Scissor Addiction

Raise your hand if you grew up watching Kevin von Erich wrestle.  Now raise your hand if you have a thing for scissors.  You know who you are: you pause the video when you see a thick pair of thighs circling an opponent and crushing away without mercy like one of those big smothering snakes.

Something about Kevin’s long, sinewy, relentless, punishing legs (always up to the challenge of wrapping themselves all the way around some victim’s body no matter how thick he is) has created a whole generation of scissor addicts I think.

Don’t beat yourself up if you’re a hopeless, incurable scissor junkie — blame the promoters, wrestlers, and magazine editors who planted this seed in your head, who sold you on the fantasy of bone-crushing Scissors of Death.  They found us a ripped young Texan, dressed him in little more than a speedo, and featured him week after week demonstrating his thigh strength by dominating other dudes between his legs (with the announcers in awe, telling us enthusiastically about his incredible leg power).  His thighs and hamstrings look like twisted steel when he flexes on the pressure.  How could anyone who grew up on these fantastic displays of leg power not have a scissor fetish??

They even kinked it up a bit more by telling us that Kevin practiced his scissors on bags of grain.  The magazines of the day would send a camera man out to the ranch to snap photos of intense young Kevin on the ground going at it, his rock-hard legs crushing an over-stuffed bag. Now that is just unfair — making us picture him flexing away all afternoon in the hot sun, getting sweaty with his thick legs clamping and relaxing repeatedly, trying to burst open the bags.  (I always wondered what his father thought when he saw all the busted bags and spilled grain all over the ranch.  Was old Fritz angry about the mess, proud of his son’s determination to form his body into a deadly weapon, or maybe curious about his son’s relentless obsession?)

I prefer boots on a wrestler, but some guys who like seeing the feet have told me that being shoeless adds to the allure of Kevin’s scissors.  Seeing his powerful feet locked together, his boldly exposed soles and toes flexing as he cranks on the pressure, seems to add to their enjoyment of the scene.

I guess this has to do with the shock of nudity — the striking image of bare flesh that is normally covered.  It also is exciting because it crosses a barrier of decency — we expect that athletes should wear appropriate footwear — yet this wild young country-boy throws caution to the wind and proudly gets it on bootless.

Body scissors play on elements of domination and helplessness, bondage, breath control, body contact, and muscle worship.  So it’s hard to watch pro wrestling for long and not develop some affinity for scissors and the grunting and groaning that result from them.

You may have fallen in love with scissors by watching Kevin (or some other leggy wrestler) apply them, or you may have been lucky enough to develop your appreciation first-hand when someone clamped his legs around your waist during a tussle and let you experience and be awed by his leg power.  (Is there any more effective way to experience someone else’s strength than enduring a crushing scissor?)

So you really can’t help it that you’re now an addict — it was force fed to you when you were most impressionable. You’ve had this monkey on your back (scissoring you around the neck) for years now, and it’s hard to break the habit.  You might as well get your fix on — sit back and enjoy these images of young Kevin dominating the competition with those thick, tree-trunk thighs.  Clearly, Kevin has conquered many men using his breath-taking scissors, including a lot of us in the audience.