The Man Game (2 page)

It felt to me like we were leaving the city, but according to the unfolded map we were headed only for the far east, where I'd heard about something called a man game that was about to take place. I heard about the man game at a provincial wrestling tournament my cousin was competing in. These two teenage guys sitting behind me in the bleachers talked about it like it was going to be the most amazing thing ever. Purely word of mouth. No flyers, no ads. According to the teenager the sport was very hush-hush on the downlow.
Worth the effort, the kid said, to go so far east in the city. And this kid then says how the man game was going to be way better than what we were watching, which happened to be my cousin getting the shit kicked out of him.

This was back in January. The trees were barebones along the road where we parked. We were so far east that nothing was recognizable. Not the streets, which sloped and undulated. Not the shapes of the houses, which all looked like miniature churches set up one beside the other. They're called Vancouver Specials because there's so many of them, charmingly ubiquitous split-levels, red and orange brick on the bottom, white stucco or panelling on the top floor, and a peaked A-frame roof. Each house was like an arrowhead or a mountain peak garnished with electric bulbs strung along the rooftop gutters, around the windows, and above the motorized garage door. I was unfamiliar with the style of the yards, which were two concrete slabs with a beach table and some chairs, surrounded by a white-painted iron-wrought fence with more arrowheads at the top of each post and bulbous avocado sculptures at each corner facing the street. The picture windows on the top floors reflected the image of their neighbours opposite. I no longer felt we were in the Vancouver I identified with. Even just stepping out of my Dynasty it felt as though the area was governed by a quite different set of habits. The sun shone weakly behind its white curtain. No rain today, but still, you could never tell. In Vancouver, rain could happen all at once.

I was hungry and nervous, always the case when I was with Minna. She never stopped thinking about food and I permanently worried about life.

I saw people head down a mulched alley between two blue houses with lawns stewing with fertilizer. Presumably these folks were aimed in the same direction we wanted, so we followed. To me the neighbourhood felt downcast and quiet; the houses seemed to sulk, the landscape was neutered.

A long-nosed boy sat in a corner of the yard beside a tree, one hand inside a black silk top hat, no pants on. That kind of neighbourhood. Poor magic. I watched a man at work
on the pickets of his half-crushed fence, and he didn't look too amused, nor did his wife, leaning out the window, pulling at the ropes of her crowded laundry line.

Our footfalls matching, heads lowered, we concentrated on the two slips of dry tread along the alleyway that led towards a puckered cul-de-sac—more post-war bungalows and Vancouver Specials—where individuals from all rotten walks of life gathered to await a spectacle.

A thick crowd of people milled between a fence and a house with pink vinyl siding as they gradually squeezed their way into the backyard. We assumed this was where we wanted to be too. The thing about the house, which was otherwise pleasant and well-maintained, was how it had caved into its own foundation. Along the front corner opposite the garage the house sank a good two or three feet below the lawn. There was a basement window diagonally halved by ground-level topsoil and sod, looked clogged on the inside, too. Somehow Minna and I, and this troubled and hesitant love we shared, had ended up here at this weird beat-up house with the sag of a broken jaw.

I think we're going to enjoy this, I said.

This is the kind a thing you only ever hear aboot, said Minna, but you never actually get to see it or witness it.

Whatever it is we're aboot to see or witness, I said.

Exactly, she said.

We walked a little on. The cold Canadian sun shone on us.

I can't remember, Minna said. Does your guy's apartment have an elevator?

No, I said. After this we'd scheduled a trip to buy me a bed through Minna's quote unquote
Chinese connection
, a paranoid couple living on Knight Street who sold mattresses, frames, bedsprings, the whole bit out of a corrugated aluminum shanty in their backyard. Two days ago I'd moved into an apartment with a new roommate and I needed a bed, and though it's true I prefer to dress ready for business, I don't actually make much money, so this is how a man like me gets a boxspring.

Lopsided house on an obscure cul-de-sac. Indivisible from the throng, we proceeded into the grassy canyon
between the fence and the house, flowing as a mob into the backyard. The vinyl siding quivered from the muffled noise of a living room stereo at full volume busting out a glitchy woof of something violent.

I heard a guy say: They make it hard to be over there for longer than three months unless you're a citizen, so you can't get a job, unless, you know, you work under the table, you don't have the right to proper health care, can't go to the dentist, you can't even rent an apartment—it's ridiculous. I hadda work under the table, get another guy in my squat to pull out my fucking rotted tooth 'cause I didn't have health care.

Like Minna and me, people seemed to arrive in pairs or groups. But we were the only ones who looked unacquainted with the day's event. A lot of people were screaming for the sheer hell of it. Over by the remnant of a tree, four overweight and juvenile men wearing deranged ballcaps leaned against their girlfriends. Petite little wet T-shirted chorus girls. Their boyfriends were teeth, hair, groins, in that order.

I considered the possibility that we should definitely leave, but I didn't want to look timid in front of Minna. I despise crowds, and she knows.

Man, lots a people here, I said.

Just enjoy this, she said. Can't you just enjoy us being together?

We could be anywhere, I said.

Uh-huh. And we're here because a something you overheard a teenager say at a wrestling match?

I have my own connections, yes.

The cheers and whoops from the audience around us only made me feel
less
enthusiastic. People kept putting their hands in the air and waving them like they didn't care if they looked like imbeciles. We were all young, but I was the only one wearing a tie, never mind leather shoes. The rest had shirts that might as well have been branded garbage bags. I wanted to scream if not for the fact that it would only make me fit in more.

