THE UNSTOPPABLEJELLYROLL

JELLY ROLL FISTS a handful of loose skin beneath his black compression shirt and moves it from his hip over toward his belly, pulling it out of the way.

- By RYAN D'AGOSTINO

He takes my left hand and wedges it in there, planting it on his iliac crest, the top of the hip bone. I can feel the bone’s definition. He reaches down between my legs and claws the inside of my left thigh with his huge hand.

“I will 1,000 percent not hurt you—especially if you keep that neck stiff when you land so you don’t bang your head,” he says.

His tone is relaxed but also a little intense, like a dad coaching his kid to go off the diving board for the first time.

“You ready?”

Oh, yeah, definitely, I tell him, trying to sound extremely cool with the fact that he is about to body-slam me. To be fair, I volunteered to be body-slammed. I’m here to write about both body and soul, and a body slam seems like a good way to place my trust in both—in the newfound strength and power of his emerging physique, and in the goodness of his heart, which has always been there but which receded for more than a decade behind a tonnage of cocaine, prison time, self-hatred, and fat.

When you’re getting body-slammed, putting your hand on the body slammer’s hip bone is important, because in the choreographed mechanics of professional wrestling, you assist the body slammer by pushing off his hip bone as he’s heaving you up over his head, making it easier for him to get you up in the air before dropping you. The hip bone move is a little trick that happens quickly and sneakily—you can also push off from the guy’s quad, but the hip is better because you can really press on it, almost like pushing off the ground for a handspring.