by Mamrie Hart
At the bar later, I sat with Maegan and the Long Island Sisters discussing theories. Every time someone from the murder mystery walked past the bar, I convinced them to take a seat and tell me their theories, hoping they had a lead or could find the connection between Bucket Hat’s murder and the original hit that was put out. One by one, Maegan and I told our tale of the night before and how odd it was, and soon everyone was intrigued with the Douche. Hell, even Dagger Eyes and Cheese finally caved and had a drink with us. I’d like to think it was because I had proved to them my innocence, but she told me, “Honey, I Wikipedia’d you last night, so I know you’re telling the truth.”
Several drinks later, I laid in bed, trying to put together the puzzle pieces. I just couldn’t figure it out. And right before I drifted off, it hit me. “I got it!” I yelled, sitting straight up in bed. “Got what?” Maegan asked sleepily. “I got our motives,” I said, pulling the covers tightly around me as I smiled from ear to ear.
The next morning, Maegan and I headed to breakfast, rocking matching shirts in solidarity.
Specifically Friends Forever 21.
I walked in confidently, feeling like we’d really 12 Angry Men’d these retirees. Margot took her place as I made extended eye contact with the Douche while shoveling grits in my mouth.
“We have had quite the weekend, haven’t we? Before all is revealed, let’s go around and share our theories, hmm?” Then, just like we had introduced ourselves at the first dinner, table by table everyone stood up and regaled the room with their scenario. Most were tired old theories that the wife put the hit out on Bucket Hat because he was obviously cheating on her with that youngin’, and after the hit woman got shot, the wife came down to do it herself. Seemed too obvious. Of course, Dagger Eyes’s theory involved Maegan and me being a part of the crime, despite our olive branch from the night before. Finally, our table was called, the last one to go.
“Wait, what are we saying again?” Maegan asked.
“Don’t worry, I got this,” I reassured her, standing up. I cleared my throat dramatically. “Well, well, well. While I loved listening to everyone’s simplistic finger-pointing . . .” I said, staring down Dagger Eyes.
“Your Wikipedia said you had an acting degree!” she said, as Cheese took her arm to sit her back down.
“I, however, have come to a different conclusion. You see, my friend here and I”—Maegan pointed to her shirt—“had such a vile interaction with this guy”—Maegan pointed to the Douche—“that we knew there is no way he can’t be in on it. No one is that big of a dickhead, so he has to be an actor. So! My theory is that this [yes, I used actual air quotes] ‘real estate agent’ here took out the hit on Bucket Hat, because he is the wife’s real estate agent and wants her to get the house they share so she can sell it and he can make that commission. When it didn’t go as planned, he tipped off the wife to cause a diversion so he could kill Bucket Hat himself! Aha! Gotcha!” I said, pointing my finger at him. “How’s that for raping a dude?” I mimed a mic drop, high-fived Maegan, and sat down. The room was dead silent. I leaned back in my chair, proud of cracking the case. That is until I felt a little tap on my shoulder, I looked up and there was the Douche holding a business card.
“John Doe Real Estate.”
I tried to laugh like I was kidding as I scanned the room and all its shocked faces. Dagger Eyes was apalled. I slinked down into my seat as the silence grew to a dull roar. Finally, Margot cleared her throat. “Okay. Ummm, that was . . . interesting.” She moved past it and brought everyone’s attention back to her, like there was a gruesome car crash in the room and she didn’t want anyone to look.
Turns out while Maegan and I had tried to think out of the box on what the answer could be, it was a classic case of “husband cheats on wife so the wife puts a hit on him but it goes awry and she comes down to do the dirty work herself.” It was textbook. We had overthought the whole thing. I yearned for a bucket hat to pull down over my eyes.
Meanwhile, everyone else was celebrating their victory. Since so many people had it right, they ended up just drawing a name for the winner. The prize was a discount off their next murder-mystery weekend, which we knew they’d be attending as soon as possible. But not Maegan and me. The second after Margot wished everyone a safe trip back home, Maegan and I full-on sprinted out of there, cackling as we ran past the trees. I had somehow been a bigger disaster than the cast of Southern Charm . . . and, let me remind you, two of them dug a hole on the beach and slept under branches because their golf cart ran out of gas and they couldn’t find their way home.
