Wrestling Hillary Clinton: Part II
“Here, Edward Partin, a jailbird languishing in a Louisiana jail under indictments for such state and federal crimes as embezzlement, kidnapping, and manslaughter (and soon to be charged with perjury and assault), contacted federal authorities and told them he was willing to become, and would be useful as, an informer against Hoffa, who was then about to be tried in the Test Fleet case.
“A motive for his doing this is immediately apparent — namely, his strong desire to work his way out of jail and out of his various legal entanglements with the State and Federal Governments. And it is interesting to note that, if this was his motive, he has been uniquely successful in satisfying it. In the four years since he first volunteered to be an informer against Hoffa he has not been prosecuted on any of the serious federal charges for which he was at that time jailed, and the state charges have apparently vanished into thin air.“
Chief Justice Earl Warren in Hoffa versus The United States, 1966; Warren was the only one of nine justices to vote against using Edward Partin’s sworn testimony to convict Jimmy Hoffa.
I wrestled Hillary for the first time in mid November of 1989, when I was 140 pounds. Schools alternated hosting each other, and it worked out that the first and only time I visited Capital was for my first match of the 1989-1990 wresting season. It was my first dual-meet after the team had elected me co-captain of the Belaire Bengals at the end of the 1988-1989 season.
After school on a Wednesday in mid November, we crammed into the Belaire Bengal’s old blue Chevy passenger van used by all sports teams for field trips. Our other co-captain, a 140 pounder named Jeremy Gann, a senior and returning state silver medal winner at 135 pounds, was in the passenger seat next to Coach. I was the last one to load into the van, so I sat by the sliding side door and slammed it shut after confirming everyone was inside.
We pulled out of Belaire’s gymnasium parking lot at 12121 Tams Drive and Coach slowly navigated out of Belaire subdivision and north turned onto Florida Boulevard towards Government Street and Capital High. The ride was only 8 and a half miles, about how far I’d run after school during cross-country track practice each fall, but because of afternoon traffic and stoplights it took us around 20 minutes reach downtown. As we approached, we could see the new state capital building towering over the intersection of I-110 and I-10; it was built on a bargain budget during the Great Depression, and was the tallest and most elaborate state capital in America back then, a 39 story art-deco edifice towering over the Capital neighborhood.
Capital High was, and is, at 1000 North 23rd Street, just around the corner from the North Street church and a cemetery that still had tombstones riddled with bullet holes from when northern soldiers reached the old state capital, a squat structure made to look like a castle adjacent to Louisiana’s original war academy, the predecessor of today’s Louisiana State University and a museum most of us visited in middle school to learn about the civil war. We pulled into their parking lot, glancing around at what had become a worn neighborhood with a reputation for the worst crime rates in Baton Rouge.
Jeremy jumped out, I opened the door, and the Bengals followed Jeremy and me in an informal and quiet herd. Coach, who had wrestled with the 1960 olympic team at 126 pounds and was a former marine from the Korean war period, followed to ensure no one was left behind; it’s a trait I’d use around a year later when I’d find myself in combat, which is why leading by being last sticks in my mind to this day.
The first I thing I saw when I approached Capital High’s gym was a hand-painted sign above the doorway, large yellow letters against a black scroll that said Welcome to the Lion’s Den. Inside, they had laid out a faded purple and gold LSU wrestling mat donated after the team disbanded in 1979. The walls were painted maroon to match their singlets and warm-up hoodies, but the paint was so faded that the maroon was a close approximation of the faded purple mats, and the yellow on their murals matched the worn gold on LSU’s mat. Few people other than Capital’s coach knew that the mats once belonged to America’s 4th ranked wrestling team, which was created and led by Coach after LSU recruited him in the 1960’s. When the 1979 Title IX law mandated equal numbers of male and female athletes in collegiate sports, LSU was one of around 100 wrestling programs disbanded to balance the match; that was when Coach donated the mats to fledgling programs around town and started Belaire’s team with only one wrestler, his youngest son, Craig Ketelsen, who became Belaire’s first state champion and graduated before I joined the team. Capital received one mat, and a downtown wrestling club dedicated to the all-city team and Louisiana junior olympic team received the other. Capital’s program and the downtown wrestling club began at around the same time as Belaire, but by the time I began wrestling Coach had raised enough funds for us to have a shiny blue and orange mat that still smelled like new vinyl and fresh fungicide rather than Capital’s musty 25 year old sweat-soaked seconds.
Capital’s gym had tufts of gray asbestos dangling from the rafters. The smell of mold was only barely hidden by the stench of sweat in a gym that mercilessly had no air conditioner, but no one there seemed to notice but us. Spectators in the stands wore the same green, red, and yellow colors of Capital’s murals. I thought the Lions were paying tribute to the colors of New Orlean’s Zulu parade, but by my high school prom a few months later I had evolved to think they were modeling the lion’s den from the Book of Daniel, because many wrestlers, myself included, had to shave off a pound or two before each match; like Daniel in the old testament, we fasted before facing a pack of lions. I had yet to learn about Ethopia’s Lion of Juddah on their green, yellow, and red flag that symbolizes strength and pride in Africa.
