Stephen Florida

by Habash, Gabe

  And then I have one of those sudden bad little moments when I’m not being challenged, which is when I question the whole thing. Why did I latch on to this? I’m going to be let out in six months. With nowhere to go, what am I supposed to do? When did the future become as unfaithful as the past? When I was a kid, I was always afraid of how heaven never ended, and one night trying to fall asleep, I just couldn’t take it, it really got into me, I threw off the covers and ran down the hallway hyperventilating, and my mom found me gagging into the toilet. After I die, no one’s going to be there to check my tombstone for typos.

  Some of these saplings I can sedate with one-third of my mind, but because I have nothing else I put my whole self into it, which is why I sometimes get away from myself.

  The referee flips the disc and I pick top. There’s not going to be a third period.

  Brett Espino’s mentality is simple: he doesn’t like to be bottom. Because one cannot bait from the bottom, he does not like the bottom, even if he’s up 2–1. When I kneel down beside him, through my fingers I can sense in his skin his anxiousness to get out so he can ride a 3–1 lead and resume the fishing game we just spent a period playing. There’s something like sympathy in taking my position behind him, placing my right hand on his right elbow and my left hand seatbelting his stomach while he looks straight ahead, letting me. I place my ear on Brett’s back and hear his heart. “Oh, Brett, I told you I was going to eat you,” I whisper to him. Something like sympathy, I could fall asleep if we stayed here long enough.

  But the universe shakes its rainstick, and the course of history follows the only path it was ever going to, and I imagine there is a sadness in seeing, from the bleachers, the exact steps Brett takes in the exact spots he’s supposed to, exposing himself to the conclusion, which is my forearm against his nose and his weak, frenzied exhales before he stops struggling and I push him down like a planting root, like burying a secret, and pin him. There are a few handclaps when my arm is lifted, and I walk back to my corner of spit down the hall and spout nonsense I’ll never remember. This feeling, which lasts about one minute and then it’s gone, is completely round and full and soggy, and it lifts me out of everything bad. I’m completely mad with it.

  I go to the bathroom, roll my singlet all the way down my body so I’m shitting naked, except for the banded red wad on my knees. A lot of people will tell you the middle part of a quad or a bigger tournament is the worst: when there are still more matches to wrestle than have been wrestled. Erasmus first posited the idea, which everyone now knows, that the worst enemy of the utopia is boredom. But I like the challenge of getting through it, of cutting through the boredom fat, I like the part where you’re stewing in your juices because it opens up new causeways of thought, strange new ones you never saw coming. Part of the fun is batting away thoughts you shouldn’t be having at this time—what’s going to be on midterms, Mary Beth’s neck, which I can look at by picking the right seat in Drawing. Even better: twice I caught her looking at me. This is all very exciting.

  I count two smallish stools, a good number. The timing is also fortunate: a clean colon can sometimes give you a little boost, the impression that you’re as fresh as you were before your first match.

  Some feet go by under the stall and stop at a urinal. It’s Sherman. “Hey, Stephen, is that you? I shouldn’t tell you this, but a few people are whispering about whether Linus could beat you. There are whisperings.”

  I wipe. Sherman’s already lost twice this year. In fact, only me, Linus, and Fat Henry are undefeated. Oregsburg, as a team, we aren’t very good and we’ve never had anyone win a championship.

  In the top corner of the stands, I watch Linus win his match like I knew he would. I eat a banana. I watch the next opponent, a person named Damon Kennedy, scratch out an 11–5 decision.

  A little boy sucking at a Capri Sun sack climbs up to my corner of the stands. He sits down next to me. There’s a Band-Aid over his left eyebrow and his hair sticks up all over. I guess he’s been following the bracket sheet because he says, “You’re Stephen Florida. I like Florida. If the United States was a man Florida would be his penis.”

  I admit to him that it’s true.

  “You could be my favorite wrestler. I’m going to root for you.”

  “Thank you. What do you think of him right there?” I point at Kryger, who’s sulking on the side of the mat.

