The Santamarian Matador by William Matheson
Why
do people go to Saint Mary's University[1]?
Education is almost secondary - most people who resign themselves to the
existence have an ulterior motive. Mine was to meet girls, but I was soon
cured of the expectation of that outcome. I knew that I had gone to the
wrong school the moment I saw a blonde-haired lettered athlete walk into
the Gorsebrook[2],
causing the four girls that talked me into buying drinks for them to shout,
“Hockey bum! Hockey bum!” and relocate to his immediate vicinity. Things
like this were happening to me a lot, and I soon realized that to actually
get to first base with a girl, you needed to be a varsity athlete. This
was a troubling realization, for I had trouble getting to first base in
tee ball.
One gray September day when I felt like it would take a miracle to get
girls to like me, I saw it: The recruitment poster for the Saint Mary's
Bullfighting Huskies. “Fun! Friends! Excitement! Free Gatorade!” Tryouts
were in two days, on the foozeball turf. It looked like something I could
do, so I showed up.
The air was really cold that morning. You could see your breath, the bull's
breath, and the bull's gas emissions. I looked around and scoped out my
competition. It didn't look good for me in the beginning - some of these
guys had come up from the legendary high school teams in Spain and Portugal.
The coach had us do some drills and basic exercises for most of the morning,
and in the afternoon we had some practice matches against the young steers.
Even to the late afternoon, even with my lack of athleticism, somehow I
had managed to hang in with my theatrics. I would try to play the comic
relief card – I'd swing my tryout baton ineffectually at the bull and just
have it run over my legs so I could bruise and bleed a little. I let them
see that I could be a good “jobber,” a fighter who exists to make the bulls
look good. I showed them that I was willing to take some pain so that I
could be associated with varsity athletics and have the pleasure of kissing
a girl someday.
There were to be thirty spots on the squad, and at five-thirty in the evening,
as the sun was dropping behind Loyola Residence leaving us in an enormous
cold shadow, there were thirty-one of us left. I had the distinct feeling
that I was the thirty-first as we prepared for the final exercise, a tag-team
bout that pitted a man named Eduardo Dominguez and myself against Gate
of Horn and Ikileue. Eduardo and Gate of Horn were picked to start the
match. Eduardo got in some key fur-dishevelling baton hits on Gate of Horn
but Gate of Horn came right back and kicked him in the ribs. Meanwhile,
Ikileue I guess didn't know that he was supposed to hang onto the tag rope,
because he came bounding along on the outside of the paddock and head-butted
me up in the air by the seat of my pants. I landed on my back twenty feet
away from my corner, and I wasn't available when Eduardo needed to tag
out. I tried to scramble back on my good arm and good leg, but by the time
I got back to the turnbuckles, Gate of Horn had plunged one of his horns
up Eduardo's anus, rupturing his intestines.
The match was stopped with a Gate of Horn and Ikileue victory by intestinal
decompression, and Eduardo had to be taken to the hospital. While the paramedics
were seeing to him, the coach told the other thirty of us to stand in a
line and I watched with envy as Eduardo's girlfriend accompanied him onto
the ambulance. The coach walked slowly past us, saying a word or two to
some of the candidates. He stopped in front of me. “You're in,” he told
me. Some of the people thought that I had back-doored my way onto the team,
but I was determined to prove to them that I belonged there with the best
of them, so when it came time for us to plan our first pay-per-view event,
I volunteered to face Bolofor in the opening match.
Bolofor's grandsire was Goromatic, one of Nova Scotia's most famous bulls.
Goromatic earned his name one day in Sydney Mines when he vivisected a
mainlander with his horns during Cape Breton's famous "Running of the Bulls,"
much to the cheering of the crowd. Bolofor was being groomed to be his
successor. He was given the best paddock, the best grain, and the greenest
sections of the Halifax Commons to graze on in the spring. (Rookies such
as myself were given the task of meeting the “pick up after your pet” by-laws.)
Sport veterinarians came by twice a day to monitor his fitness and performance.
