Never knew that Laurie Anderson was a running partner–and wrestling partner–of Andy Kaufman back in the day, until I read this passage from a Believer Q&A conducted by Amanda Stern:

“BLVR:

Did he talk about why he was doing what he was doing?

Laurie Anderson:

He didn’t have to. The hardest part was wrestling with him, because he would be doing these club shows where he was very abusive to women, very abusive: ‘Those broads think they are… Who do they think they are?’ You know, ‘I will not respect a woman until she comes up here and wrestles me down,’ and that was my cue to come up there and wrestle him down, and I’m like on my third whiskey—I don’t usually drink, but trying to get up the nerve—and he would fight, and he wasn’t pretending. He’d twist my arm.

BLVR:

Did you ever get really hurt?

Laurie Anderson:

No, he wouldn’t break my arm, but he would really twist it around, and I fought back. It was definitely not pretend-wrestling. He wasn’t acting, and neither was I, but at the same time it was a game. There are plenty of ways you can play the game of fighting and really seem to be fighting without going for the jugular. Anyway, he was just curious about taboos. To be playing bongos and sobbing—I mean, everyone in the club is looking at that and going, ‘My god, this is so embarrassing.’ You’re not supposed to cry while you sing or play. That’s our job as the audience. We get to have a tear roll quietly down our cheeks, but not the performer.”

______________________

Andy was Intergender Wrestling Champion, back when that title still meant something:

Laurie looked at the viral nature of language in 1984, before all communication went in that direction: