Essays, Emails ...

by Palahniuk, Chuck

  With his father after the match, he says, “This is just great. I’m still in high school. I get to go back home and tell all my friends I’m going to the Olympic trials in Dallas.”

  Phil Lanzetella wins his first match 3-0.

  His second match, Phil ties 0-0 in the first period, loses a point to his opponent in the second period and loses in overtime.

  Already the crowd of wrestlers is thin. People are getting out, catching planes. Tomorrow is Monday, and everybody has to be back at work. Sean Harrington as a painting contractor. Tyrone Davis as a water plant operator for the town of Hempstead, New York. Phil Lanzetella as a spokesman for the company who installed his heart valve.

  Lanzetella sits at the far side of the tournament floor while the last consolation matches wrap up. His wrestling shoes sit a few feet away.

  “I got what I deserve,” he says. “I haven’t been training hard enough. I have different priorities now. My wife. My kids. A job.” He says, “Last time these shoes will see action. Maybe I’ll take up golf or something.”

  Sheldon Kim says, “This is probably it for me. I have other priorities. I have my little girl. After this, that’s it for me. I’ve gotten enough out of the sport to know what I’ve accomplished.”

  Wrestlers leaving “the family” to concentrate on their own.

  Now almost no one is here at the Arena.

  Justin Petersen says, “It is a dying sport. I’ve heard some people say that boxing’s a little bit worse, but wrestling’s right there behind it. There’s a lot of colleges dropping their wrestling programs. The high school popularity is going down. It doesn’t have a lot of years left, that’s what people say.”

  In the past 28 years since the law that requires colleges offer equal sports opportunities for men and women, 462 schools have dropped their wrestling programs. Even Olympic champion Kevin Jackson says, “I have a son, and he’s stared to wrestle a little bit, but he does tae kwon do, soccer, basketball, and I really hesitate to push him toward wrestling in any way because it is such hard work for little reward.” Phil Lanzetella has a plane to catch, too.

  “Maybe all this energy can be funneled into monetary gains,” he says. He’s been approached about writing a book. “Now I have the time to reflect and certainly the stories. From 1979 through today. I’ve been through about every aspect. Running for state legislator... going out with Mondale’s daughter when we boycotted the Olympics in ‘80. Being a part of five Olympic teams, that’s never been done before. Yeah, there’s a lot.”

  He picks up his shoes and says, “I still have to call my wife.”

  “It feels so good when you stop,” says high school wrestling coach Steve Knipp. “It’s such a demanding thing when you’re doing it that when you stop cutting weight and get to eat, you never appreciated food so much in your life. Or when you get to just sit down, you never appreciated that chair so much. Or when you get to take a drink of water, you never appreciated water so much.”

  And now Lanzetella, Harrington, Lewis, Kim, Rodrigues, Jackson, Petersen, all those ears. Davis, Wilson, Bigley, all those stalactite, cauliflower ears are diffused out into the big world where they’ll blend in. Into jobs. Into families. Where they’ll only ever be noticed by other wrestlers.

  Keith Wilson says, “It’s a small family, but everybody knows each other.” And maybe amateur wrestling is dying, but maybe not.

  At the Olympic team finals in Dallas, there were 50,170 paying spectators, and big-money corporate sponsors including Bank of America, AT&T, Chevrolet and Budweiser.

  In Dallas, one wrestler asked to perform a ceremony to mark the last match of his career. In this tradition, the wrestler puts his shoes in the center of the mat and covers them with a handkerchief. With the crowd silent, the wrestler kisses the mat and leaves his shoes behind.

  Sean Harrington says, “I got a friend who used to tell me, ‘If I wrestled, I’d be the best. I know I’d be the best.’ But he never put on the shoes and went out and did it.” He says, “Just the fact that you’ve accomplished, and you’ve set your goals and you went after them, and you never were a ‘woulda, shoulda, coulda.’ You actually did it.”

  No one mentioned in this article made the US Olympic team.

