This past weekend, I enjoyed participating in my second WrestleFest gathering, and my first in New York. It was intense and fun and, not unlike my experience of NYC itself, dozens of different things at the same time. My first adventure to a WrestleFest was last summer, when I thoroughly enjoyed attending WrestleFest Canada. In Toronto, everyone I met I was meeting for the first time. This past weekend felt more like a reunion, catching up with old friends. Well, maybe less like a reunion and more like going back to summer camp to rekindle friendships forged in the intensity of periodical pop-up community. Well, summer camp in Manhattan… with snow falling… in mid-February. Okay, okay, metaphors fail me. It was awesome. I’ll just start there.

I squeezed in a healthy amount of hot wrestling action, I’m happy to report. As in Toronto, I got to enjoy some group scraps and several 1-on-1 matches. In the weeks leading up to WrestleFest, I actually dabbled with the idea of just scheduling matches with wrestlers I’d already matched with, and enjoyed so much, last summer. But the opportunity to wrestle some guys I’d never met in person sort of fell into my lap (in one case, quite literally). Wrestling with new faces turned up that intensity of trying to anticipate the unknown. I’d have had a blast if I’d only wrestled with friends I already knew I was going to have a great time with, but there’s definitely value added in that nervous lead up to the knock at the door, and the reveal of finding out how well the wrestler on the other side of the door matches his MF picture and, more importantly, my mental picture of what it would be like to lock up with the hottie with whom I’ve been exchanging messages and negotiating what to expect of each other. I sincerely hope that my new-to-me opponents this past weekend go into the looking-forward-to-the-rematch column for the next time. They were hot, sweaty, and exhausting times with genuinely fascinating and incredibly sexy guys. My first-time opponents were snarky fun and funny and all had a similar laid back vibe that really resonated with me this weekend.

Opportunities to rematch and reconnect with former opponents/pals was, of course, a major highlight. I got to tussle with SeattleFight and my buddy Bobby again. I thoroughly enjoyed another round with one of my coaches from WrestleFest Canada, TxWresl, who generously assured me that I’ve improved since last August. And I got to go a few entirely unexpected rounds with Scott Williams, who I knew was going to be attending WrestleFest, but with whom I hadn’t managed to actually schedule a match ahead of time. I was less inhibited and less in my own head in these rematches. Knowing a little bit about what to expect, and what was expected of me, let me jump into the middle of the intensity of a match right from the start. With familiar opponents, I spent less time battling my insecurities, less time wondering if I was as skilled as they’d hoped, as attractive as they’d hoped, as competitive as they’d hoped, as I am when squaring off against new opponents. The rematches are sort of a blur to me because they all felt like one furiously intense chapter in a much longer story, and I love that.

I was humbled many times this weekend by blog readers coming up to introduce themselves and offer praise and encouragement for this labor of love I’ve been typing away at for almost 15 years (I just double checked… my first post was May 15, 2009… someone bake me a cake in May). It’s sort of stunning and surreal to hear guys say how meaningful my seemingly aimless ramblings have been to them, often as an early point of contact with homoerotic wrestling community. Like, woah. A few guys this weekend described discovering for the first time that there are others with an erotic interest in wrestling by stumbling across my words here on the blog, and then fast forward to 2024, and those guys are in Manhattan with 300 other like-minded guys celebrating homoerotic wrestling in person. Amazing! Humbling. Like, fuck, I need to go back and edit all of my old blog posts for the infinite typographical and grammatical errors I keep piling onto these pages and making myself cringe when I re-read them, considering this is seriously formative stuff for some of you!

All joking aside (well, some of the joking aside), my first and biggest impression of Wrestlefest NYC 2024 as I try to digest it all these few days later is community. It was about relationships, new and continuing. It was about more than just not being alone, but being part of something that feels vital and grounding and connected to something I know is deeply true in me. It was all about that knowing grin we share when we recognize that same thing that’s inside me is also inside you, and even if it isn’t something we talk about with just anybody in our lives, for this one moment at this event, it’s right there, out in the open, connecting us to one another.

I’ve got more to say, but just wanted to start there in downloading and debriefing this past weekend. WrestleFest NYC was plugging into community that I didn’t always know existed, but now can’t imagine my place in the world without being part of it.