Living the Gimmick

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “She’s smart,” he suggested, and we both laughed. I looked back out at the ring just in time to see Shawna perform a flying cross body from the top rope. She remained in the air for what seemed like many seconds, mocking gravity, before landing on Summer. Born to be a pro wrestler. The referee counted to three. The crowd unleashed a hurricane of cheers, and I joined them.

  When my match came, instead of posing a la Mike Maple, I whipped my head around and let my long hair fly while flashing the universal two-finger-and-thumb-raised sign for heavy metal. The crowd ate it up, and I was pleased at how easy it had been for me to shed one skin and adopt another. But a simple nervousness kept surfacing; there was something else different about me, something with no relation to my new persona. While the crowd’s cheers crashed on my ears like a slow predictable tide, Shawna’s laughter ruled my mind. I replayed our interaction in my head and, while covering one of our opponents for a three-count, came to the conclusion she was someone full of surprises. The referee raised my hand in victory.

  She is a person who will shelter me from myself.

  My original conclusion would certainly prove correct, which would in turn doom any hope of my being sheltered from anything.

  After the show we retired to a Motel 6 about two miles away, located thirty yards from the entrance to the interstate. Mark had insisted on paying us at the hotel, and Hal had assured me that it wasn’t all a ploy to slip out on us. “Mark wouldn’t leave without paying,” Hal said. “He enjoys it too much,” he added, then smiled and refused to explain any more.

  With the exception of Richie and Allah, who had been paid in advance, all the wrestlers had to go into Mark’s room to get paid. Shawna and Summer went in together and came out quickly. Then Hal entered. A few minutes went by. There came some shouting from inside the room. Then a crash like a lamp had been thrown to the floor. I started for the door but Jimmy placed a restraining hand on my shoulder. When I asked him what the hell was going on, he just smiled and shrugged. “You’ll find out soon enough,” he said.

  When Hal emerged five minutes later, an envelope was in his hand and a bemused grin adorned his face. “You’re up, Mick,” He said and clapped me on the back.

  I stepped hesitantly through the open door. Mark, clad only in a pair of green skivvies, was placing the lamp back on the dresser. “Hi, Mark,” I announced.

  “Oh!” He turned to face me with wide frightened eyes that mirrored my own nervousness. “Close the door,” he said, gesturing restlessly with his hands. “You came for the money, right?” he said with the swiftness a host offers a guest a drink. I nodded.

  “Well, I don’t have it!” he snapped. I frowned. He sank to his knees. “I’m sorry,” he said. I took a few steps toward him, scanning the room for his briefcase.

  “What do you mean you don’t have it?” I asked in bewilderment.

  “I don’t have it!” he huffed again. Then his voice dropped to a husky whisper, “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”

  I looked down at him. A small pool of sweat was collecting in the bald spot at the center of his scalp. Then my eyes fell to his skivvies. They were stretched with an erection.

  He enjoys it too much, Hal had said. I felt a little ill. Did this freak want me to actually hurt him? Or just threaten to do so? I scanned his body for any possible wounds that Hal might’ve inflicted. There didn’t appear to be any. He whimpered, groveling at my feet, and I snapped into my role.

  “I’m gonna kick your bitchy little ass, punk!” I roared. He sobbed.

  “No, sir!” he cried. “Please! Don’t!”

  Now what? “I’m gonna shove my foot up your ass and make you bleed!” I roared again. He clutched my calf. I caught sight of myself in the mirror and the minor tremor of excitement I felt made me look away quickly. A frantic whisper came from below. “What?” I addressed Mark’s scalp. He didn’t respond. I cursed softly, then bellowed: “What did you say ya little punk?”

  “The lamp,” he urged sharply.

  I grabbed the lamp, noting that the lightbulb had been conveniently removed. “I’m gonna slam this over your fuckin’ head if you don’t give me what I came for!” I shouted, then immediately hurled it across the room. Mark gasped as the lamp slammed into the wall, then sighed comfortably when it sunk to the ground unbroken.

