For the Love of Money (4 page)

CHAPTER
6

Fifteen Pounds

¤

B
y senior year in high school, I was no longer fat—veins snaked my forearms and my shoulders. A thick layer of muscle covered my arms and back. My hair was bleached, mimicking how wrestlers from Temecula Valley and Calvary Chapel, two of the toughest programs in the state, wore their hair. The previous summer, Ben and I had gone to several wrestling camps, including a two-week intensive that was billed as the toughest camp in the nation. Every day after school Ben and I drove an hour and a half to East
LA
to practice with the wrestlers at Schurr High School, a regional powerhouse.

For senior season I cut down to 152 pounds. It was ­grueling—I was cutting 8 to 9 pounds of water weight for each match—but I loved how small my opponents were, how easy to throw. Midway through the season, I started to consider dropping even lower, to 145 pounds.

To qualify for state at a certain weight class, you had to wrestle several tournaments at that weight. The California Interscholastic Federation was concerned about the health risks of dropping excessive water weight. If I wanted to drop to 145 pounds, the match versus San Marino was my last chance.

The day before the San Marino match, I stood alone in the cold gray locker room on a cold gray scale. I hadn't eaten since the night before. I took a deep breath and started sliding the metal cartridge over the grooves. As I passed 155 my stomach tightened; I thought I'd dropped a few pounds that week. The metal finger didn't drop until I hit 160.
Holy shit
, I thought.
I have to cut 15 pounds in one day.

I pulled on mesh shorts, a tee shirt, and then two pairs of sweatpants and sweatshirts.
I'm already hot
, I thought plaintively, as I pulled on a pair of plastics over the sweats. Plastics are trash-bag suits with elastic at the wrists, neck, and ankles that cinch, trapping the heat inside. I looked like an astronaut. I put on a ski hat.

I was an hour early to practice, so I jogged around the ­perimeter of the mat, the squeak of my
ASICS
my only company. Practice was brutal, two straight hours of intense drilling and hard wrestling. After, I lay exhausted on the mat. I hadn't drunk any water during practice. I figured I had dropped six or seven pounds. My mouth was parched and I fantasized about a sip of water. But I knew this was only the beginning. I got up, walked out into the warm Los Angeles air, and started to run. I followed the trail the cross-country team trained on, each footfall bringing a brown puff of dirt. It was already difficult to swallow.

After three miles I headed back to the locker room. I stripped, toweled off, and stepped on the scale: 153 pounds. Not even halfway. Ben was dropping a weight class, too, and had to cut almost as much as I did. Even though we weren't really speaking, it felt comforting to be with him. We walked to the car in silence, our mouths dry and lips chapped.

At the YMCA, we undressed, wrapped towels around our waists. We each held a credit card as we pulled open the wooden door, revealing the dark maw of the sauna. The air singed my face, and the scalding wood burned the back of my
legs. Soon I was sweating. Sweat is a cooling mechanism; as it evaporates from your skin, heat leaves your body.

I started to scrape the sweat off with the credit card. The more I scraped off, the more my body produced, desperately trying to cool itself. First one arm, long swipes from shoulder to wrist, then the other. Then chest, stomach, sides, calves, thighs, face, and neck. Then again, in rhythm. Scrape, scrape, scrape, switch hands, scrape, scrape, scrape. Sweat pooled below me.

I'd committed to ten full credit card circuits of my body. Halfway through, I started to panic. I wanted to run out, drink water, quit wrestling. But I didn't. I wanted to go to state. I wanted to wrestle in college. And I kept thinking about what had happened with my dad the weekend before.

The whole family was at Manhattan Beach, a forty-­minute drive from our house. Dad and I started wrestling. I thought we were just fooling around when suddenly my foot slipped in the sand and I went down. He ended up on top of me, his heavy belly covering my face. He let out a triumphant whoop, loud enough so heads snapped toward us. I lay grimacing underneath him, waiting for him to get off. But he didn't get up.

“Big wrestler guy,” he taunted, holding me down. “Still can't beat your old man.”

“Get off me!” I yelled, arching my back and pushing him off.

He fell back but kept his arms high in the air, triumphant.

