Missive 3
It all will come out at some point during this inventory of failure, of how it all began.
How I can appear as someone destined to succeed, only to be knocked back, accidentally, by something completely out of my control.
High school wrestling.
Yup. Boys in tights, sweating, rolling around on the floor with other sweaty boys in tights.
That it was a Catholic school league — with priests in the crowd — made me think of the tune: “I Want Candy.”
By nearly every measure, I did well. I won my weight-class tournament in my second year — not because I deserved it, or worked hard, or even was particularly good — but simply because I just showed up.
I won by default half the time, as other schools didn’t have someone puny enough to meet the weight class I was in. Other times, if a school did have someone in my weight, they were typically just placeholders that the school hoped would win by default. As wrestling is basically a battle between who can squirm better, I would typically win easily.
I am excellent at squirming.
My second year, I won my weight class in the Catholic League tournament. Off to battle for the State Catholic League Championship, I was sent to compete in a final against the New York City Catholic League champ. One look at my opponent — a 98-pound ball of angry barbed wire — I was on my back almost immediately. That didn’t prevent me from earning second-place recognition statewide.
Simply by showing up.
I know that isn’t failure — even though second out of two is also last place. I mention this only to show how any and every success I have ever had was achieved on very shaky premises — with me knowing full well that I really didn’t deserve what I had just earned. Scratch the surface of most of my success, and you find the papier-mache scaffolding on which it was built.
The following year, my third year in high school wrestling — reigning Catholic league champ and second place statewide, I go against a 98-pound monster. A kid I knew was stronger than me and better in every way. Just about every way.
I knew he was essentially a gorilla with more blood than brains and that my only chance was to learn a move: the lateral drop. It is almost a judo move where you use your opponent’s momentum against them. Great for smaller, weaker dudes like me when going against gorillas.
I got his blood roiling, pushing into him, getting him angry. He then began driving into me with all his momentum. I executed the lateral drop perfectly. He flew over me and, in an instant, was staring up at the fluorescent gym lights with a look in his eye that almost implied intelligence.
As the ref was counting him out, I saw the stunned “what-the?” look. Holding on as hard as my teeny-wiry frame would allow, it was over.
I knew it was a break. If he had gotten out of it, I would have been doomed. He didn’t. This time.
We would meet again in that year’s tournament. I knew I had no chance. He was now hip to my move and would most certainly avoid giving me the chance. Also, I knew he could see just how scared I was — how lucky we both knew I was to catch him off guard, and he would not let that happen again.
I was so rattled that I failed to do the most basic thing of lining up correctly to start the match: One foot on the line of the circle. Duh.
I remember the referee just kept looking at me, asking: “Ready?” — knowing I would be fouled if I didn’t correct my footing. I am sure he was trying hard not to penalize me for such a basic mistake. He wanted me to adjust my footing; he just couldn’t tell me so. I didn’t and was penalized two points.
I don’t recall how I lost that match. Maybe he pinned me, maybe it was on points. Probably lost by one point, and then the two-point pre-match penalty would be so tasty in its narrative. Likely, I got demolished. He was just that strong and good. People watching felt “sorry” for me because I made a simple mistake of not lining up properly.
Did I do it intentionally?
Self-sabotage?
To manufacture sympathy?
Whatever it was, I would learn from it.
A clear manifestation of a skill I would soon perfect: the loser who isn’t really a loser.
Just someone who caught a bad break. This, I would learn, is a key craft of the Spectacular Failure: manufacture an intangible, plausible reason for people to attribute to your failures. To feel “sorry for you” because there was something not core to your performance that brought you down. This would become almost an instinct.
Over and over again, my failures were wrapped in something that would make people feel for me. Not necessarily feel “sorry” for me. Just feel for me. That it wasn’t as much my fault as just fate. Mistakes made, but not mistakes of character or merit.
In front of teachers and classmates in “talent shows”, performances attempting to be a musician in high school, at my brother’s wedding, forgetting how to play the piano while doing his dance song — all examples of the second-place nature of my life.
In art school, the fact that I managed to stage a play and make a silent comedy film was less a testament to my talent than to my inability to enlist help from others, requiring me to do everything myself.
Painting, hanging lights, and setting the stage all by myself because I was unable to persuade the people in the school who were going there to learn to do just those things, to help me. Manning the camera, the props, all while doing the craft of creating and editing, simply because I didn’t know how to sell other people on my vision (interpret: dream).
Time and time again: efforts made that showed sincerity in purpose and effort only to be revealed as the sloppy, sophomoric, unskilled presentations of — as my father so often laughed: “Walter Mitty.” Thanked for trying, but life will be “taking a different direction”, thank you very much.
Art school brought realization, learning my place, accepting my fate as the one who says “yes” to others, and unable to get others to say “yes” to me. Not so much “giving up” but learning where I stood. Outside. On my own. Alone.
Staring down at my left foot, on the edge of the circle of the wrestling mat, not on the line as required. Not seeing that it was just out of position, with the referee almost begging me to adjust it by two inches so he wouldn’t have to penalize me. I recognized the sympathy I elicited from others.
I just didn’t want the match to begin, I guess. Against that boy, my age but not my frame, the boy I had so soundly licked earlier in the year, to his bulging-eyed surprise, and was expected to beat again. I just didn’t want this match to start because I must have known I was doomed to lose. I wanted everything to just stop.
But it didn’t. Life doesn’t stop.
So many failures before that moment taught me who I was, yet I was the only one who knew. All the failures that were to come after only served to let everyone else in on it.
I am right back there now — staring at my foot, not on the starting line.
Time is running out, and the referee will not stay the match.
Next: Missive #46: The Veils of Genius