, with “stuff” ranging from pens and paper to drinks and snacks in the company fridge. Since the latter included beer, I was reluctantly compelled to point out that I was still eighteen. Ten minutes later, the IT guy dropped by with a picture-perfect California Driver's License with my face and someone else's name. “Don't ever hand that to a cop,” he said solemnly, before heading back to his desk.

“All problems have solutions,” the Boss was fond of saying, “some just require more creativity.” I was thoroughly amused by the mindset that decided the solution to the problem of the new office girl not being able to buy beer was to make her a fake ID.

Task two was the filing of paperwork. Most of our records were digital, of course, and thus my brother's job as database administrator. Actual paper records belonged to one of three groups: Documents we were legally required to have paper copies of, which occupied a fraction of a single cabinet, documents which were otherwise important, which got scanned and sent to my brother, and everything else, which got recycled.

The third main task I had was to act as receptionist. Any phone calls into the office were forwarded into assorted mailboxes, (the general rule at this company was that if the call were important, it'd go to people's cellphones, so no one ever picked up their desk phones,) and any visitors should be greeted and handled.

I hadn't brought much in the way of business-y clothes from home, but when I asked what the dress code was, the boss' answer was, “Don't violate exposure laws.” I gave a laugh at this, right until I saw one of the programmers walking past in what looked like combat boots and a pair of bikini bottoms. “Pretty sure Dave lost a bet,” he said.

I still didn't understand what it was we DID, as a company. The best explanation I could get from Nathan was, “we write software that reads how you're using your software and tells you how to use it better.”

In an average week, my tasks took about twenty hours or so of actual work. After about a month working there, I decided I had to tell the boss that. “Yeah,” he said, “but WHICH twenty hours?”

I blinked at that. “I don't understand.”

“Which hours of the day is it you work in?”

“Uh, well, more in the mornings, but stuff comes in whenever.”

“Exactly. Sure, I could send you home at noon, but that means every time something comes up in the afternoon, someone else, someone being paid, no offence, a lot more than you, to do an entirely different job, would need to stop what they're doing. Making you part-time would be like replacing the fridge and the coffee maker with a vending machine. Yeah, I'd save a few bucks, but I'd piss people off and they'd just all get their snacks somewhere else. No bueno.”

“If you need something else to fill the hours,” he continued, “I'm thinking of putting a gym in that empty conference room.” As I said, this was a very strange work environment.

The gym never did get put in, as more people voted for a tv and game room, but I was hardly complaining. After just 6 weeks there, I'd saved up enough for a deposit and a futon, and I moved into a 2-bedroom apartment in Fremont, sharing it with a San Jose State student in her sophomore year.

My flatmate and I weren't close. She was focused on her studies, and her reaction to an abbreviated version of my story made it clear that we had next to nothing in common. We both kept the apartment neat and quiet, though, so there was little friction, there.

Once that got set up, though, I had something new: Time to myself. Training was 2 nights a week, the day job was a day job...you do the maths. I had some pocket money now, an apartment in walking distance of a train station...and a really good fake ID. Like I said, you do the maths.

Poking around the Internet in those free hours at work let me know where the “right” clubs were. It was at one of those clubs where I found myself talking to Maiko, a pre-med student at the University of San Francisco. “So what do you do?” she asked, smiling.

Now, I've had a few drinks by now, and I'm really rather lost in her eyes at the moment, so instead of coming up with an appropriately-impressive sounding title for my day job, I instead blurted out what I think of myself as, and answered, “I'm a professional wrestler.”

Maiko only smiled wider at this, and leaned forward, whispering in my ear, “Let's go back to my place and you can...show me a few moves.”

She lived close by, so minutes later, she'd taken my coat, my purse was on her couch, and we had moved into her bedroom. She leaned close, flashing the sexiest little smile at me, practically purring, “You want to body-slam me, wrestler girl? Go on...” she said, red lips lightly parted.

I gave her a quick look up and down. She looked a good 8 inches shorter than me, and was slender to boot, probably no more than 110 pounds. Still, I couldn't count on her coming up for it, so I had to assume I might be dead-lifting, here, so I bent at the knees, reaching my right hand in between her legs.

