Alicia Goon 005: What we do here

Content warning, highlight the hidden text between the lines: 

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Mild violence

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"A spot just opened up if you want to enroll," said a familiar curly-haired, mustachioed man. He had traded the magenta and khakis for a tailored suit and a power tie.

Alicia held out her palms as if to stop the momentum of the incoming sales pitch. "I really just wanted to take a look around." The man seemed unimpressed. "I mean I might enroll! I just don't really know what a wrestling school," she searched for the right word. "Is."

The door behind the front desk swung open, and a compact, sinewy woman with light skin and just the hint of a tan stepped through. "Allen, what the fuck? I told you not to run the desk while I’m working. Pop your head in and ask if I’m busy. You want me to run this, then keep your hands off it. Sorry. Hi. Who are you?" The lean, muscular woman extended a hand wrapped in calluses and tape. She stood maybe five-foot-five or five-six, with mussy short brown hair and green eyes. She wore black and gray two-piece workout gear and leggings. Long trenches of scar tissue streaked her forehead, and a prominent split ran down the middle of her lower lip from where it had busted open and healed over a career spanning decades. Her body was covered in war stories.

Alicia's jaw dropped momentarily before she recovered (poorly). "You're Iron Maiden!"

"Yeah, I am. Did I ask the wrong question? Yes, hello, nice to meet you. I'm Sabrina Irons. I wrestle as Iron Maiden. Now I've introduced myself. How about you, Big and Tall? You got a name?"

"Um… it's Alicia," she stammered, shaking the wrestler's hand. "Winthrop."

"Cool. You ever been in a ring before, Alicia, or are you coming in new?" The woman was all business, and set the tone accordingly.

Wait a minute. Was this happening? Or were they hustling her to make this happen? 

"Hold on," countered Alicia, finding her voice again. "I just came to take a look around, ask a few questions, see what you do here. If I like it, I'll think about signing up."

Sabrina cocked a smile and tilted her head back. "She wants to see what we do here." She elbowed the part-time backstage interviewer and, Alicia presumed, owner of Queens of War, at least as a business entity. "Lemme make sure my gal's alright with you watching for a bit," said the veteran. She turned and opened the heavy, painted metal door she just entered through with a very loud creak and very little effort. Behind the door sounded like the main gym or workout area or the whatever they call it. "Yo, Stace. You mind if a prospective sits in?" There was a pause. "She's cool with it. Come on back."

The operation itself was impressive. Three rings, a full bench, full rack, heavy bags, bikes, free weights, rope. At least a dozen blue, foldable tumbling mats had been leaned against the wall with a few more stacked up on the floor beside. She had been on teams that trained in places smaller than just this gym's equipment area. 

Sabrina read her smile. "Yeah," she said with a nod and a grin. "Pretty cool, huh?"

More than cool, it was almost surreal. A woman with shoulder-length red hair was spotting her partner on the bench. In the ring closest by, a woman Alicia took to be Sabrina's student stood waiting, while in the next ring over, a heavy-set young woman with blonde hair was practicing throws on a crash mat with a similarly young, tan, muscular woman wearing a knee brace and what looked like sports goggles. At the far corner of the floor in the third ring, a comparatively tiny raven-haired woman with a boyish haircut and a lean build practiced top rope moves onto a similar crash mat positioned to break the fall.

"This is awesome," Alicia said, remembering her giddy voice for the first time in a while. "Thank you for letting me come back here."

"You should know what you're thinking about getting yourself into," replied Sabrina. 

A tall young woman with a volleyball player's build stood in the center of the ring. The trainee wore a gray workout T and shorts with her long, brown hair tied back in a ponytail that hung past her shoulders.

"Come on and get in the ring. You can probably just step right up, can't you?" said the pro, backhanding her student on the shoulder and pointing her thumb at Alicia. "What do you think about someone her size coming at you? Rip you in half like a phone book. What do you say, Stace? What would you go after?"