Hillary led the pack. The Lions trotted onto the mat to warm up in a line that began with their 103 pounder and ended with their 275 pound heavyweight, like a line of purple hooded Russian Matryoska dolls, but with Hillary moved to the front. He wore his maroon hoodie low over forehead, and his dark face was hidden in the shadow. The shadow, and his broad chest pushing against his maroon hoodie, demanded my attention, even though I didn’t yet know he was their 145 pounder and I’d face off against him 30 or 40 minutes later.
The joke about Hillary, though never to his face, was that he was like Sue in Johny Cash’s song, “A Boy Named Sue,” a story put to song by the Playboy magazine cartoonist and poet Shel Silverstein; it’s about a kid whose dad left him after naming him Sue so that he’d learn to stand up against bullies and grow up tough and mean and able to take care of himself. But Hillary wasn’t mean. He was terse and scowled all the time, but he wasn’t mean. He wrestled fairly, but was relentlessly brutal with every move and left a trail of wrestlers from more privileged schools wondering how they were manhandled like rag dolls by someone from Capital High.
I once heard that Hillary was born in mid-October of 1971, a few days shy of being one year before I was born, and that he began kindergarten at age 5. That meant turned 6 a month later, the oldest and biggest kid in kindergarten. By the time we were seniors in high school, was a legal adult, able to vote in elections and to buy beer (possible because Louisiana was the last state to raise the legal age to 21).
He was 5’4″ and had grown into his adult size by the tenth grade, adding muscle since then and barely squeezing into the 145 pound slot. His burly arms were proportionate, not gangly like a lot of growing teenagers. His thighs bulged with muscles, and his lats were a hands-width wider than his narrow waist. To fit into Capital High’s skin-tight maroon wrestling singlet, he had to wear a larger size than his lean stomach needed; it was taut across his chest but hung in loose folds around his waist.
Hillary had been shaving since the 10th grade. Everyone in the same weight class would stand side by side to weigh in at tournaments, where referees checked for clean-shaven faces. Unscrupulous wrestlers shaved a few days before a match to make their chins and arms abrasive, like course sandpaper, but Hillary shaved his face smooth each morning before competing. He kept his body hair natural, though, probably because his forearms were covered in Brillo pads like we used to scrub cast iron pots and his chest hair was already a mat of thorny spines that hurt like hell when he put all of his weight into pinning you.
It wasn’t the abrasiveness of his forearm hair that made an opponent turn their face. When Hillary cross-faced someone, he put every ounce of his short hairy body behind it, and the force would whip our faces away and allow him to spin behind for takedown and quickly flip you to your back. If you wore braces like I did my junior year, Hillary’s crossface would shred your lips and you’d choke on your own blood while he pinned you; I was fortunate that I had my braces removed before season began.
Hillary was the best bear hug thrower in all the southeast. In summer freestyle and in national junior olympics, a more aggressive form of wresting than in high school, his throw would earn a full five points. In winter collegiate wrestling it almost always led to a pin. In those throws, he’d arch so steeply that the loose folds on his singlet would stretch out, and for a brief moment he seemed taller, as if he could defy physics to pin someone. Kids seeking to learn perfect technique would gather to watch Hillary wrestle.
At the Robert E. Lee Invintatrional, schools from as far away as Texas, Florida, and Oaklahoma came to Baton Rouge to compete in Lee High’s annual tournament. Mostly, those schools were there to face the Jesuit High Bluejays, a New Orleans institution with three levels of teams, a dedicated wrestling room with two mats, and banners laced around their ceiling with state title championships dating back to what seemed like the civil war era. But Hillary dominated even the Bluejay 145 pounder, and we’d watch Hillary defy physics and rip through all opponents on his way to another gold medal. He never spoke with any of us before or after the tournaments, and though he competed nationally he never joined the all-Louisiana practices or helped coach any team other than Capital. Hillary always wore a scowl of fierce focus that discouraged visitors from approaching him, especially at the Robert E. Lee Invitational.
For three years, he had been captain of the Capital High Lions, a 100% African American school located near the downtown state capital building. The surrounding homes were Capital neighborhood, once a nicer area near downtown and the port of Baton Rouge until the raised interstates of I-110 and I-110 created a ceiling over downtown that rumbled with 18 wheelers hauling chemicals from northern Baton Rouge and goods to and from the port of New Orleans that was linked to the rest of America via I-10. President Eisenhower began the U.S. interstate program to mimic Germany’s autobahn, which had facilitated Hitler’s army mobilizing an concurring parts of Europe before other countries could respond. Interstates were built with military specifications so that convoys could move under bridges and, in emergencies, could use long stretches as emergency airplane landing strips.
The interstates coincided with the rise of the Teamsters, which used an army of truck drivers to ship civilian products across America. My grandfather was instrumental in having I-110 built; it bypassed the Baton Rouge train rails, airport, and port on the Mississippi River to give Local #5 a monopoly on shipping oil and raw plastic from Baton Rouge’s burgeoning but lucrative petrochemical industry north of downtown. As Teamster union influence grew, they pushed out lower-paid employees and raised standards for union members, which led to more union members and increased Big Daddy’s influence in Louisiana just as Hoffa’s influence was growing nationally.
