Cold As Ice

“Oh man, that feels divine.”

He slipped into the ice bath in only a pair of form-fitting boxer briefs, not even recoiling at the drop in temperature from the ambient training room to the frigid temperatures of his therapeutic bath. Each tendon that throbbed after rolling out of the ring in that main event became quieter. The muscles singing heavy metal in gnarled growls gave way to lo-fi beats to chill to. Literally. A body aching from four-plus years of non-stop touring and wrestling and extracurricular shenanigans, if just for a few, serene moments, felt glacial peace.

For a moment, Tom forgot about what happened in the ring out there. Another title match slipped through his fingers. Another macroaggression shot across his bow from Tony Gamble. Another reminder that life would be more likely to chew him up and spit him out than hand him everything he wanted on a platter.

Nothing but the cold mattered.

-

“I can’t believe our baby is going to college in two months.”

Tom sat in his recliner watching baseball on a lazy evening. Tam sat on the sofa looking like she was about to shed a tear or two at the cruel, unfeeling passage of time delivering their older son to school.

“Really, time has been a blur in the last five years. One day, you’re cleaning up a birthday dinner, and then, BOOM, kid’s gone to college.”

“At least it’s Lehigh. We can visit him.”

Tom eased the seat up from full recline enough that his legs could still remain extended but also that he could face his wife.

“Why would we want to? Kid’s gonna want to have his freedom. It’s a weird feeling, but I’m imagining my dad checking in on me after every tour date and well…”

He shuddered.

“Well, for one, you love your kids.”

“He loved me. He just pretended not to. For reasons I can’t comprehend.”

Tam did the Alonzo Mourning shrug. You know, the one from the viral gif.

“Besides,” Tom continued, “He’s going to want to work on his jumpshot since he’ll be walking onto the basketball team, hopefully. That and having friends and possible situationships. I’m using that one right, right?”

Tam shrugged a little more earnestly this time.

“I don’t know. I hang out with old people. You’re the one in the locker room with Gen Z.”

“Eh, I don’t know about that. There’s a lot of us oldheads on the PRIME roster these days.”

“You’re not wrestling one of the oldheads though. What did Dr. Zeke call Hayes? Drugs, Jr.?”

The urge to call him an old soul was strong, but Tom knew in the back of his head what it meant. More stark contrast for the condition of his own body. Yeah, Hayes Hanlon burnt the candle at both ends, but the great unfairness in life is the elasticity of the human body between the ages of 16 and 30. He remembered bonging bottles of tequila at night and carrying the load in a trios match the next afternoon. Morgan Wallen’s bitch ass could never. The mere thought of heavily drinking on a Thursday before ReVival these days sent him into apoplexy.

And that was before factoring in the doctor’s blunt assessment. How he felt after Rob Williams and then Tony Gamble put him through a wringer in Newark. He never thought about the dangers of exertion before, but his body screamed at him in increasing volume after each successive show. It took an expert opinion to make him take the earbuds out to actually listen, but the shrill notes became unavoidable.

And now, in the middle of his living room in South Philly, in the dead of summer, a sharp chill ran up his spine.

-

“I don’t know why youse insisted on helpin’ me. Ain’t you supposed to be takin’ it easy?”

Tom shook his head fielding the question from his youngest brother Mikey as they hauled a sofa into his house.

“Because that’s what brothers do. Or at least it’s what they’re supposed to do.”

They plopped the sofa down where the old one was, in front of the wall and the staircase heading upstairs in Mike’s Northeast Philly rowhome.

“Besides, I still feel bad for the Paxton shit.”

Mikey wiped the sweat from his brow before shaking his head and rolling his eyes in indignation.

“Really? That was years ago, and I’m all better now. ‘Sides, I knew what I was gettin’ into. Ain’t your fault that I overestimated what I could still do.”

“But it is. I could have noticed that.”

“Look, bro, it’s over. I’m better now. Pax ain’t messin’ wit’chu. I’m livin’ my life, an’ now, so should you, aight?”

Tom wiped the sweat off his own brow and nodded, if just to get his brother to stop trying to derail his own self guilt-trip.

“But seriously, bro, you gotta wrestle that young boul Hayes in a week. Didn’t you say the docs said they was thinkin’ ‘bout not clearin’ you?”

