Living the Gimmick

by Ben Peller

  Fifteen minutes later Chuck emerged smiling. He immediately apologized to me for behaving as he had. I assured him it was fine, and underwent a complete renewal of faith in him. “Alll riiight!” we bellowed in unison, before going out and having one of our best matches. Out in the ring, he hollered at his beautiful valet with gusto and flexed for the crowd as though this display of machismo and people’s reaction to it were his very reasons for being. Naturally, I did the same.

  A week later we had a one-day layover in St. Louis. I was lying on the bed of my hotel room, studying the hideous curtains when a knock came at the door.

  Shawna came in and presented me with a long thin gift wrapped package. “Open it,” she urged, as though whatever was inside might explode if not revealed quickly enough. I did as she asked and found a set of fifty colored pencils.

  “Whoa,” I said. “These are . . .” Unable to determine a proper adjective, I let the ascension of my eyebrows supply one.

  Shawna watched my reaction carefully, then said: “I want you to draw me. In color.”

  “Umm,” I said, nodding, “okay.”

  She draped herself over a chair.

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she explained, “we’ve got the whole evening.”

  This comment sent me into a state of mental and physical fumbling that lasted until I finally had a sheet of blank paper stretched tautly on the easel before me. Then came the same mix of dread and anticipation that had consumed Muscular Mike Maple back in a southern California YMCA so many years ago. Now, finally, I was having that feeling in a situation that had nothing to do with wrestling.

  As I worked I asked Shawna questions. Her responses were neither evasive nor confessional. When I carefully asked why she had no boyfriend, she provided an airy shrug and answered, “My life is complex enough without adding in men.” She instilled the final word with an assemblage of hope and confusion usually reserved for words like infinity.

  I drew on, my hand becoming more and more animated as it discovered the richness of color. I shaded Shawna’s dark flesh with a combination of brown, yellow, and gray, then added slashes of red and green to simulate the shine a certain wave of light mined from her flesh. Where this light came from was a mystery to me; it may have even been brought on by my own mind, but there was no doubt my eyes and hands saw it as real.

  At one point I asked her, “Why are you in this world, Shawna?”

  “To learn, I hope.”

  “What could you learn from pro wrestling?” I joked.

  “Oh. You meant this world. I thought you meant this world.”

  “What could this world teach you?” I asked seriously.

  “I’m going to just be quiet and watch you draw,” she said and smiled in gentle rebuff. “Let me know when you’re done.”

  I finally stopped at about eight o’clock. My new excitement over color had resulted in an abundance of details. Imagined shadows and tones swirled together to form a visual overload. But there was no doubt I had captured Shawna. The portrait’s eyes twinkled. Face impossibly alive, looking soft enough to caress.

  When Shawna looked at the result, I assumed her silence meant she hated it. I was ready to say the hell with it and tear the thing to shreds when she asked me if she could keep it. I nodded mutely. She seemed to sense how drained I was, and left quickly with the sketch, squeezing my hand in farewell.

  As soon as she left, I leapt to my feet and began to pace my room. My brain was still humming. I wanted to talk to someone, anyone, about something or anything. I left my room and took the elevator down to the hotel’s lounge.

  The first thing I saw was Chuck Beastie marooned at a table in the corner. Above him, a halogen light shone down, its glare clouded by a piece of metal that had been sculpted into an ambiguous shape. The rest of the light shone down on Beastie’s body, which was slouched with the confusion of a lost child. I stepped up to the table. “Mind if I join you?” I asked. He waved haphazardly at the chair across from him. I sat and flagged down a brunette waitress, who took our order for two martinis and disappeared.

  “I lied to you,” Beastie drawled quietly.

  “About what?” I asked, staring across at his wrinkled brow. Listless piano music floated from the other side of the lounge, where a mustached man was playing out his final set of the night. Beastie’s eyes met mine sullenly.

  “I didn’t meet ’er on a road,” he slurred. “I didn’t see ’er walkin’ out of a cloud.” His chin sagged down and rested against his chest. “I met her in wrestling. She won a contest to be my valet for the night. Way back when I was in Texas.”