Like a lot of downtowns beginning in the late 1950’s, the interstates created a sinkhole of poverty around Capital High; white families moved away, and those who remained were overwhelmingly African American. Hillary, like all of the Lions, remained silent all weekend at the Robert E. Lee Invitational, a tournament named for the southern civil war general who fought to keep slavery only 125 years before our city tournament. Baton Rouge still has bullet holes in downtown buildings and cemeteries from what some teachers somewhat jokingly called The War of Northern Aggression.
Our history was palpable as the bullet holes around Capital High. Though never discussed at the tournaments, it was possible that great-grandparents of some Louisiana wrestlers owned Hillary’s great-grandparents and made them work in the sugar cane fields that are still a backbone of southern Louisiana economy, and a staple of the Teamster trucks that rumble across I-I0 and rattle the gym rafters of Capital High School on their way across the Mississippi River Bridge.
It’s no wonder Hillary scowled.
I was the opposite. I usually wore a sly grin, though that’s more of a facial feature I inherited from Big Daddy; our cheekbones are high and pull up on the corners of our mouths, making it look like we’re smiling even when we’re not. But I was a genuinely happy kid, though I epitomized the awkward gangly years of a growing teenager. I was co-captain of the Belaire Bengals, and the youngest senior wrestling in Louisiana.
I was born on 05 October 1972 and began kindergarten in late August of 1977. I was only four years old when I began school, and I was always the youngest, smallest kid in class. Had I been born a few days later I would have been too young to start kindergarten and would have been pushed back a year. If that had happened, or if the cutoff date were shifted two days, I would have began my senior year at 17 instead of 16; I would have been 18 my senior year, able to vote and buy beer like Hillary (and, knowing what I know now, I would have been 5’11” and weighed around 190 lean pounds). Instead, I began my senior year as a 16 year old, 145 pound, 5’5″ tall, mid-pubescent kid with disproportionately long arms, wide hands, long knobby fingers, and scuba fins for feet.
My toes were bulbous monstrosities best kept hidden inside of tightly fitting size 11 wrestling shoes that looked like two submarines strapped to the bottoms of my legs with five sailors crammed together inside of each. My blue Belaire singlet was pulled taunt by my long torso. I had negligible underarm hair, and my pale face and shoulders were dotted with bright red pimples that stood out against the blue singlet. I had auburn hair that seemed to turn red with the increased sunlight of spring, and I kept it cut like a mullet, stopping just before my collar so I was still within state wrestling rules.
My voice had already changed, so at least I didn’t squeak when I talked, but my body was slow to catch up. I had never shaved and didn’t need to. The hair on my arms and legs was soft like the fur on a puppy. I never stripped naked to weigh in because I was embarrassed to have only a few scraggly black hairs hidden by my underwear.
My Achilles Heel, the weakness I couldn’t seem to overcome, was my lack of upper body strength when standing. I was vulnerable to throws and bear hugs by stronger opponents like Hillary. My saving grace was that I had quads thick with muscle from hiking the Ozark Mountains with my dad most summers in the early and mid ’80’s, carrying hefty backpacks full of horse and chicken manure to his marijuana fields hidden far from roads, and I used my leg strength to shoot quickly in the first moments of a match.
My cross-face was strong. Not because I had upper body strength, but because when I pushed my fist across someone’s face my bulbous thumb knuckle caught and opponents nose. I was rarely taken down by a shot because my cross-face would deflect their face and halt their momentum. A good cross-face is essential defense if you don’t have strong arms yet; when you’re as strong Hillary Clinton, a cross-face is an unstoppable force, especially if you have Brillo pads all over your forearm.
As co-captain, I stood beside Coach and Jeremy and watched Hillary lead the Lions onto their mat.
The Lions remained eerily silent as they trotted from their locker room with echos from their feet in unison like a disciplined military unit crossing a parade field. Their footprints softened when they hit the old LSU mat, and then they jogged in a circle while stomping a foot on every fourth step to create an intentional rhythm.
Every team had its own warm-up ritual, but what stood out about Capital – besides the obvious racial difference – was the contrast of their vocal silence against the musical echo of their feet echoing in the gym. Their foot pattern mimicked a funky rhythm in the style of popular performers from the 70’s and 80’s, like James Brown or George Clinton, and as they circled they stomped the mat harder with their left foot on every forth step, like the 1 of a 4 step beat: ONE two three four, ONE two three four… The echos reverberated in the small enclosed room and we could feel the beat in our chests while we waited our turn to warm up.
The Lion’s spectators filled their relatively small set of worn wooden bleachers and stomped their feet on the one beat with Hillary and his team. They were mostly parents and relatives who rented cheap houses once built for the middle class after WWII, or in eight-unit, two story, rectangular brick apartments built with dark red bricks after I-10 was built. Regardless of wher they lived, the murals spoke to them and they radiated more pride than any suburb school I knew. Coach, who had built teams since the 50’s, once told me that community support is what made a team. Belaire never mustered more than a few straggling parents, and for the first time I saw what he meant.