“Never going to beat your old man,” he said.

But I didn't want to beat him. I just wanted him to be proud of me. That incident stayed with me all week. I'd remember the feeling of Dad on top of me, and my jaw would clench with resentment. In the sauna, I steeled myself for the excruciating pain I knew was still ahead of me. Sweat was still coming off me in buckets—it was when you stopped sweat
ing that things became really hard. I watched proudly as my puddle grew.

My mind was a single camera, orbiting around an ice-cold lemon-lime Gatorade. Droplets of water condensed on the bottle. One slid down like a tear.

Eventually the panic and heat overwhelmed me, and I rushed out and lay on a bench, touching the metal lockers with my hand to feel their coolness. I savored that cool for five minutes and then, head hung like a prisoner, I reentered that dark oven.

After three hours of fifteen minutes in, five minutes out, Ben and I went home to endure a long, sleepless night. In the morning I was still two pounds over. After classes, I grimly piled on my damp layers of sweats and shuffled along the same dusty trail I'd run the day before. The sun beat down, but no sweat came.

Coach was in the locker room when I returned. He was angry that I was still a pound over. He put me in the front seat of his car, rolled up the windows, and turned the heater up full blast. While he drove, I sucked on Jolly Ranchers, spitting the saliva into a plastic cup. Coach's face was dripping, but I didn't start sweating until twenty-five minutes in.

I was still a half pound over when we got back but was too parched to do anything. I stripped to my underwear and lay on the cool stone floor, shifting positions every few minutes to new slabs to conduct away the heat. I kept sucking on the Jolly Ranchers, spitting toward the drain next to my head. My teeth hurt, like the enamel had been ripped off of them.

The San Marino wrestlers arrived. Each team lined up in their underwear according to weight. One by one opponents stepped on the scale, and the ref released the metal finger. If it moved, even by a little, the wrestler made weight. My opponent looked tiny. I couldn't believe I was trying to weigh what he weighed.

When it was my turn, I stepped on the scale. The ref removed his finger. The metal finger didn't move. I was still too heavy.

I pulled off my underwear and stepped bare assed onto the scale. I was dizzy. I watched the metal finger as the referee dropped his hand.

It moved. Just barely, but it moved.

Before I was even conscious of it, I'd drained a Gatorade in one swoop. It wasn't pleasurable or enjoyable; it was simply gone, and I was suddenly freezing. I was gulping water, but I still felt as thirsty as before. Soon I was shivering. I put my sweats back on but was still cold. I started to munch on whole wheat bread, and after a while I was full and I knew I was in trouble. The match was in an hour.

The stands were pretty full for a wrestling match, maybe fifty people. Dad was standing at the side of the mat, talking on his cell phone. He'd recently started a public relations business, Polk Communications, and he worked incessantly. It was just him alone in an office, but he'd started to talk about how one day he'd sell the company for millions of dollars. As we warmed up, liquid sloshed inside my stomach. I kept looking at Dad to see if he was watching me, but he was engrossed in his call. The ref blew the whistle, beginning the 103-pound match. I felt nauseous, already exhausted.

Before I knew it I was up next. I took my warm-ups off and walked slowly to the center of the mat.

My opponent was soft and pudgy, a fish. Novice wrestlers are called fish because of how they flop around when you put them on their backs. I towered over him. The whistle blew and he shot. The shot is the most common offensive move in wrestling, sort of a controlled tackle. I saw it coming and scooted away easily. We circled each other again, and then I shot, got ahold of the back of his legs, and lifted him easily into the air. I carried him on my shoulder while he wriggled like
a live tuna. The crowd screamed. I heard my dad cheering. I strutted around the mat, then slammed him down, holding him on his back to earn points. I was up 5-0.

I could have kept him on his back, maybe pinned him right then. But the screams from the crowd filled me with pride; I didn't want it to be over yet. So I let him turn to his stomach. Then I just stood up. Letting someone up in wrestling is like slapping them in the face. You
give
them a point, because you know you can earn it back. He stood up uncertainly, unwilling to believe I had so startlingly disrespected him. I walked back to the center of the mat. He started toward me.