"Uh... maybe her ankle?" guessed the trainee.

"Nah, not the ankle. You don't chop down a tree at the roots," the veteran explained, sounding more academic than Alicia had expected. "Now a high-flier? Sure. Take out an ankle and you'll shut them down cold. Big gal like her? Take out a knee, there goes her power. She gets around slower, you neutralize the reach and pick away at her," continued Sabrina in a clinical tone. "Anyway, before we get started: this is Stacy. Stacy, Alicia. Just give us space to work and you're fine wherever. I'll tell you to move."

Alicia took a couple steps back and tried to take it all in. The trainer positioned the arms of what was clearly a beginner and assumed a symmetrical grappling stance with one hand clasped on an elbow, the other around the nape of the neck. 

Sabrina talked Alicia through what she was seeing, "This is called a collar-and-elbow tie-up. A lot of your fundamentals start from here. Okay? Hand over. Get a grip inside the elbow, not the top." She reached over and gripped Stacy's pale hand firmly, rotating it into place and holding it snug to that spot for a moment, as if to affirm the correctness of the position. "Like that. Now watch what I can do from here. You pull the elbow tight and you turn. Pop your hip into them, get below center-mass, and let go of the back of the neck. See how my arm comes around? Hook underneath their shoulder." Sabrina torqued the larger woman into place for what looked like a flip. The toes of Stacy's shoes barely touched the mat. "You ready?"

"Uh-huh," Stacy answered, her voice strained from having her chest compressed against her trainer's back.

Up and over. Graceful throw, ugly landing. The larger woman hit the mat with a thud instead of a crash, like what had reverberated throughout the Plunj's domed 4,000-seater a few days ago. Alicia had taken similar wipeouts on the ice. Even in pads, a spill like that on the hip and shoulder would make finishing the game unpleasant, to say nothing of the morning after.

Sabrina shook her head and offered a hand to her cargo. "You keep turning your body on the release. You're not protecting yourself by taking a fall on your side." Knew it. With a sharp tug, Stacy was again upright.

"I know," said Stacy, wincing. "It just knocks the wind out of me taking it on my back."

Sabrina grabbed Stacy’s wrist and twisted it, then stepped behind her student and pressed down on her shoulder. "There are a million ways to target a shoulder, and if yours gets dislocated, guess where they're gonna go?" She released the hold and slapped the trainee on her back. "It feels unnatural, but you learn to take the bump on your back because you want to take the bump on your back. You want to spread out the impact as much as possible. One of the most important things you can learn as a wrestler is how to minimize the damage you take when you're getting your ass kicked, because you will." 

Stacy nodded, clearly embarrassed at being lectured in front of a stranger. Whether or not she liked it, the Professler was teaching class.

Teacher and student returned to center-ring and resumed the collar-and-elbow. "We're gonna practice it until it's second nature to you," remarked Sabrina. "As long as that takes less than 15 minutes, because then we're running ropes."

* * * * *

"Good workout, Stace. Lots of ice on your back when you get home. Anywhere it hurts," said the trainer with a wave to her student returning from the locker room. "You'll thank me tomorrow. When's next time?"

"Next Monday?" suggested Stacy, slinging her gym bag over her shoulder with a wince. She was walking pretty stiff now.

Sabrina looked surprised by the answer. "You going out of town or something?"

"No," Stacy replied, looking confused.

"Alright. Make sure to mark down your name and a time on the way out so we'll have a ring for you," said the woman who hadn't broken a sweat. "Dues and locker next time you come in, okay? I'm going to see if Allen's cool with me putting you with Minisha. If so, you'll be working with her starting next month." 

The aspiring wrestler turned with a nod and loped out of the gym, seemingly aspiring to wrestle noticeably less than she had an hour ago. 

Sabrina nodded toward the door as it slammed shut. “Promise me if you train here, you don’t hit the ropes like that.”