The bleachers shook and rattled every time spectators stomped on the beat. Loose screws would squeak, and flakes of paint would fall from the bleachers and land on the gym floor. No one seemed to notice the derelict stands other than visiting teams, who were more used to modern gyms without asbestos and quiet spectators. Even Belaire, which pleaded for more state funding and filled math and science teaching positions with untrained Teach For America volunteers, was Eden in comparison to Capital High. The only reason we had a new blue mat was because of Coach, who ran fund raisers and could buy expensive sports equipment wholesale through a small company he formed just for that purpose.
When the Lions finally stopped circling and sprawled into a tight circle, they landed with their faces close together on a silent cue none of us heard. The spectators calmed down and gave the team a moment of silence, and Hillary spoke so softly that I never heard what he told his team as they prepared for battle. For about two minutes, the den became a church; there’d be no stomping or squeaks from the stands, just an occasional cough or someone clearing their throat.
When it was Belaire’s turn, we pulled up our blue hoodies and trotted onto the mat silently and without being synced. Jermey led, I was second, and about 22 Bengals followed in whatever order worked out that day. It was the first time in our history we filled an entire squad.
About six Bengals were Red Shirts, a program Coach adopted from football that let kids not eligible for wrestling, because of grades or a disciplinary action agains them, still practice and walk onto the mat with the active team. I was one of them in the 10th grade, and encouraged them to join us at every match. When a Red Shirt’s probation is lifted, they can challenge whichever weight class they wanted and fight for the right to wrestle first string. Until then, they warmed up with us just like any other Bengal. I didn’t have Coach’s experience with community building a team, but I had experienced the power of Coach’s Red Shirt program making you feel part of something bigger than yourself.
We split into two groups like a flock of birds following two leaders. Every time different Bengals followed us in an evolving pattern that would make sense if you knew us; we naturally fell into zones of proximal development, small groups of three to five wrestlers who could all learn something from each other, and that would change every week and therefore our warm-up routine also changed every week. The zone of proximal development is a concept that came from the Soviet Union after WWII, when 30 Million Russians died and left millions of orphans to fend for themselves in massive gymnasiums without much supervision; toddlers naturally formed small groups, developing their own languages and patterns and mixing in and out of other groups to where give-and-take was balanced. Coach had a master’s in education theory and, because of his role to compete against the Soviet national wrestling team, was knowledgable about all things Russian; he had mentioned the zone of proximal development offhandedly, and though Jeremy and I didn’t understand how the Bengals flowed into groups we never questioned it. Even Jeremy and I would weave in and out of being in each other’s groups each week, naturally flowing into zones where we could both learn and teach within the same group.
We warmed up in the Lion’s Den by jogging onto the mats and circling for about two minutes, separating into groups of three to five, and practicing standard wrestling drills in slow and meticulous motions. Jeremy was such a better wrestler than I was at the beginning of season that he naturally formed a group with some of the other experienced Bengals. I was with Michael, our 135 pounder and a formidable third year wrestler, a couple of second year wrestlers, and two freshmen.
Each group methodically drilled single leg shots, doubles, stand ups, and sprawls, the building blocks of any great wrestler. Different zones practiced these moves with increasing levels of speed and intensity, but all with the intention of waking up muscles after a long day of sitting in classes. After warming up, we gathered behind Belaire’s corner of Capital’s mat. Both teams watched as I stepped onto the mat with Jeremy and we met Hillary in the center.
The referee spoke softly to us and reminded us to wrestle fairly. Jeremy and Hillary slapped hands in a modified handshake to show the spectators we would take the message back to our teams. Not used to two co-captains facing him, Hillary stared at both of us with stoic indifference. We returned to our corners and matches began at 103 pounds and proceeded up each weight class. I began warming up when the 129 pounders shook hands, because you never know how quickly matches can end and there was only the 135 and 140 pound match before mine. As an extreme case, if all matches lasted the entire six minutes I’d warm up for 18 minutes and step onto the mat with a hefty sheen of sweat.
Coincidentally, Hillary and I warmed up almost identically. Both of us took longer than most wrestlers, something I’d see again and again over the next few months. At Capital, though I wasn’t a threat, he still warmed up the same as if he were stepping onto the mat for state finals again. We began whipping our arms around our chests and stepping up and down as if we were climbing steps on the state capital or hiking up an Ozark mountain. Then we shook our heads and hands and feet faster, breathing in deeply and exhaling slowly. Hillary did jumping jacks and squat thrusts, I jumped a rope. Both of us were trying to slowly grow a thin sheen of sweat over our entire bodies, warming us up and beginning the match with the tiniest of advantages by having slippery legs. We both wore headphones connected to a Walkman. I never learned what he listened to, but I listened to a mix tape of mostly Heavy Metal that got my heartbeat up, like Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock!” and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” with Red Rider’s “Lunatic Fringe” from the 1985 wrestling film “Vision Quest” thrown in to remind me of that high schooler’s senior year; he, too, jumped rope to warm up.
