Living the Gimmick

by Ben Peller

  My brain dragged along a rocky terrain of consciousness, throwing up sparks of heat, which made even the simplest thoughts painful. I didn’t know how long I had been there. It could have been hours or days. When I checked in I had given the skeptical-eyed clerk my credit card and told her to charge for as many days as I stayed. Perhaps even then, I unconsciously expected to die here. So be it. The Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the door would buy my corpse enough time to begin rotting. Stomach rolling, my hands kept swiping uselessly at invisible bugs that were feeding on my burning skin. The shades were pulled but I knew that somewhere in the surrounding void there was a liquor store. Got to buy a pint of vodka and maybe some Primatene tablets. Pseudo-ephedrine, what the fuck desperate times call for—

  My stomach gagged, and I pictured the worms crawling in and out of it. I couldn’t go anywhere, I was too sick. My body throbbed, every parched beat of agony colliding against ragged nerve ends like an open hand into a thin sheet of glass. I knew each injury like an old friend; where and how all of them had happened. My knee blown out in St. Louis. My hand fractured in Buffalo when a chair slammed against it. My back reduced to a riotous assemblage of crooked dried-out bones grinding against one another like rocks in an arid forest. My spine with no fluid left; it had leaked out through tiny holes that had sprouted as a result of the innumerable times I slammed myself down against canvas and concrete. The flesh on my forehead seized revenge for all the times I had cut it apart with razors, reopening and oozing puss and blood. I gazed up at the ceiling into a vacuous hell of miming reflections; their battles had no connection with one another. They crisscrossed with unrelenting ferocity in a collection of visions so twisted it was impossible to term them dreams or nightmares.

  And Beastie’s body fell and the coffin was lowered and money was thrown and people were trampled and I tore the gun from a man’s hand and pulled the trigger and frothed at the mouth and flexed and then the blade sunk into virgin flesh.

  Maggots swarmed my forehead. Their small green bodies falling into my eyes, but I wiped them away, entranced now by the visions on the ceiling. I watched myself slam Bryan and Marty on one of the mats at school and sit back down to watch television on Saturday mornings and Max Egan was chanting “Bastard” and I was running and crying and pounding my own fist into my forehead, wanting to bleed as my mother stood in a doorway shaking her head and saying, “Your father’s dead.” I held his ghoulish frame in my arms, the bones so pronounced against the taut stretch of flesh/canvas that I am afraid one of them will penetrate his skin and pierce mine.

  I recoiled, squirming on the bed, afraid to touch him, afraid to be him. Reeling out of the hospital room in horror. Never, I said to my reflection, never will I be like him. He is not a man. He is not my father. I reached out and touched the muscular vision on the screen, this Dream that will hold its pose forever and never ever die.

  The vision dissolved, seizing the child’s finger and pulling it off in a sea of sparks and the child melted into its own shadow, vanishing. Gone.

  The awakening took place in stages, with my mind laying claim to limbs and muscles one at a time. When I was finally able to stand, the first thing I noticed was sun peeking between the curtains. An air-conditioned breeze stirred the shades to movement, granting their scraps of brightness a fluid quality similar to that found on shifting waves of a sun-drenched lake. I threw open the curtains and was blinded by a rising sun.

  Turning on the television, I saw from a morning show that four days had passed since check-in. I turned off the TV and went to take a shower. I winced as water hit my naked body, every drop a tiny blade on exposed sensitive skin. But I remained under the water for a long time, amazed at how much I could feel.

  13

  UNMASKED

  The champion is a master at making the crowd wait. Their cheers build. A fan leaps into the aisle and starts running toward the curtain but is tackled by security guards. The wide red line remains unbroken.

  The lyrics of the champ’s song begin. He will not emerge until the first chorus. All as scripted as a character’s entrance in the scene of a play.

  “When it all feels wrong and you’re goin’ down . . .

  “You gotta stand tough, gotta hear the sound . . .”

