Living the Gimmick

by Ben Peller

  In addition to these matches, I was making a string of public appearances. My days were spent at children’s hospitals, orphanages, and other places rife with photo-ops. But these events also provided me with a chance to connect with people on a one-to-one basis. The orphanages always hit me hardest; after an afternoon of talking with parentless kids, I would often sob alone in my car on the way to the arena. All my senses felt like those of a newborn, nerves raw and eager to experience emotions for their own sake. Because my heightened feelings also included the aches and pains that are part of a pro wrestler’s everyday life, it was a small miracle that I hadn’t yet hit Santa up for a single painkiller.

  Since ceasing all steroid use, my physique had lost the added thickness granted by water retention. Each night I felt smaller and smaller in comparison to Scotty Fitzman, who religiously injected himself with 1,000 milligrams of testosterone cypionate once a week instead of taking the Fitzman One-A-Day Vitamins he endorsed.

  But in spite of all this, as well as the knowledge that I wasn’t going to win the belt, I felt on top of the world. The days passed like steps down the aisle, filled with that infinite possibility I always compared to the opening kickoff of a football game. I was that football, climbing higher and higher before a crowd of eager faces.

  “This world has been through countless revolutions and periods fueled by emotion and violence. Professional wrestling taps into both of those needs in a safe manner that at the same time is thoroughly entertaining. There is violence, but it’s contained, and the fact that these gladiators often reflect facets of the audience’s own personalities enables people to undergo a catharsis while watching them engage in battle.”

  “A bit of a highly inflated opinion, wouldn’t you say?” speculated the host, Harry Winters. “A lot of people would say it’s just a couple of fat slobs pretending to hit each over the head with chairs.” He chuckled and gave the camera a sly glance, sharing this joke with millions of his late-night viewers.

  “Obviously they’re not watching very closely.” I alternated my focus between Winters and the camera. “Anyone who watches pro wrestling can see these are athletes, not ‘fat slobs.’ But there has been a certain stigma attached to pro wrestling due to its over-the-top approach. As a result, many people are closet fans. But the WWO’s worldwide popularity makes it impossible to deny that pro wrestling touches a very primal nerve in people. The whole situation is almost overwhelming, a brutal ballet with larger-than-life characters—”

  “But you’re not claiming to be larger-than-life, are you, Michael?” he pounced. “I mean after all, your name is Michael Harding, period. You’re supposed to be the young lion.”

  “Sure . . . ,” I fumbled for a panicky second, watching the red dot just above the camera swell, a large eye tunneling into my thoughts. I touched my arm, flexing it, and found an answer of sorts: “When I get in that ring I become something else. It’s like a connection to a past point, a kid jumping around on mats with a dream, and something greater, a man who is on his way to making his dream a reality—”

  “But let’s get real,” Harold Winters chortled. “The endings are all predetermined. The moves are choreographed. Given those two factors, how can you really feel like you have any control or independence? How can you expect people to cheer for you?”

  “When you see a movie or watch television, those things are all predetermined. Hell, Harold,” I said and smiled, “before we started the show, you and I planned out what we were going to talk about in this interview. Now you didn’t mention that you were going to question pro wrestling’s authenticity. So you just went off the script for our interview.

  “And since you went off the script,” I continued loudly as Winters’ mouth parted, “I’ll do the same. I’ll draw an analogy between pro wrestling and your show. Given that your show is planned out beforehand, you know that there’s one thing none of your guests will ever mention. The fact that you’ve been married and divorced seven times and are currently on your eighth wife. Everyone knows that’s your Achilles heel, the thing you’re very sensitive about. That,” I added, “and your three face-lifts.”

  Harold Winters’ expression compressed itself into a stern frown. “We’ll be right—” he began.

  “See there?” I announced. “You dug at me, so now I’m digging at you. This kind of stuff happens in professional wrestling as well. With all the variables and personalities involved, you can never be sure what’s scripted and what’s not.”

  Harold turned abruptly to the camera and almost shouted: “We’re right back.” The red light shut off.

  “Ninety seconds!” the cameraman called out. Harry waved off the makeup people that swooped over to us.

  “Those were some low blows,” he said, sounding more genuinely stunned than angry.

  “Don’t fuck with my sport, sweetheart,” I said and winked at him.

  This episode was rerun the next night on CNN and wound up making the national papers. Two days later, USA Today had a phone-in poll on who had emerged as “the victor in our debate on the merits of pro wrestling versus late-night talk shows.” Seventy-nine percent of the 13,000 readers who phoned in said that I had won. Backstage at the Pittsburgh Civic Center that night, Hippo Haleberg informed me that, with the event still a week away, advance pay-per-view orders for SlamFest had hit the million mark, an all-time high.

  When I got back to my hotel room after the show, I found a manila envelope had been slipped neatly under the door. Inside was a standard employment contract for International Championship Wrestling. Under section E, which was labeled “Payment,” the sentence read: “I will be paid the sum of for 365 days of employment under International Championship Wrestling.” Over the line were the handwritten words: “Name your price.” A cover letter signed with best regards by Brad Burner invited me to call him “day or night” if I had any questions.

