I found him in the cafeteria and said something like: Floyd, come on! I’ve got the wagon with beer and weed and we’re going to Penn State to stay in a hotel while they show me around the school for the weekend. I’m not going to go there, but we might as well have some fun saying no!
I think he was in the car before I was. Road trip!
As soon as we got through the mountains of Pennsylvania and arrived in the Happy Valley, I realized why they asked me to drive: there was no major airport in this town. I softened my stance a little, and then a little more when I met one of the coaches, a two-time national champion. Coach also seemed amused that I brought my friend Floyd instead of my parents.
We headed over to the weight room to meet the Nittany Lion wrestlers. The first guy introduced to us was Dan. Dan seemed unintimidating—big hips but slight upper body—but Floyd and I knew we shouldn’t underestimate him. We had seen him wrestle a few months back, against the University of Maryland. Dan seemed surprisingly relaxed given his opponent was a beast, pacing back and forth behind his bench like a bull.
He slayed the bull that night, but tonight Dan saw only bullshit. He looked disgusted that he’d been assigned to babysit a recruit for the weekend. I told him not to bother, that we would show ourselves around. We had a cooler of beer and a bag of weed in the car to keep us company, and I wasn’t going to Penn State without a full out-of-state scholarship. Dan was taken aback by my bravado but warmed to the beer and weed.
Next thing I knew, we were at Dan’s fraternity house, which could have been used as the set of Animal House—the film came out that same year—with Big Dan a perfect fit for the John Belushi role. Hey, get a load of this recruit. He brought up his buddy and a case of beer. After a few beers and bong hits, someone said we should all go over to the Rec Hall wrestling room, where I ended up challenging Dan and a few seniors in my weight class. I did more than hold my own. Dan was completely won over, and I was too. I wanted to go to Penn State—if I got that scholarship.
I felt a connection that day I hadn’t at Clemson or Tennessee. I found myself drawn to more than wrestlers, parties, women, and the world-famous Rec Hall. I liked the fact that there were so many colleges and major options within the university. Yes, me: the kid who hadn’t read a book since sixth grade. When I told them I wanted to consider photography as a major, the coaching staff set up a meeting for me with the head of the photography department. Floyd and I spent the rest of the weekend bouncing between raucous parties at the frat house and winning over the team’s incoming head coach, Rich Lorenzo, at white tablecloth meals at the Nittany Lion Inn. I told him I loved the school and wanted to be a part of their great tradition, competing for a team where matches were packed with fans and where my hard work would be appreciated and honored. But I needed that full ride. The following day, he called with the offer.
Almost two years after I got my first college offer, I signed my letter of intent and became a Nittany Lion wrestler. That summer, I embraced that new identity as I prepared to make my last stand for Falls Church and win the high school national tournament in Iowa City, the tournament I had been runner-up in as a junior. I decided to skip my training in Falls Church and drove up to Happy Valley, with my throwing dummy “Bill” riding shotgun this time instead of Floyd. I was ready to work hard and party hard with Dan, who nicknamed me “Boy Wonder.”
I fell just short again in Iowa City. Dan was there to watch the matches and saw me make a great run through the Greco-Roman bracket, even beating the number-one “Dream Team” recruit from Kansas in the semifinals. In the national finals, however, I butted heads with my opponent from Illinois and split my head open above my eye. It got taped up enough for me to finish the match, but I lost, collecting another national runner-up award before heading to the hospital to get stitched up. The doctor advised me to withdraw from the Freestyle event that evening. But instead of returning to the arena to bow out, Dan took me to a bar downtown.
The beer helped to relieve some of the pain—as did all the old guys around us telling their wrestling stories, especially the one about an Iowa wrestler who lost a bet in this bar and had to strip naked and swim up the river outside. Dan and I were laughing. Offhand, I started joking that I never officially withdrew from the Freestyle tournament. They were going to be calling my name soon for the first round. I joked I should go back and do that match drunk just for fun.
If you do that, Boy Wonder, that would be wild.
I did it. Because that’s what wrestlers do. That’s what I do. Wrestling is what soothes me. It is what I run to, not away from.
Dan yelled out to everybody in the bar that I was on deck up at the arena and how I was gonna go kick some ass. Then we took my bruised, stitched up, and boozed-up body back to the arena. I changed back into my black singlet and put on my black wrestling shoes just in time to hear my name called. I’d wrestled drunk before—even at a tournament a few weeks after State, and it hadn’t affected me at all. But I had never wrestled with a large swollen gash stitched above my eye. Still, I ended up dominating my opponent from Ohio, getting big throws but cracking heads and opening the gash again. I shook hands, felt my arm raised, and then officially withdrew to avoid risking any permanent damage.
Coach Lorenzo found me and shook my hand, talking about how good I looked and seemingly having no idea I had been drinking before the match. The coach of Team Virginia, however, knew I was smoking—at least after the match. I was the only wrestler to place from Virginia that year, and when the coach looked to congratulate me, he caught me doing a bong hit behind a dumpster. He just laughed. He knew me well, having been my elite boys’ club coach and now the coach at George Mason University, which had offered me a full ride to stay in state. He shook his head. You’ll never do anything in college.
I told myself to remember that when I proved him wrong. I wasn’t going to let him spoil my high, and I was high on everything that summer. I decided to get even higher by trying something new: cocaine. Or at least that’s how I rationalized it. I didn’t think of myself as an alcoholic or a drug addict. People like that couldn’t do what I did on the mat. People like that did not win scholarships to Penn State.
No one could stop me. Except me.
I was with my girlfriend, the cover model, who made me a fondue dinner. She lived in an apartment with her mother, who was never home. She had gotten a little coke from her uncle—enough to make me wonder what it would be like to do more. This taste was a tease. It was unlike anything I had ever felt while drinking or smoking. It gave me a feeling of strength that I had only found wrestling up to that point. I was always “foxy” (thanks, yearbook committee), but cocaine pulled me out of my shell and made me feel like more than just an athlete with a pretty face.
I lost my inhibitions. I was talkative. I had broken away from everything that had defined me in the past. And I craved more. But the lure of wrestling for Penn State kept the demon powder at bay for another year. Four years later, it began to take over.
LOOKING DOWN ON MYSELF
What the hell had I done?
I was looking at the beautiful bird’s-eye view picture of my final home match at Penn State as a senior, covered in the local paper.
What the hell had I done?
For the first time in my wrestling life, I had done cocaine before a match.
That’s what the hell I did.
I had been doing coke for years, and had even done it before training sometimes, but until my last match, I’d always kept myself cocaine-free on the mat—kept my healthy addiction to wrestling separate from my drug addiction to cocaine. It was my church and state. The wrestling mat was my temple, where I
