Editor’s note: The views expressed in I Am So Popular are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the IST network.

Being both a Yankee and John Irving disciple, when I hear the word wrestling, I think of stinky mats in high school gyms and unitards that have not been attacked by a BeJeweler Pro™ .

Apparently, though, when other people hear the word wrestling, they think of something entirely different. They think of big scary men and faked-breasted women, the entire lot of them sporting spray-on tans, dangerous smirks, and very stretchy articles of “clothing” as they hurl each other around inside of a ring while thousands of mesmerized spectators, many of them apparently just having raced on over from Walmart and/or on furlough from Fashion Prison, scream their approval.

I’m talking World Wrestling Entertainment, people, aka WWE, formerly the WWF (until those Panda Suck-ups at the World Wildlife Federation, apparently got their unstretchy panties in a wad, overly-concerned there might be confusion between hulking, greased, denuded bipeds in big underpants and nearly extinct, fur covered, free-balling black and white bears from China).

Anyway, so the reason I never saw WWE on TV is not because I’m some kind of a wrestling snob. It’s because I don’t have a damn TV. And yet, can you say irony? If you tune in next Monday and watch WWE, you will see me, most popular woman in Austin, FRONT ROW CENTER at the recent WWE taping at the Frank Erwin Center.

I attended with my friend Garreth, a bit younger than me, who started his love affair with wrestling (WWE style, not John Irving style) some twenty years ago over in England. Garreth, who, it should be noted, is Oxford-educated and so extra smart about this wrestling stuff—has made reading the auto-bios of pro wrestlers a bona fide, passionate avocation. I learned more on the subject from him during our interminable search for pre-show parking than I could have if I’d taken an informal class on the topic.

Garreth’s Wrestling Archrival- The OriNator

I didn’t tell Garreth where our seats were, I just kept taking him down lower and lower until, at last, we were led to our spots of privilege, at which point Garreth nearly collapsed with joy. Seated to my immediate left was a guy, Mr. X, very in-the-know, chatting up the cameramen whom he knew by name. He even knew which one preferred shooting close-ups of the girls and which one preferred shooting close-ups of the dudes. I assumed he worked for WWE and that he was an audience plant.

Garreth had a similar hunch about the guy next to Mr. X, who wore some sort of facsimile of a wrestling championship belt slung across his shoulder, and who never strayed from an expression of intense seriousness the three plus hours we were there.

(Garreth also had payroll-suspicions about the huge guy behind us who, as if he might be an Animatronic, yelled at set intervals, “SHAAAD UP!! SHAAAAAAAD UP!!” seemingly at no wrestler or ref in particular. He also had a thing for Lilian, our hostess, whose boobs and boots seemed about equally stacked.)

How to capture what happens at a live taping of a WWE event? God it’s impossible. I mean, as Garreth and I discussed the next day, you start telling people you watched a leprechaun-costumed dwarf nicknamed Hornswoggle gleefully bite the recently buffed ass of Mr. McMahon, a 62 year-old man, who keeps yelling “Bastard!” and somehow it just doesn’t translate very neatly.

Photo courtesy of WWE website

So there I am, with my face just about in the asses of these guys, as in I don’t need my bifocals to read their names, which many of them do, in fact, have emblazoned across their asses. These are names not so easy to keep track of for the uninitiated-- like Jericho and Mr. Kennedy and Shawn Michaels, and Jeff Hardy and JBL and UMAGA!!! And then there’s Finlay, who—could he be putting the gay in Gaelic?— likes to swing his shelalagh to protect Hornswoggle. There is a ton of hype and loud music and video montages interspersed with the occasional five minute match during which this guy grabs/hugs that guy and/or throws him down/spends an awful lot of time on top of him.

Does all this confuse you? Good—that means I’m describing it accurately.

Meanwhile, back in the audience… Mr. X has disappeared, replaced by Mr. Z. In his twenties, with one of those BlueTooth ear-phone things on, Mr. Z is toting the most adorable three year-old child I have seen since my own child was three years old. This child is wearing a t-shirt that says The Undertaker, and he points out that fact to me repeatedly.

Wait. It’s time for me to tell about:

THE EXPLOSIONS!!!

Yes, that’s right, people. INDOOR FIREWORKS!

Why it didn’t dawn on me that of course there would be explosives at a wrestling match is also something we can trace back to and blame on John Irving. That’s neither here nor there though. What’s important, in order for you to feel as if you were right there with me, is to know that I have pretty serious-ass Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which mainly manifests as Exaggerated Startle Response, which is what happens when I encounter an unexpected noise.

Like, say, a balloon pops? I burst out crying! Really!

Garreth thought he’d adapted to my disorder when we played Boggle and the buzzing timer made me scream. But he was no way prepared when, without warning, about fifty thousand megatons of explosives went off next to my head in a closed arena. I actually was back in Nam. Oh wait, I was never in Nam. Well I felt like I was. Then I opened my eyes and, I am not kidding, I was on the floor, in a ball, my glasses thrown from my face, me, clutching at Garreth’s arm.

But, I wasn’t going to the real risk of a heart attack scare me off, not with the evening’s leitmotif of homoerotocism filling the air with an electrical charge so palpable my hair started defying gravity at least as well as the lady wrestlers’ breasts.

Sign Guy’s MySpace Page

And if the punches and kicks weren’t really making full impact (I’m not saying for sure they weren’t, I’m just saying if they weren’t) this was made up for with some very genuine acrobatics— flying leaps and flips that caused Garreth, realtor, to proclaim, “That’s his job! That’s what he gets PAID to do!!” as if selling houses isn’t just as much fun.

I got more insider dope from Mr. Z who takes his kid to as many WWE events as he can. The kid can tap out a three count—which he did repeatedly on my leg—to let you know when a match is over. And Mr. Z explained that Mr. X is not an employee. He’s just a rabid fan, known as Sign Guy, who gives the old John 3:16 clown a run for his money. Sign Guy has no shortage of carefully plotted and well-executed signs, which he holds up right on cue every time. No wonder the camera guys love him.

As for the seat switch? Mr. Z explained—he was sitting next to a guy who spotted Sign Guy and stated it was a life dream to sit beside him. Mr. Z, understanding fantasies, obliged, switching places with his pal, Mr. X. And so it was the night of ringside dreams come true, as Garreth got to see the wrestling life up close, I got free desensitization treatment for my PTSD, and some guy got to sit next to Sign Guy.

God I love this country.

Spike Gillespie puts on The Dick Monologues and blogs for LaunchPad Coworking and for her own amusement at www.spikeg.com. She knows who you are.