A radio in his stable was kept on and tuned to 780 KIXX Country, for the
purpose of mounting his aggression. The expense was laid out in the hopes
that someday bull raisers from around the world would pay through their
nose rings to have their calves sired by Bolofor. In the meantime, short
“squash” matches were put together to raise his profile.
In the weeks before the pay-per-view, I let my limbs heal up and explored
other interests, such as probate law. Meanwhile, in performing my basic
duties as a team member, I got to be reacquainted with a truly fantastic
woman whom I had met just after the tryouts on a transit bus. Her name
was Christine, and she bred and raised some of the best fighting bulls
in Eastern Canada from her small ranch on the twenty-second floor of Loyola.
The students who lived on the twenty-first floor sometimes complained about
the noise from above (especially when the female animals were in heat),
and they weren't too fond of the smell of manure, but Christine made peace
with them in her usual way by taking her neighbours up to meet "Kinley
The Kirk," one of the more personable specimens of her gentle beasts. These
animals, in any other hands, were capable of inflicting serious damage
to homo sapiens, but because Christine was in charge, we all knew
that Kinley would be a gentle giant, and Christine's guests were enjoying
themselves so much that they never came back downstairs again - their PlayStation
2's being left unused in their single rooms, the DVD drives being rendered
inoperable due to the airborne hayseed.
Christine and I were sort of friendly rivals the once or twice a week that
I got to talk to her, since she was a bull-raiser, and I a fighter, even
though we were both working under the same umbrella. Christine's reputation
was so high that she was hired as a substitute caretaker for Bolofor, and
she was so fond of him that she treated him like one of her own bulls from
back in her home in Country Harbour North. I sometimes wondered what she
felt about me taking on Bolofor. As rivals, I liked to pretend that there
was some kind of romantic tension building up between us, but I think Christine
thought we were just friends. Nevertheless, I really liked her, and would
gladly have knelt down to worship her greatness. I found her attractive
in a lot of different ways, notably the way she euthanasied her older or
unwanted animals by launching them out of her outside window to gently
glide down onto the foot track around Huskies Stadium. "Moo," they'd say
as they traveled on their downward route, just before becoming a fierce
explosion of bovine organs. And then the nearby Dockside Dining Hall would
be having a two-for-one special on hamburgers.
I never ate there much myself, though, since the food wasn't very cheap,
and everything was sold à la carte. I didn't like to think
about what the people in residence were doing to cope with that. Some would
purchase "declining balance meal 'plans,'" in which they would deposit
a few thousand dollars, eat nothing but one cold ham & cheese sandwich
a day for three weeks, then find that their cards had run out, at which
point they would starve to death. This was becoming a larger problem, as
the University soon found that dead students didn't usually make their
second semester tuition payments on time.
One day I came up to visit Christine, who was cleaning out her stalls at
the time and sending the manure and soiled bedding straw down the laundry
chute. It was the day before the pay-per-view and I was hoping to have
a few more interactions with her before the match in case something happened
to me. As I darkened her gate, she turned around and said, "Oh, it's you.
Come in. You can keep your shoes on." I was in Heaven. I would have helped
her clear the stalls, but I had just come back from practice, so I was
still wearing my matador's uniform. For those of you who have never seen
one, it's actually a pretty simple affair. I wear black Guysborough-county
style wading rocket boots, a Kurt Angle t-shirt that says "I'll make you
TAP out!" some Christmas lights on my arms, a red Darth Maul-style double-ended
lightsaber, a Hogwart's backpack containing a car battery to power the
previous two items, safety goggles, and a special cheddar cheese wedge
hat. I knew I was looking sexy, but I kept to myself because I didn't want
to look like I was coming on too strong.
