Goran recently reached out from Serbia to do a little fact checking here at neverland.  He assures me that BG East one-hit-wonder Arn Nedic is not, in fact, from Serbia.  I had passed along that little detail from the online description of Arn’s one and only (fuck, get him in a ring!) homoerotic wrestling match (to the best of my knowledge, PLEASE correct me).  Goran states that Arn is, in fact, a London-based model known as Lucas Agra.

Lucas (aka Arn) can call himself anything he wants, as far as I’m concerned, as long as he puts those phenomenal pecs back into homoerotic wrestling action again soon. The fact that he’s London-based doesn’t, on the surface, exactly pin down his ethnicity, of course.  Living in one of the most cosmopolitan world cities in the history of the world doesn’t really argue strongly that he’s English, by any means. And going by Arn Nedic or Lucas Agra lends itself to an interpretation that his incredibly distinctive, severely ripped physique belongs to someone somewhere east of the prime meridian, I’m still suspecting.  But Goran seems sure his origin story isn’t rooted in Serbia.  Fair enough.

Happily, luscious Lucas has demonstrated he is fabulously equipped and willing to bare it all to show off his sensationally sexy body, so may I recommend a rip ‘n’ strip scenario?  Those soul piercing eyes are enough to stop even a mildly homoerotically inclined opponent in his tracks, but can you just picture that gorgeous cock unleashed mid-match!? Fuck, even a Kinsey 1 would surely be unable to resist getting an up close, hands-on examination of that marvelous meat.

The misdirection of Arn/Lucas’ wrestling persona raise for me the question of what it is we expect by way of self-disclosure of our homoerotic wrestling infatuations. In an erotically-identified industry like homoerotic wrestling, it should come as little wonder that athletes use pseudonyms. You might not want mom or a day job employer to do a Google search on you and stumble across an image of an opponent schoolboy pinning you with his balls resting on your lips.  Truth be told, I’ve even had an opportunity to pitch in a couple of times when it comes to selecting a wrestling name for a newbie looking to make a big splash with fans. So, of course I’m well aware that, as with public entertainment figures of many types, homoerotic wrestlers may have many reasons for going by a name that isn’t on their birth certificates.

But more than simply a matter of keeping the homoerotic professional and the personal separate, I think there’s a utility to hunks wrestling under a pseudonym. There’s a suspension of disbelief inherent in professional wrestling. No matter how much back story explains it (and I LOVE a compelling back story to my homoerotic wrestling), there’s little face value validity to the idea that two complete strangers strip down to next to nothing, climb into a wrestling ring with a camera crew on hand, and instantly generate a roaring, aggressive animosity that compels them to execute such stylized and idiosyncratic combat moves as snap mares, over-the-knee backbreakers, and Boston crabs.

Ours is a genre that makes demands of us and of the wrestlers we enjoy. Of us, professional homoerotic wrestling demands that we overlook occasional lapses in motivation, character, and convincing sell. It demands that we read pro wrestling shorthand to recognize the tropes and gimmicks and suspend disbelief enough to follow a narrative about magnificently muscled men trading what would almost certainly be lifelong crippling maneuvers leading to miraculous rallies, devastating reversals of fortune, and will-bending psychological domination. As a couple of wrestlers who I’m privileged to count among my friends point out, it isn’t all gimmick and script. These are trained (for the most part) professionals committing their bodies and well-being to honest-to-god wrestling, including both highly competitive unscripted shoots as well as carefully choreographed dances in service to propelling a particular character (the irritating narcissist, the savage heel, the doomed jobber), a certain fan-favorite narrative (the squash, the heel turn, the agro-lust boiling over), or a particular fetishized genre (trampling, gut punching, knock outs). We know the homoerotic wrestling camera is not a lens into the “real” world, but it is, most certainly, a lens into the world in which we live, with real men, with real lives and experience and motivations, engaging in a competition-themed form of entertainment that turns us on.

But the industry also makes demands of the wrestlers we adore. It demands that they display more of their body than they probably do with all but one or two of their most intimate companions. It demands that they conform their aptitudes and preferences and insecurities to the kinks and opinions and tastes of those of us in the homoerotic wrestling audience. It demands that they engage in a homoerotic narrative, even if only erotic by association with the broader industry within which their match is to be marketed.  It insists that they be characters, much bigger than life, louder, more egomaniacal, more sinister, more helpless, more merciless than surely any one of them ever actually is.  It demands that whatever decisions they have made to work in this industry at this particular moment in their lives, their choices will be part of the public record in perpetuity.

So if Lucas Agra (I’d bet a lot of money that’s also a pseudonym) wrestles as Arn Nedic, more power to him. I bet Goran is correct that he probably isn’t Serbian, but I’m absolutely certain he is something. He’s a real boy, with a heritage and a resume and a pile of dirty laundry and a longing to be loved for the content of his heart. He’s flesh and blood, gifted with drop dead gorgeousness more than abundantly enhanced by what is obvious a fanatical devotion to fitness and muscle development.

And whatever he’s like with his family and friends and lovers, he’s also, for just a few minutes whenever I push “play,” an eye-poppingly sexy motel wrestler who wants nothing more than to wipe that fucking smirk off of prettyboy Connor Cross’ face and make that punk ass kid his little bitch.

We’re all complex, socially constructed, and self-determined human beings. Homoerotic wrestlers included.