  Enabler

  My three o’clock appointment shows up clutching a yellow bath towel, and around his finger is the white groove where there should be a wedding ring. The second the door’s locked, he tries to give me the cash. He starts to take off his pants. His name is Jones, he tells me. His first name, Mister.

  Guys here for the first time are all the same. I tell him, pay me after. Don’t be in such a rush. Keep all your clothes on. There’s no hurry.

  I tell him my appointment book is full of Mister Joneses, Mister Smiths, John Does, and Bob Whites, so he’d better come up with a better alias. I tell him to lie down on the couch. Close the blinds. Dim the lights.

  I say, shall we get started?

  Even if a guy says he isn’t after sex, I still tell him to bring a towel. You bring a towel. You pay in cash. Don’t ask me to bill you later or bill some insurance company because I just can’t be bothered. You pay me cash, then you file the claim.

  You get only 50 minutes. Guys better know what they want.

  This means the woman, the positions, the setting, the toys. Don’t spring anything fancy on me at the last minute.

  I tell Mister Jones to lie back. Close your eyes.

  Allow all the tension in your face to melt away. Your forehead first, let it go slack. Relax the spot between your eyes. Imagine your forehead smooth and relaxed. Then the muscles around your eyes, smooth and relaxed. Then the muscles around your mouth. Smooth and relaxed.

  Even if guys say they’re just looking to lose some weight, they want sex. If they want to quit smoking. Manage stress. Quit biting their nails. Cure hiccups. Stop drinking. Clear up their skin. Whatever the issue, it’s because they aren’t getting laid. Whatever they say they want, they get sex here and the problem’s solved.

  If I’m a compassionate genius or a slut, you don’t know.

  Sex pretty much cures everything.

  I’m the best therapist in the business, or I’m a whore that accepts Medicare and Medicaid. I don’t like being so slam-bam with my clients, but I never wanted to earn my living this way.

  This kind of session, the sex kind, first happened by accident. A client who wanted to quit smoking, wanted to be regressed to the day he was 11 and took his first puff. So he could remember how bad it tasted. So he could quit by going back and never starting. That was the basic idea.

  In his second session, this client wanted to meet his father, who was dead of lung cancer, just to talk. This is still pretty much normal. People want to meet with famous dead people all the time, for guidance, for advice. It was so real that on his third session, the client wanted to meet Cleopatra.

  To each client, I say, let all the tension drain from your face to your neck, then from your neck to your chest. Relax your shoulders. Allow them to roll back and press into the couch. Imagine a heavy weight pressing your body, settling your head and arms deeper and deeper into the cushions of the couch.

  Relax your arms, your elbows, your hands. Feel the tension trickle down into each finger, then relax and imagine the tension draining out through each fingertip.

  What I do is put him in a trance, hypnotic induction, and guide the experience. He’s not going back in time. None of it is real. What’s most important is he wants this to happen.

  Me, I just give the play-by-play story. The blow-by-blow description. The color commentary. Imagine listening to a baseball game over the radio. Imagine how real it can seem. Now imagine it from inside a heavy, theta-level trance, a deep trance where you hear and smell. You taste and feel. Imagine Cleopatra rolling out of her carpet, naked and perfect and everything you’ve always wanted.

  Imagine Salome. Imagine Marilyn Monroe. If you could go back to any period in history and get with any woman, women who would do every
thing you could imagine. Incredible women. Famous women.

  The theater of the mind. The bordello of the subconscious.

  That’s how it starts.

  Sure, what I do is hypnosis, but it’s not real past-life regression. It’s more a kind of guided meditation. I tell Mister Jones to focus on the tension in his chest and let it recede. Let it flow down to his waist, his hips, his legs. Imagine water spiraling down a drain. Relax each part of your body, and let the tension flow down to your knees, your shins, your feet.

  Imagine smoke drifting away. Let it diffuse. Watch it vanish. Disappear. Dissolve.

  In my appointment book, next to his name it says Marilyn Monroe, the same as most guys here for their first time. I could live on just doing Marilyn. I could live on just doing Princess Diana.