  “I think he’s a dumbbutt.”

  “Me, too. What’s your name?”

  “Dylan.”

  “What happened right there above your eye, Dylan?”

  “It was a bike chain.”

  “Ouch,” I say. “See this tooth? The front one here? Half of it’s fake because I ran into a fence chasing down a Frisbee.”

  “Who threw the Frisbee? Were you mad at the person who threw the Frisbee?”

  “My dad? No, I guess I never thought to be mad at him for it.”

  “Can I touch it?”

  After I let him pull on my fake tooth, I sign his match info pamphlet.

  And then it’s twelve minutes until curtain, so the pattern repeats itself.

  Spit. Walk. Crowd. Stable as a table. Headgear smack. Tug. Hello.

  A middle-aged woman on her hands and knees is patting around the rim of the mat. She touches my shoe and my organ flutters, reminded of my Masha.

  “Can you help me locate my contact lens?” She squints up at me.

  “I can’t help you right now.”

  Close your eyes. None of this, indeed very little of life at all, comes from divine inspiration, but what little makes it through, never more than an instant, shows itself in wrestling. The rest is stubborn, repetitious work. I go out to my fields and do my job. If it’s boring, it’s because you don’t understand the peace of mind that habitual hard work grants. Open your eyes.

  When Kennedy ties me up, he smells like what I figure my brother would’ve smelled like, if I ever had one. He fidgets with me like how we would’ve messed around in the yard, knocking each other into a pile of leaves and smashing them on each other’s heads. His arm is inside my arm. At one point, I bite his hair. I need to stop pretending people are people who should care about me. He keeps pushing me back but I stay lower than him. We go outside the circle and return to the middle. He holds my hand and pulls me down. I push him away and we detach. He puts his palm on my forehead and pushes. With his other hand, he grabs the back of my neck. We rub our heads together.

  I’m holding on to all this for later, I’m cataloging to remember. He keeps pulling on my neck, trying to open me up. I’m not going to let him open me up. He keeps putting his right hand on my forehead. It’s not unpleasant. Kennedy has a 3.89 in criminology at Wright College, where he goes, it says so in the program. He’s a good wrestler. You start to lose track of time, to forget. The whistle blows. I move down to the bottom for the second period and Kennedy gets on top. He gets a caution. We reset. The good stuff won’t come until later, I’m mainly in the time of cheesecakes, which are the rung below parsons, but I’ll remember beating them anyway, I’ll remember all of it. He pushes and we tip forward and my face hits the mat, I don’t know how bad, but his right arm is off my right elbow, and so he’s trying to hug me now around my neck. But just then, the whistle blows. The match is stopped because of the blood coming out of my nose.

  I go over to where my team is. Fink jams paper up the slot. His fingers dig in my nostrils, pulling the skin. This is fun.

  Hargraves is in my face. “Stop fucking smiling, Florida. Put your fucking Manson face on and go snap that fucker’s dick off like the fucking chimp you are!”

  I return to the center and crouch down for bottom. On the whistle, I turn with my knees on the mat, but he has me in a tight hold so we just end up face-to-face. I can’t get my arm up, and where my hand ends up is trapped right against his crotch, palm out, and I’m unable to release it. The opportunity presents itself to give the nuts a squeeze, to give Kennedy the five-on-two. A brief and sharp squeeze,
which no one sees, but causes Kennedy to pop off me and let go before immediately trying to punch my face and choke me. They’ve got him off me in no time flat, he’s disqualified, and I lie there cowering like a butterball for dramatic effect.

  “Is it over?” I whimper. The referee helps me up and raises my hand while Kennedy’s pained cries of “Fucker! You fucker!” fade away and he’s dragged out of the gym. I haven’t given anyone the five-on-two since seventh grade. I got caught that time.

  When I’m walking off the mat, I can tell by Linus’s face he saw the squeeze. Fink stops me to cut the nosebleeding, which has started back up again. “Goddamnit, Florida, goddamnit,” Hargraves gleefully barks, hitting my scalp like he’s nailing down a railroad spike, which feels good. There’s a copper taste in my head.

