Living the Gimmick

  Thomas Rockart Jr.’s office was in a twenty-story building whose rocket shape and glass exterior had earned it the nickname “The Crystal Ship.” Rockart’s office was on the top floor, and one could tell immediately that it was a space where important decisions were made. An aquarium occupied an entire wall, housing miniature sharks and fish of such remarkable color and design that they looked like swimming works of art. The opposite wall consisted of a fireplace surrounded by bookshelves stocked with the classics. Just behind the massive mahogany desk sat a globe that was at least four feet in circumference and beyond that a large-framed window looked out onto the city sprawled below. Rockart could easily lean back and spin the globe, then stare out the window contemplating the world revolving around his latest decision or dilemma. Spending enough time in that office could lead someone to believe that they were king of the world.

  Thomas Rockart Jr. was almost as impressive as his office. With carefully styled black hair and dark eyes, he carried himself with the air of a man who controls others’ lives both effortlessly and guiltlessly. His size surprised me; on television, where he served as a play-by-play announcer for matches, he had always seemed to be a smallish Ivy Leaguer. In person, he was an inch taller than me and looked to weigh about 220 pounds. He still retained his sophisticated presence, carrying his bulk well in a $1,000 Armani suit. My current outfit of blue jeans and a red-and-black-checked flannel shirt made me feel severely underdressed, but he quickly put me at ease with a radiant smile that assured me there was no other person in the world he was more eager to see. His handshake featured moderately restrained power, and just before he released my hand he gave it an extra squeeze. “Mister Harding, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” His introduction managed to be smooth without sounding practiced. “Have a seat, please.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Rockart,” I said, glancing quickly at an oil portrait hanging to the right of the window. That it appeared to be of Rockart himself was not surprising. He seemed to have enough nerve and imagination to, with a straight face, consult an image of himself for advice.

  “I’d like to thank you for coming up on a Sunday,” he told me, “and please, call me Thomas.”

  “Only if you call me Michael,” I replied, while at the same time wondering how long it had been since anyone other than Shawna had.

  “All right, Michael,” he said, nodding. “Would you like anything to drink?”

  Over red wine we discussed various aspects of professional wrestling. It was then that he filled me in on the proud history of the World Wrestling Organization and his personal vision for the future of pro wrestling. The tactics Rampart dismissed as “stepping on toes” were, according to Rockart, necessary in order to place professional wrestling on a national stage. “People have accused me of losing the ‘sport’ of professional wrestling,” he explained, “but I prefer to think of it as combining the best of both worlds of sports and entertainment.”

  As I listened, I became more and more convinced that Thomas Rockart Jr.’s ruthless strategy to become king of the wrestling world was fueled by an honest affection. “Professional wrestling is better than a bunch of country yokels with chewing tobacco caught in their teeth,” he said. “It can be enjoyed by the majority of the American public.” I was aware that I was being seduced, and this specific awareness led to another slightly foggier one. I sensed that Rockart possessed a control over himself that I didn’t have. Beneath his determined earnestness and theatrical way of speaking lie a certain weight, as though he was under constant supervision from somewhere outside himself. Even a gesture as simple as a shrug was delivered with a confidence meant to impress.

  Two hours passed quickly and easily. When Rockart suggested lunch, I agreed. As we were leaving the office, we heard: “Hi, Thomas!” The voice was instantly familiar. I’d imitated it many times before.

  I turned, my eyes widening. Chuck “The Stud” Beastie was approaching us with a salutatory smile. Long black hair fell over wide shoulders that stretched against a tie-dye T-shirt. His elephant pants had legs loose enough to accommodate his larger-than-average thighs. When we shook hands, I was surprised to find his grip much gentler than Rockart’s. “I’ve seen some of your matches,” he said in a rough but subdued tone that bore little resemblance to his bellowing interview style. “You work pretty well,” he said.

  “Thanks, Mr. Beastie,” I said. Both men broke into chuckles.