By now, I was worried that Christine would be upset with me, since I was
scheduled to fight and perhaps injure one of her favourite bulls - it was
an "either him or me" situation, and if I didn't hurt the bull, he would
seriously hurt me. I didn't like having to put her in such a position so
early in our relationship, and I was hoping she wouldn't shed any tears
over me. As it turned out, though, I didn't have any need to worry. The
next words out of her mouth were, "I value Bolofor and my own bulls more
than anything else in the whole world. If you bend even a single one of
his hairs, I am going to introduce you to Kinley." So it was looking as
if a brutal loss to Bolofor might be in order for me since I wanted to
win Christine's love - girls go crazy for injury and death, as evidenced
by the success of the movie Titanic, which some women I knew went
to see more than sixteen times. It's really tragic that guys who are going
to be around for a few dozen more years are no good at satisfying female
desires compared to the dead and dying, but there's no sense complaining
about what you can't change, is there?
You know that feeling you get when you know it's your last day on Earth?
As it happened, when I got up that day I decided not to attend my 8:30am
English Composition class, as I felt that knowing what a coordinating conjunction
was wouldn't assist me with facing my possible death and certain dismemberment.
I mean, c'mon, I'm an athlete! What does this shit have to do with me?
I've got to work hard in my training if I want to make the AUS All-Atlantic
Matador List and win the heart of Christine! Oh wait, I might get killed
today. Forget I said anything.
I really had to force myself out onto the turf that afternoon. But when
I heard the cheering of the crowds in the stands, I knew that I was doing
the right thing. Bolofor was introduced at the end zone closest to the
Alumni Arena; I was at the 50-yard line with nothing but my uniform and
my lightsaber. Even as Christine's handlers held him back behind his gate,
Bolofor was looking straight at me. He must have hated cheddar cheese.
I took a deep breath. My mission was to get levelled before laying a finger
on Bolofor, yet still making him look good. Anything for the lovely Christine.
The gate swung open, and with a fury of hoof beats Bolofor was upon me.
I ducked around his first attack, but still left myself open for a second.
He ran at me again, this time slashing me in the abdomen with his right
horn. My intestines started to spill into my wading boots. But the match
was far from over.
I turned myself back towards Bolofor and clicked my heels together, activating
the rockets in my boots. In midair, I activated my lightsaber and swung
it a couple of times, thrilling the crowd. But I timed the boost such that
it wouldn't get me far enough to actually strike at the bull, and so I
fell short of my target, landing prostrate directly in front of him. This
time he chose to trample me, crushing several of my ribs and snapping the
bones in my legs.
It was about then that the finality of my experience was sinking in on
me. I turned my head and saw Christine in the stands, cheering on her beloved
bull. With a smile, I thought back to the first time I saw her...
I was seated on the bus, wearing my matador's uniform. This was just after
I made the team, so I didn't have the Kurt Angle t-shirt yet - I wore something
from GAP Kids instead.
Suddenly, the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen walked on the bus.
She had long, ankle-length black hair, she looked about ninety pounds,
and she was six foot four. I dearly hoped that she would sit next to me,
and she did!
"Hi!"
"Hi."
"What's your name?" I asked, because it was the standard thing to ask of
anyone new who sat next to you on the Metro Transit busses.
"Christine."
"You smell like cow manure. Do you live on a farm?"
"Yes, I raise fighting bulls."
"And I'm one who fights the bulls! What a coincidence!"
"Oh, I guessed that. That's an interesting uniform."
"Really?"
A blow to my shoulder, shattering the bones, brought me painfully back
into reality. I opened my eyes to look upon Christine one last time as
Bolofor came back for his finishing move, which was to separate my right
arm from my torso. The amputation was quite painful, but I think I got
a glimpse of Christine half-smiling at me as my arm spun through the air.
It was an unimaginable agony, but dealing in the realm of modern gender
relations where female affection for men (or maybe just for me) is so rare,
it was worth getting injured just to get one little sympathetic or kind
emotional response from Christine. Lying here in the hospital in the bed
next to Eduardo, I'm even getting emotionally greedy. I'm still waiting
for her get-well card, but I'm thinking it would be even more fantastic
if she came to visit me in person, so I could see her sympathy for me upon
her gentle face. There's an orderly here who keeps saying that I'm hot,
but she only raises swimming pigs, and you can see as well as I can that
bullfighting and Christine are my true callings.