When it came time to compete, Hillary took off his sweatshirt and donned his light brown hockey mask, like the one worn by Jason in the 1980’s Friday the 13th slasher films. It wasn’t an actual hockey mask, it was a wrestling mask for kids who competed with a broken nose. A hockey mask is rigid and covered in holes, but a wrestling mask is padded to be soft on the outside and has only two holes for eyes and one for the mouth, but it looked so much like a hockey mask that we all called it one. The analogy with Jason the slasher was apt because, like Hillary, he also never spoke and showed no mercy. Only two other wrestlers in the state used a face mask. Hillary’s nose wasn’t broken like theirs was, but the mask protected him from cross-faces and, I suspect, added to his reputation as a silent killer on the mat. I was the only one to notice the irony of facing off against Jason, because by then my nickname of Magik was so common no one had called me Jason since I wore a red shirt in the 10th grade.
I was relaxed and confident I’d do well against any foe after a summer of training with the junior olympic team and Jesuit High School. I donned the state mandated headgear and took a few minutes to adjust the straps so they’d press tightly over my ears and protect them against cauliflower ear, that wrestling disease that comes from tight headlocks that destroys cartilage. I had a bit in my right ear that my mom had paid to have drained the previous spring, and my narrowed ear canal combined with padded headgear made the gym seem muffled. I barely understood the ref when he called us, but I knew the routine and what to expect.
I trotted over and stood in the center and leaned forward to face Hillary. The whites around his dark brown eyes were barely visible in the shadows of his face mask. We slapped our right hands as a modified handshake to acknowledge we were ready.
The referee blew his whistle and I instantly shot a low single. Hillary sprawled, cross-faced the hell out of me, spun behind, drove my face into the mat, threw in a half-nelson, and turned me to my back before I realized how much it hurt. I could feel blood gathering in my nostrils, then I felt my shoulders touch the mat. The referee slapped the mat beside my face. Hillary pinned me in 22 seconds; it had taken me longer to adjust my headgear before the match.
We stood back up in the center, and the referee held Hillary’s hand up in the air. The applause from Capital’s bleachers was deafening, even with my padded headgear. I could feel the reverbations in my chest as they stomped their feet and hollered. Unlike most schools, which shout something like “Go Bengals!”, Capital’s fans sang their praise in unison, like a southern Baptist church raising the rafters with their voices. Hillary seemed unfazed, as if the outcome were inevitable. He strolled walked back to Capital’s corner and began prepping their 152 pounder for battle.
I returned to our corner and supported my team. Jeremy handed me a hand towel to wipe off sweat, mostly out of habit, though I still had a sheen from warming up. I used it to dap my nose, which was bleeding but not enough for anyone to notice. I ran my tongue between my lip and front teeth, a habit from when I used to wear braces and would check for torn flesh after being cross-faced; I felt nothing damaged, and celebrated that small victory.
I don’t recall the overall team score, but Capital won about 70% of the matches. Jeremy had pinned his opponent in the third round at 140 pounds before sitting back in our corner to be captain for my match. The other two notable wins were coincidentally the only two African Americans on Belaire’s team, our 275 pounder named Dana Miles and nicknamed Big D, a football linebacker who had to sweat off around 10 pounds to make weight after football season ended and wrestling season began; and our 135 pounder, Michael Jackson, who had no nickname because he was Michael Jackson, a captain in Belaire’s ROTC army program who had lost to Jeremy for Belaire’s 140 pound slot and had spent all week loosing five pounds and bumping out our original 135 pounder.
It was November, so days were short and we rode back to Belaire illuminated by street lights and traffic signals along Florida Boulevard. Everyone joked with each other and talked about what they’d do differently next time.
Unlike our drives to matches, the Bengals were chatty on the rides back. We usually talked about what happened on the mat and how we could improve. A bit more than year later, I’d be a paratrooper on President Bush’s quick reaction force, and our teams would do the same thing after every mission; we called it an After Action Review, and it’s an essential part of small team growth that I would use the rest of my life. It’s one of the most useful tools for improving. Though Coach had been a marine, he never told the Bengals to review our actions; he never told us to do anything, for that matter, but I still see his influence in how we behaved. For whatever reason, the Bengals naturally gathered and reflected on how we could improve after every dual meet, usually crossing zones of development to show moves or techniques to each other while everyone’s matches were fresh in our minds. At home matches, when we weren’t rushed to drive somewhere, Coach would waddle around the mat and give tips based on the needs of each group. When driving, he remained silent and focused on the road; his other job at Belaire High School was the driver’s education teacher, and he practiced what he preached. It was nightinme by thebn, and I watched the lights of strip malls along Florida Bulevard pass by at 45 miles per hour as I listened to the team’s After Action Review while I sat silently and reflected on how badly I was beaten.
