Living the Gimmick

  “Fuck that.” B.J. laughed, touching his beer bottle with mine. “Live forever.”

  “This is Muscular Mike Maple. I’m probably at the gym or in the ring, so leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you whenever I can. Stay pumped.” I had finally gotten a phone and an answering machine so as not to miss any calls from promoters. I had grudgingly given my mom the number, telling her to call only in emergencies. I kept telling myself that I was too busy to call Bryan or Marty, and maybe I was. In the weeks after our Tijuana visit, B.J. and I were working out with the discipline of monks and the fury of savages.

  Steroids definitely worked. I was walking proof. My strength increased, and my muscles swelled within the first few days. Much of this growth came from water retention, but it made me appear bigger when I looked in a mirror and that was what I was after.

  Three weeks into my cycle, I wouldn’t leave my apartment without posing in the full-length mirror leaning against the wall next to the closet door. Before I entered the ring at the academy I had to flex into each of the three mirrors on the different walls. If I rode in a car I would gaze into the rearview mirror and flex my neck in time to whatever song was pounding out of the radio. The only times mirrors betrayed me were when I focused on my eyes. A rabid uneasiness would invade my body, making me feel so small and insignificant that I would immediately have to flex with all my might in order to feel whole again.

  Aries’ stubborn disregard for his own body finally caught up with him during his third defense of the tag-team title. During the match, he was hurled over the top rope and launched himself into the air with a velocity that made it impossible for him to control his landing. As a result, he came down awkwardly and broke his ankle. “I wanted to make it look good,” he said later, seemingly unconcerned that he would be out of wrestling for at least two months.

  People are often shocked when they discover that pro wrestlers actually endure injuries. “But I thought that stuff was fake,” they say. The truth is that not only do all pro wrestlers suffer injuries throughout their careers, but the lack of an off-season makes it impossible for most of these injuries to ever fully heal. Consequently, a lot of wrestlers are always working in pain. It is a point of honor not to stop a match because of an injury. There was the story of one guy who had wrestled in the first match on a pay-per-view extravaganza. The match went on for thirteen minutes and ended in a scripted victory for him. He collapsed in the ring at the end, weeping what everyone backstage felt were rather extravagant tears of joy. It was only after he made it back to the dressing room that everyone found out he had suffered a compound fracture in his elbow during the first minute of the match. Also contrary to public belief, not all injuries are the result of screw-ups. One wrestler in a promotion up in Canada was shoved off the top of a steel cage and fell fifteen feet onto an announcer’s table, cracking three ribs and dislocating his shoulder in the process. There hadn’t been any mistake. He had simply told his opponent before the match, “Shove me off the top of the cage and let’s see what happens.” The rush that comes from putting your body in jeopardy is as addictive as any drug. In the same way time is rendered meaningless by being in the ring, so too is the possibility of death reduced to simply another move, another angle, or as Aries sneeringly referred to it one afternoon a couple days after his accident: “the ultimate job.”

  Around mid-September, the World Wrestling Organization arranged television tapings in San Diego and Long Beach. Shane’s main function as the WWO’s West Coast representative seemed to be scrounging up enough jobbers to throw into the ring to be slaughtered by the organization’s superstars.

  Shane explained the concept of jobbers: “People wanna see superstars wrestle each other. But how does a federation create a superstar? By showing them pezummel young rookies like yourselves. You’re there to make these guys look like superstars; it’s your job. How do you do that? Ya let ’em kick you around the ring and pin you in three minutes. Then the audience sees this on TV and goes to the live shows at arenas to see the superstars go at it with each other. All part of the beziz. Believe me.” He inhaled a shot of nail polish remover, then solemnly nodded. “Most of those guys were once jobbers too.”

  Two weeks before the WWO was set to come to town, Shane pulled B.J. and me into his office during an advanced class. My nose was bleeding slightly as a result of one of B.J.’s stiff elbows. The spot above his left eyebrow was growing puffy from my retaliatory jab. “You guys are looking good.” Shane nodded at us. B.J. and I exchanged grins.