“Maegan, were we assholes? Did maybe that guy not deserve the smear campaign we brought against him?” I asked her as we drove over the bridge away from the club. Maegan thought about it for a second, twisting her face in confusion before finally saying, “NAH. That guy made a rape joke. What a douche!”
And she was right. I was happy to leave the murder mystery with zero mysteries still in my brain, no unanswered questions . . .
Except why in the hell Dagger Eyes friend requested me on Facebook three days later?! Pick a lane, woman!
Love at First Fight
MY HETEROSEXUAL LIFE partner,* Melissa, uses a phrase that I love: “This is my life now.” She busts this out whenever we are trying something new and she falls in love with it. The best part about this is that most of these activities are usually dumb as hell. Here are some actual moments where I’ve witnessed Melissa say this:
Sitting in a Monster Jam audience as Grave Digger, the most famous monster truck from North Carolina, a vision of neon green and purple, flies through the air.
~This is my life now!~
Being stoned on a kayak in the marina and almost being attacked by a sea lion.
~This is my life now!~
And in text form: I just ate mushrooms on a boat then sailed to a little island and fell in love with some baby raccoons.
~This is my life now!~
Never have I felt more Melissa, aka more ready to dedicate my life to something super dumb, than the moment I first walked through the doors of a WWE wrestling match at the impressionable age of twenty-nine. It was in that moment four years ago that everything changed. I had been aware of wrestling as a kid but was never into it. And as an adult, my feelings were more like: The WWE is ridiculous. A bunch of people chanting along to theme songs? Silly costumes and story lines? Over-the-top shit talk? That is so immature.
That all changed when I got to see my first live performance. I can now proudly say as an educated, and I’d like to think smart, woman that . . .
I LOVE WRESTLING.
Here’s how it went down. Somehow back in 2013, while I was visiting LA, Grace was gifted with free tickets to WWE Raw. We didn’t have anything better to do, so we actually considered going. Grace was like me—she had been aware of wrestling when she was younger but didn’t pay it a second thought as an adult. But as soon as we walked into the Staples Center that night in 2013 and felt the energy of that room, everything changed for the both of us. All those ways I used to pass off this phenomenon were now said in a different intonation. Go ahead and read my doubts from before, in the same exact words but in your best stoked Mamrie impression.
The WWE is ridiculous! A bunch of people chanting along to theme songs?! Silly costumes and story lines?! Over-the-top shit talk?! That is so immature!
This was my life now.
As someone who has a theater degree, wrestling is pure art. WWE is basically theater in the round, just like Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.* But what makes it even better is that there’s no pretending that the audience can’t see you. The audience is part of the show. Wrestlers aren’t just navigating the narrative; they are also bouncing off the crowd’s energy and off the turnbuckles as they do complicated moves. Romeo never had to deliver a soliloquy that ends in a pointed elbow drop, amirite?
Another reason why I love
wrestling is because while there are a million story lines, they are relatively easy to follow. You could go in there with no prior knowledge of a character’s long history of backstabbing and walk out an expert on how he was backstabbed by his BFF tag team partner and now he’s going to seek vengeance on his former teammate. Seasons of history are often filtered down to a five-minute backstory, thanks to beautifully edited video packages of previous matches playing on the massive screens. Sometimes you’ll even luck out and get dramatic monologues filled with tons of exposition, ideally delivered with a single spotlight and usually ending with their enemy bum-rushing the stage to hit them upside the head with a metal chair. Bonus points if they accidentally knock out the ref. It’s a total soap opera circus!
Now, some purists out there might say that since Grace and I haven’t been watching wrestling since its beginning, that we are “fake fans.” And I say, “Uhhh, duh, I’m a fake fan. Everything about wrestling is fake. I am literally a fake fan.” That’s why we love it so much. So much so that we decided to make the ultimate gesture and FUCKING PROVE IT. So in the spring of 2017, exactly one year after I wrestled my emotions in the streets of France, Grace and I invited Jarrett to join us in attending the biggest event of the year: WRESTLEMANIA 33, in gorgeous Orlando, Florida!
