“Me no go,” I told him.
When I didn’t show up in Portland, Maurice sent me a second letter, giving me hell and shit because I no-showed and he had put his word on the line for me. He also gave me a second starting date, warning me that I better make it or he was going to beat the crap out of me next time he saw me. My situation in Boston hadn’t improved in between letters. For all I knew, wrestling in Boston was taking me nowhere and fast. So, I got a loan from Louie and bought a plane ticket to take the first flight of my life — to Portland.
Before that big trip, I decided to visit my family in Montréal once again. I went with Louie for three weeks; I didn’t know when I would be able to return. On our way back from that visit, we had a big car accident in middle-of-nowhere Vermont. It’s the scariest thing that has ever happened to me on the road, even though I logged miles and miles in the years to come. I don’t know how we survived it. That there were no consequences, not even scratches or bruises, was a miracle. We weren’t even wearing seat belts, can you believe that?
The car rolled over three times and was upside down in a ditch when we finally came to rest. We had to kick the door open and crawl out in the snow and mud. It was probably around six in the morning, the middle of winter, and pitch black. There was nothing around as far as we could see. We had to walk a long goddamn way before finding a house to use their phone. We were able to notify the police and call Louie’s family to come and pick us up.
Once we got back to their place, Louie’s father, who had been drinking, was mad at me for wrecking the car. The old man jumped me out of nowhere and we started to fight. He was so mad. I remember it like it was yesterday, him yelling, “You tried to kill my son!”
It was not a pretty sight.
I was confused beyond belief. Louie was driving. It was his car. What the hell? I understand better now how scared he must have been, but still, if I said my feelings were not hurt, I would be lying. The worst part was that there was no fixing it; I didn’t have time. I was leaving Louie to deal with the fallout of the accident all by himself. Portland and Mad Dog were waiting for me, and I couldn’t miss that second opportunity. And to be honest, the wrath of Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon scared me more than Louie’s father.
Louie came to see me off to Portland and even helped me pay for my first plane ticket.
In a sense, I was relieved that my relationship with Louie was being put on hold. We were getting really close, but I was afraid of my feelings for him. I didn’t want a relationship to hold me back as I tried to carve out a career for myself in wrestling.
What I didn’t know yet is that true love can conquer anything, even distance. As my career was about to take off, that man would literally follow me to the other end of the known world — or at least it seemed like it was for us.
PORTLAND AND EVERYTHING IN-BETWEEN
“I traveled each and every highway”
Moving to Oregon was a big step. I was still that little kid from Montréal barely able to speak the language. It was scary. Luckily for me, it worked out.
I am not the first to say it and I won’t be the last, but it needs to be said: Don Owen was a great person first, and a great promoter second. It was my first time traveling a regular circuit in a territory and building up matches on television. On my first night in Portland, I was in the opener and I had a good match. Afterward I got my envelope and he had paid me $300! I went to Maurice and told him that there must have been a mistake, that it was too much. Mad Dog told me with his legendary voice, “Don’t worry, you are still getting screwed!” And then he burst out laughing. I had never made so much money doing what I love.
That kind of big payoff only happened once a month; most of the time we wrestled in armories where the dressing rooms didn’t even have showers. It was important to shower after a match in those days: the mats were dirty and you could get a staph infection easily. We had to go to the bathroom to shower, where fans went to relieve themselves. It was almost as if I was back living in Montreal!
Speaking of dressing rooms, there’s something I need to get off my chest. The Michael Sam thing bugs me because journalists assume dressing rooms are anti-gay. That kid played football all of his life. It wouldn’t be any different in the NFL. It’s the same in wrestling. In my day, we had to shower together and scratch each other’s back and it was never an issue. Not once did one of my colleagues refuse to work a match with me because I was gay. Strangely enough, of all places, Michael Sam ended up playing pro in my hometown, with the Montréal Alouettes of the CFL.
Don Owen was a man of his word and we were always paid what he promised, to the exact dime every time. I appeared in a few main events, and the money became very nice, something like $300 a week on average. After living off seventy a week in Boston, it was a big improvement. And the Portland promotion was a fun territory with short trips. We would go to Seattle, Washington, and return to Oregon that same night. I was still growing as a performer, competing against some big stars including former National Wrestling Alliance world champion Pat O’Connor. Now, that was a learning experience.
O’Connor always wanted to lead and he always wanted to wrestle like he was fighting for his life. One day, I finally mustered up the courage to ask, “Can I speak with you, sir, without you getting mad?”
“Sure, kid. What’s up?”
“What is it you don’t like wrestling with me?”
“No, I love wrestling with you.”
I had my opening so I explained to him how we could have much better matches. I wanted him to let me do my thing as the villain so that he, the hero, could shine. “Let’s go out there and tear the house down,” I told him.
He said he would think about it, and when he finally let me lead in a match, it was like night and day. Another thing: Pat was the cheapest wrestler I had met yet. He didn’t spend a penny, not on anything. After that good match we had, he bought me a beer at the bar. I almost had a heart attack.
