I wasn’t planning on penning a new year retrospective, but then I sat down to watch the History of Gay Wrestling Panel that I participated in last February, and I got all nostalgic. That got me thinking about the panel, which got me thinking about my first Wrestlefest NYC, and then it was totally a slippery slope to reflecting on another amazing year of getting to enjoy wrestling in so many different ways.

BG East Arena members can watch the History of Gay Wrestling video streaming there in the Arena, if you’re interested. It’s not your typical homoerotic wrestling video fare, I’ll grant you. There are no nearly naked hunks throwing down and getting hot and sweaty trying to dominate each other in the video. However, in the video there are dozens of wrestlers who have been those nearly naked hunks launching a thousand fantasies, talking about their experiences as wrestlers, as participants in the wrestling business, and as founders and builders of the homoerotic wrestling community that I enjoy so much today. I blogged about it a lot early on the year, so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much. Honestly, my first time watching the video these many months later was mostly motivated by wanting to see if I came across as a dork. I’m happy to report that my dork-quotient was well within levels that I’m happy to own. But what stuck out to me when watching the video was the room full of good will and the genuine camaraderie and esprit de corps that was so evident and spontaneous and such a privilege to witness. We can make so much drama for ourselves, can’t we? But for about an hour and a half that Sunday afternoon in Manhattan, there was just a ton of appreciation for being part of something that gives us pleasure, but also joy. You can practically see the common thread running between every person who showed up on camera up front, and I promise you that same thread was visibly attached to the heart of the 100+ attendees behind the camera.

Wrestlefest NYC was a trip in 2024. I got a lot of wrestling in, happily getting my ass kicked and happily kicking ass in proportions that I’ve grown to enjoy. It was also the setting in which I got to attend my first live wrestling event. Yeah, I mean, like, any wrestling. I’ve never been to a mainstream pro wrestling show, though they’ve always been happening (and continue to happen) in proximity to me throughout my life. So it was a very special pleasure to get to enjoy a remarkable event pulled together by Scooter at WFNYC, giving a small audience the opportunity to watch live, hot, intense mat wrestling action within arms length. And like that history panel vibe, there was this intense common thread connecting everyone seated around those mats, grunting and groaning in unison, eye-fucking these drop dead gorgeous wrestlers going at it for our pleasure. Fuck, that was hot.

And speaking of fucking hot… like I said, I got in some super fun wrestling action at WFNYC, and managed to squeeze into the rest of my life a few meet ups over the rest of the year. The majority of my wrestling in 2024 was with Scott Williams, though. I don’t blog about every encounter like I did that first meet up, because I think we all know we’ve got to be careful about stroking that man’s ego too much. But I’m happy to report, for those of you following that particular journey of mine for so long, that Scott seems almost as eager to get another shot at his number one fan as his number one fan is to get another shot at him. I’m pretty sure it burns his ass that my passionate enthusiasm (“passionate enthusiasm”) for watching him get worked over translates repeatedly into his cocky bluster crumbling to just a fan. I’m happy to report that Scott’s already been texting me for a shot to redeem his cred as a wrestling star muscle hunk in 2025. Even when he’s whimpering and tapping, though, he’s always a wrestling star muscle hunk to me.

As I’ve mentioned for the past couple of years around the turn of the New Year, another highlight of 2024 continued to be co-creating wrestling fantasy fiction with my good buddy AR. We were recently trying to guess how many pages of wrestling fiction we’ve written together in the past two and a half years. I’m certain it’s in the thousands, with literally hundreds of illustrations AR has rendered with jaw dropping hotness. The creative process itself, and the sharing and refining and bouncing wrestling fantasies off of each other, is the real payoff, but we’ve both agreed to try to package some of this hotness up and share more of it with fans of the genre in 2025. Stay tuned.

The last thing I wanted to mention that was truly remarkable for me in 2024 was trying my hand/voice at some audio recordings for the blog that I called Sidelineland Sounds. The first time I mentioned the concept to my sounding board, AR, he clearly thought the idea was out there. And, honestly, so did I, but it sounded fun, and I ended up recording 3 episodes. Their fucking time-intensive, though, and time got away from me to keep recording some of additional episodes I’ve got planned. But the really remarkable part wasn’t just creating something entirely new (and having fun with it). The remarkable part was the reception that Sidelineland Sounds got. I was pleased and a little relieved when I saw on my stat counter that people were downloading them, presumably listening to them, and quite a lot of folks commented, added their opinions, asked questions. Once it was clear that Sidelineland Sounds wasn’t too out there of a concept, after all, I stopped tracking the downloads. As 2024 came to a close, it occurred to me to take another look. The first episode audio file has been downloaded 99,000 times. The second and third episodes were downloaded close to that. What the fuck?! I’m pretty confident that some readers/listeners have downloaded/listened multiple times, but still, I had no idea of the draw that me talking about and sampling hot homoerotic wrestling would have. I’m extra motivated now to get additional episodes created… when I can find the time!

As I sit here and type this, I’m going to be painfully honest and say that I worry about the future. The world was a fucking dumpster fire from day to day in 2024. At this point in my life, I can definitely say it was more so that than I can remember it being in a long time. I hope that, as a species, we get our shit together in 2025, but frankly, I don’t know that I have faith that that can even happen. There’s this intense counter-revolutionary vibe in the air, with a maelstrom of conformity and convenient lies and the clutching fingers of the privileged doing everything in their power to claw back the right to decide what’s normal for everyone else. I worry for the place of our little homoerotic wrestling community in the midst of that social discourse. But I also take heart watching those panelists from the event last year talking about finding each other, exploring that thread that connects us, back when the risks felt so great that guys rented PO boxes to exchange contact information for fear of being found out. I don’t think we’re headed into Handmaid’s Tale territory or anything, but the guys upon whose shoulders we climb are witnesses to the truth that the authentic draw to what turns us on about wrestling will find a way. Stay strong, folks, and wrestle on.