I was nursing a sore nose with the blood-stained hand towel Jeremy had handed me after I lost; I was pinned so quickly that no one but me noticed that my nose was bleeding a little bit when I sat back down, and I was just beginning to process how much his cross-face had hurt. I ran my tongue across my front teeth again, and thought that at least I didn’t have to wear a mouth guard any more. I made myself think: that was one thing for which I could be grateful.
I looked down at my lap and made a tight but relaxed fist with my right hand. I pushed it down on my left forearm and watched my right wrist deflect. I rotated my thumb upwards and pushed again; the rigidity of my wrist bones in that orientation forced my left arm down the same way Hillary had cranked my head and rotated my body. Coach had taught me that the year before, using biomechanics to augment strength. But it wasn’t just technique that I had felt; my neck was still aching from the sheer power of Hillary’s mighty. I had not felt so weak since the 10th grade.
I reflected on my first match at Belaire’s Thanksgiving tournament. Coincidentally, it was against a new wrestler from Capital. I never saw again, but he pinned me with the same half-nelson he probably learned from Hillary. I had shot then, too, and he had crossfaced me and shredded my lip. He turned me and leaned into his half nelson with a novice’s body position, unable to leverage both of my shoulders against the mat at the same time to complete the pin, but I panicked from not breathing and chocking on my own blood and forced my shoulder against the mat to end the pain and fear. By the 11th grade I had vowed to never quit anything again, to always give my best. I didn’t know what to do when my best wasn’t good enough against someone as strong as Hillary.
The difference between Hillary and me is obvious in hindsight. Coincidentally, in the mid 1980’s a research scientist noticed that professional hockey players in Canada were statistically likely to be born in spring. At first it seemed like astrology, but then researches realized that Canadian laws required being five years old by January 1st to begin practice; kids born the first few months of the year had an entire year advantage over kids born in the final few months.
Every year after, the kids who started sooner outperformed the ones who didn’t, and they placed higher and were therefore promoted faster and received better coaching, similar to how Hillary began kindergarten as the oldest kid in class and I began as the youngest. A year at four to five years old is a lifetime on an exponential growth scale, and the differences between two kids in the same class but eleven months apart grow and multiply each year.
That research study was practically unknown until brought to the world’s attention in 2008 by a book: “Outliers, the Story of Success.” It was written by Malcom Gladwell, a Canadian by birth who became a journalist for The Washington Post, writer for the New Yorker Magazine, author of several bestselling books, and popular TED speaker. He combined other research studies to paint a bigger picture in Outliers, and he pointed out that America didn’t have the sports laws as Canada, but the age cutoff for kindergarten creates a similar academic disparity: older kids in kindergarten begin with a 17% advantage on aptitude tests. Like how older hockey players are placed in more competitive groups and therefore grow stronger in a self-fulfilling prophesy, many older American students are grouped academically and their initial advantages grow over time, which, by definition, creates a class with disadvantages.
Gladwell quoted a social justice expert and called the phenomenon of advantages from birth and circumstance “The Mathew Effect,” after the New Testament’s book of Matthew, where Matthew wrote something like:
Whoever has, will be given more, and they will have an abundance; whoever does not have, even that will be taken from them.
Most of Gladwell’s books focused on topics about how little companies outmaneuver big ones, detailed in his book David and Goliath (named for the biblical and David who defeated a much larger foe, Goliath, using only a slingshot), and how individuals have brief moments of intuition that outperform teams of experts, detailed in his book Blink, as in the blink of an eye. In Outliers, Gladwell pointed to the unseen trends that shape success, like which month you were born; but, though dozens of interviews and case studies and research reports he showed how constant, persistent determination and practice seems to help anyone succeed. He interviewed people like Bill Gates and cited famous bands like The Beatles, and pointed to the 10,000 hour phenomenon that implies 10,000 hours of effort is necessary to overcome obstacles.
Most outliers, by Gladwell’s definition, are lucky. Even though putting in 10,000 hours of work is admirable, Bill Gates was still lucky because he had access to one of the world’s first computers to practice with. Before The Beatles were, as they said, “bigger than Jesus,” they played their first 10,000 hours in the windows of a red light district as background noise while men shopped; but, they were lucky to have the instruments and live where they could practice. Luck is the first and often most unseen way, Gladwell concluded, but it’s not the only way. Others create their success, but they are so rare that they wouldn’t fill a paragraph in his book.
If I had one thing in abundance, it was what my teammates called tenacity. I had lost all 13 matches of my 10th grade year before becoming a Red Shirt. My junior record was something like 75 wins to 50 losses, almost twice the number of matches most kids have because I kept getting beaten in semifinals and dropped down to the loser bracket to claw my way to third place finals; usually loosing there and getting an unrecognized fourth place. It was like having 10,000 hours of practice. Many chose to quit instead. Abundance means having enough to share, and it was tenacity, not talent, that led the Bengals to vote me both co-captain and most-improved the same year. Coach attributed my tenacity as an example that led so many Bengals to stick with wrestling even though Belaire was still a new program and being thrashed by schools like Jesuit, Catholic, Baton Rouge High, and Capital. The only other Belaire state champion other than Craig, Coach told us, was another kid named Jason who lost all of his matches his freshman year, but h stuck with the program and won state in 1985, his senior year, when Belaire only had enough wrestlers to fill half of the twelve weight classes.