“Oooh, you don't play arooowwwWHHHAAAAA???” she started to say, her voice going up in pitch and volume as I clasped her shoulder with my left hand, grunting a bit as I lifted her up off of the floor and turned her upside down, depositing her onto the bed on her back as gently as I could, not wanting to break anything.

After a moment's pause, she sat up, eyes wide, and yelled “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?”

My mouth hung open for a moment at this reaction, and I said, “But....but you ASKED me to!” Surely that soft a landing on a bed hadn't HURT, had it? I took stiffer bumps onto my futon just for shits and giggles!

Confusion was evident on both our faces. She was the first one to speak, “Wait...you're ACTUALLY a wrestler?” I nodded, probably a bit dumbly. She put her hand up to her mouth, trying to stifle a giggle, but quickly failing.

I may have looked a touch annoyed, “What, you thought I was lying?”

It only made her laugh harder. “I thought....” she said, struggling for breath as she laughed. “I thought you were coming on to me. Y'know...wrestling..moves?”

My face felt hot. I knew without looking in a mirror that it was bright red. Like the English flag, pale, northern English skin has two colours: White and red. Trying for dignity, (and probably failing,) I said, “Well I WAS...just...not with that...”

It would take far too long for her to stop laughing.

Once she DID stop laughing, the mood was, if not lost, definitely altered, so we moved back out to the couch, with Maiko pouring us each a glass of wine. "So. You handled me pretty easily, in there."

"Not that easily," I admitted. She frowned. "I didn't mean THAT," I said quickly. "In wrestling, typically the person taking a throw or slam is helping. The hardest part is getting you up. If I were giving you a body slam in a match, you'd have bent your knees when I bent down, then pushed off with your feet as I lifted. Once I've got you up, then I can turn you around and drop you down."

"When you...slammed me, it didn't hurt a bit. Is all that just an act, then?"

"Not exactly. Wrestling rings aren't that well padded, certainly not as much as your bed. Also, I took care to give you as soft a bump as I could. In a match, I'd throw you a lot harder."

"Oh," she said softly.

"As for how that feels, well, not good, but we practice a lot, both to take the bump as safely as possible, and just to toughen up and get used to it. So it won't hurt much," I said, setting my wine glass down on her coffee table, saying, "the play-acting is called selling," before mimicking a back bump against the back of of her couch, my arms going out, and grunting, "UNNNGGHH!" selling the non-existent bump with a pained expression on my face, my right hand going behind my back.

When I opened my eyes, I could see spots of colour had appeared in her cheeks, her lips parted slightly. Heh. She was turned on. I'm not going to claim great seductive prowess, but someone turned on by the thing I love most? Oh yeah. I know what to do there.

"Lots of other throws, of course," I say, my hand reaching for hers and gently removing the glass from her fingers, setting it on the table next to mine. "Here's a belly to back suplex," I said, my left hand going around her waist, my right reaching under her left thigh, gently pulling her part way onto my lap. "I'm sure you can see where the name comes from," I murmured softly into her ear, the palm of my left hand stroking her flat tummy, mine up against her back.

My right hand spent a bit of time rubbing the inside of her right thigh, just underneath her short skirt. "So next I lift you up and drop you back," I say, not really doing much lifting, instead just letting us fall back to the couch. "Don't forget to sell."

"Ohhhhhh!!" she moaned as we "landed", which was not precisely selling the move properly, but I was rather beyond offering professional critique myself.

"Now that you're on your back," I say, rolling myself on top of her, "I can try to pin you, and-" and at this point she stopped my narration by flinging her arms around me and fiercely pulling my mouth down to hers.

Shwing!
*drools a lot*

x G x

Please keep this story going - it's awesome

One thing I have always appreciated is when a writer takes the time to develop characters and then give us some in-depth incite into what drives them, what moves them.

Its nice to see that for a change and its what makes this story excellent and worth getting invested in.......especially since a "story" is actually being told.

It will only get better from here so it should be fun :)

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good <3

I can't wait for the next installment

I'd gotten off on wrestling before, but Maiko was the first person I'd ever known who actively fetishised it in this way. This was great, at first. When she realised I didn't really know any more than she did about wrestling-as-kink, she appointed herself "head researcher", as she described it, and set about obtaining material. I'd shown her some of my joshi tapes, but they didn't do it for her. In retrospect, that was probably just as well. Since Maiko was looking for "do", not "watch", Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka beating the piss out of each other probably wouldn't have made a good model for us. Hell, a lot of what they were doing, I shouldn't be trying yet, never mind on someone untrained.