  “Call me Chuck, kid,” Beastie said smiling.

  “Michael and I were just going out to grab a bite,” Rockart said in a voice like velvet. “Care to join us?”

  “Sure,” Beastie responded immediately. My heart was pounding excitedly as the elevator indicator rang. Rockart held the door open for us.

  We dined at the terrace restaurant of a nearby four-star hotel. The waiter didn’t bat an eye at my orange mohawk, and his unflappable cool made me wonder if Thomas Rockart Jr. brought all his prospective employees here. Maybe the waiters had long since grown accustomed to this debonair, dark-suited man popping in for a midday meal in the company of men who looked as though they had just stepped off the pages of a comic book. After all, this was New York.

  For lunch there was a fettuccine dish with chunks of salmon and lobster swimming in alfredo sauce. I didn’t taste a bite. I was sitting at the same table with Chuck Beastie. Rockart kept up a steady stream of conversation until the waiter brought us coffee. At this point his voice lowered to a conspiratorial pitch that, though directed at me, managed not to exclude Chuck: “Michael, I’m going to take you into my confidence. I want you to come work for my company. There’s a position we have for a wrestler like yourself, one who’s young, but has been around. The potential is limitless.”

  “I’m interested,” I said, ignoring my coffee and finishing my second glass of a smoky Merlot.

  “Last week, one of our jobbers got his neck broken by Rand Stiffer,” Thomas Rockart Jr. said.

  “He used to wrestle up in Canada, right?”

  “That’s correct.” Rockart nodded. “We brought him down here and gave him a heel gimmick as a psychopathic hockey player. Problem is, he’s taking his gimmick a bit too seriously.”

  “Living it, huh?” I suggested.

  “Exactly,” Rockart agreed. “He’s injured jobbers before, but this is the first time he’s almost killed one.”

  “How is he?”

  “As unapologetic as ever. Said the kid had it coming—”

  “No,” I interrupted him, “how’s the kid he injured?”

  “He’s okay.” Rockart nodded eagerly and continued, “We took care of the hospital bill. He’s never gonna wrestle again, naturally. It happened at a house show so we weren’t even able to get it on tape—”

  “Be good ratings.” Chuck uttered in a growl that sounded a little too rough.

  Thomas Rockart Jr. peered at him out of the corner of his eye before once again focusing on me. “It’s obvious Stiffer is a bit out of control,” Rockart admitted. “But the problem is he won’t mess with any of the boys who have been here for awhile—”

  “You want me to be a policeman,” I suggested, using the term for wrestlers that help keep other workers in line.

  “Michael, you’re a hell of a talent,” Rockart urged, “but you are young. Very young. Wouldn’t you agree, Chuck?” Chuck was busy studying the microscopic holes of varying width that made up the tablecloth’s flowery design. He looked up, studied me with careful eyes, then nodded.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “I want to bring you in, Michael,” Rockart spoke slowly until I looked back at him. “But I don’t want you coming into a hostile environment. I’ve seen your matches in the SWA, and I know you’re a good shooter. If you take this guy out, you can earn the respect you’re gonna need to have the other wrestlers put you over.”

  “Take him out?” I asked.

  Rockart’s eyes settled on me from just above the tip of his wineglass. “Do whatever you have to do.” His voice was firm.

/>   I looked over at Chuck, who immediately began nodding slowly. “If I were ten years younger, I’d take the sonofabitch out myself,” he informed me. “I’ve seen your matches. You can do it. That’s why I recommended you.”

  “You recommended me?” I asked, my ears growing hot.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, nodding.

  Rockart shifted forward in his chair; his eyes sweeping over both of us. “Shall we go back to the office and talk contract?” he suggested.