  To Mister Jones, I say, imagine you’re looking up at a blue sky, and imagine a tiny airplane skywriting the letter Z. Then let the wind erase the letter. Then imagine the plane writing the letter Y. Let the wind erase it. Then the letter X. Erase it. Then the letter W.

  Let the wind erase it.

  All I really do is set the stage. I just introduce men to their ideal. I set them up on a date with their subconscious because nothing is as good as you can imagine it. No one is as beautiful as she is in your head. Nothing is as exciting as your fantasy.

  Here, you have the sex you’ve only dreamt about. I set the stage and make the introductions. The rest of the session, I watch the clock or maybe read a book or do a crossword puzzle. I play solitaire on my computer.

  Here, you’re never disappointed.

  Buried deep in his trance, a guy will lie there and twitch and hump, a dog chasing rabbits in a dream. Every few guys, I get a screamer or a moaner or a groaner. You have to wonder what the people in the office next door must think. Guys in the waiting room hear the fuss, and it drives them wild.

  After the session, a guy will be soaked with sweat, his shirt wet and sticking to him, his pants stained. Some could pour the sweat out of their shoes. They could shake it out of their hair. The couch in my office was Scotchgarded, but it never got a chance to really dry out. Now it’s sealed in a clear plastic slipcover you can just wipe clean.

  Don’t think I haven’t considered some kind of sanitary drape, some big tarp each guy can lie down on and then just throw away, but that would mean assuming that sex was always going to happen. I’d be throwing away even the pretense that I do any other kind of work anymore. It’s so premeditated. So intentional. It’s the difference between manslaughter and murder.

  So guys each have to bring a towel, in their briefcases, in paper bags, in their gym bags with a clean change of clothes. In between clients, I spray around air fresheners. I open windows.

  To Mister Jones, I say, make all the tension in your body collect in your toes, then drain out. All the tension. Imagine your whole body slack. Relaxed. Collapsed. Relaxed. Heavy. Relaxed. Empty. Relaxed.

  Breathe with your stomach instead of your chest. In, and then out.

  In, and then out.

  Breathing in.

  And then out. Smooth and even.

  Your legs are tired and heavy. Your arms are tired and heavy.

  At first, all I did was house cleansings, not any kind of vacuuming and dustings, but spiritual cleansings, exorcisms. The hardest part was getting the people at the Yellow Pages to run my ad under the heading EXORCIST. You go and burn sage. Say the Lord’s Prayer and walk around. Maybe beat a clay drum. Declare the house clean. Clients will pay for just doing that.

  Cold spots, bad smells, eerie feelings—most people don’t need an exorcist. They need a new furnace or a plumber or an interior decorator. The point is, it’s not important what you think. What’s important is that they’re sure they have a problem. Most of those jobs come through real estate agents. In this city, we have a real estate disclosure law, and people will admit to the dumbest faults, not just asbestos and buried oil tanks, but ghosts and poltergeists. Everyone wants more excitement from their life than they’ll ever get. Buyers on the verge of closing, they’ll need a little reassurance about the house. The real estate woman calls, and you put on a little show, and everybody wins.

  They get what they want, plus a good story to tell. An experience.

  Then came fêng shui, and the clients wanted an exorcism and they wanted you to tell them where to put the sofa. They’d ask where the bed need to go to avoid being in the path of cutting chi from the corner of the dresser. Where should they hang mirrors to bounce the flow of chi back upstairs or away from open doors. It turned into that kind of job. This is what you do with a degree in psychology. Just my résumé is proof of reincarnation.

  With Mister Jones, I run through the alphabet backward. I tell him, you are standing in a grassy meadow, but now the clouds will descend, coming lower and lower, settling over you until they’re all around you in a dense fog. A dense, bright fog.

  Imagine standing in a bright, cool fog. The future is to your right side. The past to your left. The fog is cool and wet on your face.

  Turn to your left and keep walking.

  Imagine, I tell Mister Jones, a shape just ahead of you in the fog. Now start walking. Feel the fog start to lift. Feel the sun bright and warm on your shoulders.

  The shape is closer. With every step, the shape is more clear.

