As the third hour of rehearsal began, The Toe and The Knee scuttled across the grass in matching flesh-colored bodysuits, coming to rest behind Purrrsonal Trainer.
The duo admired Purrrsonal Trainer’s costume: fuzzy ears, rainbow sweatbands and striped fur pelt. But one thing was a little off.
“Let‘s fix your butthole,” said The Toe, repositioning a saucer-sized circle of pink felt.
The comment might seem inappropriate elsewhere, but at this, the third and final rehearsal for Gunz of Steel, an arm-wrestling competition for women and nonbinary people, no one raised an eyebrow — or the assortment of mustaches and unibrows many had affixed to their faces.
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The competition began when Erin Stellmon, 49, a former women’s arm wrestling champion from Brooklyn, New York, moved here to teach and make art in 2018. She soon met Amanda Dice, 52, a fellow educator, who had helped choreograph Baltimore’s delightfully weird Fluid Movement water ballet shows.
Like two arms clasped across a table, Stellmon and Dice united in a common purpose. Since then, the twice yearly shows, which feature fictional characters engaged in real arm wrestling, have grown increasingly elaborate.
Stellmon coaches participants in the finer points of the sport and presides over matches as her black-horned alter ego, Atomica. Dice choreographs the bits of dance and theater threaded throughout the event and emcees the show in the character of sleazy wellness guru Mary Louise Miller, A.K.A. M.L.M.
A dozen costumed participants, many joined by a costumed manager, will lock arms across Stellmon’s custom-built arm wrestling table Saturday evening for four rounds of competition. The event is held at the Clifton Pleasure Club, a private membership organization which feels sort of like a queer Cheers plunked in the middle of a residential neighborhood. (The 175-year-old building is the city’s last remaining one-room schoolhouse and has housed a social club for the past 115 years.)
Each Gunz of Steel competition raises about $2,000-3,000 in donations for charities that focus on women or LGBQTIA+ people. The proceeds from Saturday’s event are slated to go to Baltimore Safe Haven, the city’s only trans-led drop-in center.
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Most participants have never arm wrestled competitively before, but arrive looking to have fun and meet “like-minded weirdos,” Stellmon says.
“I don’t care about the arm-wrestling. I like the campy-kitschiness,” said Jossie Dowling, 36, of Charles Village. “It‘s an older woman queer crowd, which is what I’m drawn to.”
“It‘s how I made friends here,” said Katie Carey, 40, an archivist who moved to Baltimore in 2021. Her first character was Muff McGruff, the bitter ex-wife of McGruff the crime dog.
On Saturday, she’ll play the Pharma Rep, who hawks a drug with side effects that include “loss of earlobe tone, excessive farts, hygienic disassociation and radioactive discharge.”
“My inner child is satisfied,” said Carey, likening the creative process to making movies with her sisters as a kid.
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Planning for this show began three weeks ago as participants brainstormed ideas for characters over beers and tacos at a wooden picnic table in the club’s honeysuckle-draped yard.
A.J. Janes, 35, who has previously appeared as a taco named Carnage Asada and a Broadway wannabe plumber called Pipe Dreams, was kicking around plans for a cow suit.
Massage therapist Sarah Strahorn, 49, discussed reprising her semi-villainous character, The Toe, short for “camel toe.” Her friend, Asa Keiswetter, 44, plays her sidekick and long-lost twin brother, The Knee, as they lead the audience in chants of “Toe-Knee, Toe-Knee.”
By Thursday’s rehearsal, the ideas had coalesced into show. There was a food theme and an animal theme and a subplot involving the paternity of a mustachioed Cabbage Patch Kid. Radioactive Jell-O shots, fake prescription pads, and individually wrapped slices of American cheese would be thrown to the audience.
“I’m going to need the cheese back, by the way,” the Gym Rat, A.K.A. Rachel Rosenberg, 30, of Charles Village, said at the rehearsal.
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Janes was Beef Cakes, a bull inspired by the story of Ferdinand. The Toe and The Knee passed an inflatable doll back and forth while spinning languidly to music from “Dirty Dancing.” Other characters include Bad Bird, Big Bird’s Jungian shadow, Pepper Ann Prepper, doomsday prepper, and Miss Terry Meat, a lunch lady with dubious standards.
Strahorn’s partner, Katherine Wunderink, 46, a power lifter, will appear as Horse Girl, a rider of toy ponies. “She’s gonna win,” said Strahorn, rolling up Wunderink‘s sleeves to reveal her bulging biceps.
Kate Dunn, who was celebrating her 41st birthday, planned to reprise her character, Third Degree Tear-or, who arrives at the wrestling competition in labor, clad in a hospital gown and mesh medical underwear, an epidural taped to her back. She twirls a crocheted placenta attached to a doll at one point in a show.
“The audience really connects with it,” said Dunn, a nurse, explaining that they had first thought up the act after giving birth.
Saturday’s event will happen rain or shine, organizers said. A $15 donation is suggested, as is bringing a folding chair. For those who can’t make it, perhaps due to that other sporting event scheduled for Saturday, there are regular queer arm wrestling events in Philadelphia. The fall Gunz of Steel show is slated to be held at The Current Space in October.
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Rosenberg, the Gym Rat, said she was drawn back each time to the “quirky Baltimoreness” of the event. “It‘s one of the things that makes Baltimore a place I love,” she said.
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