Everyone has to be produced: whether you’re Pat O’Connor, Ric Flair, John Cena, Frank Sinatra, or even Michael Jackson. After a while, stars get into a habit and the show becomes stale because they only want to do their usual thing. The worst part is, in many cases, no one around them wants to tell them. The magic of what we do in a wrestling ring follows the same principle as in a good movie when the hero is down. That desperation needs to register with the audience. They have to believe he needs their support to come back. People have to identify with you. I already knew a lot about what works in the ring by that point, and I consider myself very lucky to have learned from so many more great teachers in the years to come. But if anyone had told me I would be the teacher one day, I would never have believed them.
* * *
In Portland, I was Maurice’s boy and Maurice was the top star, so I was golden with Don Owen. Don took very good care of me, but he still asked me for favors. “Talk to Maurice. He’s creating way too much trouble with his shit. We are going to have problems.”
I would go to Maurice and ask him to tone things down. He would shout back in French, “Qui mange de la merde le colisse!” There is no perfect translation for that bit of colorful French lingo . . . Let us just say that Mad Dog said something about eating shit and leave it at that. Really, Maurice was so over, he could get away with almost anything. One night, I saw him wrestle Luther Lindsay in a sixty-minute match. I had never seen anything like it. Ten minutes from the end, everyone in the armory was standing on their feet. I told myself one day I would create the same reaction.
I’d moved to Oregon without Louie, and as far as I was concerned, we’d split up. But I’d never told Louie that quite so bluntly. He had a job, a very good job, and I never expected he’d leave it behind. And, to be completely honest, I didn’t want him to come with me.
Before I left Boston, he’d asked me, “When will I see you again?”
“I don’t know, Louie; we might me
et again. I will go there for a while and we’ll see.”
What was I going to do with him? I was moving to the other side of the country, and I didn’t want to bring him out there to face it — it was 1962, what kind of reception would we get? My career always came first, end of discussion. Louie understood the choice I was making. He knew how important wrestling was to me. He was, without a doubt, beyond my mother, the first person who completely understood and accepted me inside and out.
I had been in Portland for a month and a half when I realized I needed Louie in my life. We had been writing to each other and one day I wrote to him to come to Portland because I was just missing him too much. He left his job and his family to be with me. If that’s not pure and unadulterated love, I don’t know what is. I never regretted my decision to ask him to come and join me in Portland. I would have gotten myself in trouble for sure without him. I’m a lucky man.
We stayed at my hotel for a couple of weeks as we looked for an apartment of our own. At first, I was hiding him and that wasn’t fun. One night, Mad Dog Vachon showed up in the hotel lobby a little drunk. Louie was afraid of Mad Dog and he took off, as if he had just seen the devil himself. I can’t really blame him because we were all scared of the Dog at one point or another. Maurice knew I was gay. He had met Louie when I came back from Boston to wrestle in Montréal and naturally he had figured things out. Seeing Louie in Portland, Mad Dog got himself all worked up. He had vouched for me and now I was putting him in a precarious position. “You prick, you double-crossed me . . . You brought your boyfriend here . . .”
“Maurice, he’s my friend,” I said, “and he’s important to me.”
“Where is he?” Mad Dog yelled, madder than ever.
“I don’t know. When he saw you, he bolted.”
“We’ll find him,” he said.
We jumped in his car and we drove around downtown, Maurice getting madder by the minute. It was no fun for me at all. We had been driving for over half an hour when I finally spotted Louie. Mad Dog stepped on the gas, we stopped right beside him, and Mad Dog growled, “Get in the car!”
Louie started running for his life as if he’d just been sentenced to death.
“The bastard, I will get him.”
Maurice stepped on it again and he actually got on the goddamn sidewalk to block Louie from escaping.
I tried to calm everyone down and salvage the situation. “Louie, please, get in the car.”
He reluctantly got in the backseat. And that’s when Maurice said, “We go to the hotel and we drink.”
Louie didn’t drink much more than a beer usually. Mad Dog wanted us to drink scotch. I figured he was getting ready to kill both of us, so we drank. He started a conversation with Louie, and they didn’t stop talking all night. They became good friends. I could not believe it. Throughout his life, Maurice had never been afraid to open his mind to new things. I guess he figured out that Louie and I were great people who just happened to be gay. In the years to come, the same thing happened with a lot of people who had never known anyone gay before.
I’d had a comparable experience moving to Portland. In Montréal, there were almost no black people in my neighborhood. In Portland, Shag Thomas, a former football player, was one of the star wrestlers. He was the first black person I became friends with. He had a wonderful family and one night he invited Mad Dog and me to visit. It was quite an experience for me — the first time I went to a house where everyone was black. I was discovering the world all right, and appreciated meeting all kinds of different people. That probably doesn’t seem noteworthy today, but to me, as a gay man, it was uplifting to see that we could all get along and love each other with all of our differences.
Now that I think of it, Maurice Vachon was instrumental in helping people in the business accept Louie and me. Maurice was so well respected in Portland, and since I was teaming with him, no one bothered me; the other wrestlers were even encouraging me. Whenever we traveled, Maurice would ask, “Where’s Louie?”
