After thirty seven hours in a car, I want to sleep in, stretch out, and maybe go for a hike, but when my kind friend whom I am staying with says, “Some of the guys are coming over soon and we’re going to paint the ring, but let me know if you need anything.” I think, “You know that Joe Rogan quote you like, where he says ‘be the hero in your own movie’? Well, would the hero in your movie chill out and do his own thing, or would he help his friends paint?” Well, I channeled my inner Goku, gathered the Dragon Balls to do what felt right, and grabbed a brush.
The other guys seem surprised that I am helping and are very appreciative. One guy brings me a Big Show sized cup of Pepsi, and my first thought is, “I don’t drink soda.” But I let that thought go and take a big, grateful drink of brotherhood beyond barriers of language and borders; what an amazingly sweet refreshment that transcends taste buds.
I spend the next few days doing interviews with a translator, getting astonished looks as I walk around in my horn adorned Krampus hat, and getting deeply sympathetic looks of shock when I explain to the people who are graciously offering to feed me that I don’t eat meat.
The event is being held in a city park, with the ring set up in the middle of a street. Match days have a way of getting me trapped in my thoughts, so I find a place to sit down and meditate.
Under a tree, on a sunny day, with the roar of child’s play beating against my eardrums, with curious eyes inviting me to be self-conscious, I began to pay attention to my unconscious breath. Without willful choice, the body in which my consciousness resides draws in oxygen and pushes out carbon dioxide. I just note myself being breathed, while thoughts of the past and future pop up out of and back into the Ocean of my Mind, with no net held out to catch them. Everything except this moment disappears and I ask myself, “Do I want anything for this moment?” “No.” I answer. “Do I need anything in this moment?” I ask. “No.” I reply. “Then this moment is perfect.” I explain to myself.
The dressing room is across the street in a municipal office building. As I change into my Hellbilly-Viking-Último Dragón ring attire, someone brings in a few boxes of pepperoni pizza.
I’m a little hungry, but before I can start to feel sorry that free-zza isn’t on my diet, my mediation-buzzed consciousness offers up the idea of sharing it with a stranger whose diet may not be as restrictive. So, I let go of my insecurities about failing and the silliness of this mission, and march outside with purpose.
With empty-minded full-heartedness, I walk straight up to a guy who is washing car windshields and say, in Spanish, “You want this?” He does, and replies with a look that I can’t describe, and a “gracias” that blows away the ego-clouds of my True-Heart. I put my head down and rush back to the dressing-office, making a b-line for the toilet-room and promptly begin to weep like an emotional mother at her only son’s wedding while thanking the Love Force of The Universe for making me do that.
The match is good, but the highlight is trying to get several little kids to console me with hugs while I’m crawling in pain on the street outside of the ring; most shriek and run away, but one boy that looks to be about 4 years old pushes his way to the front of the crowd and gives me a gentle-but-big hug and the audience lets out a collective “Awwww!”
The event is a success; we have collected a lot of Christmas toys for local impoverished children. Now, it’s time to celebrate.
At the after party, I am enjoying a wonderful vegetarian supper prepared for me by the inspiringly thoughtful, kind mother-in-law of the wrestler that I had just faced off against, when one of the promoters gives me a loaded handshake of money. I say, “Thank you, but you don’t have to pay me for a charity show.”
“No worries, it’s from a local doctor who helped with putting the event together. He is giving the other luchadors free health care, since he couldn’t do that for you, he wanted you to have this.” She explains.
And that, my beloveds, is how I made nine hundred pesos; how I can say, with a grateful smile, that I wrestled on the streets of México for forty two dollars and twenty six cents.