  “As you know, the WWO is coming to town. They need jobbers.” Shane opened a drawer and removed a gallon jug with a label identifying it as high grade nail polish remover. “I’ll recommend you two if you want. But my advice is don’t do it.”

  “How much does it pay?” B.J. asked.

  “A hundred and fifty. I take twenty of it for my . . .” His voice wandered off in search of a proper word.

  “Kickback,” I offered.

  “Managing fee,” he countered with a smile as he opened the jug.

  “Why don’t you want us to do it?” B.J. asked.

  “As you know, I worked for the WWO. And I saw these jobbers come and go.” He slid one end of a rubber tube into the jug and carefully placed the other end into the small brown bottle he constantly carried with him. “And I’ll tell ya . . . these WWO executives see you come in as a jobber just one time, and that’s how they’re gonna always remember you. ‘Once a jobber, always a jobber,’ we used to sezay,” he said, licking his lips as he tilted the jug. I watched in bewildered fascination as fluid snaked down the tube. It was like watching a deranged episode of MacGyver.

  “What about what you said before,” B.J. said, “about how most of the superstars used to be—”

  Shane cut B.J. off with a snort. “That was to give those boobs something to shoot for,” he said as he squeezed the tube and let the remainder of the fluid glide back into the jug. “They’re not as serious as they like to think they are,” he added, stashing the rubber tube back into the drawer along with the jug. “They’re sure as hell nowhere near the level of you two,” he concluded.

  I felt a quick glow of pride snake down my throat and warm my stomach. He capped the refilled bottle, gave it a good shake, then uncapped it and took a tentative sniff. He followed this with a deeper one, then reclined back in his chair as he scrutinized B.J. and me. The jagged rhythm of bodies falling in the ring broke through the office’s thin walls, all four of which were adorned with pictures of professional wrestlers. “You guys are on the jezuice, right?” His voice was leading, almost as though it was required that we be in order for him to continue.

  “Yeah,” B.J. said immediately.

  “All right.” Shane nodded. “I think I can get you guys some jobs with the Southern Wrestling Association. They promote in the Mid-South area. Gotta warn you, though, it’s a tough region.”

  My palms tingled. Hell yeah, it was common knowledge in the business that Mid-South was one of the toughest territories around. But that reputation also lent the area its distinction as a hotbed of pro wrestling. The SWA alone had produced legend after legend. “The WWO’s been raidin’ the area of talent,” Shane was saying. “And a promotion like the SWA would be a nice step up for you guys.”

  “That’d be great, Shane,” I said. “We’re ready.”

  “We’ll see,” he said with an impartial smile.

  “What kinda . . . managing fee should we give you?” B.J. asked.

  Shane broke into a halting laugh. “Shit, kid. You’re gonna be gettin’ your brains beat out for forty bucks a nezight. I get you two into the SWA, you’re on your own.”

  His eyes roamed the growling, groaning, taunting visages that lined the walls of his office. He leaned down and snorted from the bottle and smiled back up at the two of us. “But I’ll tell you what,” he said in the first soft voice I’d ever heard him use. “Either of you guys become a world champion, you tell everyone where you were trained
. Deal?”

  “Deal,” B.J. and I agreed simultaneously.

  A couple weeks later I dislocated my shoulder during a match at the San Bernardino arena. After the match I slammed the thing back into place against a concrete wall to the applause of my fellow wrestlers. Although my body cried out in pain, I managed to grit my teeth and stretched my lips into the requisite sneer that Muscular Mike Maple used to show that pain didn’t affect him. Later, Steven (aka “Jack Daniels”) came up to me and asked if I was hurting. “Nah,” I managed to growl. “I’ll be all right.”

  He nodded knowingly and extended a small plastic bottle. “Try some of these.” He shook the container, the loose pills inside making it sound like a maraca.