And when I’d say, “Well, he stayed home, Maurice,” Mad Dog would shake his head.
“Tabarnak, why does he stay there all alone? He doesn’t know anyone.”
“I can’t bring him to wrestling.”
“He’s my buddy, we bring him with us.”
So, I told Louie that Maurice wanted him to come on trips with us. I wasn’t going to argue with Mad Dog, and neither was Louie. We both knew better. Everywhere we went, Maurice introduced Louie as his friend. Louie got over right away with everyone, first because of Mad Dog and then because he made friends easily.
I became good friends with Nick Bockwinkel around that time as well. He went on to win the AWA Championship and our paths crossed many times. One day, Nick said that his wife, Darlene, wanted to meet Louie and he invited us for dinner at their place. I don’t remember how exactly Nick had come to know of Louie and my relationship, just that it wasn’t a big deal to him. Darlene really hit it off with Louie and they became great pals. We had them over for dinner at our place. They loved Louie so much, they started to talk about him with everyone they met. They were putting us over like crazy. “Pat’s friend, Louie, he’s such a great guy and what a chef.”
Louie briefly became an on-and-off character in my act.
All the wrestlers wanted to meet him. “Pat, when are we getting an invitation to eat at your place?” Wrestlers love to hang around with each other and we never say no to a free meal. When I started to move from territory to territory, Louie’s reputation was always stellar, and I can thank Maurice and Nick for that. I bet you didn’t expect that from a bunch of wrestlers in the 1960s.
It is surprising that in the world of wrestling, where you might expect all those macho guys to be homophobic, that it was never an issue — at least not in my case. A friend of mine recently told me that if Michael Jordan had been gay, it would not have mattered because he was so good and drew so many people to his sport, that no one would have said anything bad about him. The same thing applied to me, according to my friend — I was special and that’s why I was accepted. Special? I don’t know. I don’t think I should be compared to Michael Jordan; I just think it’s important to stress how easy it was for me to gain acceptance. Then again, I was never openly gay in front of the wrestlers. I never talked about it in the dressing room. I was always joking and being one of the guys, so unless you were close to me, you never truly knew.
I was no angel, though. I liked to have fun and party like any guy. But I was gay, and I had to be careful about showing who I really was. I couldn’t draw attention by flirting with men at the hotel bar or bringing guys back to my room. I couldn’t tell the other wrestlers stories about my conquests the way that most guys were bragging about how many girls they slept with that week or how many honeys were waiting for them in their hotel room. Some of the wrestlers even used me as an alibi with their wives. They knew their wives would feel secure if they believed their husbands were with me. I would say hello to the wife on the phone, helping to ensure I was part of the boys even though I never allowed myself to be myself around them.
Half the time, I protected wrestling against all the naysayers and the other half, I spent it hiding my personal life from my colleagues so that they would feel more comfortable around me. Maybe that’s why I never met another gay couple in wrestling. There were those wrestlers in Boston who were gay, but they were never part of a couple. If there were gay wrestlers around me in Portland, I just didn’t know then. Maybe they just didn’t feel comfortable to share their life with me, just like I didn’t share mine with the boys. As a gay wrestler, I was living in not just one but two closets. (I know I’ve already written that — but if you want the complete Pat Patterson experience, some stories and ideas will repeat themselves. That’s how it goes.)
Louie appreciated what Maurice did for us and they remained good friends throughout the years. Much later, when we were livi
ng in Florida and had a beautiful home on the canal, we had not seen Maurice in years. Mad Dog was not rich, and he was at the tail end of his career. He let us know that he would love to visit us if he could. Without hesitation, Louie said, “Just tell me when; bring your wife and some friends.” I think Maurice stayed for a month and Louie took real good care of him.
Vince McMahon and Mad Dog only met one-on-one a couple of times. But I have told Vince so many stories about him that he fell in love with him and his character. I was damn proud, and thankful to Vince, to have been able to repay Mad Dog a little for all he did for Louie and me by helping to get him inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2010. It was something he deserved.
Just before we went on stage the night of the ceremony, Mad Dog asked me how much he was being paid.
“Five hundred,” I said.
“What! Only five hundred?”
“No, Maurice, I’m just kidding — it’s five thousand.”
He kept repeating the number, as he could not believe he was making that much money for so little work. We had a good laugh. It was the last time we saw each other. There is no doubt in my mind that without him I would not be here writing this book. When he passed away in 2013, I was sad because he had been so strong when I first met him, I felt that this man would live forever. But we all meet our maker, no matter what. Friends of mine, who had access to his picture collection after he was gone, told me that one of the few wrestling photos not of Maurice or his family was one of Louie and me in Portland. Maurice will have a special place in my heart forever as well.
* * *
There were gay bars in Oregon; they were not as out in the open as in Montréal, but we got by. I would wrestle and Louie would stay home in our little apartment. He took care of our place and cooked food. Sometimes, I would be gone for a week in Seattle for a bigger tour.
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