Lise Haines - Girl in the Arena

GIRL IN THE ARENA

They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES, The Virgin Suicides

PROLOGUE

A HISTORY OF THE GLADIATOR SPORTS ASSOCIATION

In 1969 there was a young widower named Joseph Byers who lost his only child, Ned, to the war in Vietnam, when Ned tried to dodge the draft. Ned was a serious asthmatic whose condition became aggravated by any small contact with cats. So he borrowed nine of his friends tabbies and minxes and Persians and drove around in his VW Bug with the windows rolled up. The cats laced in and out of Neds lap, moved along the back of his seat, nudged the stick shift, and tried to rub against the foot pedals. The plan was to drive around the city and pull right up to an emergency room, and then 4-F all the way. He just couldnt find a hospital in time. The coroner said that Ned miscalculated the number of cats he needed in the car.

Joe Byers introduced neo-gladiator sport into American life to involve teenage boys in a new form of athletic competition that would be exhilarating while releasing aggressive energy in a safe, clean way. He hoped there would be less need for war over time, especially for useless, savage wars like Vietnam.

Byers purchased plastic shields at a toy store. He whipped up balsa wood swords on his band saw and lathe, and tipped them in soft rubber. He bought swim goggles to protect their eyes, the kind of shin guards Ned had used to play soccer, bicycle gloves and football helmets, and a few catchers face guards. Then Byers cleared out his backyard, built a wooden platform, put sand down on top of this, and coaxed his sons friends over to his house with the offer of a barbeque, television sports, and a chance to honor the dead. Despite some awkward moments and stupid jokes, the boys took to the sport, and soon began inviting more friends over. Weapons were modified so no one would get seriously injured, but its possible this concept put him in league with the scientists who worked on atomic energy and didnt foresee Hiroshima, Mon Amour.

Joe Byers had a cousin, Craig Winsome, who started his own neo-gladiator chapter. He was a tool manufacturer, and came up with a retractable sword and spearhead that made it appear that ones guts were being sliced or impaled, a small reservoir of artificial blood in the weapons breaking on contact. Craigs wife, Anna, wrote out the Gladiator Rules as Craig dictated them. Later she penned the original 28 Bylaws, which were expanded to 128 and governed the social mores, attitudes, and conduct of the gladiator wives and eventually the sons and daughters as well. By the early 1980s there were 153 chapters of the Gladiator Sports Enthusiasts, or GSEs, as the group was then called, made up primarily of older teenage boys with some adult branches, and one early effort comprised of a group of women who called themselves the Vestals.

An article in Newsweek claimed that some chapters were working with weapons that didnt retract but ran a body through. Those accounts went largely unconfirmed, but the GSEs went underground, which meant the organization quickly swelled in numbers.

Then four things happened: Chuck Palahniuk, 9/11, the war in Iraq, and a self-help book selling in the millions called The Mystery. Drawing on the self-actualizing techniques of The Mystery, Caesars Inc., a holding company located in New York City (not to be mistaken with the Las Vegas group), recognized an opportunity. Caesars hired a handful of young Ivy League graduates, offering wild salaries capped by travel, BMW, and hedge fund benefits to join a newly formed NoHo think tank called the Senate. Since Byers and Winsome had never incorporated, and held, in fact, no legal or official paper on their organization, Caesars first move was to incorporate the GSAthe Gladiator Sports Association.

The GSA offered cash prizes to the Neo-Glads who fought in their leagues. The first sixty-thousand-seat amphitheater was targeted for Chicago, beating out Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Atlanta.

America got to know Caesars spokesperson, a woman with a steely authority who went by the name Sappho. The media focused on her top-model appearance and her Armani suits. She stated that the GSA would provide a new form of sport slash entertainment slash battle that would capture the American ethos on a scale equal to the NFL. She said Caesars would deliver one hundred able-bodied fighters for the first event.

A reality television program, The Competitors, was aired to find those one hundred neo-gladiators. The competitors were required to don original costumes, which would in time set off a fierce battle in a fashion industry grown weary of military wear. And though some said Jean Paul Gaultiers clothes were too flamboyant for actual combat situations, he became the darling of the sport. The Glads, as the competitors came to be known, lived together for eight weeks on an abandoned military base in California, where they attended Ludus Magnus Americus, the first neo-Glad school.

The GSA did not restrict women from competition per se, any more than the NFL doesit was all about meeting certain physical standards. But some said that the sport was hobbled by old-school thinking, the inherent belief that men were by nature more fit to compete, more ready to kill. The womens leagues were small and, in general, poorly funded. And groups across the country battled over the idea of including fighting women. The Gladiator Wives Association didnt help much. And though they received a lot of flak for their traditionalist views, they held to the notion that a Glad wife had a vital role to play in their culture.

In one episode, the men, and some womenthe Gladswere taken by bus to visit the amphitheater as it neared completion, which was a pretty sappy show with plenty of shots of the Roman Colosseum and Lake Michigan at sunset. During the course of the filming there were several injuries and one accidental death, and some missed their lovers or families so badly they dropped out. A few people hooked up. One marriage occurred.

Caesars paid television stations to air Ridley Scotts Gladiator so they could piggyback their ads around car and beer spots and Russell Crowes face. The GSA television ads were Nike-esque, beautifully muscled in all respects, and print ads ran in popular fashion and mens magazines. Single images were reproduced on colossal posters throughout airports and malls. And yes, even Times Square was lit up with gladiator sport. During that first competition there were no fights to the death, and though lions and other large cats were added to the excitement, they were declawed, defanged, desensitized. Fighters were carefully matched. Dwarfs fought dwarfs, men with nets and tridents fought men with nets and tridents, light men light, heavy men heavy. Injuries were considered no worse than the aftermath of a rousing hockey game or a soccer match in Brazil. By all accounts the GSA had pulled off an elegant feat.

The GSA purchased the copyrights to the official Gladiator Rules and the 128 Gladiator Bylaws, and Byers and Winsome became romantic icons, like rotary dial phones. After three years Caesars Inc. had a large-scale success on their hands that would soon be echoed in their gaming division, as well as the licensing of hats, swords, T-shirts, and toys.

About this time, a man on death row in Texas, Victor Shroedinger, was scheduled to die in the electric chair but he had a profound fear of electricity. Hoping to die with dignity for his familys sake, he petitioned the governor. The governor was an ex-professional body builder who never missed a GSA game on television. Shroedinger asked to fight any man or beast with nothing more than a rubber knife. The governor thought the case had merit. Being a highly persuasive man, he managed to get his own senate to pass a small amendment tacked on (in 6-pt. type) to another bill.