A new story for 2011 from my, as yet, unpublished second collection:

Wrestling with Jesus

Jesus is a mean wrestler. Not ‘mean’ as in nasty, but in its more modern sense of being damned effective at winning physical contests. Jesus could never be nasty. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.

Greco-Roman is his style, unsurprising considering his upbringing. But he happily competes in all the other disciplines – some of which exist in just one corner of one district of one country in the world. Despite the variety of rules and regulations he conforms to, he generally wins gold medals in all competitions. And he’s competing all the time. There is no let-up in his wrestling schedule – it’s like the modern professional tennis season. One day he’s grappling on hard-baked mud in the centre of an African market town, the next he’s pinning someone down on the tough grasses of the Mongolian Steppe. He loves the sport. In his opinion it demonstrates the ultimate expression of admirable masculine values: strength, courage, quickness of mind and body, and guile. Wrestling, he told me, is the only sport capable of unifying all men. He believes that if every male on the planet competed in some form of unarmed sporting combat or other, there’d be no appetite left for waging wars.

I did judo for a few years. I enjoyed the experience of fighting one to one with another man without worrying that he’d to reach for a knife or gun if I won. I was no Brian Jacks though. I was more of an enthusiastic fighter than an effective one. Groundwork was my strength. Once I was struggling on the mats with an opponent, my strength and courage made up for my lack of skill. On my feet, I was far more vulnerable. I lacked the speed of body and mind that allows good practitioners of judo to outwit and outmanoeuvre the person they are fighting. Because of my lumbering attacks, I never progressed through the grades. I would sometimes do well in competitions, defeating brown belts who also lacked striking speed and relied on being physically obstinate on the floor. I’d eventually get knocked out when I came up against someone who could attack much more quickly than I could react or defend. I never imagined during those fruitless years on the dojo, that I’d end up regularly manhandling Christ. But I did.

Everybody wants to fight Jesus. Even getting your name down on the waiting list is like trying to get last minute tickets for the best seats in the house at the opening night at La Scala. But ask often enough and one of the dozen or so angels tasked with timetabling his contests will appear from out of the blue and add your name. Unless you want to specify a discipline the rules are simple. There are no rounds, you fight till a victor emerges. It’s wrestling, so no punches or kicks or blows of any kind are allowed. (Jesus is a pacifist, after all.) You can’t do anything nasty like bite, gouge or pull hair but other than that more or less anything goes. Simply throw your man solidly to the ground or force a submission from him to win. Jesus has never been a uniform man, so you can wear whatever you like to fight him; a ceremonial costume or the designated outfit of any sport body you affiliate yourself with. Some men like to get all ancient and fight Jesus naked. He doesn’t care, its not like he hasn’t seen a man naked before. For my first battle I wore long tracksuit trousers and a thick cotton sweatshirt. Like him, I’ve never been much of a conformist.

We met in a field, grass close-cropped by overgrazing from sheep, earth then turned dry and dusty by several weeks without rain. I’m not sure if he arranged that surface or if it is just the way it was. I’m not an expert on Christianity, able to qualify to what degree divine powers are allowed to interfere in the planet’s weather these days. All I can say is that the hardness of the ground is what encouraged me to wear full body covering. In the fortnight before the contest, I visited the venue every day to help with my mental preparations. I could see that grappling around on the solid earth would be pretty rough on the skin and I didn’t want to be put-off making bold moves by the concern of sustaining superficial grazes. Unfortunately my long sleeves were instrumental in my first defeat. My celestial opponent used them to wrap me up in a knot on the ground, twisting them behind my back and pinning me down, forcing my face uncomfortably into the dusty soil. He held me there, unable to escape, until I was exhausted from trying to free myself and half suffocated by the grainy air. As soon as he saw my strength was at a low ebb, he flipped me on my back and grabbed one of my arms for an arm lock. The lock dug in really quickly and I submitted by slapping my free hand flat down on the rock-hard soil. The slap raised little brown clouds of dust particles, towering pestilent storms to nearby watching ants. I’m sure his second-cum-referee Michael smirked when he saw my dejected, scratched face, mud-stained mucus drizzling out of my nostrils. But it’s so hard to tell with angels, they always look so bloody self-satisfied. After that defeat, I always fought Jesus wearing cheap shorts and an old battered T-Shirt.