  “What are they?”

  “Soma.”

  “Soma. Sounds like some good bud.”

  He laughed. “Just muscle relaxants, man. They sell ’em over the counter in Mexico. Hold out your hand.”

  He spilled two pills into my palm. White pills with 250 etched into their surface. I popped them with a shrug, forcing them down my dry throat with no liquid.

  A half hour later my shoulder was still on fire. After the show ended, the owner of the arena (who was pleased that the gate was close to three hundred) let us drink free beer from the tap at the snack bar. Several beers helped reduce the flames to a steady throb. I found Steven. “Jack, those pills suck,” I told him. “I still hurt.”

  He poured three more into my hand. I downed these with a swallow of beer.

  After another couple rounds of beer a group of us headed to Denny’s for a post-show snack. On the way I hit Steven up for a few more. The pain was still there. “Give it some time, man. These things are good.”

  “I swear, I must have a high tolerance,” I reassured a hesitant Steven. “I still feel the damn thing.” So he gave me two more pills.

  At Denny’s I realized I had fucked up; Soma don’t really kick in until there is something else in the stomach for your body to absorb. After wolfing down a few bites of one of my French dips (having ordered two), I was suddenly suspended between my chair in San Bernardino, California, and a pleasant cloud that was floating in a world I had never visited before. “Hey, check out Muscular Mike!” I heard a voice come from one of those dimensions.

  “You are fucked up, man,” B.J. commented with a melting smile.

  “I’m fine,” I slurred. Drool was leaking down my chin, and when I tried to pick up a napkin my fingers stubbornly refused to close. Getting up from the table, I stumbled at first; clouds had taken the place of a floor.

  I was wading toward the exit when I heard a young voice calling from behind: “Muscular Mike!” At first I worried that I had split into two beings and left part of myself back at the table, but when I turned, there was a boy who appeared to be about eight years old standing there, holding a napkin and pen. “I saw you tonight,” he said shyly. The words came out like nervous high-pitched static. “You were great.”

  He looked behind him, and I followed his gaze to a man and woman perched by the cash register. They nodded at the kid and made urging motions with their hands. When I looked back down, I saw he had thrust the napkin and pen out and was gazing up expectantly.

  “Thanks . . . ,” I slurred. My tongue felt like a freshly caught fish flapping uncontrollably. “Little dude,” I drawled with great effort. Then I gripped the pen with stiff fingers and planted the napkin against the wall. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Devin,” came the shy reply.

  My hand jerked across the napkin: “To Devin . . . Best, Muscular Mike Maple.” After I finished, I took a look at the napkin and saw that “Muscular” was the only collection of jumbled symbols that resembled an actual word. I handed the napkin and pen back to Devin, then looked away from the confusion devouring his eager expression as he stared at the incoherent name. “Sorry . . . Devin. My hands are, um . . . ,” I stuttered while Mike Maple scrambled for a reasonable answer. “. . . kind of messed up from the match.”

  “Sure,” he nodded quickly. “I understand.”

  I grinned and extended my hand for him to shake. But my concept of distance was distorted; my fist slammed into his chest. He stumbled backward, staring at me with startled and frightened eyes. I began to apologize but then saw his parents inching forward or maybe charging forward, so I just waved and ran through the restaurant doors into the parking lot. “Shit,” I inhaled, acutely aware of my heart’s panicky beat. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  “Hey!” Steven called out from his car. “Mister High-tolerance!” He laughed. I nodded wearily. The last thing I tried to think of before I blacked out was a joke, so that I could laugh along.

  I awoke in my apartment, terrified and disoriented. I had just had the dream of being in the ring. This time, the finishing maneuver had been a press slam. But before the mask came off everything exploded in a display of multicolored lights.

  My eyes swept the dark room. No one else there with me. But outside the night was being tickled by a web of rotating red and blue and yellow lights. The same ones I saw in my dream.

