I Watch Wrestling For the Ass.

When I was young, there weren’t many of us girls who loved wrestling the way I did.

But my Grandma Chloris and I would watch it every Saturday. Those were magic times. Sure, she was my Grandma, but for those two hours every Saturday, we were two best friends, 50 years apart in age, smoking cigarettes and objectifying hairy-shouldered men in their underwear. We loved all the big stars. Bruno. Bockwinkel. Harley. Koloff. Dusty. Gorilla. Man Meat. Lots of it.

It was early on that my Grandma shared with me the secret to enjoying wrestling.

“Myrtle,” she said in her dark, husky, smoke-scratched voice, “the trick to wrestling is simple.”

“It’s all about ass. That big hairy man ass. That’s why I watch. I just want a handful of that ass.”

I was taken aback. Had my Grandmother, who just hours earlier had fallen over attempting to make a sandwich, really admitted that she was lusting after these bruisers we watched every Saturday? Had she just admitted that her mind had drifted to the thought of other men besides my Grandfather, who by that time had been dead for just 11 years?

Yes. Yes she had. I was stunned. I was scared. I was still studiously learning the names of moves and the difference between a wrist lock and a hip toss.

“None of that shit matters,” she said. “What matters is when you see Dusty shaking his gigantic dumper. Who gives a shit what moves he does?”

Childhood ends differently for everyone. Mine ended that day in my Grandmother’s fourth story Adult Care Facility apartment in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

But now, 55 years later, I can’t even watch with my granddaughter. I can’t make leering, thinly-veiled comments about these nerds people call wrestlers.

The men my Grandmother and I fancied wore cotton undies and no kneepads.

They didn’t travel with video game consoles and stream on Twitch. They were rugged. The kind of men you watched hoping they’d beat up some marks at a bar afterward. Now you’d be lucky if they even went to a bar. And if they did, they probably tip 20%, treat people like human beings, and keep a low profile.

Disgusting.

So my Saturdays are free now. My Granddaughter doesn’t even come by. I haven’t seen her in 7 years. And given my prison sentence, it will probably be at least 8 more years before I do. Just my second strike, thankfully! Small victories, I guess.

But I still have those memories. Harley Race in tiny undies, sweat dripping down his crack, the smell of cigarettes and stale beer all over him. It was never about the moves. It was never about who won or lost. It was always about the ass. And it always will be.