  He didn’t seem to expect a response, and I didn’t trust myself to provide one. The waitress brought our drinks and Beastie drained half of his in one swallow. I did the same.

  “She’s leaving me,” he croaked dissonantly. “We went on separate vacations. Thought some time apart might do us good. But all it did was show her how much she enjoyed being away from me.”

  “I can’t give her what she wants,” he said. “When we first got together, it was like . . . it was the first time in my life I could see myself together with someone. I never wanted to be apart from her. And because I met her as a valet, it was perfect. Of course, once we had kids she would retire from the road to raise ‘em. For eleven years we tried . . . tried to make it work.” His words gave me a dull chill and I inhaled the rest of my vodka to fight it. “It was supposed to be like a dream,” he repeated. Sweat was running down his forehead. His voice was receding from the low rasp that he had forced himself to develop over the years. The tone now had a pathetic hollowness, as though it were a limb or organ he no longer had any use for.

  “I hate that goddamn picture you drew of me.” The words flew from his mouth like darts “It makes me look . . .” He withdrew back into a melancholy silence before pushing out the final word: “Goofy.”

  “Hey, it’s . . . it’s all right, Chuck,” I said. “I’ll take it back.”

  “Ask me that question again, kid,” he mumbled.

  “What question?” I whispered tightly.

  “Do I . . . regret it?” he said.

  I opened my mouth only to find I couldn’t speak.

  “I love pro wrestling.” Chuck’s voice suddenly sounded young and scared. “I’m grateful as hell to my father for giving me the chance to compete in it.”

  He sighed with a final gasp of force. “But yeah. I regret it,” he said and drank more of his martini. “It was supposed to be a dream. Now I gotta get a fucking life.”

  He drained his glass, and this bit of liquid seemed to push him over the edge. As he slumped toward the table, I quickly reached over and righted him. “A fuckin’ life,” he mumbled. I stood and stepped over to him.

  “Come on, Chuck. Time to go,” I said. I managed to get him out of the chair and hoist him over my shoulder. I carried him like this past the disapproving stares of a middle-aged couple nursing drinks at a table, past the ceaseless drone of the piano, and finally escaped out the door under the pitying gaze of our waitress.

  I dug Chuck’s room key out of the pocket of his elephant-legged pants and finally managed to haul him the rest of the way to his room. After I carried him inside and laid him down on the bed, he seemed to gain a slight foothold on consciousness. “I’m all right.” He blinked at me and nodded. “How’d I get up here already? I pass out?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, “I carried you.”

  “No shit.” He laughed. “Haven’t passed out in years. Felt damn good.”

  “Hey,” he called as I turned to go, “I lied to you.”

  “You told me,” I said. “It’s all right. I hope you and Mimi can work it out,” I added helplessly.

  “Huh?” He shot me a puzzled frown, then nodded. “Oh, yeah. That too. But also about that day we first met. It was a setup.”

  “Say what?” I snapped the light on and approached the bed. He wiped his brow and rolled over so that his back was to me.

&n
bsp; “Rockart wanted you to put Staffer out of wrestling. He wanted you on the team. It was my job to help coax you on board. Rockart knew I was your favorite wrestler from that questionnaire you gave Shane Stratford.”

  The elaborateness of the plan stunned me, and I even felt a sting of pride at the trouble to which Rockart had gone. This slight boost in self-esteem was dashed by Beastie’s next comment: “He figured that if you got hurt, no big loss. But he knew you were young and hungry enough to get it done.” He turned back to face me. “His original plan was to drop you after your first year. I talked him in to keeping you on.”

  Beastie seemed to be groping for a specific response. For an instant I was tempted to go to the bed and throw my arms around him. This notion passed quickly and I took a step back. Thanks, I mouthed the word to him. He leaned back on the pillow.

  “Like a dream,” he murmured. “Was gonna be like a dream.”