  My heart was still railing with an angry irregularity. I stood, determined to ignore the lights outside. They signaled some kind of chaotic event, something completely out of my control. I closed my eyes and jogged in place, trying to forget about my heart, forget about the fact that the signing of my first autograph, an event that would never come again in my lifetime, would never be anything more than a jumbled blur of shapes with distorted voices. Finally I gave up and wandered over to the window. About a half mile down the freeway, a sea of squad cars surrounded a jack-knifed semi that lay sprawled in the road like a fallen dinosaur.

  In the sober moments of the next afternoon, I was able to repress my dread by putting the situation into a thoroughly proper perspective. I had been hurting and had taken a few too many muscle relaxants, pure and simple. The cause was nothing more sinister than inexperience. With this lesson learned, I felt certain I was capable of handling Soma any time there was some pain to kill. To prove this to myself I ended up trading Steve one hundred Dianabol for two hundred Soma. Over the next two weeks a few moderate doses of Soma caused no embarrassing intoxications, and I easily fell into a pattern of four Soma a day, two before I worked out and two before bed. The pre-workout intake masked any lingering aches from matches and enabled me to work out with greater intensity, and the two doses before bed granted me a blissfully dark and dreamless sleep.

  One morning my phone shattered through another Soma-induced coma at an entirely ungodly hour. Raising my eyelids haltingly, I glimpsed the clock display reading 7:04. No one would call this early unless it was really important, I thought, springing for the phone with the anticipation of hearing Shane’s proclamation that we were heading south.

  What I heard instead was my mother calling to check up and make sure I wasn’t dead. Why hadn’t I called in so long? What was I doing? How was I doing? Had I heard about the flood that had closed down half of State Street in the Loop? She asked all this in a carefully veiled tone that made the questions seem like a maze designed to lead to an ultimate query that would no doubt be along the lines of, “When was I going to come to my senses and give up this pro wrestling?”

  Before she unleashed this final question, I tore my tongue away from the roof of my mouth and provided some short answers: Fine, I was fine. No, I hadn’t heard about the flood. I didn’t have a TV—

  Didn’t have a TV? Her voice sprang at me. What about the newspapers? How would I be able to keep up with what was going on in the world?

  I replied that I didn’t read newspapers and that I really didn’t care what was going on in the world.

  “How are you, darling? Really?” she asked, her tone leaning toward a suspicious tenderness.

  “I . . . signed my first autograph the other night,” I mumbled. “I’ve had twenty matches so far. And I’m getting bigger—”

  “Bigger?” She sounded alarmed. “What do you need to get bigger for? Yo
u’re too big already!”

  “I’ve gotta go, Mom.” I groaned. “I’ve gotta go . . . work out.”

  “Don’t work out too hard!” she implored urgently. “Damn it, Mike, are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”

  “Muscular Mike,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Muscular Mike. That’s my name now.”

  “Muscular Mike,” she spat out the words as though it was the name of a newly discovered lethal disease. “I see.”

  A few cautiously spoken exchanges broke the line’s crackling silence. It was ten below wind-chill factor in Chicago. No, I didn’t really miss the snow. How’s the apartment? Still the same, oh good. Mine is small. Yes, very small but I don’t mind. They put the Christmas tree up in the Loop already, where’d the year go? “When do you think you’re coming out?” she inquired.

  My fingers gripped the phone for support. “I’m not,” I said steadily.

  “Why not? It’s Christmas, we’re—”

  “I don’t want to go to Shirley’s place,” I said. “I don’t want to see them. I—”

  “Don’t you want to see me?” she asked.

  “I have to do some things out here,” I said quietly. “I have three matches Christmas week.” I lied in a wavering voice.

  “All right,” she said, her tone suddenly subdued.

  My next few attempts at small talk disappeared into the silent void on her end of the line. “So, I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I suggested finally.

  She didn’t respond, although a tightly labored breathing indicated she was still there. The silence stretched on. “All right,” she said quietly. “Merry Christmas. I love you.”