E. didn’t want to write anymore; he simply wanted his body. He wanted the backyard spring of blue jay calls asterisking his skin as his teenaged self rose from the mat, wiped the back of his hand across his bloodied mouth, and looked across the ring to his opponent, his neighbor Matt Thornton (who looked then like his body expressed an allergy to freckles by simply producing more freckles), who had said that he would be wrestling as The Great Mattini while E. should be known as Mister Steroid. “But I can wrap my hand fully around my bicep,” E. had said then. Matt shrugged. “Maybe it’s a Hulk-like situation,” he said, climbing the ropes, putting on an announcer’s ringing intonation. “‘You don’t want to see Mister Steroid get mad, J.R.! You just don’t!’” He leapt.

E. knew that that feeling could exist here in Scranton, he said his husband, thumbing a fry head first through a pool of ketchup like Buster Keaton having a go at being a forensic anthropologist as coffee steam kibbutzed with other coffee steam under the stained ceiling of Boulevard Diner on the selfsame avenue.

But didn’t you once say that writing was your body? E’s husband said, doing his best to slice his eggs into matching shapes.

Look at my man Zeno here, E said, smiling softly.

E’s husband smiled and forked a handful into his mouth. Why wrestling?

E. shrugged. Why anything?

The leveled eyes of someone who knows, who always knew. Stop it. Come on.

They walked back to their car and E. smiled the whole way. E. loved Scranton, Pennsylvania, and he felt like he could never quite put his finger on the why. He even had a favorite gas station, the one on Cedar Ave right next to Roaring Brook. He loved the way in which the backyard accoutrement of at least two houses directly across the way from the gas station looked — on account of the sharpness of the small hill upon which these two houses sat — like their backyards were less backyards and more an outdoor shelf. Here was a lawnchair squeezed next to a barbeque squeezed next to highway off ramps right next to a turn back to downtown Scranton.

It was like a yard sale, he ultimately decided. It was a good, workable metaphor. You don't usually think of a yard sale's role at the level of urban studies. But that's how it was, and he didn't hate it. It spoke to a fundamental lack of precision that existed deep within the heart of capital — and how, even if capital could render places clean, minimal, and modern, that was almost a deep, inadvertent parody of capital's so-called exactitude. Maybe the same way that 'AI' was a parody of intelligence. Maybe 'true' life existed 'in the mess.'

The mess was there when you saw a little pinwheel of a propeller on a stick sticking out of a weathered cardboard box of Vietnam memorabilia and VHS tapes. It was there when you saw an old He-Man figurine stretched to straddling the roof of a bird feeder. This wasn't marginalia; this was how things were. It deserved to be seen as such.

So why wrestling and not writing? E's husband said, waiting for the light to change as E. stared at the funeral home where the baseball players for the New York Yankees minor league team also lived, half-trying to hum the theoretical sitcom theme song to himself.

E.

E. turned. Sorry?

Why wrestling?

E. shrugged as he settled into the sound of the radio like it was an old, favorite couch. You know what a good chunk of the current indie wrestling scene reminds me of — the thing that excites me, at least? It’s like someone is posing the question, ‘What would happen if the characters from ‘Characters Welcome’ started fighting each other?’ Like — what would happen if Luigi on Joe Rogan’s Podcast started wrestling JRR Tolkien, Who is Obsessed With Hobbit Milk? Mystery Wrestling up in Gatineau is exactly that. Their 'Oops All Referees' match was incredible.

E's husband could feel the landscape almost green screen behind them as he thought the implications through.

Are they all like that?

They're all different. I once saw Jesus wrestle someone telekinetically at St. Mary's Center.

The bingo place?

Jesus, E. confirmed. And his mind.

Scranton, PA

And you'd give up writing just for that?

That's not the question, though, right? Like, I've been trying to sell this novel for -- what -- two years now? That LeBron story, that story that's just a wall of laughter -- those took literal years to get published.

So your work takes years. So what?

I mean, E. said, stopping a minute before starting again. I'm here now.