  His eyes closed. I stood very still for several seconds, afraid to move. Then I turned and crept out, extinguishing the light before closing the door on his silent breathing.

  The next night Rockart flew into Atlanta, where we had an event at the Omni. Mimi no-showed that night, and Beastie and I worked the cage match without her or Shawna at ringside. The match was rocky, and at one point Chuck accidentally stiffed me in the jaw. After the match Chuck had a private meeting with Rockart. I stuck around backstage, sprawled out on a table in a Valium-induced daze that gave the familiar desirable result of dulling the pain enough to make me an observer within my own body. I turned my head and watched a scruffy rat dart from a gaping hole in the wall. The animal paused before a mirror, staring up at it while its long pink tail whipped to and fro like an uneven pendulum. I was too buzzed to be frightened; even if I had been, I couldn’t have screamed. My tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth. Then the door to the dressing room slammed, sending the creature back into the opening from which it had emerged and leaving me to wonder whether or not it had even been real.

  I struggled to sit up. Shawna stood before the table. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” she announced. “Rockart just gave me my walking papers.”

  “Shit,” I slurred. “Mimi’s not coming back?”

  “Apparently not,” she said.

  “Shit,” I repeated. “That sucks.”

  She looked at me and snorted, then without a word turned and left the dressing room. “Shawna!” I shouted. “Wait!”

  I stumbled off the table and into the hallway just in time to see Shawna leaving with her gear. “Wait!” I yelled again, and this exertion made me dizzy enough to have to lean against the wall. The world was in the throes of a rapid spin. When my surroundings finally straightened out, the first thing I saw was Beastie at the other end of the hallway, gazing sadly at me. I pressed my head back against the wall, suddenly very sober and miserable.

  Back at the hotel I went straight to Shawna’s room. There was no answer at her door. After checking the lounge, the pool, and the fitness center, I finally spotted her sitting by the fireplace as I hurried through the front lobby. “How long have you been here?” I asked her.

  “The whole time,” she said. “I was going to call out to you, but you looked so determined to find me yourself that I decided to just let you run.” I collapsed onto the couch.

  “What was that back there?” I asked. She furnished an answer by focusing a stoic gaze on the knuckles of her right hand. “You tell me you’re leaving tomorrow morning and then you just walk out?” I demanded.

  “What do you expect?” she snapped, cracking her knuckles. “A lay for the road? Something to reward you for all your trouble?”

  “Hey, what the hell?” I charged, “I didn’t deserve that!”

  “How would you even know anything about what you deserve?” she shouted. “Either you’re pretending to be someone else or so zonked out on drugs or alcohol you can barely think!”

  “Well, in the last two years I’ve had three broken bones, at least a dozen concussions, and more sprained wrists, ankles, and dislocated shoulders than I can count. So if I have to take a few pills for the pain, excuse the hell outta me!”

  “You’d take those pills anyway,” she said in a voice that was more saddened than accusing.

  “Maybe I would,” I allowed. “I like the way they make me feel.”

  “You mean not feel!” she cried. “Why are you so afraid of yourself?”

  “I’m not afraid of myself!” I shouted.

  “Michael Harding!” she shouted back. “Why is he so bad? Why don’t you want to be him? That’s who I was falling in love with! Not Chuck Beastie or Chameleon or whoever the hell else you pretend to be!”

  Those words made everything leading up to them instantly worthwhile. I reached out to touch her but her eyes stopped me. There was something familiar about the look they possessed, and I quickly recognized it as fear. It was the same fear that had been lurking underneath the noncommittal answers she provided while I had been sketching her.

  I reached out and drew her to me. We kissed and I parted her lips with my tongue. When I felt her respond, I closed my eyes. The world fell away and I was almost tempted to put a hammerlock on her to ensure she’d stay there forever. As though she were reading my mind, I felt her immediately pull away. I opened my eyes and she was on her feet. “I haven’t fought with anyone like this for a long time,” she said.

  “Who was the last poor bastard?” I grinned weakly.

  She just shook her head and grabbed her bags. Then she rushed over the shiny marble floor and fled through the doors into the waiting night.

