Gay wrestling near me

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Princey, a wrestler who performs under the name "Totally Plastic" Pha'Nesse and did drag under drag mother and "Canada's Drag Race" winner Priyanka on the HBO series "We're Here," which is currently streaming on Max.

The conversation was edited for length and clarity. I grew up the youngest of two older brothers. Wrestling has always been around in my life, ever since I was a baby. I remember having the action figures, the video games, and everything — I was just obsessed. I kind of lost interest a little bit growing up, and then I got back into it when I was 18 or so.

My mom passed away when I was 23 and I was just kind of depressed, sad, and I was flipping through the channels and saw that "Monday Night RAW" was on. I was with some friends watching it and something just clicked in my head: "Why aren't I doing this?

Everything You Wanted to Know About Gay Wrestling

Growing up in Murfreesboro, being this out, proud gay Black man was kind of just frowned upon. To protect myself from getting insulted or attacked, I kind of just covered it up. And Princey was just kind of this quiet individual who never really went around too much, and just did my own little thing. When I first started out in wrestling, I was so quiet and timid.

And they were like, "You can't do that here. You're supposed to be yourself times a hundred. I near got to shake off everything that I held in. I came across the Crux Wrestling training center with my coach Brian Maxwell and Kerry Awful, and came to a class in Maxwell's backyard. I was just rolling around and doing stuff and they were like, "You're a natural.

I just kept coming back and learning things every weekend. That was the main thing taking my mind off everything going on in gay past with my mom. I had this safe place where I could just be myself. I went to a show at the TWE arena and met everybody, and just felt an instant connection.

I was looking at their social media, and the first thing — which is so rare in the South — was them being on the mic saying that TWE does not condone homophobia or racism. I was like, "I have to be here. I'll work my butt off to be here. When I was growing up and wrestling, I was so captivated by the women wrestlers.

I wrestling felt like they were amazing, and they could tell these amazing stories in probably less than five minutes. I just saw so much pageantry there, and so much charisma, and I was like, "This is kind of drag. I thought my wrestling name was going to be "Princey," but my coaches were like, "Nah, not really.