  Billy Harren steps up beside me. “Jesus, get ready for a roar,” he says.

  “How long have you two known each other, Billy?”

  “Since he started in the WWO,” he says and laughs a little. “You know he was a heel at first?” he asks.

  I look at him. The lyrics landing against my ears but not penetrating.

  “Dig down deep inside your soul . . .

  “Gonna pay the price, gotta lock and load . . .”

  “No way,” I say.

  “Sure,” he nods. “He came out as ‘Dastardly Duke,’ or some such thing. Crowd hated him. But then our most popular face jumped ship. So Rockart flipped Duke, and he became a big all-American hero. Won the belt a year later.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Take the reins, kick into overdrive . . .

  “That’s what we’re here for, to be alive . . .”

  “No reason you should. It was only two matches,” he chuckles. “Damn . . . eight years ago . . . eight or nine—”

  “That’s a long time,” I comment. “You gonna call this one straight, Billy?” I ask.

  “For the first time in my life,” he says and smiles.

  The chorus kicks in:

  “I am a true American . . .”

  The crowd swells, a giant raging hand strong enough to reach into the night and pull down the stars. Billy and I look to the curtain, where the champion has just emerged.

  Twelve hours later, I was at a pay phone in a rest area just outside of Phoenix. Clouds provided the sky a quiet gray shield while peppering the ground with rain.

  Shawna answered on the third ring. “Hey, Shawna,” I said, “the mountain just came to Mohammad.”

  Her house was located in an upscale neighborhood. Just outside her door stood an Indian sculpture of an eagle adorned in a red and blue headdress. The bird’s expression and crouch suggested imminent flight. Next to this work of art stood Shawna, wearing a smile similar to the eagle’s. “So,” she called as I got out of the car, “you still a pro wrestler?”

  I waited until I stood in front of her before I spoke. “I’m on my way to Chicago,” I told her. “I’m supposed to be there . . . in a couple of days I think.” My hold on time had become precarious; minutes felt as temporary as the drops of rain melting upon contact with Shawna’s cheeks. “Just passing through.”

  She nodded. “Fair enough.” She stepped aside. “Come on in.”

  “I love you,” I said. She continued to regard me with an impenetrable gaze. Then without a word she turned and walked inside. I followed. The living room had a stream running through its center. It began in a fountain and drifted along a sloping floor, its flow guarded by rocks on either side. It ended up in a small reservoir near the kitchen, where it was washed outside. All the furnishings were made of wood, and several more headdresses adorned the wooden walls. In the corner was an umbrella holder in the form of a penguin.

  “Beer? Vodka?” she asked.

  “Do you have any water?” I asked. She gave me a doubtful stare. “It’s been kind of a rough few days,” I explained. “I don’t think I could handle anything stronger right now.”

  I drained the glass she handed me in one long swallow.

  “Thirsty, huh?” she smiled.

  “Very,” I answered. She went back into the kitchen and came out holding a copper pitcher. She refilled my glass. I wet my lips before setting it down on a beaded coaster. “Shawna, I don’t know what’s happening,” I said. “I have no idea. I want you . . . I need to wrestle . . .” I inhaled sharply, “I don’t want to lose you.”

  Her mouth opened and I saw the familiar look cross her face that signaled a sarcastic remark was coming. But then she swallowed and nodded, her expr
ession vanishing like a page on fire. “Wait here,” she said. “I’ll be back.”

  She walked back into a hallway and disappeared through a room.

  I paced the living room, my heart beating tremulously. It was as though this were a main event of some sort, and we were searching for the proper finish with no rehearsal. While I berated myself for thinking about wrestling at a time like this, she reappeared with a photograph in her hand. She held it out to me at arm’s length. I examined it. It featured a trim young man standing in a wrestling ring, whom I recognized instantly as the same one I had seen in Shawna’s wallet. “I see . . .” I nodded.

  “I don’t think you do,” she said and sighed. “He wrestled in Memphis under the name of ‘The Brawler.’ But his real name was Sean.” She paused. “He drove west one night and never came back.”

