Jenny Sadre-Orafai: Hooking, Toprolling, and Pressing

As 2011 draws to a close, we’re featuring some highlights from our publication year with selections from Issues 9 and 10. Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s “Hooking, Toprolling, and Pressing, or What It’s Like When I’m in Love” appears in Issue 10 of The Los Angeles Review.

The hook is the most common move in arm wrestling. You are probably familiar with the hook, because it is the move that is used when arm wrestling is portrayed in bars and elsewhere on TV. It is considered an “inside” move, meaning you are trying to beat your opponent’s arm instead of his hand (as you do in a toproll). To be successful in a hook, you should be stronger than or at least equal to the strength level of your opponent. From Ultimate Arm Wrestling (www.eiyc.com)

A pair of gummy headphones and a portable tea infuser.

Neither of these are pricy, but they are all that’s left of an intense match of strength. They’re testaments that there was even a match here.

You should know that I never played sports in school. Neither of my parents played sports when they were in school, either. It seemed foreign to the entire family, including my sister. I was competitive in my own way, just maybe not in that physical way. I held games. Great matches took place between me and whomever I found myself dating.

I met the man who would buy me the headphones not that long ago. Our first date was generic. A movie. Just a movie. Not a movie and drink or dinner or coffee. On a Monday night. The second date was at a coffeehouse. This is where I told him about all my rules and how it takes a while for me to let people warm up to me, physically at least. It was at this table that I crossed my legs and brushed my hair and mimicked whatever he was doing with his hands—all nonverbal and unconscious clues that I was attracted to him. It’s also here (in between playing with my hair) that I told him how much I detest public displays of affection because it shows a lack of control, a lack of strength. Here is where the two of us—he and I, not you and I—become metaphorical hands (for the purposes of this essay) locked in a tight grip on the table. The referee (yes, they have them in arm wrestling) just released our hands. He blows go into the whistle.

After leaving the coffeehouse, he walked me to my car that was parked by these railroad tracks here and that restaurant across the street that stays open 24 hours a day, just like the signs says. When we got to my car, I noticed people strolling around the various restaurants in the area, other people parking their cars around us. Then, I looked at him only to realize that he had been looking at me while I was people-watching. He shook his head and said, I’m sorry, but I have to kiss you. I’m sure at first I looked confused, then angry, and lastly just defiant. I couldn’t believe that this man who I was very much attracted to on many levels after only two dates was pushing aside all my rules. He grabbed my face and kissed me here in this parking lot with people milling around. I couldn’t believe what had happened. This is when my elbow first slipped and his arm pulled mine closer to the table.

The toproll is a great move to beat your less experienced friends with. If you win with a toproll, you are winning with leverage instead of brute strength. This is because the toproll is what is referred to as an “outside” move. You are trying to put tremendous pressure on your opponent’s fingers, causing his hand to open up and allowing you to gain leverage. When the opponent’s hand opens up, it allows you to get further out on his hand (toward his finger tips) and makes it very difficult for him to “outmuscle” you until he regains his hand position. From Ultimate Arm Wresting (www.eiyc.com)

We dated into the wintertime. This is when people who own older houses unearth space heaters from their old attics. He had three. And, he made sure that there was at least one on the highest setting and near me at all times. He would have friends over and they would watch him hunt down a heater to put at my feet. He didn’t seem embarrassed by the act. I most definitely was. He knew I was cold but wouldn’t dare ask him to bring the heater near me. He made me seem breakable.

This wasn’t the only time he would do things like this. Once, we went out with his best friend. It was probably two or three in the morning. We were at a small country diner. It was spring but it was freezing inside the diner. He took my car keys (I drove that night) and rummaged around in my car for something, anything, to keep me warm. Victorious, he came back with a hand towel and draped it across my lap.

This place looks different, doesn’t it? That’s because we’re in Nashville. It had been raining and hard. There was a puddle the size of a car in our path to his car. I had on heels and a dress. Since it was between sets at this bar, most of the crowd was outside on a covered patio. As I began to walk around the farthest edge of the puddle, I felt two hands lift me up and over the water. In front of everyone. I tried my hardest to weigh hundreds of pounds more. I wanted to weigh down his hands and arms as much as I could so it would look harder than it was. I could feel my knuckle brushing the table. He almost had my arm pinned.

I came to learn that I could fight back in my own way. I could show him how strong I was. For example, I never, ever called him first. Ever. Also? I didn’t always answer his phone calls. I would purposely take hours to respond to texts and e-mails. I held him off. I kept him at arm’s length as best I could. He wanted to meet my parents, who live a mere hour and 15 minutes away (depending on how fast or slow you drive). I made excuse after excuse. Too much work to do. The dog. It’s raining.

There were other ways I regained my strength, other ways I showed him how strong I was. He was never allowed in my apartment. I would come to him if and when I came to him. He wasn’t allowed to visit where I lived and see my things, things that I saw on a daily basis, things that would tell him more about me than if I sat down next to him and whispered in his ear for days.

However, he began to push his way into my life and my apartment. I began receiving surprise visits. The first time he came to my apartment he brought fries and cheese sauce, a favorite food of mine that I rarely buy and eat. It was too much. Him in my space and bearing gifts.