  “Okay, okay,” he nodded eagerly. He scampered to the bed and pulled a fifty dollar bill from between the mattresses. “Here.” He thrust the bill out with the same disdainful air that Merv had given me with the extra fifty dollars. I took the bill, pocketed it, then stalked wordlessly to the door. When I looked back, Mark was already picking up the lamp and carrying it back to the small table. I wondered if he’d even bother to plug it in.

  Much later that night, Jimmy, Shawna, and I were the remains of a drunken party in the room Jimmy and I were sharing. Jimmy was pontificating for what must’ve been the tenth time on the dark psychological deviancies that drove Mark to his bizarre method of paying people who wrestled for him. I cut him off with a belch. “Guy’s a freakazoid,” I said. “He likes to be threatened by big muscular guys.”

  “Not really threatened,” Jimmy corrected. “He likes the illusion of the threat itself. It enables him to indulge his desire to be dominated while still permitting him to enjoy it in the absence of any real threat.”

  “So, basically, you guys are serving as his dominatrixes as well as wrestling for him.” Shawna chuckled. “He oughta pay you extra.”

  Jimmy spent a few more minutes delving into the psychological implications of role-playing, be it conducted in “the process of what we knew as everyday life” or “through fantasies forbidden by societal norms.” Finally, having made a closing point of some kind, he staggered over to his bed and passed out. Shawna and I stared at one another across the crumpled beer cans overrunning the table. We began going over our personal histories in a revealing, somewhat desperate manner—two people drunk and getting to know each other for the first time. I learned that she had been raised by a foster family after her real parents abandoned her. The foster family consisted of an alcoholic mother and a father who gambled. She had an older brother, whom she loved very much. He protected her from bullies at school (eager to make fun of the fact that she had no “real parents”). “ ‘I’m her real brother,’ Billy would tell them,” she said proudly. “Then he’d say, ‘And if you don’t stop teasing my real sister, I’ll kick your real ass.’”

  Billy had died the summer after his high school graduation while diving off a bridge above a reservoir. The water level had been low and he had cracked his head open against a rock jutting up from the bottom.

  “I’m sorry,” I said after she told me the story in a quiet monotone.

  “He was a daredevil.” She brushed her hair out of her eyes and smiled. “Had a lot of energy. We used to have pro wrestling matches in our backyard.”

  “So that’s where you learned to take bumps,” I said.

  “More or less,” she answered.

  “Is that what made you want to become a wrestler?”

  “You mean is that when I realized I wanted to be one?”

  “I’m not talking about a realization necessarily,” I explained. “I’m talking about why. Like are you trying to keep those years intact through being a pro wrestler?”

  “That’s a strange question,” she said. “Are you drunk or something?”

  “Yeah. But I ask strange questions when I’m sober, too.”

  “You do ask some strange questions,” she repeated, laughing. “You know that?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. Then I reached across the table and took her hand. This spurred her on to further hilarity.

  “Uh-oh,” she eased her hand away. “Time for me to go.”

  “Why?” I asked, giving what I hoped was a nonthreatening smile. “Things are just getting interesting.”

  “I’m not big on following rules, but I do have one I never break,” she
said. “I never get involved with pro wrestlers.”

  “Never?” I repeated with teasing disbelief.

  “Never,” she stated. “They have too many issues. And the ones who are grown up are already married.”

  “Marriage probably wouldn’t stop most of them.”

  “It stops me.”

  “You think I don’t want to grow up?” I demanded.

  “I know you just met me tonight and already want to sleep with me,” she said. “I know you’re a pro wrestler,” she added, as if this cemented my immaturity.

  “So what?” I cried. “You’re a pro wrestler too.”

  “So maybe you’re right,” she said, her voice slipping into a tired slur. “Maybe I am trying to keep something in my past intact. Jesus, you should come out with a psychiatrist gimmick. Can see it now . . . ‘Doctor Freud.’”

  Jimmy’s snoring was cut off as he stirred on the bed and mumbled something unintelligible. Then he snorted and started up again like a dying motor coaxed back to life.