  Here, in your mind, you have complete privacy. Here, there is no difference between what is and what could be. You’re not going to catch any disease. Or crab lice. Or break any law. Or settle for any less than the best of everything you can imagine.

  You can do anything you imagine, here.

  I tell each client, breathe in. Then out.

  You can do anyone. Anywhere.

  In. Then out.

  From fêng shui, I went to channeling. Ancient gods, enlightened warriors, dead pets, I’ve faked them all. Channeling led to hypnosis and past-life regression. Regressing people led me here, to nine clients per day at 200 bucks per. To guys in the waiting room all day. To wives calling and leaving messages that go:

  “I know he’s there. I don’t know what he tells you, but he’s married.”

  To wives sitting in cars outside, calling me on car phones to say:

  “Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on up there. I’ve followed him.”

  It’s not as if I started with the idea of summoning up the most powerful women in history to give hand jobs, blow jobs, half-and-half and round-the-world. It just snowballed. The first guy talked. A friend of his called. A friend of the second guy called. At first, they all asked for help to cure something legit. Smoking or chewing tobacco. Spitting in public. Shoplifting. Then they just wanted sex. They wanted Clara Bow and Betsy Ross and the Queen of Sheba.

  And every day I was running down to the library to research the next day’s women: Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

  In, and then out.

  Guys called wanting to pork Helen Hayes, Margaret Sanger and Aimee Semple McPherson. They wanted to bone Edith Piaf and Empress Theodora. And at first, it bothered me, how all these guys were obsessed with only dead women. And how they never ask for the same woman twice. And no matter how much detail I put into a session, they only want to pork and bone, slam and bump, shaft, hole, screw, drill, pound, pile drive, core and ride.

  And sometimes a euphemism just isn’t. Sometimes a euphemism is more true than what it’s supposed to hide.

  And this really isn’t about sex.

  These guys mean just what they ask for. They don’t want conversation or costumes or historical accuracy. They want Emily Dickinson naked in high heels with one foot one the floor and the other up on her desk, bent over and running a quill pen up the crack of her butt.

  They pay 200 bucks to find Mary Cassatt wearing a push-up bra.

  It’s not every man who can afford me, so I get the same type again and again. They park their minivans six blocks away and hurry over here, staying near the buildings, each guy dragging his shadow.
They stumble in wearing dark glasses, then wait behind open newspapers and magazines until their name is called. Or their alias. If we meet in public, they pretend not to know me. In public, they have wives. In the market, they have kids, in the park, dogs. They have real names.

  They pay with damp $20s and $50s from sopping wet wallets full of sweaty photos, library cards, charge cards, club memberships, licenses, change. Obligations. Responsibility. Reality.

  Imagine, I tell each client, the sun on your skin. Feel the sun get warmer and warmer with each big breath you exhale. The sun bright on your face, your chest, your shoulders.

  Breathe in. Then out.

  In. Then out.

  My return customers, now they all want girl-on-girl shows, they want a two-girl party, Indira Gandhi and Carole Lombard. Margaret Mead and Audrey Hepburn. Repeat client don’t even want to be real themselves. The bald ones ask for full, thick hair. The fat ones ask for muscle. The pale, a tan. After enough sessions, every man will ask for a strutting, foot-long erection.

  So it’s not real past-life regression. And it’s not love. It’s not history, and it’s not reality. It’s television, but it happens in your mind. It’s a broadcast, and I’m the sender.

  It’s not sex, but it feels great to everybody but me. I’m just the tour guide for a wet dream. A hypno lap dancer.

  Each guy keeps his pants on for damage control. Containment. The mess goes miles beyond just peter tracks. And it pays a fortune.

  Mister Jones gets the standard Marilyn experience. He’s rigid on the couch, sweating and mouth breathing. His eyes roll back. His shirt grows dark under the arms. His crotch tents up.

  Here she is, I tell Mister Jones.

  The fog is gone and it’s a shining, hot day. Feel the air on your bare skin, your bare arms and legs. Feel yourself getting warmer with every breath you breathe out. Feel yourself growing longer and thicker. Already you’re harder and heavier, more purple and throbbing than you’ve ever felt.