  The next day the WWO was in Cleveland. I took a cab to the arena straight from the airport and simmered backstage all afternoon. “You hurtin’, kid?” Chuck asked when he found me.

  “I’m sorry,” he stammered. His eyes were bloodshot and cloudy.

  I nodded.

  “About all that shit I said the other night . . . ,” he began.

  “It’s okay.”

  “I like the picture you drew,” he blurted, then paused. When nothing happened, he seemed relieved and continued: “That’s how I’d wanna . . . picture myself. Hell . . .” He gave his voice plenty of rasp. “I’m thinkin’ about taking some time off.”

  “To get a life?” I asked.

  “To get something.” He seemed to be struggling against his own words. “It’s a mixed-up game, huh, Michael?”

  It was one of the first times anyone other than Shawna had called me by my name, and I felt my face flushing uncomfortably. “I suppose,” I mumbled.

  “I mean . . . ,” he began with an arcane hope.

  “You’re still my favorite wrestler, Chuck,” I met his eyes. “And always will be. Even if you’re not a wrestler anymore.”

  He smiled and nodded, biting his lip. “Thanks, man.” He reached out hesitantly, then rested his hand on my shoulder, “I’ve worked with a lot of people. And what you just said is mutual.”

  I should’ve been overjoyed. Chuck Beastie had given me his approval. But the moment lacked the magical sheen it possessed in my dreams. I wanted to jump up and cry with joy, to throw my arms around Beastie and thank him. To hold him. But I did none of these things and was still nodding and biting my lip when he suddenly got to his feet and wandered off.

  We had done the spot dozens of times. On top of the cage. Marks screaming, all falling away below as we wrestled in a dimension that belonged solely to us. The match had been a beautiful one, as effortless as a dance while appearing as chaotic as an army of souls rioting in hell. Chuck and I were like two actors locked in a scene so good that the barriers of reality and fantasy had long since fallen away, leaving a world that felt so right you never wanted to leave. “What a fuckin’ match,” Beastie whispered as he jabbed me, his fist brushing against my neck.

  “Fantastic,” I agreed and accepted his knee coming up gently into my mid-section.

  “I love you, brother,” he whispered as he swung me around.

  “Love yo
u too, Stud,” I whispered back as I reversed him. Dozens of times. He would let go of my arm and then charge toward the edge of the cage before stopping himself and teetering there for just a second and then turning and flattening me with a clothesline.

  But this time he kept going and for an instant he seemed suspended in air and the moment was senseless as a dream and I was waiting for him to turn around and charge me but he was already falling. I scrambled over to the edge of the cage and saw that he had landed on a table. His body was fixed and peaceful, still glistening under the lights. His positioning was perfect, like the set pose an action figure would assume while waiting patiently for a child’s hands to grant it the gift of movement. But then his motionlessness became too complete for him to be anything more than a perfectly obedient son to the end, blood leaking out of his ears like a regurgitated secret.

  12

  SHOOTING WITH MYSELF

  Perched on the turnbuckle, my eyes become microscopes. I focus and draw out individual faces, seeing them as cells of an amorphous organism. Every one a pulsing collection of eyes and nose and mouth and ears but no combination exactly like another. A vague amazement passes through me as I consider how many combined sensations have helped shape these people’s lives. A world of sight, taste, sound, and touch has been filtered by eighty thousand individual arrays of senses, melted down by thought and strained into action that has brought them together as a combined force.

  Why are they here? Why am I here?

  I pause now on the fourth and final turnbuckle. A woman with hair dyed blue is at the end of a row, holding up a sign with both hands. The sign is a white poster board with red letters pasted on: Michael: U Are Already a Champ! A girl about six, possibly her daughter, is in the next seat. I picture this woman sitting up last night, working to finish this sign. Carting it to the stadium and spending all afternoon guarding it against being crushed. Then picking the right few moments to hold it up. All for the hope of what? Connection? Support? I search her face for familiarity, but she is unknown.