Relax a bit, said Minna, rubbing my lower back. Her hand rubbed up my shoulder blades, then across my stiff
spine. I smiled carefully for her. I was enjoying the attention on the inside. She appeared, as always, patient. I'm not. But Minna didn't call for me to amuse her, much as I endeavoured. Daily life was all the amusement necessary; she didn't need me, at least not the way I needed her. She was hot and serene. Nothing fazed her, not even me.

At last the music began to die away, and after a brief round of spastic hollering the crowd succumbed to silence, prepared for the true event drawing ever closer to go-time. We waited for it.

Upon this cue of quiet, those with a porch view nudged to squish on either side to make a path to the door. I tried to get a look into the window, but shadow blacked out everything.

A figure emerged, followed by another. They passed without incident through the canal of spectators and totally ignored the extended palms demanding high and down-low fives. Two young men walked onto the killed grass of the backyard.

The players stood on the pitch side by side, then split up to find a dry corner opposite each other, where the taller, hairier of the two proceeded to undress completely. Off came The Bay's tricoloured boxer briefs. Minna and I shot each other hesitant but inquisitive glances, and although I watched her lips part and one black eyebrow cock up, she chose to say nothing.

A spectator's gleeful whoop soared into the air and a baritone voice called out, All right. There was sustained applause.

You going to get down to it? said the naked man to his still boxered opponent.

The guy shook his head while he looked to the ground, a
No
gesture, and all at once the audience erupted in hisses and catcalling. They stamped up and down and swatted insults at him. Get outta the yard; Go home; Go back to wherever you came from; Take your sorry self back to that shameful place.

After all this stress from the mob, the player finally agreed to take off the boxers. The crowd loved this. The crowd noise was embarrassing as he pulled the folding holes down over his ankles and left the elasticized underwear in the dirt
of his corner. He stood, gently rocking on the balls of his feet, under the steaming gaze of some hundred or so people.

They're naked, said Minna. Kat, you didn't say anything aboot buck.

I had no idea. I wouldn't have brought you if I'd known.

They got great bodies, said Minna.

I had no comment. A little younger than me, but they still looked as physically fresh as if they'd come straight from the high school gymnasium. All those endurance runs and flexed arm-hangs, push-ups, and basketball had left a good imprint.

I'm a little confused what's happening, she said.

This definitely isn't what I pictured.

We watched as the two men warmed up. The stocky guy with the long curly hair greased back did a one-armed handstand. He made it look like the kind of thing a person just does. I checked my wrist for a watch, for something else to do instead of gaping at the naked men while they limbered from the necks on down. It was a big show of loosening various flattoned street muscles along their arms, backs, chests, legs, and necks. I ignored it. Not to be outdone, the taller, more heavily built and unshaven one did a backflip, landed on a single foot. Deep breaths and neck cracks led to flippering wrists and more heaving breaths. They danced on their toes and dodged left and right. I wasn't paying attention. After both guys relaxed to a neutral position and shared a moment of staring stillness, they walked to the centre of the yard and shook hands.

I'm Silas, said the tall one.

Hi there, I'm Ken.

They backed away and hunched down, arms held out at the ready, same as Olympic wrestlers. I had a good idea of what was about to happen and I thought of my poor cousin, relieved he wasn't out in front of me.

By the rise in idiot cheering throughout the yard, and without a referee or any coaches watching, I assumed this was probably going to end much worse than it began.

It's a wrestling match, I told Minna. It's naked wrestling.

I'm ready to go whenever you are, she said.

Yeah, I said.

We arranged ourselves for a delicate exit.

Silas was the big one, and cromagnonically hairy. It was impossible to ignore the hair all over him. Not to mention that his arms were frightening—slablike muscle carpeted straight to the fuzzy knuckles. And his knees were scabbed in long stretches.

Ken was the one with less bulk and height but more sinew. He was square and scribbled; he looked like a car battery, capable of great shocks and acid attacks. He did agile footwork I thought looked sketchy. Even with less hair he looked more animal than Silas. Perhaps his size could account for that, or his winter tan, or his thick, crusty hands.

He was the first to move. In a spider-fast sprint Ken was across the yard, nothing but pure tendon and rippled muscle and a delicate layer of pale bluish skin. A person had to be more alert than me to know he was coming. He seemed to glide through my blind spots until he was on top of the game, locking and freezing Silas in his arms. The headlock made it look like a holdup at a nude beach
{see
fig. 1.1
}
. Ken started to run backwards and Silas kept apace as they ran faster and faster. It was the kind of prank that ended in skull fractures. To get out of Ken's grip, Silas swung him over his shoulder, cranking his own neck and hips almost three hundred degrees as Ken flailed and landed on his heels, gambolling furiously to his side of the yard to regain his composure while we, vitalized audience, freaked holus-bolus.

FIGURE 1.1
The Cherry Tree Clutch

Calabi's commentary: Requires the steadiness of a pillar and the flexibility of the longest branch to take the force of the opponent, coming as fast as a boulder down a mountain, and to bend him through twists and turns as if the clod was instead a cat in the clutches of a cherry tree.

Minna took my arm in her hands and pressed herself against me and I said: What's behind all this?

Bad upbringing? Garbage society?

I'm inclined to agree, but?

I don't know, she said. It's a clown show.

A decent part of me hadn't yet accepted what I'd seen. I was simply confused. Was Minna spinning the same bafflement through her head, and if so, why was she smiling so indecently? A new violence, or something invented long ago. I wanted to know.