  “Well, there you go,” I announced with confused triumph. “And I don’t want to sleep with you,” I continued sulkily.

  “Oh no?”

  “We could just go to bed and hold each other.” “Oh God,” she moaned, rising to her feet. “Good night, Mick.”

  I took her hand and traced the gentle ridges of her hand leading up into her forearm dotted with small white hairs.

  “What the hell are you looking at?” she snapped, yanking her hand from my grasp.

  “I’m memorizing you.” I smiled at the frown just above her gently sloping shoulders. “I’m an artist,” I said. The statement took us both by surprise. The last time I had attempted to draw had been that night after Shane gave me a lesson in gimmicks. Since then I had pushed the possibility of drawing far from my mind, telling myself that I was too busy wrestling and striving to gain more muscle for Muscular Mike Maple.

  Shawna was taking a few steps back, arms wrapped around herself. “An artist, huh?” she stated suspiciously. “What do you draw?”

  “Nothing,” I admitted.

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, I’d be a lousy subject.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Sweet dreams, Mick,” she replied as she opened the door.

  “I didn’t mean it like that—” I began, but the door had already shut behind her.

  Next morning the first thing I did was reach over and grab a partially open beer on the nightstand between my bed and Jimmy’s. I shook the can. About half full. I held my breath and took a sip and promptly spewed beer all over the carpet. Jimmy had been using the thing as an ashtray.

  I found an unopened beer on the table and opened it. I could hear Jimmy butchering a song in the shower. Outside the window, the sun was up and stoking the flat sandy terrain into glowing fullness. Cars blazing by on the interstate provided me with a sound familiar to my mornings of the past four months. I finished off the can of beer and opened another. Starting a buzz at . . . I looked at the clock . . . 8:00 in the morning is typical behavior for a rocker.

  Jimmy agreed, and by the time we were checking out at 9:30, he had downed four beers and I had downed six. We bought a case for the road from a small convenience store across the road and were loading it into Hal’s van when Shawna emerged from the hotel office, clad in short jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Got some road refreshments, I see,” she called with a grin.

  “Care to join us in one?” I asked, following the separation of her thigh muscles as her legs carried her toward me.

  “Up here, Mick,” she said, “my legs can’t hear a thing you’re saying.” But she was smiling as she stopped in front of me.

  “You coming with us?” I asked. She shook her head and waved her hand in the direction of a Pontiac Firebird. “Nice wheels,” I whistled.

  “It’s a two-seater,” she said. “My gear and stuff takes up the passenger seat,” she added quickly.

  “Probably just as well.” I shrugged. “I don’t trust myself around you.”

  “I don’t know whether to be insulted or flattered.”

  “Be both.”

  “I meant what I said last night,” she said, her head lowering just a bit. “I don’t get involved with pro wrestlers.”

  “You’re involved with yourself,” I said, “aren’t you?”

  She plucked a beer out of the case. “See you at the next stop, Michael.” She threw the words over her shoulder, turning away with a smile.

  “Who’s Michael?” I called. She didn’t turn around.

  The fourth day of the tour was our day off. Mark had booked us rooms in a small town in southern Colorado. We were supposed to rest up for the final show of the tour in Rochester the next night. With nothing better to do, Jimmy and I spent twenty minutes aimlessly patrolling the streets in Hal’s van. The houses were mostly typical single-story homes that appear pedestrian in the daytime and subdued at night.

  However, as we cruised around, we couldn’t help but notice we kept passing groups of women walking around. I pointed out the apparent absence of men to Jimmy. “Doesn’t this strike you as odd?” I asked him.

  “Maybe it’s a town of women who have made a conscious decision to ignore standard sexual roles in Western civilization,” Jimmy suggested.

  “You mean like a town populated by a lot of lesbians?”

  “You got it,” he said, flashing a grin.

  We were coming up on a pair of women both clad in bikini bottoms and belly shirts. “Jesus, Jimmy!” I exclaimed. “Pull over!”

  He guided the van to the side of the road, warning me as he did so, “Don’t be surprised if they’re frightened and/or a bit hostile.”