Once you’ve lost a fight with Jesus, should you request one, you are fast tracked for a rematch. Most choose not to, calculating that it would be impossible to beat him and realising that all they really wanted to do was have a go at The Son of God rather than harbour any ambition to vanquish him. I wanted to beat Jesus – not to force him to abdicate from the throne of Heaven then usurp him and impose a new world order, but because I was fed up with propaganda that he was perfect. He is a man after all. And no man is perfect, my mother always told me that. Despite every God Botherer I’ve ever met telling me he’s infallible, there’s evidence in the bible that he isn’t. He’s got form for trashing a legally held market, sending poor honest traders’ goods flying to the floor in a temper tantrum because he disagreed with their legally approved venue. That report was the chink in his armour that kept me going. He had an Achilles heel and even Hercules was defeated eventually. So, with the single agenda of proving no living being was incapable of losing, I dedicated myself to overcoming Mr Christ. If he was going to walk amongst us, he should at least once taste the bitterness of defeat.

For over ten years we met in private places to engage in physical contest. He’d throw me to the ground on a deserted beach; put a choke on me in an abandoned quarry and lock a limb in an empty warehouse. The odds were always against me; he was a master of countless forms of wresting and I had just a few years of judo under my belt. Regardless of the statistical chances of defeating him, I always immediately booked in for a rematch. Towards the end of my long stretch of defeats, I began to detect a change in Christ’s demeanour. He wasn’t used to men coming back at him time and time again. A few ignoble defeats was usually enough to pacify the greatest human competitors. That was my strength. I knew I wasn’t one of the best wrestlers to have ever lived. Defeat, therefore, was not nearly as humbling. I always believed there was a way to overcome him. And faith moves mountains, after all.

My victory came in the centre of a little-visited stone circle set at the top of a small green hill in South Wales. I don’t for a moment think that those stone circles marked ancient wrestling arenas or that the stones infused me with some Druidical power, but it seemed like a fitting place to get to grips with a flashy foreigner. The Land of My Fathers. Michael, his ever present second, signalled us into action with an effete, languid wave. My persistence bored him. He presumed that, as usual, his champion would shortly throw me to the ground with such force that the air was involuntarily expelled from my lungs, or master me with a lock or choke and have me begging for mercy. Jesus’ eyes told a different story. He was worried. I could feel in it my soul.

We charged together like two mighty stags fighting for territory. I had learnt early on in my series of one-to-one matches with The Messiah that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, or, in other words, charging headlong at the divine quick-witted, experienced fighter was the quickest way to end up on your back. This time, it was the turn of the revered prophet to end up upended. As we closed in on one another, I did a little sidestep which caught him unawares. He turned towards me as we passed and his outside leg span out forwards, his tough Roman-nail-scarred foot flicking up and catching my shin. Caught off-balance at the combined speed of our approach toppled him and he fell to the ground. But a fluke like that is never enough to beat an experienced fighter! He twisted in mid-air like a falling cat, landing on his side. I turned as quickly as I could but wasn’t quick enough to take advantage of his tumble. Maintaining his momentum, he rolled over his shoulder then sprang to his feet in readiness of continuing action. At this point, Michael started to take an interest, his eyebrows moving further away from his chubby cheeks and closer to his halo. The next thing I knew, Jesus was upon me, his strong arms wrapped around my torso, his powerful carpenter forearms taut as he gripped his own wrists in readiness for a take-down. This tight clinch was exactly what I’d needed. I wanted to smell the sweat on his body before making my move. Jesus expected me to fight him shoulder to shoulder as I had for years. Our repetitive battles had become shows of strength that I was always destined to lose. But we were fighting open rules and I’d come to realise there was no advantage in tackling him head on. So, after years of refusing to accept his absolute mastery of me, I did the one thing that was capable of surprising him. Like a penitent catholic priest confessing his abuse of altar boys to the almighty, I dropped to my knees with the force of a construction site pile driver. The guile of my action stunned Christ. I slipped from his grasp and flung my hands around his knees pulling them together so tightly that not one single ray of light could pass between his legs. As he leant forwards to make a counter attack, I put part two of my plan into operation and rose to my feet like Spartacus escaping his chains. I drove upwards and forwards, my right shoulder leaning into Christ’s crotch as if I’d tackled him to prevent a touchdown in the Super Bowl. The vigour with which I rose up lifted him clean off the ground and he flew backwards in an elliptical curve, his hands gripping my shoulders with my arms still wrapped tightly around his legs.

Michael acknowledged my victory the moment my opponents shoulders slammed squarely and heavily into the ground. I was offered another fight, but declined. I’d only ever wanted to prove a point. Jesus was incredibly noble in defeat and congratulated me on my persistence and guile. He told me that I should enter some open wrestling competitions and even suggested a few. But, unlike him, I was growing older and it was taking longer and longer to recover from the impacts and contortions of each struggle. I asked him if he intended to carry on fighting. Absolutely, he replied, wrestling was in his blood.