The resignation worn on his face like his own lucha mask, Tom wilted as he plopped down on Mike’s new sofa. He shook his head and sighed.

“Can I be frank for a minute?”

“What, you ain’t wanna be Tom no more?”

Tom grabbed one of the throw pillows off the sofa and chucked it at his brother.

“Jackass.”

Mikey chuckled.

“Seriously though, it’s been a lot to process. For the first time, wrestling Williams, I felt what the doctors told me. Like, I always thought the aches and pains were part and parcel of being a wrestler. But against him in that main event, I actually felt like it was a labor to pick him up, to do anything that involved exertion. My legs, arms, back, all of them felt like they were in overdrive the whole match.”

He slumped in the sofa, as if he was melting in the summer heat.

“It was a new feeling. I didn’t like it.”

Mike sat down right next to him.

“Well no shit, Sherlock. But ain’t never took you as no quitter.”

“Didn’t say I was quitting. Just, how am I going to compete with guys Hayes’ age when my body isn’t cooperating? It’s new territory. I used to be the athletic guy. Now look at me.”

“Pfft, youse still looks pretty athletic to me.”

Tom looked at his brother and smiled, even if it was hollow.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

Tom stood up and bade his brother farewell. He opened the door, and even as the early June sun beat down on him, he felt as cold as ever on the inside.

-

“I’m getting on in years, mijo,” said Pedro, Tom’s old teacher, with a joviality belying the stark resignation of that statement as he sat down in the booth of the North Philly diner.

“You and me both, maestro.”

“Tom, you pendejo,” he replied with a chuckle. “You can still move around with two legs. I need this wooden one.”

He held up his cane and shook it with faux menace.

“It’s a chore some days, I’m not gonna lie.”

“Naturally. There were some days years ago that I didn’t even want to hobble downstairs for my coffee. But life only lets the worst people have it easiest.”

“You can say that again,” Tom replied as an Amazon truck drove by out the window.

The waitress came to their table chewing a wad of gum and holding a ratty old pocket folder with a pad inside.

“The usual, hon?”

“Si, señora,” Pedro replied warmly.

“Two cups of mud, on the double,” she said with a wink.

“I think she likes you, maestro.”

“Ha, only because I’m a good tipper.”

There was a pregnant silence for a few moments. Tom’s gaze drifted out the window to the bustling street, cars in stop-and-go motion with the changing of the stoplights. Pedestrians with their carriages or their grocery bags or their dogs walking to and fro. Kids racing on their bikes. The scene was vibrant, yet the circus outside might as well have been staffed with ghosts.

“I can see a great many things weigh on your soul today, Tomas.”

“How is that different from any other day, maestro?”

Pedro let out a guffaw that made the few stalwart midday patrons turn at him to look.

“You’re a funny man sometimes.”

“So I’ve heard.”

The waitress came back at that instant with two standard white cups filled to brim with diner swill set upon saucers of the same color.

“Want me to leave the pot, hon?”

“Si. We might be here a while.”

She smiled as she set the cups down and then the glass pot in the middle of the table.

“Tell me now, what troubles you?”

“It’s like a switch flipped. Someone shut the lights off.”

“Another concussion?”

“Oh, oh, no, not this time. It’s worse.”

“What could be worse than another concussion?”

Tom closed his eyes and shook his head.

“My body just feels like it shut off. Everything’s harder. Like, in an instant, every jump felt like it didn’t get as much air. Every time I try to pick someone up, it’s like lifting a bag of wet sand. A switch flipped.”

Pedro nodded as he took the first sip of coffee.

“You know, it’s not the Puertorriquena vintage I’m used to, but this diner coffee, it hits a certain chord.”

“Were you even listening?”

Pedro’s face turned slightly indignant.

“OF course I was, mijo. I was just remarking on this coffee. Sometimes, you have to take a pause to appreciate the finer things, no?”

Now it was Tom’s turn to do the Alonzo Mourning gif face.

“But to answer your concerns there, dear student, what is your opinion on the great El Guapo Grande?”

“Guapo? Oh man, are you trying to test me? I know I’m kinda friends with him now, right?”

“Ha, this I know. But that’s not the question I asked.”

Tom nodded.