It was dark when we arrived back at Belaire. Parents and carpools were waiting for most of the team under the gym parking lot lights. I said goodbye to the guys and straddled my 1981 Honda Ascot, a 500cc machine with a shaft drive that wouldn’t need maintenance for the rest of the season. I, on the other hand, was 0-1 and would need a lot of work over the next four months.
I watched everyone leave and then I sat there for a moment, remembering Hillary in his mask and wondering if it would help protect my nose. I sniffed, feeling the dried blood flakes rattle around the back of my nostrils. I was already in the army’s delayed entry program, so I believed I’d be going into the army after high school and that those battles would lead to real bloodshed, not the small red dabs on my hand towel that no one noticed. Though I didn’t know it yet, I’d look back on that van ride and dotting the blood from my nose soon after graduating high school, when I’d stare at a hand-painted sign on the Fort Benning Advanced Infantry School’s physical training field that said: “More sweat in training means less blood in combat.” I’d see that sign six days a week for five weeks, and chuckle to myself because nothing in the army was as challenging as wrestling Hillary Clinton, and the first nosebleed he gave me was my motivation to begin training harder than ever so that it wouldn’t happen again.
I stood under a light pole and pondered how I could stand up against that beast with only four months left of season. I decided that I’d start in the morning with an extra set of pushups and maybe an extra mile or two of running, then go from there. I saw myself turning into Sylvester Stallone in Rocky, running up and down the Baton Rouge state capital steps instead of Philadelphia’s capital steps and focused on wrestling Hillary Clinton instead of boxing Apollo Creed. Or, more like the high school senior in 1985’s Vision Quest who woke up early to jump rope and practically starved himself to death so he could drop 20 pounds and wrestle Shoot, Washington State’s three time undefeated state champion. Maybe I’d even be like Jason from the 1985 team, but winning state after only two years instead of four.
I took a deep breath and felt the unusually crisp Baton Rouge air that signaled the start of another wrestling season. I exhaled slowly until my lungs were empty and allowed myself to breathe normally until I wasn’t thinking about the day any more. It was time to go after a few breaths. I strapped on my backpack, pulled on my full-face helmet, slid the visor down, and straddled the motorcyle, an aging 500cc Honda Ascot with shaft drive that wouldn’t require maintenance and allow me to focus on wresting. I pushed the ignition on my motorcycle, watched my headlight illuminate the brick wall of Belaire’s gym, then I pulled out of the parking lot and onto Tams Drive and drove south on Florida Boulevard. I was in my subdivision within five minutes.
I parked a few houses from home and locked my helmet to the bike. I walked carefully towards my mom Mike’s house, still wearing my backpack with school books and decks of cards and an Okito coin box filled with four Kennedy half dollars. I was already in the army’s delayed entry program, and I imagined myself practicing walking towards an enemy’s base.
I stopped outside the carport and whistled softly in a three-whistle pattern, one long and slow followed by two quick and short. I listened. I whistled again and listened again. I heard the thump-thump of Kelly’s tail against the wall. She was a diminutive and aging Irish Setter. I then heard the soft whine of Sean, a burly yet simple-minded and slightly younger Setter. They wouldn’t bark now, so I walked into the carport and spoke softly and petted them over the gate. I turned and opened the kitchen door and startled my mom while she was loading the dishwasher.
“Hey Wendy,” I said.
“You startled me!” she said with a soft smile.
I called my mother Wendy. She had me when she was 16, an accidental pregnancy when she lost her virginity to the drug dealer of Glen Oaks High School, a 17 year old Edward Grady Partin Junior. They dropped out of school and eloped an hour and a half away to Mississippi, where state laws didn’t require parental consent for a pregnant 16 year old girl to marry. They returned as Mr. and Mrs. Edward G. Partin and moved into one of Big Daddy’s houses without having to change the name in Baton Rouge’s phone book. My dad and a group of his friends left Louisiana on motorcycles and rode to Miami, where they took a boat to some Carribbean island, though it was never clear which one. Wendy said Cuba, my dad said Jamaica, his friends said they couldn’t remember most of the 70’s, and my great-grandmother said Puerto Rico, where, I’d learn as an adult in the medical device industry, American drug companies had just begun outsourcing manufacturing of things like opioids. Grandma may have thought it was Puerto Rico because their Teamsters president knew the name Ed Partin well; in 1967, the then Peurto Rican Teamster president, Frank Chavez, showed support to Jimmy Hoffa’s recent imprisonment by publicly saying, ““I’m gonna fuckin’ kill Edward Partin!” Chavez was murdered soon after, and a more temperate Teamster took his place and never said anything ill about a Partin. It’s likely my father had help navigating the Caribbean, and they may have gone all over looking for drugs and pursuing Bob Marley concerts. Regardless of where he bought the opioids, while he was gone Wendy abandoned me an a judge placed me into the Louisiana foster system. Wendy returned on her own, but was ashamed of having married a criminal and abandoning me, and while she fought my dad for custody she taught me to call her by her first name so people would think I was her little brother. Old habits are hard to break, and I called my mother Wendy ever since.