  I walk down the length of the hallway outside the gym, step my shoe in the spit I’ve left under the water fountain. From now on, the people I face should be given whatever the opposite of the benefit of the doubt is. Unmindful of time, I reach the end of the hallway, lean for a second against the frosted window plates that twinkle with streetlights, not real sunlight, and for a moment I remember that there is something outside of this going on. Sometimes I get so close that I forget.

  I say appropriate words to Linus after he wins his second match, then I sit in the bleachers next to him. Two matches won. I keep my foot down on Miles City, I won’t let up until I’m asleep tonight in my locked room with the lights off. For fear that the long span of a quad might dull your edge, it’s useful to remind yourself about the big picture. Three wins this season, zero losses. A few struts, a rebar cage for the thing I’m building. Progress. I eat an apple.

  Linus says, “This is easier than I thought it would be.” I wipe my eyes. Then Linus says, “Neither of us are going to lose, you know.”

  The scenes this season are what will be in my biography, a photo taken of my face right now next to Linus is what will be on the cover. I look at him and realize he looks just like me. There’s a towel on his shoulders, he’s grinning and he doesn’t even know it. He’s living in the funhouse, too talented for anyone else to have any of the fun, he uses it all up, and he’s always had it coming. He just takes what he deserves.

  “I know,” I say.

  I saw Poynter wrestle earlier. I always used to remember their first names, but my focus is tightening and something has to go. He beat a good wrestler named Pike in the quarters and then the four-seed Osse in the semis because you can tell it matters to Poynter—it’s why he’s won two matches today. Like a pious pilgrim, walking around the New World rattling the less devout, staying up late and gazing into his hut’s fire, blasting away more wild turkeys than the other pilgrims—that’s what I think of when I see him bring down Osse in November like it’s March. Osse is only a sophomore, Poynter is a senior, like me, and he is aware of his own dependency on every match. Every match will put you one iota closer to proper, safe seeding at postseason tournaments, and proper, safe seeding can be the difference between losing and winning. He’s not scared of anyone, and he will not be scared of me, but he’s scared of himself if he loses.

  I wait on the side for the last matches to wrap up. Fat Henry loses. By then, Poynter is on the other side of the mat. He’s tired with worry, you can see it from forty feet away. Hargraves, Linus, Sherman, Simon, assistants, other fucking people are talking to me. I rub the sore spot on my ribs that Kryger gave me. Hopping in place, maintaining his heart rate, Poynter is a weary totem, and I tell myself I won’t be like him. I’m going to kill the Frogman.

  Poynter is standing lower than me in the circle’s center. If I believe I am Stephen Florida I am Stephen Florida and he will keep breathing. I hear an air-raid siren somewhere far away. You broke a human arm. You are going to win this match.

  Right before the whistle goes, Poynter says, “If you try to squeeze my shit, I’ll kill you in the parking lot.” The match starts and Poynter crawls around on his hands and knees. I crawl with him. We stand. We tie up. We break. Poynter’s fingertips touch the mat. I dive forward at his right leg. After a few seconds, I have his ankles. Like a small livestock, a slimy thing you’re tasked with bludgeoning for the sake of the farm, because you have two sisters and your dad says you’re the oldest, I have his ankles. He falls and I scramble up his body and hold on, unsure whether I’ve been rewarded for the takedown. I am lost for a moment while trying to turn him and my hands lock around his torso and the whistle blows. “Locked hands, one point, green,” the ref says, just as we’re stumbling out of bounds.

  I check the board and see I got my takedown points. We return to the center. I recognize that he’s the first parson of the season. I get on top of him. The whistle blows and he struggles. He keeps rebuilding his base. I keep tearing it down. Poynter hasn’t lost this season, but I’m going to change that. It’s my job to make other people upset and sad. I squat on him. He shows his shell to me, I’m trying to turn him over and get to that sweet underbelly, where the meat is. Two minutes into the first I have 1:33 riding time. I keep trying to pry him open. Every now and then he brings an arm up near my shoulders, and I bend his fingers back. At the end of the first I have 2:33 riding time.