We got in late Saturday night and kept it chill, saving our energy for the next day, as if we were going to be the ones in the ring. While Grace had a lot of editing and napping to do, Jarrett and I struck out on our own that Sunday for food and drinks. The last time he and I were together, as you’ll remember, we were gallivanting around Paris, drinking incredible Bordeaux and eating pommes frites. How were we going to top that culinary experience? Culture at its finest: DOWNTOWN DISNEY.
Neither of us had any interest in going to actual Disney World. I myself have never been a Disney person. It might stem back to the only time I went to Disney World, back in seventh grade. To this day, I’m not sure what exactly happened, but after snapping a pic of Dale, from the famed Rescue Rangers, I was wrongly accused of hitting him. I know, right?! I don’t know if it was someone else, or he got swiped by a stroller, or he just had a vendetta against me because he had heard of my distaste for rodents, but that chipmunk wrongly snitched on me, and I’ve never forgotten. Since then, I have no real interest in being around mute mascots. I’d rather stay on the outskirts of the parks and hit up something that has never done me wrong . . . theme restaurants.
And oh, there were plenty of them there. We drank Cheetah Ritas at the Rainforest Cafe, and then Raptor Ritas at the T-Rex Cafe, which is my new favorite spot and future wedding venue if I ever bump my head hard enough that it kicks in some desire to get married. Seriously, though, this place is incredible and stokes every aspect of my obsession with comically large things. From its glacier room that had floor-to-thirty-foot-ceiling fake ice walls and animatronic woolly mammoths to the massive, prehistoric octopus that looms over the bar, it’s cheesy heaven. And in classic theme-restaurant form, they lay the theme on real thick with the menu names. Some of their specialties include . . .
Tar Pit Fried Shrimp: I get it. Dinos got stuck in tar pits, yada yada. But with the Gulf oil spill of recent years, don’t you think it’s maybe not the best idea to conjure up the idea of tar when presenting diners with your seafood?
Lava Lasagna: ’Cause that doesn’t immediately make you feel like you are going to burn the shit out of the roof of your mouth as soon as you dig in, right?
Pterosaur Wings: I get where they are going here, with pterodactyls being the only dinosaur with wings, but why do they have to add the “saur” at the end? If you don’t read that as “tear a sore,” then congrats, you are much classier than I am. Couldn’t they just be “Ptero Wings”? They really should have gone for “Ptero’bly Tasty Wings” and saved us gross-minded folks the visual.
I decided to go for the menu item they gave up trying to cleverly name—the Kale & Red Quinoa Salad. But a little healthy salad was no match against those specialty drinks, so by the time we got to the stadium, we were pretty lit. And we needed to be, because, MY GOD, walking into the middle of a hundred thousand screaming wrestling fans is intense!
We met up with our WWE contact, a super-on-top-of-it woman who led us to our seats. I knew we’d be close, since my girl Tess (aka Dark Orgasm) hooked it up, but we actually had no idea how good they were going to be. As we emerged from the tunnel, we trailed single file behind her, mouths agape like a line of shocked baby ducks as we got closer and closer to the ring. “Here are your seats,” she said, gesturing to them. “And remember that you can take them with you as souvenirs at the end of the night.” She power walked away, leaving the three of us standing silent in shock.
We were in the FOURTH row, ringside, aka the fifty-yard line of what was usually a massive football stadium. We took our seats as the sun set in that Orlando sky, military fighter jets flying overhead as Tinashe sang “America the Beautiful.” I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more redneck American and thankful of everything I’d done in my life to lead me to that moment.
The next five hours were pure INSANITY. More matches than an arsonist’s wet dream. I felt like I was going to have whiplash from jerking my head around to the ramp every time another theme song started spontaneously blasting. There were comebacks of nineties tag teams (the Hardy Boyz), retirement matches from legends (the Undertaker), and even a proposal (John Cena and Nikki Bella)! But it was the bad guys who really brought their A game, including an insane taped segment where Randy Orton burned down the family compound of his opponent, Bray Wyatt. When this played, everyone went NUTS.
