The Pacific Northwest After M.'s departure, Piglet almost never left San Francisco. There were Lesbian bull-whip societies. Mixed wrestling clubs. Piglet could network. Although try to find one good woman wrestler. You'd think they'd learn a few basic moves. Piglet had wrestled varsity in high school. You'd think a wrestling woman might apply some science to compensate for her lack of upper body strength. But right off she throws the half and you spike her into the next county. And she's either too petite or a gorilla. And even find a trim athlete, a smiling Amazon strong and eager, you might still just as well let sit on your face. Because there's no technique, no licensing. Piglet rented a car and drove to Seattle to visit a friend, for a brief vacation. He drove up along the coast. The weather was fine. Retired government workers aiming video cams out over the ocean. Taking brisk walks through the national parks and supporting the highway economy. At sunset the pink glow from snowy Mount Shasta was everywhere. A splashing river followed him the next day. And then a great nuclear power plant. Astonishing hillsides of trees mowed down like a shaving commercial. Piglet stopped to play golf. The day sparkled. The air smelled like fresh cut timber. His golf shoes gripped the moist grassy earth. He swung, the tee flipped over. The ball rode a rising crest up the fairway to a peak way out in mid-air. When Piglet was a boy, there were woods instead of parks. Once Piglet and a pal came within a yard of stepping on a giant hornet's nest. A perfect paper lantern that they then crunched with a great rock. You could hear the hornets trapped inside, furious. After golf Piglet sipping a drink on the clubhouse veranda in the Sylvan evening. Staying the night at the Thunderbird Motel for $24.00 with Cable, HBO, and remote control. Eating pistachios in bed. Watching Perry Mason late night. Those 50's guys were so massive. While the women were kind of adorable, and totally tricky in their prim suits. Piglet fell asleep. He woke up some time in the morning, and went out to buy a Sunday paper and cup of coffee. He read the paper in a steaming bath. No way would O.J. testify. Not against himself. Nor the Blast Suspects. While The Motorist had testified. And the President would testify, but only by video, with the right background. Then Piglet saw a small story down in the corner that made him sick. Teenage girl proves her right to wrestle Candy Jones, Staff Writer. As the last spectators of the wrestling match leave the Edna Hill High School parking lot, Jim Arnold sits alone on the sidewalk waiting for his ride. He is the picture of depression. Jim just got beaten by a girl. Sally Dickson, the only girl on Edna Hill's wrestling team and the first ever in the league, trounced Jim in the third round of their match at the Maplewood School. . ." It was all coming true. Starting to actually happen. Beaten by a girl. With Candy Jones looking on. Smiling an admixture of sympathy and sadism. Candy Jones! Not defeated--but beaten--by a girl. Trounced. Dragged across the mat. Whiff the glandular girl armpit that's pinning you. Her other hand jacking up your crotch. Pinned by a girl! The referee holds up her victorious, nail-polished hand. The Edna Hill cheerleaders bursting out on the gym floor, clapping between their kicking legs. Geeze, their panties. Jim's father looking on. Mr. Arnold is a decent, simple man who doesn't understand this. He drives off. And later there's Jim alone on the sidewalk, dazed. Candy watching from the shadows. Sally Dickson emerges with her friends, the cheerleaders. It takes her a little longer to shower and dress. Her friends are amused. So they all walk over. Good match, Jim, it was close, until the third round. When I rode you with that double arm bar. Broke you down and slipped the half and turned you like a steer. How you almost managed to bridge-out the period. But then you started to tire, your bucking started to weaken-- Writhing on his back, beneath Sally's proud new breasts. And then the moment of final, complete humiliation, when the referee's hand comes down with a terrible shudder. Piglet felt rubbery. A great erection bobbed above the water. It was way too real. It wasn't meant to be, or just barely real. It was meant to be secret, not out there. The whole thing was just a fun secret! He felt poisoned, overdosed, systemically sexual. Reality compounding everything. All borders had dissolved. He levitated in the dense water. His stomach knotted, intestines fissured, legs shook. What he needed was a nice round of golf. Piglet made it outside. And realized that he didn't even know where he was. What town, or state, for that matter, he was in. Washington or Oregon, or maybe even California still. California was endless. Cars whizzed by. What time was it. The air was sticky. There was a highway, motels and restaurants, and lots of telephone poles and wires. Bulky people wearing colorful windbreakers, non San Franciscans, going in and out of restaurants. There