Eventually, we settled on semi-comp as the proper balance, for us. We both dug the play-acting part of it, and it allowed us to switch roles, whereas any actual competition between us would be short. I was bigger, stronger, and better trained. Which is to say: "trained". That would eventually be a problem, for me, because I still couldn't quite lose myself in the play. Maiko would try out new holds she'd found, but she didn't always grasp how hard she could and couldn't apply those. Once, when I was letting her roll me, she moved into a cross-armbreaker position, or as it's known in judo, juji-gatame.

I kept a bit of curl in my arm and started to go into a moaning sell, (had to keep it quiet not to freak the fuck out of the neighbours,) but then she tugged on my wrist, straightening my arm out. "Safeword!" I yelled. "Safeword!" Yes, our safeword was 'safeword'. Unimaginative, but it was easy to remember. She was a bit pissed about that, but a quick explanation about hyper-extension made it clear what the problem was. Hell of a mood-killer, though.

In the end, we parted ways after a few months. I could enjoy being someone's walk on the wild side, (for the novelty of it, if nothing else,) but I didn't care for something so central to my identity being nothing but someone's kink to them. By the end I was grinding my teeth when she called me "wrestler girl". It had the same inflection people use for "dominatrix", or "hooker." (Not judging people in either of those professions, mind you, just wasn't caring for the attitude she had towards it, like it was something freaky.)

Besides, my room-mate's year was ending, and she was going home for the summer. I'd have to figure out a new living situation. Living frugally and a reasonably decent wage meant I had a bit of money saved, but it seemed too risky to spend such a large portion of it for my own apartment. It was 2001, and software start-ups were going belly-up left and right. I ended up moving into a rather run-down studio apartment with Sara. Like me, she'd given up on college as not being for her. Unlike me, she didn't have to go through a maelstrom of maternal disapproval, but she too knew frugality was the order of the day.

As I got to know her better, it seemed like we had a lot in common. Nuts about the business from an early age. Never really had eyes for anything else, in terms of a career. Realistic about our prospects, and about the difficulties women had in this business. Still, we dreamed.

"Obviously AJW's the top choice," Sara said, "but of the others, where would you go?"

I answered immediately, "ARSION seems like the best bet for a foreigner. Not surprising, given it's Aja Kong's promotion." Aja was the daughter of a Japanese woman and an African-American soldier.

"You could totally make it in the WWF."

I made a face. "I feel like I've just been insulted."

Sara laughed and shook her head, "I don't mean as one of Godfather's hoes."

"He doesn't have hoes, anymore. He's 'The Goodfather' now. And don't point and laugh at me, yes I watch WWF. They have Benoit and Guerrero and loads of good wrestling there."

"My point, Miss Defensive, is that you're pretty enough to get work there."

"Not without getting my tits done, I'm not, and fuck that. I'd piss myself every time I took a face bump in fear that one would explode."

"I don't think they make the 'divas' do face bumps."

"Between the surgery and the promise of not actually wrestling, you're really selling me on this."

"I'm just saying it's an option for you. Don't look past those. Not all of us get it."

"And I'm just saying it's not a likely one. I think it's Japan I should be shooting for."

"Well you can't. Japan's mine," she said teasingly.

"Nah, they love Brits. Mark Rocco. Dynamite. They'll be all over me. You can have the WWF."

"There is zero chance I will ever work for the WWF," Sara said.

Her predictions and my boasts aside, I had more than a few trepidations about where I could work. WCW and ECW had both folded earlier that year, leaving WWF (and it's antediluvian attitude towards women) the only big company that was left in the US. Japan was, I thought, my best possibility, but, I wasn't entirely sure it could work. Their typical foreign wrestler (or "gaijin") was usually quite large, to seem more of a monster for native wrestlers to overcome. Monster Ripper and Reggie Bennett, both well over two hundred pounds, were examples. True, neither Mark Rocco nor Dynamite Kid fit that billing, but those were two of the best wrestlers to have ever lived. Obviously I wanted to be good, but I was nowhere near that, yet. I might never be, in truth.

If I'm honest, those thoughts kept my eyes open, staring up at the ceiling in the dark room more nights than one.