“Look at that, look at it!” He leaned over, grinning, and showed her the digital picture on the screen.

“Yeah, that’s a great shot. Nice lighting.” She was distracted by the shouting that suddenly erupted from the crowd of spectators, so she barely saw the picture, though it looked fine to her.

“Wish I could do better, though. These’re all turnin out like crap. Damn ref’s in the way again. Hey, move! Ya fuckin idiot… Look at him, he won’t get out of the fuckin way.”

She turned her gaze to where his camera was pointed and saw that indeed the referee was a mass of black and white stripes that filled their view. Raising her own camera to her eye, she struggled to focus the lens but soon realized that the wrestlers had moved and were blurry once more.

“I can’t get a good one cause they won’t stop moving,” she growled, lowering her camera in defeat.

“Mine keep comin out blurry, though maybe my f-stop’s too low. But if it’s not that low, the lighting sucks.”

“What speed film you usin?”

“Uh, like six hundredish. No, wait it’s only two hundred!” He cracked up at that, laughing at his own clumsiness, and quickly thumbed the buttons on the panel so as to make some changes. “No wonder they were so fuckin blurry,” he muttered, finishing the adjustments and raising the camera once more.

“I still have to shoot with this crappy four hundred speed film,” she said darkly, tapping a finger on the black plastic. “Piece of shit camera, too, that’s another reason why I can’t shoot. Jesus, you see that? Wrestling is gay, look at that shit!” He nodded his agreement to her statements and the two laughed at the strange positions the wrestlers were getting themselves into.

“Yeah, sometimes people get shots of wrestling that just look wrong. I mean, you know, like the shots where someone’s got their hand in the wrong place.” She snorted and turned back to the fight where two medics had rushed onto the mat. One of the wrestlers had gotten a bloody nose, and the game had to be paused while the two sports doctors shoved a piece of tissue up the wrestler’s nose so that he could go back out onto the mat and fight some more.

“Hey man, look. They got girls in wrestling! You think they fight the guys?” She looked seriously intrigued, gazing at the opponents waiting to fight, but he only laughed.

“Shit, those aren’t girls, look at em!” He pointed a finger at one of them practicing on the sidelines.

“Hey, that’s rude. That’s mean, man, don’t say that. Look, they got boobs like­-” He cut her off mid-sentence.

“Man boobs, not real ones. Those are not girls.”

“Whatever, man.” She turned away from him, frowning at the fight.

“Look at this one, this shot’s awesome.”

She obliged, though she still felt anger radiating from her body. “Yeah, that’s cool. Look, they got the girls out fightin the guy! How come our team doesn’t have any girls on it?” She was lost to her imaginary world where girls could fight alongside guys without anyone saying anything about it.

At once, she was rudely jerked out of her fantasies by the coaches shouting at the players. The home team’s coach was angry, red-faced, shouting at the boy, who was obviously losing. “Get off your knees, damn it! Off your knees! Grab her hair! Reach under her, that’s it!”

The other coach seemed to be taking a lighter approach, possibly because his girl was winning. “It’s alright, Mel, take it easy, it’s not a race! You got im, Mel, you got im!”

“Rip his eyes out! Pull his guts out!” the boy mocked, and she laughed.

“They’re so into this,” she mused, pointing to the screaming coaches. “This game’s so violent, so primitive. Two guys fighting each other, I mean, come on!”

“Maybe even more violent than hockey… you remember that?”

“Yeah, I remember. They kept slammin each other into those Plexiglas walls, and bangin each other over the heads with their sticks. I kept feeling like they were gonna knock those barrier things over.”

“That was cool, though. But really hard to shoot. I kept wishin some dad of one of the kids would start yellin at the refs.”

“I still can’t believe my pictures of that got deleted, though.”

“It was my fuckin mom.”

There was a nervous pause and then, cautiously, she chanced posing a question. “You wanna get something to eat while we’re at this break?” She was trying to change the subject to something lighter.

“No, that’d make me fat. I’ve already had, oh, half a bag of chips today. That was my breakfast.” He gave her a sarcastic smile.

“Then go buy some fucking food! There’s a table right over there­­-”

“Fat!” he moaned, shaking his head.

“Jesus fucking Christ, you gotta stop.”

“Can you hand me my Coke? I’ve got a headache.”

She gritted her teeth in frustration. “It’s a Pepsi. And that’s because you haven’t eaten anything.”

“Whatever. Coke, Pepsi, all the same fuckin thing.”

“Hey, they’re starting again, let’s get closer.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright.”