What You Learned at the Indie Wrestling Show

You eat Sour-Patch-Kids-themed edibles. Makes the theater of wrestling more theatre. On the way to the event center, one of you sits up front and chats up the Uber driver. It feels rude not to include him in the conversation, to pretend he doesn’t exist. If you did, you worry you wouldn’t exist. All you have to offer, though, are detailed analyses of finishing moves and powerbombs.

“Five stars,” one of you says, imitating Macho Man, an imaginary coffee creamer cup pinched between thumb and pointer.

You tip and head inside. The ring, one of those 3-D cubes you doodle when bored, rests centered near the back wall. A screen, not as big as the ones on the professional circuit but respectable for an indie show, hangs above the metal walkway leading into the squared circle.

You stand in the back. Your view stinks unless you want to see the tops of heads, which maybe you do. The lights go dark, the first step to them coming back on. It’s all about immersion, about getting you ready for what’s next.

Pyrotechnics rain down like glimmering flowers.

Lasers.

Television pixels.

Power chords.

Flashing images of an opening and closing money-filled briefcase.

Boos.

A hulking man dressed in a business suit struts down the walkway into the ring. His suit tears away, revealing tights garnished with hundred-dollar bills. Hundred-dollar tights calls your town garbage, and you cheer because you know it’s fake, which makes wrestling more fun in some ways and less in others. You predict in a few years you might start second-guessing yourself and start believing wrestling is the most real anything can be.

From the crowd, a man dressed as a scoutmaster storms the ring. You jeer, know, even if he loses, he’ll get the next one. No one wins for good. No one.

You don’t watch the beginning of the match. The ending is your favorite part. You wait in line to buy nachos. When you turn around, the scoutmaster holds up a three-finger pledge and slams hundred-dollar tights into a camping tent erected in the middle of the ring. Before he can go for the pin, hundred-dollar tights reaches into his tights and removes a wad of cash. The scoutmaster takes the money and runs. “He did it for his troop,” you tell yourself. The bell rings. You leave and call another Uber.

It’s the same Uber driver from before. He asks how the show went. You shrug. The Uber driver takes you home. You don’t get out, so the Uber driver takes you to an empty field.

“Don’t try this at home, kids,” one of you says.

The Uber driver seizes your neck and puts you in a chokehold. One of you jumps on the Uber driver’s back and performs a hurricanrana. You clothesline you. It isn’t until morning, bathing in the gray sunlight of a new day, that one of you gets the one, two, three and is crowned heavyweight champion of the world.

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Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Timber, The McNeese Review, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. Connect on Twitter at @Will_Musgrove or at williammusgrove.com.