In A Weekend

Fall 2012, I decided to take a weekend away.

Life was moving fast. There was the busy summer I’d grown accustomed to while I lived in Baltimore. At the end of it, I’d decided to end a two-year relationship, that I’d less changed my mind about than been trying to figure out the right time to end for months.

Then I got an invitation to emcee an a cappella competition in Chicago that felt like a validation of my blogging effort for the five years leading up to that point, just as I’d launched a new “season” of The A Cappella Blog, with a ten-part feature called “The Cool 100”—ranking the hundred coolest singers, arrangers, recording professionals, producers, and other miscellaneous folks affiliated with the a cappella world. It was a project I envisioned giving a credit to under-recognized people in the niche market I blogged about—an embodiment of the ethos of the website on the whole—not to mention that I’d hoped it would be a big draw for website traffic.

When the invitation to emcee came in, my first impulse was to write the girlfriend I’d just dumped, whom, despite my mounting dissatisfaction, I still thought of as the top cheerleader of efforts related to blogging, writing, and a range of other personal pursuits. I stopped myself. I was single again. Despite never having a relationship that lasted over a couple weeks until I was twenty, I’d spent about six and a half out of the eight years to follow committed to someone, and I took a moment of pause, recognizing I’d have to relearn to operate without someone’s unconditional support or out of proportion excitement for what I might accomplish.

I bought tickets to a wrestling show.

Though my most recent partner had been a “team player,” going along with my wrestling habit, including attending my then-annual WrestleMania party and even going to a live event with me, I also appreciated that it wasn’t a personal interest for her and tried not to push it. Newly single, I felt a degree of liberation to attend King of Trios—a three-night wrestling festival of sorts, put on by the small Chikara promotion, chock full of meet and greets in addition to three-person team tournament that highlighted the weekend.

I departed for King of Trios in Easton, PA—two hours outside Baltimore—the same day that the final post of “The Cool 100” went live. While the series of blog posts had drawn a spike in traffic to the site, it hadn’t come without its lumps. More than one person I’d written about or worked with in the past wrote me to express their surprise at their exclusion from the list, while I came upon others posting on social media about errors in what I’d written. A particularly stark message expressed resentment at the omission and asked me to remove his name from a list of “honorable mentions” and people I’d acknowledged making a mistake in forgetting, because mention in that list itself came across as an insult.

It wasn’t until after I’d checked into my hotel that I realized the full scope of the backlash, though. There were quite a few more social media posts and more vitriolic conversations about “The Cool 100” than I’d realized, knocking not only the series of blog posts, or even The A Cappella Blog, but me personally as a hack who didn’t know what he was writing about (and wasn’t writing about it well, either). All of this came into sharper relief with an email from the event organizer in Chicago, asking me if I’d like to step down from my emcee duties given how the community at large was responding to my work.

“The Cool 100” experience as about as close as I have been and ever hope to be to feeling “canceled” for a transgression. While there were a handful of private messages to follow from friends in the a cappella community expressing their support and checking in that I was OK after all the pushback, it only did so much to balance the scales—if, simultaneously, offering a bit clearer picture of who my friends really were.

I felt a sense of isolation that Friday and Saturday, into Sunday. Despite a cappella being such a big part of my life, it wasn’t something I shared to any significant degree with many friends, family, or coworkers. In a sense, it fell alongside my lifelong fanhood for professional wrestling—despite following the form obsessively since before I’d learned to read, I didn’t have many people close to me or in my day-to-day life who cared about it beyond recognizing it as one of my quirky points of interest. So, I was alone in relishing the joy of watching great wrestling matches, and meeting stars like Tatanka, Tommy Dreamer, and Marty Jannetty, just as I was alone in my moment of going on trial before the a cappella world.

Everything culminated on Sunday. I’d spent time before the Saturday night show drafting a follow up blog post in which I explained my intentions in writing “The Cool 100” and owned up to my mistakes and miscalculations. I woke up early Sunday—exhausted after a poor night of sleep, spurred on by the adrenaline of the wrestling show and still mulling over what I’d done wrong and what to say and not to say in my a cappella apology.

And in the weeds of all of this, I realized I’d forgotten my grandmother’s birthday.

Grandma Jean had passed away four and a half years earlier. I’d felt as though I’d lost her a good two or three years before that as she slipped into a state of dementia and it was decreasingly likely she’d recognize me when I came to see her. Still, I rated her among my most important, most favorite figures from my childhood, teenage years, and early adulthood. The kindly grandparent who spoiled me with gifts, but more importantly, read any story I put in front of her and offered words of encouragement, who lent me her full attention to play board games and do arts and crafts and participate in whatever imaginary worlds my sister and I concocted when we weren’t the coolest kids in school and didn’t have the happiest lives at home.

I checked out of my hotel Sunday morning. When I found a public park, I pulled over and went for a walk. There was no one else around, and I had a conversation with my grandmother.

I told her about the breakup and about a cappella and about wrestling. I told her about my ambitions of pursuing an MFA soon and how it felt like one last stab at making something out of all that potential I’d always thought, or at least hoped I’d had as a writer.

I asked her what I should do.

I didn’t hear anything back.

I didn’t really expect an answer, because I’ve never had much faith in ghosts or signs.

It was nice to talk to her again anyway.

And though my grandmother may not have been with me in that park and may not have heard a word I said, I still couldn’t help thinking of her again that evening. I went to the last wrestling show of the weekend and bought a raffle ticket at intermission. Before the main event, there was a drawing for a poster signed by every wrestler who’d appeared that weekend, and I was more than a little incredulous to hear number on my ticket called from the ring.

I jogged to ringside, ticket in the air, and accepted my prize. I held it over my head, something like a championship belt, to a smattering of applause from the first few rows.

And though it was an odd—probably silly—connection to make, I thought of my grandmother then, and when she’d bought me a subscription to Pro Wrestling Illustrated for Christmas even though she detested wrestling, and all the CDS she’d bought me long after she stopped understanding my taste in music.

Maybe this was one more gift. A supernatural hand tipping the raffle bucket in my odds.

Maybe not. But it was a complicated moment, and I was happy to accept a small victory amidst it. I went home with the poster in hand and carried on with my life.