Bare Submission

The mat smelled like a hundred other men's sweat and the faint ammonia of a mop bucket that hadn't been rinsed since morning. I knew this because my face was pressed into it, cheek flat against the vinyl seam, and I'd been breathing through my mouth for the last two minutes trying not to gag.

"Again."

Coach Barlow's voice came from somewhere above my left shoulder. He didn't yell. That was the thing about him. He never yelled, not once in the four months I'd been training under him, and somehow that made everything worse. A man who yells is a man you can hate. A man who just stands there with his arms crossed, watching you fail for the ninth time, is a man who makes you hate yourself.

I pushed up. My arms shook. Ninety minutes of drilling had turned my triceps into wet rope, and the burn in my shoulders had gone past pain into something numb and electric. I got to my knees, then my feet, and faced him.

Barlow was fifty-three years old and built like a fire hydrant. Five foot eight, two hundred and thirty pounds, most of it in his chest and forearms. He wore the same gray sweatshirt every session, the collar stretched out, and he had a way of looking at you like you were a math problem he'd already solved.

"You're telegraphing," he said. "Every time. You load your weight on your back foot before you shoot. I can see it from the parking lot."

"I know."

"Then stop doing it."

I wiped sweat off my forehead with the back of my wrist. The gym was empty except for us. Tuesday night, nine-forty, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead and the radiator clanking in the corner like it was dying. Outside the plate glass window, the parking lot was dark and wet from rain that had stopped an hour ago.

"One more," Barlow said. "This time, don't think about the shot. Think about what comes after."

I nodded and bent my knees.

What comes after. That was the whole problem, wasn't it. I'd spent six years wrestling in high school and two in college before my knee blew out, and in all that time I'd never once thought about what came after. After the takedown, after the pin, after the match. You just did the thing and then it was over and you did the next thing. Simple.

But I wasn't in college anymore. I was twenty-six, working nights at a warehouse, and paying Barlow forty bucks a session to teach me something I should've already known. And every Tuesday and Thursday he put me on this mat and made me shoot on him, over and over, and every time I ended up flat on my stomach with his knee in my spine.

I shot.

It was a good one, maybe the best I'd thrown all night. Low, fast, my shoulder driving into his midsection. For half a second I felt him give, felt his balance shift, and something hot and bright flared in my chest. I've got him.

Then the floor tilted and I was airborne.

He'd used my own momentum, that was all. A simple lateral drop, textbook, the kind of thing you teach a twelve-year-old in his first month. I landed on my side and the air went out of me in a grunt, and then he was on top, chest across my ribs, forearm braced against my throat.

Not choking. Just there. A reminder.

"You see it?" he said, close to my ear.

I couldn't answer. I was still trying to breathe.

"The shot was fine. The shot was good. But you don't know what to do when it doesn't work." He let up and stood, offering me his hand. I took it and he pulled me to my feet like I weighed nothing. "You've got one move, Danny. One. And when it fails, you panic."

"I don't panic."

"You flail. Same thing."

He walked over to the water fountain and drank for a long time, and I stood there in the middle of the mat with my hands on my hips, breathing hard, staring at the floor. The vinyl was scuffed and gray where a thousand feet had crossed it. There were stains I didn't want to think about.

"You know what your problem is?" Barlow said, wiping his mouth.

"Enlighten me."

"You're afraid of looking stupid."

I laughed. It came out ugly. "I just spent ninety minutes getting my ass kicked. I think we're past that."

"No, you're not." He came back and stood in front of me, arms crossed again. "You're afraid of looking stupid in front of me. So you hold back. You don't commit. You shoot at seventy percent because if you shoot at a hundred and miss, then you're the guy who tried his hardest and still lost. But if you shoot at seventy, you've always got an excuse."

I didn't say anything.

"That's why you quit after your knee. Not because you couldn't wrestle. Because you couldn't stand the idea of being bad at something."

The radiator clanked. Somewhere in the building, a door opened and closed.

"You don't know anything about me," I said.

"I know you pay me forty bucks twice a week to tell you things you already know." He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. "Lock up when you're done."

He walked out. The door swung shut behind him with a hydraulic hiss, and then it was just me and the buzzing lights and the smell of sweat and ammonia.

I sat down on the edge of the mat and put my head in my hands.

He was wrong. He was wrong about the knee, at least. That was a real injury, a real thing that happened, not some excuse I'd cooked up. I'd torn my ACL in a match my junior year, and the surgery had gone fine, and the rehab had gone fine, and then one day I was cleared to wrestle again and I just... didn't.

I told people it was the fear of re-injury. That sounded reasonable. Respectable, even. Nobody questions a guy who says he doesn't want to blow out his knee again.

But Barlow was right about one thing. I'd stood at the edge of that mat, cleared to compete, and I'd felt something I'd never felt before in my life.

Relief.

Relief that it was over. Relief that I didn't have to find out if I was actually good, or just good enough to beat the guys in my conference. Relief that I could walk away with a story instead of a record.

I got up and started rolling up the mat. It was a two-person job, but I'd been doing it alone for months. I dragged it to the wall, folded it, stacked it on the others. Then I turned off the lights and stood in the dark for a minute, listening to the building settle.

The parking lot was empty except for my truck. I got in and sat behind the wheel without starting the engine, and I thought about what Barlow had said.

You've got one move. And when it fails, you panic.

I'd been thinking about that for a while now. Not the wrestling part. The other part. The part where you want something so badly you can taste it, and you know you're going to fail, and so you hold back. You shoot at seventy percent. You keep one foot on the ground at all times.

I started the truck and drove home.

The apartment was dark when I got in. I didn't turn on the lights. I just walked to the bedroom and lay down on the bed in my clothes, still smelling like the gym, and stared at the ceiling.

Tomorrow I'd go to work. Thursday I'd go back to Barlow's and get my ass kicked again. And somewhere in between, I'd keep doing what I'd been doing for the last four years, which was nothing. Nothing that mattered. Nothing that cost me anything.

I closed my eyes.

Somewhere in the building, a neighbor's TV murmured through the wall. A car passed outside, tires hissing on wet asphalt. And I lay there in the dark, thinking about the one move I had, and what would happen if I ever decided to commit.