I shrugged as if that didn’t make me happy to know that I was getting good at carrying a backpack at night undetected. I don’t recall what either of us said, but it was quick and habitual, a combination of typical teenage focus added to only nine years of living together with someone you once thought was your sister. I walked into my room and took a long, hot shower in the Jack and Jill bathroom between my room and Mike’s office to help sweat off a few more ounces.
I put my physics and calculus books by my alarm clock and adjusted the alarm to be twenty minutes earlier. I practiced magic the same way I wrestled, by warming up first. I opened the cards and did a few one handed Chalier cuts, then increased the challenge by spinning one card atop my right forefinger to direct attention while my left hand did the cut. I changed the card into another, secretly a few times then face-up for an instant change a few more. I opened the Okito box and took out the half dollars, warmed up by rolling one across my right knuckles, then two, then three, then all four; I had to keep one still on my thumb while three moved, and balance it atop my forefinger while the thumb caught the final coin falling off my pinky.
I practiced on Kris Kenner’s Three-fly, the unobtainable Holy Grail of coin magic back then. Kris showed me Three Fly after a David Copperfield show at the Baton Rouge’s Centroplex theater in 1986, where Kris’s performance was projected on a giant screen so everyone could see close-up magic during David’s stage show. At the time, I was the youngest member of the local International Brotherhood of Magicians and a rising apprentice to David Copperfield’s “Project Magic,” teaching magic to kids in hospitals, and our club had back-stage passes to every year’s show. In 1992, Three-fly would be published in Kris’s “Totally Out of Control,” revealing the secret the same year that the JFK assassination report would share secrets held by the FBI and congress since 1963, but in 1989 only a few of us knew how to do it.
Knowledge doesn’t lead to understanding or ability, and I still couldn’t do Three-fly after being taught by Kris himself and spending three years practicing it. He used Morgan silver dollars from the late 1800’s, but all I had were Kennedy halves from the 1970’s, which were no longer the silver ones from the 1960’s and much more slippery and hard to control. Failing at Three-fly, I changed gears and executed a perfect rendition of David Roth’s Hanging Coins, the Holy Grail of coin magic before Three-fly burst on the scene. Then I did it again, trying to relax my body and focus on presentation instead of technique. I spread the four halves in my left finger tips, spread into a fan, took one in my right, and pretended to put in my left hand but kept it held parallel to the floor between my right thumb and middle finger.
I took a deep breath, a way to focus your energy that Tommy Wonder taught me at the state magic convention a year before, and imagined the half was actually inside the partial fist of my left hand. I grasped the three coins from my left finger tips and rotated my right hand to show the coins and ostensibly show an empty right palm (the edge grip hid the one half that was parallel to the floor). I tried to believe the half was in my left hand with the same conviction a devout Christian believes in God. I raised my hand and made the half invisible, held in my left the fingers the same way my right fingers held the three coins fanned and one coin hidden, and hung it in mid air. I exhaled, relaxed at having the magic work, and slowly lowered my left hand while contently staring at the invisible coin hanging in mid air.
I smiled. I felt confidence grow. I counted the three remaining halves into my left fingertips, then repeated the move and added the second coin under the first, both parallel to the floor and hidden by my long and lanky fingers. I stopped with the final coin displayed in front of three hidden ones, dropped it into my left hand and, under that big motion, deftly slid the three coins into classic palm. I reached into the air and released one coin and it’s momentum propelled it into view between my fingers and quickly dropped it onto the first coin with an audible “clank” to direct attention there. I did it two more times, coming full circle to four halves displayed in a fan. (I was proud of that; not even David Roth could do it, and he ended the routine with a self-admitted awkward grab of all three coins at once.)
I did the routine a few times, mimicking looking at an audience and not my hands, then put the halves back into the Okito box and set it by my cards and physics book.
Ending the night with the Hanging Coins set my mind at ease that it could happen again. I could find a way to beat Hillary, I felt. With that thought, my mind calmed and I laid down. My nose was clear and there was no hint of the blood from earlier. I breathed easily and was asleep a few minutes after putting my head on the pillow.
I slept so well I didn’t notice the lost twenty minutes when I woke up and began training with more intensity and focus. Without knowing about the sign in Fort Benning’s training field, I somehow knew that more sweat in training would lead to less blood in matches. As Tommy Wonder told me, perfect practice makes perfect; and as Coach said, ten perfect pushups was more effective than 100 in poor form.
I did three sets of around 30 or 40 pushups each, went for a quick two mile run, took another long hot shower, and worked on physics problems that asked you to predict the path and distance of army artillery shells. I heard Mike begin tapping on his new Macintosh computer and Wendy leave for work at Exxon, one of the petrochemical plants at the end of I-110. I put the Okito box full of halves in the little watch pocket of my jeans. I went to the back yard and received some loving licks from Kelly and Sean before heading to Belaire and beginning the next phase of my life.
Go to the Table of Contents