was no wind. The sun was hot. Piglet felt like Camus, Sartre. San Francisco hundreds of miles away. Maybe a thousand. As Jim Arnold sits alone head bowed by the curb. Candy the Cruel steps out, kneels down and says, "How does it feel, Jim. You can talk to me." She opens her notepad. If Piglet can barely take it, what about Jim. Piglet's been at this for years. But you can't expect a staff reporter to back off. He entered a restaurant, the Silver Cleaver. Everyone was eating omelets. Dripping strands of cheese from their mouth. And those mounds of wormy hash browns. "Ready to order," said Piglet's waitress. "What time is it," said Piglet. The waitress pointed to a burl clock on the wall with brass hands. It was IV past XI. "I'd like a small bowl of brown rice," said Piglet. "You mean the chili rice." "I'd like a small bowl of white rice," said Piglet. In a few minutes the waitress returned with the rice. The rice made him better. Than the rest of these pigs. Wearing their cool windbreakers. The blue postal workers. Yellow ATF agents. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fornication. Adultery, Tobacco, and Mortification. He ate to live. They lived to eat. He started to feel okay and remembered why he had felt sick. Oh no. Jim stands up. Darkness has fallen. Where's dad. His dad came to all his matches. Dad, I'll get bigger, stronger--but she won't--or not as much. He says alone in the dark. Give me a year. Six months. I can take her. It was just a stamina thing-- we were even through round two. I'll train. Please. The way she jacked his inner thigh. He starts to tingle a little in the dark. A pre-puberty tenth grader. While she was a junior! And girls mature so much faster--he could have taken her in a year. But the fact is, she had trounced him. Piglet began to feel dizzy again. But women were your friend. They're so totally different, all you could do was trust them, lying with them, listening to the rain. Piglet had never known a woman who wasn't really good. Even the Lesbians. He ate some more rice. What he needed was a good jolt of pornography to get past this, and then back on the golf course in no time. Enjoying his vacation. The rice and coffee cost $5.00. Outside cars whizzed by in the glare. Everyone was gone. They were all at the golf course by now, in their cool windbreakers and saddle golf shoes. Fine. By the time Piglet arrived, the first tee would be wide open. He shielded his eyes and scanned the highway looking for the word "Adult." And it dawned on Piglet that here, roadside, was a true pornographic desert. Not even a newstand, a 7/11. Piglet despaired. Maybe a deck of dirty playing cards somewhere. If he searched the bottom drawers of motel dressers. While the maids were airing the rooms. While San Francisco was a pornographic wetlands. San Francisco was unbelievable. Piglet entered the gas station store where he had bought his morning newspaper. Behind the counter were Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler. Maybe okay for poor beaten Jim, but useless for Piglet, who had acquired an extremely high porn tolerance level. Piglet was 39. By now he needed pictures of naked women drilling guys right through the head with long thick drill bits. Next to the candy was a small magazine rack. Maybe a woman's bodybuilding mag! thought Piglet--Women's Physique World, or at least a Strong and Shapely. Something synergistic. The idea of a "Woman's Physique World" was a total turn-on. But here, along the road, there was nothing, not even a New Body, or Self. In San Francisco, at least half the stand was devoted to various forms of body magazines. Piglet began to fret. Could Jim ever return to school. What would his girlfriend say. There was no way to ever fix this. They wouldn't wrestle Edna High again until next year and by then Sally Dickson might be in a completely different weight category. Her breasts would be larger. He searched the magazines in desparation until he found one called Wrestling Eye. A weird, heiroglyphic eye peered out above a grimacing, clenched-up Hulk Hogan. These bloated, jokey professional wrestlers--everyone knows they're fake. But were there lithe, little lady wrestlers. Piglet picked it up. Let me see. And flipping through the pages Piglet discovered a rich new vein of exciting perversity. Pages of advertisements for videos of amateur wrestling babes! That's what that creepy eye was all about! Piglet felt a little sick. But it was okay: TIGRA THE CONQUERESS THE QUEEN OF SUBMISSION WRESTLING "Vacationing in sunny Southern California, world champion TIGRA (in her best shape ever--5' 9" 140 lbs.) can't pass up the opportunity to demonstrate her overpowering wrestling prowess on a hapless male photographer." And there she was, flexing in one picture, applying the sleeper to the hapless Paparazzo in another, and her legs squeezing his brains out in a third. What a butt. Strong and shapely. Piglet took the magazine to the counter. He could tell the boy at the register took him for a homo. He hurried back