Sometimes I miss the Lucha

By 'lucha' I don't so much mean 'lucha libre', translated from the Spanish as 'free fight', as I mean, well, 'fight'. On and off for about a year or so, some of my friends and I played at being wrestlers. The goal was not to hurt each other ala the 'backyard' wrestlers of that era but just to goof around, have fun and have it look like professional wrestling.

This is where the character of 'El Hombre de Silla' was born, slowly and painfully in performance. His name changed a bit here and there but not as much as the accent I thought he needed at first. I have NO clue what I was going for there. He slowly grew into That Guy, the cheerful good natured fellow that tried to fight fair and shook hands with his opponent. He was a nice guy, a hero. In fact, in the last event we performed, that's really all El Hombre gets to do. He has no grand storyline, no mountains to climb; he fights a 'jobber' (generic) wrestler, wins, shakes hands and waves a lot. He's probably smiling but you can't see his mouth throught the mask.

At the time, I developed the theory that El Hombre had three 'personas'; not so much personalities but ways of acting in public. The 'in-ring' El Hombre was the character as already discussed. The 'movie' El Hombre (which, despite my desires, has yet to be developed) is a strange non-super super-hero in the mold of El Santo. The 'real' El Hombre is the character that has appeared in a text story or two. He has no life to speak of, he's paranoid, he fights crime (cheerfully, like his ring character) and does nothing but fight. He knows nothing else. He also never takes his mask off. Never? Well, hardly ever.

I miss the performing aspect of 'being' El Hombre. I miss developing that version of the character. To be honest, I mostly miss hitting guys with a chest chop. It can be very carthartic.