The Inferno Has Padded Floors
The Inferno is court-level at the Convocation Center, behind a kept-shut door you’d easily miss or mistake for a utility closet. Inside, it’s swampy. Body heat burns up the atmosphere. The room is lit like a film noir. A sign at the entrance says: No Street Shoes Allowed On The Mats. In a way, it means leave the outside out. A digital clock is set against the back wall. The time, in blood red diodes, is way off. In here, time is futile. A mindfuck. Five minutes feel like half an hour when you’re on your back, legs pretzeled behind your ass, someone’s forearm crow barred across your face.
You stand flat against the wall nearest the door. You push back with your legs to make the room a few inches wider because you’re suffocating. They shake hands, always, first thing. They circle, crouched, squared up. They paw and feign, try to deke the other out of position. It’s human chess—on meth. It’s chess until their heads smack like Bighorns. Now it’s a duel. One ducks under and shoots, fast, driving his opponent to the mat. They grunt, twist, struggle. Muscles flex. Muscles you don’t even have. The kid on his back rolls over. Stands. Spins the other guy off. They square up again. Circling.
They are the uber badass Ohio University varsity wrestlers: smushy-faced and cauliflower-eared. They’re the boys who came home covered in mud, knees bleeding, always hungry, tireless. In their eyes something’s been turned off. Fear. Self-doubt. Something. They’re warm now. Sweating. The walls are sweating. You tug the bottom of your shirt. Socks rolled up to your calves, legs like pencils. You stretch—bend over, touch your toes, that sort of thing. The photographer wonders what the fuck you’re doing here.
“You sure you want to do this?” he says.
“No,” you say. “But I already rubbed on the Kenshield.”
Kenshield is the foamy skin protectant. None of the wrestlers use it (only pussies.) You wouldn’t leave the locker room until you lathered every pore. At least you know where you stand.
The lanky kid, Garcia, pulls himself up. Now it’s your turn. Sweat plunges off your face, as if it doesn’t want to stick around for what’s about to happen to you. He smirks at you the way a lion smirks at a three-legged water buffalo. You shake his hand. You do your best impression of the crouch, but it’s a parody. You circle. He flicks your forehead. You go cross-eyed. In that moment he shoots, spins you off balance, slaps you against the mat like sliced cheese on tile. Arms flail. Instinctively you roll to your stomach. He pins you there. He lets you up unapologetically. You scurry to your feet. He snags your foot mid-gallop. You turn into his trap and he pushes you onto your ass. Thump. The entire time he’s smirking.
They go at it like this (nonstop) for two hours, three days a week. Though the Inferno is the practice room, what goes on inside is not practice. It’s called going “live.” When you’ve got a room full of state champions, practice itself is a competition. Everyone wants to show how tough he is. Everyone is the Big Dog. The bad motherfucker.
Three days a week they’re up before the gas stations open, in the gym sweating, maxing out. When they’re maxing out, they’re lifting more than they ever have before. More than what was physically possible last time. Three days a week. That’s how they get stronger.
You join them. Monday morning, alarm screaming mid-dream, six forty-five. You pull your only pair of mesh shorts from the bottom of your laundry basket. You haven’t been up this early in months. You slog to Peden, suppressing your morning wood under the elastic waistband. There’s something charming about the day before 8 a.m.
The weight room is Olympic: two wrestlers to a station—each a blue-collar Bowflex. They’re an army of gray t-shirts and forest green shorts. They’re arranged by size down the line, partnered up, big with big, small with small. One has the unfortunate assignment of being your partner. You go first. Power cleans. He slides a yellow weight to each end of the barbell. He says “if you can’t get this, you’re a bitch.” You grip the bar and look up as if to say, “Is this right?” You squat, back straight, deep breath, explode one motion: pull up, spread legs, wrist-flip bar parallel with chest, intestines blow out your anus, unravel onto floor.
At 8:45, the morning workout is over. They meet together, hand in the air, “team on three.” You join them, sort of. Because you’re not really one of them. Then they’re off to class like the rest of us. They get no preferential treatment. They have the same homework you have, the same tests and the same quizzes. Their schedules—their lives—revolve around wrestling.
Wrestling requires two things of a man: mental toughness and hard work. Anything else, if you’ve got anything else, is bonus. But without mental toughness and hard work, there is no such thing as the wrestler.
Your goal here is to find out what the wrestler knows that the rest of us do not. What does mental toughness plus hard work equal?
Standing there, in the Inferno, back against the wall, knees chattering, it hits you: The wrestler knows he’s able to kick anyone’s ass.
It’s not arrogance. It’s not machismo. Arrogance is a character flaw, a defense mechanism. In here, machismo will get you your ass beat sans help up and a handshake afterward. No. To know you’re able kick anyone’s ass is a state of mind—the solution when you add together mental toughness, hard work and countless hours in the gym. In here, if you don’t know you’re able to kick anyone’s ass, you’re going to lose. Simple. The concept itself is transferable outside the gym. It’s a metaphor for the things we are capable of achieving.
Garcia lets you up. He moves on, leaves the carcass for someone else. Already your legs are gone, waterlogged, shoes glued to the mat. You shake hands with this someone else. He is a cinderblock wall. His calves are as big as your thighs. His thighs are as big as your torso. You assume the crouch. You circle, feet crossing, the lazy way. Circling. You decide he’s not taking you down this time—because even in a room full of bad motherfuckers you still have some pride. You attempt a double-leg, tired and telegraphed. You drive powerlessly into his hips. What happens next is what would happen if a Smart car slammed head-on into a parked bulldozer. He sprawls, stuffs your takedown. He barrels his chest heavy between your shoulder blades. You squirm. He lies down with all his weight, you under him, and if it weren’t for the mat you’d be an archeologist’s excavation.
He backs off. You crawl towards the wall. Your arteries carry molten lead to your legs where lactic acid has burned to ash. You somehow clamber jelly-knees to your feet. You’re sucking air. He’s right behind you, on your back. He wraps you up, lifts you off the ground and slams you like a bag of sand. His shoulder plows into your face. Everything crunches. Cartilage cracks. With him still draped over you, bending your joints in the wrong directions, you reach with your free hand to your nose, which you think is broken, smashed, a sniffle away from pouring blood.
“Wait,” you say.
“What?” he says, elbow across your jaw.
“Am I bleeding?”
“No?”
“Okay.”
“Do you want to stop?”
“Yes.”
He gets off. You stay down, breathing, waiting for your body to regain its shape again like in the cartoons. He’s gone, engaged in battle with a more formidable opponent. Big with big. You get to your feet in stages: Flat backed to all fours, all fours to one knee, one knee to standing, hands on knees, sweat puddling on the mat. You’re done. That’s it. No more wrestling. No more lifting at 7:30 a.m. No more Kenshield. No more going live. You straighten up. Everything is blurry. You turn around and find the clock on the wall. You blink out the fuzz. When the numbers come into focus for some reason, you’re not surprised. You’re shirt is soaked, muscles aching. You stare at the clock, condemn it to hell. In the Inferno, time alone will make you want to quit.
