Emvergeoning

Last Friday night I was assigned a real doozy of an assignment for the San Antonio Current, Wrestling 4 Christ (..errr warriors 4 christ?)  an event that sits in a church parking lot and claims to both spread the word of Jesus Christ, and offer free live wrestling to the community.  Since that story and those images have yet to go to print, I’ll refrain from posting them here.  While waiting for the event to begin, I noticed a tall skinny blond guy, looking a little bit out of place with the crowd, walking with a pad and pencil in hand.  Not sure yet who was writing the wrestling story, I quickly scanned my internal archive of SACurrent writers who I’ve met or seen in person, and came up blank.  After sitting a little to far away from all of the gathering crowd, I decided to make my way closer and maybe see what kind of christian wrestling gossip I could catch up on.  I found a rock wall to lean on a hundred feet from the ring, turning my head, I noticed the writer who I had previously thought to be out of place.  I asked him who he was writing for and he said something to the effect of, nobody, himself, a comedy book, etc..  He was from Britain(the Isle of Wight), and had just gotten to San Antonio the day previous.  He mentioned that he had come to town just for the wrestling event, and I thought for a second he must be a real religious wrestling zealot.  After continung our discussion, I decided there was no way he could really be that much of a kook, he seemed pretty level-headed really… what was the deal?  Johnston walked up (the SACurrent writer for the story) and I soon lost track of my discussion with Adam.  We all turned our attention to getting inside of the backstage trailer full of Christian wrestlers.  Once inside, coated in the dank smell of sunday school portable turned middle school locker room, Johnston asked Adam specifically what the book he was writing was all about and if he had a publisher?  In a quiet way Adam tells us he is the maker of “The Girl of My Dreams.com,” and had embarked on a worldwide hunt for a girl he woke up one morning and drew a picture of after seeing her in a zombie killing dream.  He had received some sort of lead that his girl might be here, in San Antonio, at the Wrestling 4 Christ event.  What a journey!  Me and Johnston felt ridiculous elation at meeting such a one-off traveler.  He was leaving in the morning, on a train to Washington.  He was even wearing a neon green wrestling jumpsuit under his clothing, perhaps to flag her down? Finally, He mentioned to us the connection between his website, and “the NY Girl of my Dreams guy, who broke up with his dream girl after only 2 months..” and what he thought of that, “..Lame, wheres the story in that?”

I left Adam after watching most of the wrestling, my girlfriend wanted to get dinner, and I had the shots I needed.  Wrestling, even the pseudo-safe Christian type makes me squirm to watch.  I’m such a pacifist, I stand there watching, cringing in pain and thinking to myself, “isn’t somebody going to stop that guy?”  Adam seemed to think I was going to miss out, and Johnston got some fabulous quotes out of the backroom sweaty guys for the upcoming story..  I don’t think I’ll ever understand what the draw is..but I hope it gets Adam one step closer to his Dream Girl.

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