  I choose bottom and get out. He lets me go but is after me as soon as I get the point. He quickly pushes my arms to where I can’t use them, and it’s my fault, he gets behind me, and all the losses I’ve taken over the years, all the way back to when my mom and dad were still here and I was not fully grown or sure of myself, they put on the stirrups and ride through my mind. But I’m not weak willed anymore, I have little respect for doubt and I always do what I tell myself I’m going to do. I’m better now. Look at all the holes in this cage, I can escape through any of them.

  From the side I dimly hear Hargraves yelling, “Kill him! Kill!”

  Granby roll. I put the textbook and all the rest in my head. I do it and just like that he’s under me, I’m his overweight father and he doesn’t want to play anymore. For many seconds, I crank on his neck, staring at his scalp. He’s blessed with a small head. His head skin crinkles on my arm, and I wonder how thankful his mother was when she pushed out a baby that had such a small head. The whistle blows.

  He picks bottom. And the reality is that he’s a good wrestler, good enough that I can’t pin him, but not as good as I am, and this becomes a fact. Wrestling is unprejudiced and open minded, and it’s impossible to argue with. It always tells the truth, and that’s why so many men love it. The truth is I’ve been the one ridden for a period straight. I’ve been the one who’s good enough to not be pinned but not good enough to get the guy off my back. When someone is riding you for two whole minutes it’s enough to turn you back into yourself as a baby, as your most frustrated self, running into things all the time that aren’t what you want them to be. Poynter is a medium-level wrestler, a minor talent, good enough to get a takedown on me, but not good enough to be remembered after his last match. Men made of mesh, men made of tinsel, paper, dust. I was one for the seasons before this one. I was an infant with no good pictures, with an asymmetrical face, but now I am squatting on Poynter’s body, turning off his water, riding him until the end of the match. How many things in the world must get worse before they get better? My grandma said I should have choices so I own two nice pairs of pants, two button-down shirts, and two ties. I put my shit in the Miles City toilet and my spit is dry in the hall by now. Fewer and fewer questions need to be asked about what’s going to happen. I’m answering them. Look. There are things that can be expressed only by wrestling. I’m showing you. This is what it’s like to stick your whole hand in the nest.

  Dylan is standing in the bleachers with a sign that says STEVIN FLORDA FOR THE MAYOR. Men with cauliflower ears are clapping for me.

  Linus wins his last match.

  4–0.

  It’s dark. We head out to the vans. I’m going to study meteorology, I have my flashlight. In the parking lot, Whitey sneezes ten feet away at the same time a breeze comes thro
ugh and I get wet spackle in my mouth.

  WE FIND A BAG OF ORANGES. From Linus’s window, we fling them across the path at a botany classroom (there are tall plants in the windows). The oranges smack against the glass, scaring them in the middle of their leaves lesson. The professor comes all the way out of the building and stands on the snowy grass, staring at the face of our dorm and trying to figure out which window we’re in. “Security’s coming,” he yells, hands on his hips. Another orange makes its debut, hitting his shoe on the second bounce.

  The junior who lives next to Linus, Brandon, buys his first-ever skateboard and tries it out in the hall. On the maiden trip, his head hits my door frame and he walks a few steps before easing himself to the ground. For ten minutes, he incorrectly answers basic questions. Then, all at once, he smiles and says, “Ha-ha. I remember now.”

  A red squirrel gets stuck in the stairway and for a while we keep it on the floor, letting it run around wherever it likes. It gets in Perry’s pillowcase, and when he lies down for sleep, none the wiser, it bites his eyebrow. There’s poop everywhere. We feed it nuts taken from the cafeteria salad bar and after two weeks it’s noticeably obese. We feel bad and let it go.