  Chuck bid us farewell on the street, giving my hand a shake and saying he hoped to be seeing me soon. Rockart and I took the limousine back to his office, where I signed a two-year contract for $70,000 the first year, $90,000 the next, and a renewable option for a third year at $150,000. Also built in to the contract were bonuses for special appearances and pay-per-views. There was no clause that gave me any kind of percentage on merchandise sales bearing my name and likeness. I found out later that most of the superstars in the WWO were getting as much as 20 percent of the gross sales from their T-shirts and any other assorted memorabilia.

  As I left the office that day, I noticed Thomas Rockart Jr.’s smile still hadn’t changed. His expressions were so rigidly precise that he seemed to be a walking portrait; a mobile companion to the one that hung in his office. In following visits to his office, I would discover that the fireplace was gas-activated, the spines of the intimidating classics lining the wall were merely shells devoid of pages, and the fish in the tank had to be replaced every other week because they kept dying.

  But all I knew that first day was that I had taken yet another step toward becoming the World Wrestling Organization Heavyweight Champion.

  7

  BLINKING HARD

  Arms flail over the metal barriers, providing a tentacular display in the gaps between red-shirted security guards. They stand with their backs to me so they can have a better view of potential trouble in the crowd. Everyone’s role is so clear. The fans represent the possibility of riotous behavior, and the guards are supposed to make sure fan behavior doesn’t go too far.

  What is my role? Catalyst? Prop? The answer comes from the ring announcer’s diaphragm: “From Chicago, Illinois . . .” The pitch of his tone changing with the enunciation of the words. “. . . Weighing two hundred and twenty-eight pounds . . .” His voice peaking then receding like a patient wave. “. . . Here is the challenger . . .” Mounting and ready to explode: “Mister Michael Harding!”

  My heart hammers against the chasm between the hero that name is supposed to represent and the enigma that I am. The crowd finds a reservoir of noise and unleashes it into the night with fierce abandonment. Their growing response makes me light-headed. I reach over the ropes of the mini-ring and try to touch some of the extended hands. They are too far away. I lean over the ropes, growing more desperate, until I am almost falling out. But the distance between the hands and the mini-ring’s ropes is still too far.

  The canvas beneath me jerks. I grab on to the ropes and fall back into the ring as the motor sputters. The miniature ring stalls. My theme music blares on. Hands gesture on both sides of the aisle, bidding me to come and touch them.

  I stand on my elevated island, stranded.

  My tenure with the WWO was due to begin in two weeks. When I went to the Mid-South Coliseum the next day, Mickey, the club-footed guard at the door, said Rampart had left word that he needed to speak with me.

  “Have a good time in New York?” Rampart asked in greeting after I had knocked on the door of his dressing room.

  “You heard, huh?” I asked, only mildly surprised.

  “When it comes to pro wrestling, not too much goes on without my knowledge.” He spat on the floor as if to accentuate his point.

  “I start in two weeks,” I said. “That’s fair.”

  He leaned back and regarded me with a stare of careful scrutiny. “I put a lot into promoting you, Michael,” he said.

  “I’m still Wildman,” I snapped sharply, “for two more weeks.”

  “Sure, Wildman, whatever you say.”

  “Does this mean you’re going to have a normal hairstyle?” was my mother’s first reaction when I told her that I had just signed to the World Wrestling Organization.

  “Jesus, Mom.” I sighed into the phone. “This is the big time here. What if I told you I had just gotten a job with . . .” I struggled to come up with the name of a financial entity of comparative stature, but couldn’t recall one. “Kodak Incorporated,” I finally said. Kodak had a large plant on the highway that ran between Nashville and Memphis.

  “Well, kiddo, I’d be pleased that Kodak would make you get a hairstyle that made you look human,” she said. “Is your name still going to be Wildman?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “They may want something different.”

  “Just plain old Michael isn’t outrageous enough, I suppose.” She sighed.

  “Fuck Michael,” I snapped, reacting with the abruptness Wildman always drew upon when attacked.

  A hostile silence followed. “Goodbye, Wildman,” she said before hanging up.