We circled each other, and then I shot again, and again lifted him into the air. I heard Dad yell, “Twice!” and I felt proud. But the fish seemed heavier now, and this time I didn't slam him but just dropped him. I could only keep him on his back for a second. I was up 9-1, and there were just a few seconds left in the first period. I was grateful that the fish didn't struggle much as time ran out.

The next round started with the fish on bottom. I formed a diamond shape with my hands, my palms facing out. That was a signal to the referee that I was intentionally letting the fish stand up, giving him another free point. The referee signaled to the fish that he was being let up, and I saw him stiffen at the blatant disrespect. I put my hands on his back and waited for the ref to blow the whistle. When he did, the fish started to stand up. But I wasn't satisfied with just letting him up. I wanted to embarrass him. As he got to his feet I shoved him. He lost his balance, stumbled forward. The crowd laughed. The score was 9-2. The fish came at me with a frantic energy that I recognized. I knew how it felt to be publicly humiliated.

All of a sudden, my body felt hot, like sunburn. The fish shot and I sprawled away but just barely. Then I tried a shot
and this time didn't even touch his legs. There was a lot of time left on the clock, but I was out of gas.

I hoped the fish wouldn't sense how weak I'd become, but he did and came at me. I backed up on my heels and the crowd was silent as he pushed me out of bounds. We returned to the center, the ref blew his whistle, and again the fish pushed me out of bounds, this time making a frustrated gesture to the referee, who hit me with a warning for stalling. The next time would cost me a point. I was grateful when I heard the bell end the second round. I put my hands atop my head and sucked in gulps of air but couldn't catch my breath.

I chose neutral position to start the next round. I felt like I was underwater. He shot and I thought I'd blocked him, but then I felt his hands grab my legs and I was suddenly toppling backwards.

“Two points,” yelled the ref, a little too happily.

Now I was on my stomach, the fish on top. The score was 9-4. I tried to get up, and he hit me with a vicious ­cross-face—almost a punch, but legal as long as he used his forearm. Someone yelled, “Oh, that hurt,” and I felt a surge of rage but was too weak to do anything about it. I spread my arms and legs flat so he couldn't turn me to my back. I wasn't even trying to escape. It was blatant stalling. But there was nothing else I could do. He hit me with another vicious cross-face, his forearm against my teeth, and I knew this was purely retributive. Now
he
was playing to the crowd, and if I hadn't been so exhausted I would have been livid, but instead I was terrified. The ref blew the whistle and docked me another stalling point. I was gasping for breath and thought I might faint. Then I had the worst feeling I've ever had. I felt like I was going to shit myself in front of everyone. I desperately tried to maintain control of my sphincter, as I imagined the horrible silence that would come when the crowd saw poop sliding down my leg.

The ref hit me for stalling again, but there were just thirty seconds left, and I knew he wouldn't hit me with four more stall points. I was going to win the match. I was fighting tears on one end, my bowels on the other. I stayed on my stomach while the fish grunted above me, cross-facing at will, my face purple. The bell rang; the match ended.

The crowd was silent as I slowly made my way to my knees, then stood up. I reached across and shook the hand of the sneering fish, and then the ref held my hand in the air. I was supposed to shake hands with the opposing coach, but instead I beelined to the door. Outside, I spied a clump of bushes where I could hide and collapsed into it. I was dry heaving and convulsing, and I felt like my bowels would let go at any second. But they didn't, and I lay there, alone, until Ben came to find me.

“Where's Dad?” I asked.

“He left,” Ben said.

Neither Ben nor I made state that year. We both lost in sectionals. On the day of the state tournament, we filled a cooler with beer and drove five hours to watch. We sat in an empty corner of the stands and got drunk, watching the other wrestlers live the fantasy we had chased but failed to realize.

• • •

Ever since I'd accompanied Dad on a business trip to New York, I'd dreamed about going to Columbia University. Ben dreamed of Princeton. We both applied for early decision. A coach I had trained with at Schurr High, the tough program in East
LA
, knew the coach at Columbia, and even though I hadn't placed at state, the Columbia coach added me to the roster without ever seeing me wrestle. I had great SAT scores but hadn't been the kind of straight-A student that usually got into Columbia.