"Was she doing it that wrong?" asked Alicia. She could tell just by looking that Stacy's form hadn't been great–the constant correction had been the second clue–but she couldn't recall spotting anything particularly egregious.

"Depends what color you like to pee," Sabrina answered.

"Ah."

"You don't hit them like you're trying to tackle them. They're called ropes, but that's not rope. See how it looks like a rubber hose? That's just the outside. Underneath there is high-tension steel cable; if you fight it, you're not gonna win. You lean into it, sort of like you're falling back. Watch where my hands go when my back hits. I'm not hitting the ropes flush on my back–more like with my shoulder blade. You can tell who's been trained right by which way they face their hands when they hit the cables." Sabrina spread her arms wide and sort of leaned back to illustrate. "Palms back, elbow over the top rope, and then grab the top rope like you're shaking hands. It helps control the speed you come off them. Watch."

Sabrina jogged into the ropes, pivoted, and didn't so much hit the ropes as trust fall into them. She slingshotted effortlessly towards the opposite side of the ring, repeating the graceful maneuver. As her back hit the ropes a third time, Sabrina threw both arms behind her and hooked them over the top and middle ropes. Applying the same principle as a jet landing on an aircraft carrier, she halted in place, bouncing a bit with feet planted as the ropes absorbed her momentum.

Sabrina motioned for Alicia to follow. The trainer sat on the middle rope, making it dip with her weight as she pulled up on the top rope to create a gap for Alicia to easily step through.

Sabrina had questions. "So other than a tall drink of water, what am I looking at? Why do you want to get into the sport?"

Was it a sport? "Well, I like it," said Alicia. Hearing the words coming out of her mouth, she realized it was the first time she had admitted that to anyone. "And I think I'd be good at it."

“We’ve had fans come through here wanting to turn pro,” Sabrina replied. “Been watching since you were a kid?”

"I started following it more recently than that," said Alicia.

Sabrina quirked an eyebrow. "How recently?"

"Like… Friday?"

"Last Friday?" echoed the pro. Alicia wasn't sure if she heard incredulity in Sabrina's voice or indignation.

"I've liked it for longer than that!" Alicia interjected. "I just never got a chance to like it, you know, publicly. It's like there was a part of me I had to hide to avoid judgment. Do you know what I mean?"

Sabrina stared at Alicia for a long, quiet moment. "You know I'm gay, right?"

Alicia's jaw dropped a second time. "I... do know that, now. Yes."

"So tell me about yourself. Any wrestling experience? Pro or Greco-Roman?"

"No."

"Judo."

"No."

"Jiu-Jitsu?" asked Sabrina, reaching.

"I don’t really know what that is," Alicia confessed.

Now Sabrina cast the net broad, "You're going to get hurt doing this. Ever been in a fight?"

Alicia indulged in a pshh. "12 years of hockey."

"That a yes?" asked Sabrina.

"That is a yes, yes."

"I think I can guess who won," said the pro with a smirk. Sabrina stood up off the ropes and took a few steps toward Alicia, bringing the tone back to business, "Like Allen said, we just had a washout, so a spot's open if you want to train."

Once again, Alicia got her hands up to try and blunt the incoming sales pitch. "I really only came to check you guys out," she deflected. "I didn't come to make any commitments."

"That's fine," said Sabrina, nodding. "If you show up and work hard, you will learn to wrestle. That's what I can promise you. You knew when you walked in here whether or not you really wanted to be a wrestler. No amount of time is going to change that decision."

Alicia thought about last Friday night at the arena. Did she want this? The chance to be someone again, taste victory again, hoist the big prize again. She had given hockey up too easily. Not again. 

"Okay, I'm interested," confessed Alicia. "Tell me more."

The grappler's scarred lips turned up in a grin. "Huh. First time that's worked," she said, opening the heavy metal door and waving Alicia through. "Step into my office."