“Didn’t we order too much food?” I asked her as I handed the menus back to the waitress.
Having an intimate dinner with a beautiful, free-spirited woman—considered by many to be the greatest sex fighter in history—did nothing to ease my natural hesitation. In fact, it felt like a rhetorical question. We had ordered food for six people: two “special feast” menus with double the mashed potatoes, and extra appetizer because she insisted we had to try a local specialty made from dried mako shark roe, and for her, the 4-pound ribeye steak, which they offered for free to anyone who was able to finish it.
“I’m really hungry,” she assured me playfully, leaning her elbows on the table and resting her pointed chin on her entwined fingers.
When she relaxed her distant posture, the cheerful spirit of the little girl she still carried inside emerged in that gray-blonde woman—a spirit that the succession of disappointments of every kind had failed to extinguish.
“So you’re the legendary Queen Nuria, the first woman ever to win both the Skill and Endurance titles in the Mesalina League. Remind me not to leave without getting your autograph on the menu.”
“That was ages ago,” she replied, closing her big eyes without engaging with my joke. “Now I’m a hard-piroresu fighter in the Octagon. You won’t believe it, but it’s way more relaxing.”
“But those are real fights.”
“I knew you wouldn’t believe it…” she shot back, tilting her head and biting her thin lips until they turned white.
“The organization takes care of us. I’ve got a fight every three months at most, with a tough week of training camp before each match, a strict diet and intense gym work to make weight. But the rest of the time I live up to my nickname. This ain’t judo or Greco-Roman wrestling. No fancy moves. You just get in there and do whatever it takes to make your opponent scream for mercy. I’m damn good at that…”
I couldn’t quite picture my tablemate in the ring. You could tell she was in shape from the thickness of her neck and the roundness of her shoulders, but her face was delicate, with a porcelain-like quality, even though middle age had begun to etch wrinkles into it, giving her an even more attractive air. In any case, I was more interested in her past, so I brought up the subject just as she was diving into the dried roe, which I found repulsive.
“Did you ever compete in tekoki style?”
“Hmm, yeah, but I wasn’t particularly good at it. You need really big hands.”
“The Frenchies organized it really well. Better than in Japan.” There was this international federation setting the rules, FISTRA, based in Marseille, and all the competitors operated under the same rules. It was the way to find out who’s the top dog.
Two waitresses appeared with a feast-sized menu each. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets. She wolfed down the portion of roe I had spurned and rubbed her hands together.
“What was I saying? Oh right, there were two set-ups: one-on-one and timed rounds. In one-on-one, two contestants go head-to-head—usually no time limits or breaks—to get the most cums from a line of volunteers. When one of them gains a two-point lead, she takes the win. To prevent one from getting volunteers with more endurance than the other, each volunteer has to hit both lines.”
“I wasn’t bad at that. It gets me hyped to totally wreck my opponents in a head-to-head…”
She said this while devouring her feast-sized meal and glancing at mine to encourage me.
“Then there were the timed competitions, kinda like track and field, but instead of running distances, it’s all about how many dudes you can milk: the winner is whoever takes the least time to bust three guys the fastest in the sprint events, ten in the middle-distance events… up to 25 in the marathon… Got it?” she asked, still chewing her food.
As Nuria recalled the story, she grew more and more excited, and the food vanished from her plates faster and faster. The restaurant didn’t provide cutlery, and we didn’t know how to eat with chopsticks, so we used our hands. Some of the dishes were so spicy that your fingers would tingle.
“The fiercest milker I ever met was a Canadian woman named Allison. A classy, bony lady with platinum hair and endless fingers. She beat me three times, and I never tried again. She’d stare you down while she squeezed her victims, and you just knew she was the best—no chance for you to top her. In Sapporo, I got damn close. I was younger and stronger, catching up fast. We came tied at round 25, and she looked wiped. My hands hurt like hell, but the thrill of possibly dethroning her masked the pain. But…”
She made a big, dramatic pause. Even her glottis stopped moving up and down her silky throat. She pointed at her glass with her chin, and I made a refill.
“…then she pulled a little trick I’ll never forget.”
“What little trick?”
She looked me up and down with her mischievous gaze.
“Boy, you wanna know everything.”
I think I blushed.
“It’s called the guitar solo. I’ll play it for you tonight if you behave and finish your dinner,” she added with exaggerated seriousness and went back to chewing.
Although our backgrounds were certainly quite different, the conversation was relaxed. It could have been a meeting between a high school teacher and her favorite former student, or a head coach reuniting with her most gifted protégé. She reminisced about some of her own achievements but was also interested in mine. In addition, I managed to finish my meal—except for the extra mashed potatoes that I offered, and she accepted—which filled me with relief. In case her threat was serious—it was sometimes hard to tell if her jokes had a serious undertone—I had proven myself, and she had no excuse for not taking me to her hotel and up to her suite to spend the night together.