  “Excuse me, ladies!” I called. They approached the van wearing inquisitive smiles that made them appear neither frightened nor hostile. “My friend and I were just driving around and I’ve gotta say . . . there’s one hell of a lot of single women out on the streets,” I explained. “Are men not allowed in this town or something?”

  They laughed when I said that. “A lot of the guys went away for the weekend,” the blonde explained through lips devoid of lipstick. “Some hot rod thing down by Phoenix.” She eyed me with what seemed like habitual nonchalance. “What’re you two doin’ here?” she asked. “Besides lookin’ for girls to molest.”

  “We’re professional wrestlers,” I said again. “On tour,” I added. I brought my arm up and flexed as though it were a union card. They both raised their eyebrows lazily.

  “We’re having a party tonight!” Jimmy called out, leaning around me.

  “A party?” the darker-haired one inquired.

  “Yep.” I nodded. I gave them the address of our hotel and our room number. “Tell your friends,” I said. “They’ll be other wrestlers there too. Until then . . .” I kissed the blonde’s hand. She said her name was Diane. Her friend was Stevie. Jimmy and I gave them our names.

  “Mick?” She seemed puzzled. “That your real name?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “See you tonight, Diane and Stevie.”

  We pulled away from the curb and whooped as we headed to a Safeway to get refreshments for the party.

  With the exception of Shawna, who had already gone on to the next town, and Mark, who was probably somewhere cowering before a frothing truck driver, every wrestler on the tour spent that afternoon drinking heavily. Even Richie and Allah joined us, and after a few cocktails they began telling stories of the old WWO days. According to them, some of the wrestlers had been so blitzed before matches they wouldn’t even remember them the next day. Allah mentioned a wrestler named Rob Robertson, who he claimed was “an old buggerer.” “The inside joke was ‘When you wrestle Robertson, always wear three pairs of tights, ’cause he’ll manage to pull at least two of ’em down during the match,’ ” he said, popping open another beer. Allah told us that Robertson retired from wrestling a few years ago and was working as a road agent, traveling with the WWO and supervising shows at a
renas across the country. He also specialized in putting the moves on the ring-boys who set up and dismantled the ring. Another wrestler, a guy with a preacher gimmick, had been busted by the DEA for cocaine trafficking. He had been transporting cocaine around the country while on tour, unloading kilos in whatever cities he was wrestling in. Richie laughed as he talked about the sexual habits of “Beautiful Steve Stallyon,” who was known for his body builder physique. Stallyon would pick up overweight women, bring them up to his room, begin to get amorous, then abruptly turn on them, insulting them and shouting that he would rather beat off than fuck a woman so fat. “People used to take bets on how quick ol’ Stevie could have a woman running out of his room in tears.” Richie smirked. “I can’t recall it ever taking longer than five minutes.”

  To hear these two put it, the WWO roster was a collection of drug users, perverts, alcoholics, and malcontents with assorted inferiority complexes. “How about Sonny Logan?” I pounced, eager to get away from so much moral ambiguity.

  “Sonny Logan.” Richie grunted and took a long swallow of beer. “Total cokehead.”

  “Cokehead?” I echoed, a little stunned. “Isn’t he . . . supposed to be . . .”

  Richie gave me a withering look. “His gimmick,” he stated flatly, “his gimmick is that he’s a big teddy bear always ranting at kids to take their vitamins and say their prayers and blah, blah, blah. All I know is I worked a series of matches with the dude about a year ago, just before I left WWO, and the asshole was so coked up he damn near killed me.”

  I was stunned. In the back of my mind I had held Sonny Logan out as an example. Of course, I pretty much assumed he took steroids, but everyone took steroids. In an interview in a Chicago newspaper a few years ago, he had been quoted as saying he didn’t drink, smoke, or use drugs. “But sometimes I cheat and have a few chocolate chip cookies,” he had added. Even though I was partying, it had been my intention to settle down once I made it to the WWO. I had always envisioned myself there, wild oats properly sowed, laying claim to a position as a role model for young kids. Taking over the throne of Sonny Logan.