  “You must have loved him very much,” I said quietly.

  Her short burst of chuckles grew into a fit of laughter that then graduated into a storm of guffaws. I walked over to her and tried to put my arms around her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It must have been hard for you to lose him—”

  “Damn it, Michael!” she cried, “I was him!”

  My ears erupted into a disbelieving hum. I wrestled with her admission, imagined myself in the ring with those words-slamming them, hip-tossing them, but I couldn’t pin them. “You were him?” I asked slowly.

  “Yes,” she declared, “I was him.” My eyes expanded as I took in this person before me, my vision inserting masculine features on the face and body I had always regarded as the ultimate in feminine desirability.

  “Shawna,” I pronounced the word carefully, its sound suddenly seeming alien to me. “Jesus Christ. Shawna!” I began laughing. “It’s too perfect!” I howled.

  She gave me a dark look. “Told you I could surprise you,” she said edgily. “By the way, I was one hell of a shooter. Believe it or not, I still am.”

  “Oh no . . . Shawna. I’m not gonna . . .” I wasn’t sure of what I was going to do. “Mind if I sit down?”

  She nodded slowly. I sank into the bamboo couch. “I’ve never told anyone about this before,” she said, “so this discussion is going to be as new for me as I’m assuming it will be for you.”

  “Oh, no,” I cracked, “I’ve fallen in love with tons of transvestites in my life.”

  “Transvestites are men who dress up like women,” she said sharply, giving me the same dark look as when I had made the comment about Vivian Vitale.

  “Sorry,” I exhaled. “I meant transsexuals.”

  “I prefer to be called a woman.”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe you’d better go,” she said.

  “No.” I looked up, surprised at how quickly the word leapt from my mouth. “I mean . . . I’d like to stay.”

  “All right,” she said, nodding slowly. She suddenly seemed so vulnerable, more than I had ever thought her capable of being.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked. My eyes were darting carefully, keeping her face in a pleasant state of unfocused flux.

  “I don’t know, I was bored one Friday night.” Her wit rose faintly before she succumbed to a sigh. “I always thought of myself as a woman,” she said. “Always.”

  “Huh,” I responded hesitantly.

  “Native Americans felt that men who believed they were women possessed supernatural powers,” she said.

  “Are you . . . Native American?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “There was never any information about my parents available to me. But judging from my skin color, I’d say there’s some kind of Indian blood in me.”

  “Did you ever tell your adoptive parents?” I asked.

  “They wouldn’t even talk to me about sex,” she said. “I learned all about that from my brother. There’s no way I could have told them about this.”

  “How about your brother?” I asked.

  “In a way,” she said cautiously, as though trying out a new voice. “I don’t know that he really knew. My freshman year of high school the coach recruited me for football because I was big. But I had trouble when it came to tackling people. I didn’t like the idea of hurting anyone. So I would just try and tackle people by pulling them to the ground. The coach would say things like, ‘Every time Miller misses a tackle, that means we run an extra lap at the end of practice.’ The kids started calling me sissy and faggot. But I still couldn’t hate them enough to hurt them. I wanted to. But I just couldn’t.”

  As she talked I watched her hands move in graceful circles. In spite of my mental protests, my mind formed a picture of her as a little boy. Good God, this must be so wrong. What the hell am I still doing here?

  I closed my eyes but didn’t move from the couch. “Are you all right?” I heard her ask. “Do you want me to go on?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” I said. “Go on. Please.”

  “It was the same way when they teased me about being adopted. I would try and fight one of them, and the kids would be screaming at us to kill each other. It all seemed so stupid to me. I couldn’t hit the other person, and my brother would have to help me out.”

  “Sounds like wrestling,” I commented, eyes still closed tightly.

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “I think that may be why I became a wrestler. To get revenge. It’s like . . . this way I can feel superior in a way to the marks . . . to the crowd. I’m not sure.