to his room at the Thunderbird. There were undefeated Deena, 5'9" brown belt Karen, and Linda the kickboxer. And the world famous German Mat Club. Bikini Athletes. Some of the pictures were too dark, but it was great. Piglet felt much better. Than hapless Jim. Some day Sally Dickson would end up on these pages, possibly a world champ. Serve her right. Maybe even Candy Jones--she could be a Bikini Athlete--or Shapely Pro. And Jim, too, if he just let go of that silly ego thing. Perusing the dim ads shunted down in dark page corners, Piglet suddenly felt ashamed. At least in their own funny way they attempted to get at something real. Pictured were actual apartments, with modest carpets, and fitted rec rooms. The girls took pride in their fitness. The truth always arrived unsanctioned, wobbly, alone. Wrestling priestesses of the too hard pretend. Piglet arrived at the golf course in the early evening, still time for nine holes. He had the course to himself. The government workers had finished and were drinking on the clubhouse veranda. They waved to Piglet. One mixed drink and they were drunk. Piglet teed off. The evening air was so alive you could blend right into it. Piglet disappeared into the wooded course. Long black shadows, the spirits of tired, buffeted trees, lay down on the soft green fairways in the golden sunlight. The ocean glimmered in the distance. Piglet was alone. No more M. He remembered when he was Jim's age, he'd play golf by himself in the evenings. He went to Europe by himself when he graduated college. Boy, he had been so alone, alone in Europe, wanting so much to share it with someone. This is what happened when he left San Francisco. He missed M., funny sweet M. How she ran into so much trouble with herself. All tangled up, laughing and crying. Piglet started wandering around hitting the ball with a five iron. The hurt radiated through Piglet like a comet in deep space. He sat down in the fairway, alone in the grass and trees. Missing M. so bad. It got dark. Back at the T-Bird, he decided to return to San Francisco the next day. It had been a golfing vacation in the Pacific Northwest. Piglet slept badly. He awakened early and watched the end of Body by Jake, an aerobics show. "Let's bring it home, girls," said Jake. He visited the gas station store for a newspaper and cup of coffee. It was raining. Piglet lounged in the bathtub and read the paper. He carefully screened it for surprises. Women were good and liked unphoney goodness the most. If the globe warmed up, fewer animals would freeze. Those crystals they grew in the Space Shuttle. Do vaccuum cleaners work in outerspace. Cult leaders, the Texas Billionaire. Was this shampoo ruining his hair. Kind of gloppy. Should he use that rainwater stuff. M. used a special green dandruff shampoo that cost about $20.00. Piglet had tried it secretly once, and it set his scalp on fire. She had warned him not to. He flipped through the sports section. Quite a lot he had to hide from M. So as to present his highest person. When what was wrong with that. When there it was, on page D5 of the sports section, right above the baseball box scores. Wrestling Coach Disallows Victorious Girl Grappler Candy Jones, Staff Writer. . . . It had been a hard-won victory for the ninth grader. [Sally's trouncing of Jim Arnold] Sally, 16, has faced major opposition to her choice to wrestle. Boys on other teams hate to wrestle her and react badly no matter who wins. But perhaps the greatest obstacle she has faced has been the East Avenue School coach who feels girls shouldn't wrestle. Coach Gene Anderson refused to match Sally with any of his wrestlers. "I did not think it was correct for a girl to wrestle," Anderson said, of the March 19 match. "You've got wrestling and volleyball. It's always been boys' wrestling and girls' volleyball. . . ." Where all the real men would see it. Piglet could barely read on as Candy Jones made mincemeat of the hapless coach- -Excuse me, sir, but isn't that kind of begging the question. Because shouldn't you be your very best, especially for M. I don't beg, young lady--I told you--boys' wrestling, girls' volleyball. Even if it meant being a sneak. Please don't react badly, coach Anderson, I'm just doing my job. Piglet rose from the water, like a green monster. Quickly he dressed, packed, and paid his bill. He drove out of the parking lot and into a long slow line of departing government workers, pulling their boats and off- road vehicles. The rain was steady, but not hard. Although up here the rain continued like this for weeks. In San Francisco, storms were over in a day. What about that boy, Coach Anderson. Piglet searched for something on the radio. Surely you're not afraid of matching him against Sally. The traffic was stop and go. Orange cones and yellow signs appeared. It was just a bitter, bitter pill that Coach Anderson would have to learn to swallow. Women could wrestle. What was Sally's record, anyway, and she's only a junior. It was time to stop being a bad sport and face up to it.