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"You're going out in the world, William," Miss Frost said matter-of-factly. "There are homo-hating assholes everywhere."
"Homo-assholes?" Nils asked her.
"Homo-hating assholes," Grandpa Harry corrected his old friend.
"I've never let anyone into the gym at night," Uncle Bob was telling us, apropos of nothing. Someone was running to catch up to us in the darkness. It was Richard Abbott.
"Increasin' popular interest in seein' what gives with the wrestlin', Bill," Grandpa Harry said to me.
"I wasn't planning on a coaching clinic, William--please try to pay attention. We don't have much time," Miss Frost added--just as Uncle Bob found the light switch, and I could see that Miss Frost was smiling at me. It was our story--not to have much time together.
Having Uncle Bob, Grandpa Harry, Richard Abbott, and Nils Borkman for an audience didn't necessarily make what Miss Frost had to show me a spectator sport. The lighting in the old gym was spotty, and no one had cleaned the wrestling mats since the end of the '61 season; there was dust and grit on the mats, and some dirty towels on the gym floor in the area of the team benches. Bob, Harry, Richard, and Nils sat on the home-team bench; it was where Miss Frost had told them to sit, and the men did as they were directed. (In their own ways, and for their own reasons, these four men were genuine fans of Miss Frost.)
"Take your shoes off, William," Miss Frost began; I could see that she'd taken off hers. Miss Frost had painted her toenails a turquoise color--or maybe it was an aqua color, a kind of greenish blue.
It being a warm June night, Miss Frost was wearing a white tank top and Capri pants; the latter, in a blue-green color that matched her toenail polish, were a little tight for wrestling. I was wearing some baggy Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt.
"Hi," Elaine suddenly said. I hadn't noticed her in the theater. She'd followed us to the old gym--at a discreet distance behind us, no doubt--and now sat watching us from the wooden running track above the wrestling room.
"More wrestling," was all I said to Elaine, but I was happy my dear friend was there.
"You will one day be bullied, William," Miss Frost said. She clamped what Delacorte had called a collar-tie on the back of my neck. "You're going to get pushed around, sooner or later."
"I suppose so," I said.
"The bigger and more aggressive he is, the more you want to crowd him--the closer you want to get to him," Miss Frost told me. I could smell her; I could feel her breath on the side of my face. "You want to make him lean on you--you want him cheek-to-cheek, like this. Then you jam one of his arms into his throat. Like this," she said; the inside of my own elbow was constricting my breathing. "You want to make him push back--you want to make him lift that arm," Miss Frost said.
When I pushed back against her--when I lifted my arm, to take my elbow away from my throat--Miss Frost slipped under my armpit. In a split second, she was at once behind me and to one side of me. Her hand, on the back of my neck, pulled my head down; with all her weight, she drove me shoulder-first into the warm, soft mat. I felt a tweak in my neck. I landed at an awkward angle; how I fell put a lot of strain on that shoulder, and in the area of my collarbone.
"Imagine the mat is a cement sidewalk, or just a plain old wood floor," she said. "That wouldn't feel so good, would it?"
"No," I answered her. I was seeing stars; I'd never seen them before.
"Again," Miss Frost said. "Let me do it to you a few more times, William--then you do it to me."
"Okay," I said. We did it again and again.
"It's called a duck-under," Miss Frost explained. "You can do it to anyone--he just has to be pushing you. You can do it to anyone who's being aggressive."
"I get it," I told her.
"No, William--you're beginning to get it," Miss Frost told me.
We were in the wrestling room for over an hour, just drilling the duck-under. "It's easier to do to someone who's taller than you are," Miss Frost explained. "The bigger he is, and the more he's leaning on you, the harder his head hits the mat--or the pavement, or the floor, or the ground. You get it?"
"I'm beginning to," I told her.
I will remember the contact of our bodies, as I learned the duck-under; as with most things, there is a rhythm to it when you start to do it correctly. We were sweating, and Miss Frost was saying, "When you hit it ten more times, without a glitch, you can go home, William."
"I don't want to go home--I want to keep doing this," I whispered to her.
"I wouldn't have missed making your acquaintance, William--not for all the world!" Miss Frost whispered back.
"I love you!" I told her.
"Not now, William," she said. "If you can't stick the guy's elbow in his throat, stick it in his mouth," she told me.
"In his mouth," I repeated.