You can come in but no shoes on the carpet. This is my place. When he first came here he walked around like he was in a museum. He was careful about showing how eager he was. This is my bulletin board. I cut out things that appeal to me and pin them to this board, like most people who own bulletin boards. When he saw all of these clippings, he took one of the biggest breaths I had seen him take. He studied the board with an intensity that made him seem like he was cramming for an exam at the last minute, right before the teacher walks in. He didn’t want to put the notes away. Here he was, right here, in my space, learning things about me that could be used against me at some point. Him.

We had gone to a festival. It was the spring. I’m not sure why writers always feel compelled, okay, why this writer feels compelled to tell you what season it was. I think I’m hoping you and I have the same version of seasons committed to our memories. Maybe? Regardless, spring and an outdoor festival. We had a busy schedule that day— ice-cream-eating to fit in and a work party to go to. Somewhere in there I left my purse alone and apparently near him. I should say that somewhere in there I had also told him that I blew out another set of my earbuds while at the gym. I barely remember now telling him, although I know I did. Regardless, between eating ice cream and the office party, I was back at my apartment and getting ready when I shoved my hand in my purse to find a set of earbuds in hard plastic packaging. He was listening. He was always listening and watching for what I needed, his needy thing of a girlfriend. I stared at the headphones for a long time. First, I looked confused, then angry, and lastly just defiant.

The weekend before we broke up (for good) we came here, to this fancy grocery store. I know, it just smells fancy here, doesn’t it? Anyway, we were going to cook together. An intimate act that we had yet to do with each other. Yes, that’s us throwing oil and cheeses into the cart and not at all concerned with who’s paying. However, I found myself desperate to get my footing back. We passed the tea aisle. He couldn’t believe the varieties of tea flavors and brands they carried. He picked up a portable tea infuser and said have you seen these before? I’ve always thought about getting one. It wasn’t much but I knew that wasn’t the point really. I took one and put it into the cart. When I paid for the strainer, he stared at it much like how I stared at the headphones. And seeing it later sitting on his countertop with the green tea beside it thrilled me.

The press is one of the purest power moves in arm wrestling. Having a bulky upper body certainly helps with this one. If you are confident that you have superior upper body power (especially chest and triceps) to your opponent and are at least equal in bicep and forearm strength, this is a good move to perform. If, however, your opponent is much stronger than you are in the chest and triceps, using the press might be a bad idea. This move can be beaten by a quick toproll, as it is vulnerable to strong, quick backpressure. This is because your arm must be close to your body to perform this move, so if your opponent can pull your arm across the table you will not be able to win with a press. From Ultimate Arm Wrestling (www.eiyc.com)

The table has been taken away now. The referee has gone home for the day. And two arms that only wanted to be on top, to be the stronger one, are gone. I don’t feel any stronger. I don’t feel like I won, and even if I did I don’t know that it would be much comfort. I lost my head during the time I knew this man. I lost my heart and found it hard to weigh every little thing I did. And, honestly, it was exhausting. I sometimes wonder what it might be like for other people when they fall in love. Maybe they fight it as well. Maybe they struggle with losing their strength and power in the smallest and largest of ways. Maybe love isn’t like the seasons I was telling you about earlier. Maybe love just isn’t something I can tell you about and hope that you know what I mean because your experience is similar.

I know you thought I wouldn’t bring you back here, but hang on. Just one more trip to his place. Right before the summer started we were thinking of all the cliché summer activities that would present themselves to us as a couple. And, what would we, as a couple, take part in? During the summer? In the future? We were here, in his office at his house. He said why don’t we make a list? Hold on. Let me grab a pen and paper. I wondered then if he knew what we were both walking into. That we were going to make a list of future activities to do over a three month stretch. How could this not frighten him? How could this not weaken him? These wouldn’t be words floating around in the air anymore. No, we were capturing them—rare insects—and pinning them to the paper. So, go to the beach, right? I snapped my head up. Right. He was scribbling the words down and then began bouncing the pen off the pad What else? And when we looked at each other, I realized he understood just how vulnerable we both were in that moment. I felt like I had to meet him half-way, make him feel comfortable since we apparently had taken our hands out of the firm grasp they had been in. Make out in the backseat. He laughed and wrote it down.

Weeks later I walked by our abandoned list on the coffee table. I wanted to believe that we would actually do all the things we had set out to do that summer, that we would last, that neither one of us would just walk away from the table, that neither of us would get tired of the constant testing of strength.

Sure, a pair of rubber headphones isn’t much, but they are enough to remind me of him everyday I use them, which happens to be every day. He wins that. Something he bought me and slid into my purse when I wasn’t looking, something to let me know he was thinking of me and how hard I am on my headphones, does make me think of him…at least until I’m too hard on them. He wins that.

And, sure, a portable tea infuser isn’t much, but drinking green tea is an act he commits every single day. I suppose I win that, don’t I? Unless, of course, he rediscovered his love of coffee. Anything’s possible. I like to picture him pinching the loose leaves in between his longish fingers and sighing his hefty sigh that causes the leaves to scatter. He recaptures them and nestles them back into the wire basket. He does this every day. He always forgets his strength over the leaves. He never learns to sigh softer.