“That’s super fucked up,” I said, as screens showed the house engulfed in flames.
“Super fucked up.” Grace nodded in agreement before snapping back into amped mode. “Good thing it’s not real!”
Oh, yeah! I was so consumed by the energy of the night that I had momentarily forgotten these plotlines were written by paid professionals. Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt were probs besties in real life and hitting up the nearest Hooters after the match.
At the end of the night, we were thrilled but exhausted, and we headed to the area where our driver was supposed to be picking us up, recounting all the details of the night as we schlepped with our commemorative seats in tow.
“That was absolute madness,” Jarrett said, still in shock. “Can you believe the Hardy Boyz made a comeback?”
“Or that we were three of only a hundred thousand of John Cena’s closest friends he chose to propose in front of?” Grace said, shaking her head, as she hopped into the Escalade.
“For reals. But what was up with the house-burning thing? Do we really need to promote arson to an audience with children present?” I asked with a disapproving squint that makes me look like I’m doing a bad De Niro impression. “I mean, a lot of impressionable kids watch this! Or even worse, Southerners who love blowing shit up.”
Oh no! Was my love for this over-the-top, no-holds-barred entertainment taking a turn toward judgment? Was this no longer going to be my life?! But before I could get too into my own head, Jarrett snapped me out of it.
“Randy Orton,” he said, stone-faced.
“Yes, Randy Orton,” I agreed. “I wonder if he went too far.”
“No,” Jarrett said, looking past me. “Randy Orton is coming right for us.” I looked behind me, and like a bull charging toward a matador, Randy Orton was at our window before I had time to react. He threw open the door, and we all screamed like little girls.
“You’re in my car,” he said, taking a moment to look each of us directly in the eyes. If that moment were a children’s book, it would be titled Orton Hears a Whodafuckisinmycar?!, but it didn’t register. We sat there, frozen. “You’re in my—”
Then reality hit us. “Sorry, Randy Orton,” I said.
“So sorry, sir,” Grace said, equally terrified.
The next twenty seconds wer
e composed of about forty more “sorry”s and “sir”s through shaking voices as we slid out of that car like flattened cartoon characters.
The Escalade with Orton in it peeled off, kicking up the slightest bit of dust onto three stunned idiots holding chairs.
Guys, I told you from the start of this book that I was going to always be honest with you, so here it is . . . I peed my pants a little in that moment. Not like a full, go-change-your-pants-before-we-go-out type of way, but I definitely had a momentarily loss of control of bodily fluids when I saw that six-five, 250-pound beast coming at us while I was talking shit about him.
People can talk about wrestling being fake all they want, but in that moment, the fear was real. And really fun. All in all, I urge you to attend all the silly events you can. Don’t be a snob. What you might have cast off as being dumb or too lame or just straight up beneath you might be your new obsession waiting to happen. Go find reasons to say “This is my life now.” I promise, it’ll be worth it.
Somebody Rockin’ Knockin’ Da Boots
WHEN MY DEAR friend Kelly invited me to her wedding in the mountains of North Carolina, it was a no-brainer. Sometimes you get an invite to a wedding you would need to travel across the country for, and it’s like, “No, thanks. Here’s a toaster!” But this one was right up my alley. The wedding invite teased biscuits, barbecue, and blueberry moonshine, a service held under a giant oak tree, and the reception in a barn. Plus, all the guests could rent beautiful cabins on the property.
I had met Kelly briefly in college, but we became tight when we both lived in New York City. She was killing the game as a playwright while I was busy mastering the art of playing wrong. Although we didn’t know each other until our twenties, we had grown up about thirty miles from each other, weirdly enough. There is something so lovely about sitting at brunch with a girlfriend, talking about rubbing elbows with a celeb at a fancy party the night before, knowing good and well that we both used to consider a Friday night at the Winston-Salem Ruby Tuesday to be the epitome of class.