“Yeah. Okay. Well, I think he’s one of the most gifted technical wrestlers ever. A man who could grapple circles around anyone, no matter how old they were, no matter how old he was at the time.”

“Si. Si, I agree. A technical marvel. Tell me, next question, when was the first time you watched him?”

“You mean when I saw him, or the earliest match of his I’ve seen?”

“The latter. I know you and your tapes, you enjoyed watching them.”

“Oh, I think the earliest match I saw, wait, yeah, the best two-of=three falls at Arena Mexico from 1995, him vs. Adonis de los Montanas.”

“He was already in his 40s then, you know that, right?”

Tom furrowed his eyebrow.

“Yeah, I did know that. So?”

“Did you ever watch any of his earlier career?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Ah, I have some tapes for you back at my house. I think you should watch them.”

“Okay. Is this a sort of thing where I watch him before he was great? Another lesson?”

Pedro smiled.

“You could say it’s a lesson, sure, mijo. But I think these tapes, you’ll watch them and you’ll be surprised at what you see.”

“He was a late bloomer? C’mon, gimme something here.”

“No, no, you’ll have to find out for yourself.”

Tom laughed and took a sip of his coffee. He shook his head.

“You always like to play games. Not in a bad way.”

“It’s how I help enrich the minds of my students, Tomas. You were always one of my brightest anyway.”

Tom’s laugh was drenched in sarcasm.

“Oh c’mon. Me? Smart? I barely graduated high school.”

“You know there’s more ways one can be smart, mijo. Some people do well in the classroom. Others have innate street sense. You, it’s always been your instincts, especially in the ring. You rarely ever had to be led by the nose like some of my other graduates. Which is why I’m surprised at your insistence that I tell you what I want you to find out for yourself. The Tom Battaglia I taught all those years ago? His curiosity would’ve led him where he needed to go.”

Tom sighed as the chilling realization set upon him.

-

Later that evening, Tom rooted around his attic, furiously looking for an item he knew he kept after all those years. The attic had fallen into disorganization, between the boxes never unpacked and the remains of a certain three-legged goat, he searched high and low until he held up his prize, his face shouting “Eureka!” even if his voice was silent in respect to those sleeping on the floor below.

He scurried down the ladder with his VCR and hurried back down the flight of stairs to the ground floor to hook it up to the television, an older model he insisted they install on the first floor in case of a moment where he needed one with the RBY jacks that would be compatible with his anachronistic video player. He snatched the video cassette marked “Best of El Guapo” from the end table and popped it in.

As the static gave way to a grainy picture, he saw the first match, a much younger and thinner Guapo against an opponent Tom didn’t recognize. That part wasn’t as important as what followed.

Tom sat, eyes opened as wide as they were the first time he ran downstairs Christmas morning to find a bike with his name on it under the tree. Guapo, the man he remembered as a technical wizard with limited vertical mobility or desire to lift men over his head doing things Tom could never have imagined. Stunning topes over the top rope with elegance and pinpoint precision. A man using the ropes as his own personal dancefloor, bounding and bouncing with deadly grace and effective beauty. He was a luchador who could make anything he wanted happen in the ring. He wasn’t the same luchador Tom had remembered watching.

And that’s when it hit him like a ton of bricks.

Guapo was only one of many luchadores y luchadoras who wrestled into their twilight years because they knew their bodies and what they could do. He thought about picking up his phone and calling the man himself, but he stopped short because he knew exactly what he was going to say. Wrestling at a breakneck pace with reckless abandon only works for the wrestlers who have the kind of bodily elasticity afforded to those in their 20s like Hayes Hanlon.

The ones who last… evolve.

Like a blast of arctic air from a season long away on the calendar, Tom awoke to what he had to do to keep the young, hungry lion at his door on his toes, and to keep the playback on his comeback story going just a little longer.

-

Another workout at the gym, but this time, the throbs and the aches felt manageable. The screaming in his body subsided. Less black metal, more Seattle grunge. Remember, his body still was in the process of grinding down, but the change in focus in his workout was kinder to those muscles and ligaments.

He saw the bath in the corner, the ice glistening under the fluorescent bulbs of the locker room. He stripped down to his underwear again and jumped in.

Only this time, he jumped up in shock.

The ice bath felt colder this time, less soothing.

Maybe that was the best sign he’d received all along.