  “So one time after a fight, my brother took me aside and told me basically that all these other kids could go to hell. But I shouldn’t be ashamed of who I was. At that point I was aware that I was . . . different. But I don’t know whether he was referring to that or to the fact that I was adopted.” There was a silent gap. “That was about four years before he jumped off that bridge and died.”

  I blinked. “So how’d you become a pro wrestler?”

  “Like I said, I was always big.” Shawna shrugged, squeezing one of her forearms. “And one day in the gym someone spotted me working out. He was a pro wrestler, and he offered to train me. I was pretty sure pro wrestlers didn’t really hurt each other. Not on purpose at least.” She grinned, the first time she had done so while telling me her real history. “So he trained me and I went to Memphis.”

  “Did you ever . . . have sex with anyone all those years?” I let my eyes close again.

  “You mean did I fuck other guys?” she asked, her humorous tone suggesting that her smile was there. “No. I never wanted to make love to another guy as a guy. I wanted to be a woman. All this terrified me, of course, so I tried even harder to be a rough pro wrestler. I drank every day, then used pills after matches. Then I started using them during matches. One night I blacked out in the ring and woke up in a hospital room. The doctor who had pumped my stomach told me that if I kept it up, I would be dead soon. That’s when I realized that was precisely what I wanted: to die. I was fucking miserable. As a man.” She paused. “About two weeks later I was driving out of Memphis to a show in Arkansas. As soon as I crossed over into Arkansas and saw those rice fields, the ones I told you to sketch . . . that was when I made up my mind. So I just kept driving west.

  “But a few years later, after I had gotten the operation, I found I still wanted to be a pro wrestler. Something about it . . . the cheers, the theater . . . I was hooked. So I went to Billy Rogers’s Power Camp and started a new career with a new name, a new body . . . everything.”

  I opened my eyes. Shawna was still sitting there, legs crossed, staring at me with those wide green eyes. “But the funny thing,” she said with a throaty tenderness, “is that although I’ve been a woman for five years . . . the first time I truly felt like a woman was when I saw the picture you drew of me. It was like some kind of a . . . validation. I saw myself as a woman through another’s eyes for the first time.”

  “You must have guys hit on you all the time.”

  “It happens,” she acknowledged, “but I’ve never responded to one.” She paused before uttering, “Until
now.”

  I bit my lips. “You mean until that night in the hotel lobby—”

  “Who kissed who, Romeo?” she asked with a guarded smile.

  “Guilty.” I smiled. The moment felt similar to many we had shared in the past, except that all those previous thin hints of defensiveness and discomfort were almost gone. “I’m glad I helped you complete your change,” I said.

  “There’s also a Native American tradition for the change you’re undergoing. A vision quest,” she said. “It means a search for one’s self,” she added.

  “That’s a nice name,” I remarked idiotically.

  She laughed. “You’re not done with it yet, obviously,” she hesitated. “I just wanted you to know the truth about my history. You shouldn’t give up your search on account of a false hope.” She swallowed, seeming to weigh her next words. “As much as I would have liked you to,” she added.

  My mind spun like a planet thrown off its natural orbit. I stood hurriedly and took a few careful steps.

  “I’m glad you told me,” I said.

  “I’ll bet,” she remarked with the old defensive smile.

  “No, I mean really,” I insisted. “It shows trust.” She looked up at me with a kindled attentiveness. “Trust,” I repeated, as though it were some kind of password.

  The dust dancing through the air became invisible as all hint of afternoon light vanished from the window. “I’d better go,” I said.

  “Wait,” she said softly, “before you do, there’s something I’d like to give you.” I nodded and remained where I was, weaving in place as she once again strode down the hallway. What could possibly be next?

  This time she returned with a piece of poster board. Stretched across its surface was a drawing of the rice fields lining the road that wound down from Tennessee into Arkansas. But it was no longer just black and white; streaks of color mixing reds and yellows with blues and grays had been shaded in. A lean slice of silver represented water lining the fields.