“Enough about my life—tell me a little about yourself, will you? At your age, I hadn’t seen half as much of the world as you have.”
“Well, it hasn’t done me much good. I’d rather be back home, hanging out with my girl every afternoon.”
“Did you guys break up?” she asked, stopping to wipe up the last bits of mashed potatoes with her milk bread.
“I wouldn’t know how to answer that. I think I’m terrible at picking up on the real feelings of the people around me.” I thought Luna, my girlfriend, was head over heels for me, but she went to Chile and never came back. I thought Betty liked me from the waist up too, but as soon as I let her down from the waist down, she got furious and didn’t want me around anymore. I thought Shae wanted to shoot with me, but she just wanted to shoot with my dick, and the truth is, she’ll take any other who can stay hard long enough.
I pinched the skin between my eyebrows, trying to calm myself down.
Legendary sex-fighter Queen Nuria stood motionless, her fingers glistening with grease held in the air, as if to avoid spoiling her clothes. Her two souls—that of a curious girl and a scorned woman—struggled behind her anthracite eyes. For a moment, I thought she was going to squeeze my hand and ask for the check so she could take me to her hotel, but the more cautious Nuria prevailed. Or maybe she just didn’t want to get me greasy.
Then our waitress appeared with the 4-pound steak. “Your order,” she added, smiling from ear to ear as she placed the enormous steak on a bed of mashed potatoes, bordered by a circle of French fries glistening with oil, in front of Nuria. I prayed she’d send it away, but, wiping her lips on the back of her hand, the woman who couldn’t say “no” accepted the challenge.
“Won’t that make you sick?” I asked, almost pleading.
“Maybe, but I’m going to try,” she replied with a shrug. And tilting her head naively, like the little girl that still resided inside the mistreated woman, she added, “Tonight I have someone who can take care of me.”
For a few moments, the lively sparkle in her dark eyes reflected in mine. Queen Nuria had a beautiful, sad gaze; I’ll tell my grandchildren about it if I ever have any. So I leaned back in the comfortable seat to enjoy her battle against the Asian beef steak from the front row.
————
“I can’t believe you insisted on finishing it,” I said, cupping her forehead as bits of barely chewed meat scattered across the sidewalk.
“I can handle that and more,” she insisted stubbornly, as another wave of nausea contorted her doll-like face, which age had slightly hardened.
We had just left the restaurant when she lifted her shirt to show me her tense, swollen belly, as if she were several months pregnant. Moments later, her knees buckled, and she bent over to throw up. It took her a while, but when she was done, she wiped herself with a tissue, blew her nose, and kept walking as if nothing had happened.
It was about four kilometers to her hotel, but the night was mild, and we could both benefit from stretching our legs. Her stride was longer than mine. Sometimes our hips almost brushed against each other; other times, she slowed her pace to wait for me while continuing the account of her exploits. But whenever I steered the conversation toward technical details, she avoided giving specifics, as if bound by a legal confidentiality agreement.
When we arrived in front of the hotel, its name displayed in huge neon letters, her face had regained its fresh, healthy, and vibrant appearance. With a comical bow, she invited me to go ahead of her through the revolving door at the entrance. Inside, two shadowy figures stood up as they recognized her.
“Do you have bodyguards?” I inquired.
Nuria raised her eyebrows without saying a word. But, sure enough, in the lobby, two burly men in suits blocked our path. Only they didn’t address her—they addressed me.
“Jaime Castillo? Security at the embassy in Tokyo. Please come with us. Your legal guardians have filed a missing persons report, and Miss Elisabeth Sinclair reported you might have been kidnapped by this woman.”
Nuria threw her arms up in a combat stance and asked me, “Do you want me to take them out?”
The largest of the security men reached into the inside pocket of his jacket.
I raised my hands in a pleading gesture.
“No, please, Nuria. Thanks, but let it go—I think I’ve got enough problems going on as it is. I’m sorry. I’m sure we’ll run into each other again, believe me, let it go.”
The least imposing one showed me a trash bag.
“Miss Sinclair left this here along with her belongings. Please come with us to the consulate to fill out the repatriation forms. Your flight departs in two hours.”
Queen Nuria let her exquisite porcelain chin drop. Her lips parted, but no air came in or out. Why did these things always happen to her? The security guys separated us, and I didn’t even have time to brush against her to say goodbye. Our only physical contact had been when I held her forehead while she was vomiting.
“I’m going on a European tour this summer,” she told me as security dragged me toward the emergency exit. “I’ll call you. I’ll get you front-row tickets.”
“Please do—I’d love that. I adore women’s wrestling.”