  Shawna was also curious about my future identity. “The WWO is known as the land of the gimmick, you know.” She chided, “Maybe you can come down to the ring with a pallet and a brush and be an artist. I can see it now, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Professional Wrestler.’”

  “Do you think that’s funny?” I snapped.

  “I was joking and you know it. Don’t pull one of your Wildman roid rages on me,” she snapped back. I relaxed.

  “You always call me on them,” I said.

  “Someone’s gotta keep you in line.”

  “Maybe you can be my valet. That can be my gimmick.”

  “Chuck and Mimi already have that one tied up, my dear.”

  “You can be my long distance valet.”

  “Persistent little fucker, aren’t you?” She laughed.

  “Is that bad?”

  “It’s fine. But you haven’t even seen me for a year. For all you know I have a hairstyle like yours now.”

  “Why don’t I come see you and find out?” I asked.

  I had sprinkled in hints of a possible visit during more than a few of our phone conversations over the past year. The response was always a prolonged silence on her end, followed by a change of subject in a manner as subtle as a flying elbow off the top rope. This time, after four seconds of listening to the long distance connection purr noiselessly, I heard her say: “Your artwork’s getting better.”

  I had recently sent her, in addition to sketches of the sunset, a sketch depicting a field of faces whose only features were wailing mouths.

  “Don’t try and flatter me to change the subject,” I said, pleased by her critique.

  “You know me better than that.”

  “Do I?” I asked.

  “I should hope so!”

  I hung up that night feeling the same way I always did after a conversation with Shawna: both confused and exhilarated.

  I had been a bit hesitant to tell B.J. how much I was making. It wasn’t a million dollars, but it was a hell of a lot more than seventy-five dollars a night. Five days before I was due to leave for the WWO, he and I spent a night drinking on my patio. By one in the morning all aches had ceased and we were laughing about all our early matches back in southern California, how green we were back then, how we had smuggled steroids in from Tijuana. “You’re gonna be able to afford the good stuff now, huh?” he said, his tone curious. I knew what he was asking so I told him.

  He whistled. “Not bad, man,” he said, laughing. “Not bad for a guy with an orange mohawk.”

  Both of us belched out laughter. “You’ll be up there soon, brother,” I said. “I’ll put in a good word—”

  “I talked to my dad the other night. The night you got back from New York,” B.J. said. “He said that if I didn’t make a million dollars as a pro wrestler, I could do it as something else. Said he had no problem with that. Said he had no problem with me never m
aking a million as long as I was working hard at something I loved.”

  “You’re going back, huh?” I asked reluctantly, not wanting to hear him admit it.

  “I miss Terri, man,” he said with a sigh.

  “You could always have her move out here.”

  “She’s a California girl. And I can see it now. A mixed-race couple in Memphis. Shit, we get enough dirty looks in southern California, and this town is a few hundred years behind L.A. Know what I mean?” I nodded. “’Sides,” he went on, “I don’t . . . I don’t love this shit like you do. The only reason I’ve stuck it out this long is you were here.”

  I looked around at the crumpled beer cans scattered at our feet like reject pieces of a puzzle. “Quittin’ the business, huh?” I asked, bracing myself for the answer.

  It came with another sigh and a nod. “Looks that way.”

  “I’m gonna miss you,” I said.

  He nodded. “Me too,” he mumbled into his bottle. Then he shook himself a little. “You just be sure and tell Ricky Witherspoon hello for me. All right, Wildman?”

  “Sure thing.” I nodded. B.J. got up. “You really love her, huh?” I said, not looking at him.

  “Yeah,” he sighed, “I really do. Took me bein’ away from her this long to figure out how much she means to me. More than a million dollars, for sure.”

  My eyes didn’t move. Neither did B.J.’s shadow, its shape draped across the ground before the dim porch light. “You ever been in love?” His voice scratched the moist air.

  “Only with wrestling,” I replied automatically.

  His shadow shifted slightly. “See you in the morning.” Then it was gone.