  I shook my head and laughed. Thomas Rockart Jr. had been right. There was only one title I had spent my life fantasizing about winning. That was the one possessed by Sonny Logan.

  The next morning I was awakened by a phone call from Thomas Rockart Jr. He informed me in an urgent voice that in six days I was going to become the World Wrestling Organization Heavyweight Champion.

  I grabbed on to the sides of the bed as if to brace myself. The football was about to start falling.

  15

  TRUE AMERICAN

  Off comes the champ’s blue and red T-shirt, ripped from his bronzed chest in a show of mock strength. He hams it up, face stretching in exertion when everyone knows the shirt’s material is so thin a five-year-old could pull it off. He cocks his arm, preparing to give the crowd something to fight over, then pauses.

  He whirls back around and fires the shirt at me. I catch it on instinct, as surprised as the crowd. The champ and I didn’t plan that one. The T-shirt clings to my hand. People at ringside throw up their arms in expectation. I’m holding a sweat-soaked treasure.

  I let it unfurl. American Dreamin’ is stitched in red letters across the shirt’s glossy blue. I look out at the crowd. More hands fly up and the same people who were hollering insults at me seconds ago now beg me to toss them what’s in my hand. Even the champ himself is watching me curiously.

  My eyes scan the ringside area for who I know I will see . . . the guest ring-boy, standing on the floor next to the ring’s far corner and staring intently at the champion. I walk over and stand in front of the kid. He scowls, and I toss the T-shirt into his hands. “See there, kid?” I tell him, “I’m not such a bad guy, am I?”

  Before he can refute this, I turn and face the champ, who is waiting in the middle of the ring.

  He winks at me. I don’t wink back.

  The dream I had spent my life living for now lay within the palm of my hand, its coming as inevitable as the end of the world predicted in the dusk/dawn painting. Instead of being thrilled, I was scared as hell.

  Thomas Rockart Jr. informed me on the phone that morning what had ha
ppened: last night an exact duplicate of the contract that I received had been delivered to Sonny Logan in the same surreptitious manner. Apparently, Logan had been waiting for something like this (I remembered the smile he had given me at the Horizon when he mentioned Rockart’s suspicion that I had signed with Burner). He had called ICW headquarters in Atlanta, and even though it was midnight, Burner had called Logan back at the hotel. Logan had named his price, and the next morning left for Atlanta to sign a one-year contract for four million dollars.

  Naturally, Thomas Rockart Jr. was enraged. Because he had considered Sonny Logan to be one of the few wrestlers whose loyalty was unshakable, there wasn’t even a clause in Logan’s contract that stipulated he couldn’t work for another company after leaving the WWO. His contract expired a week after SlamFest, and Rockart had intended to use that time to hash out a new agreement with his champion.

  “That sonofabitch,” Rockart ranted over the phone after telling me the story. “I made him and he goes and does this to me! Fuck it! We’ll see how well that jerk Burner does with The American Dream! I’m the only one who can market that balding rhinoceros!”

  “I wish Sonny Logan nothing but continued success,” Thomas Rockart Jr. said the next day at a press conference in the lobby of the Crystal Ship. There were about two dozen reporters in attendance. Logan and I sat on either side of the podium where Rockart, dressed in a white suit instead of his usual black, was standing. I assumed the white was supposed to make him look more benevolent. “After all, this is a business that is rapidly growing. And with that comes higher stakes. I must say I dropped the ball here.” As Thomas Rockart Jr.’s lips stretched into a smile of tolerant resignation, I pictured him practicing rigorously in front of a mirror all morning long. “I even must tip a grudging hat to Burner for so aggressively recruiting such talent,” he continued. “Sonny Logan knows wrestling very well because he has been around a very, very long time.”

  This subtle rib at Logan caused a stirring among the lines of reporters.

  “I have a wife and two kids, with another little boy on the way,” Logan announced, “so I’ve got to look to where the future of this sport lies. By signing with ICW, that’s what I’ve done.” He cast a challenging smirk at Rockart’s impassive face.

  “What about SlamFest?” a reporter hollered.

  “Sonny Logan’s final match for the WWO will indeed take place at SlamFest,” Thomas Rockart Jr. declared. He turned to me. “Michael Harding will challenge him for the World Wrestling Organization Heavyweight Championship.”

  “So given Logan’s departure, it can pretty much be a foregone conclusion he’ll be dropping the belt,” a reporter shouted, eliciting a roomful of laughter that made me want to scream.

  “This match will, like all WWO matches,” Thomas Rockart Jr. pointed out steadily, “be a prime example of sports entertainment at its best—”

  “I’ve worn this belt proudly for five years,” Logan cut him off. “I definitely plan to leave as a champion—”

  “And I definitely plan to make sure you don’t,” I asserted, like any good challenger would. Logan looked around Thomas Rockart Jr. and smiled quirkily.

  “We’ll see Sunday,” he said.

  “We sure will,” I responded.

  “One can never know for sure.” Thomas Rockart Jr.’s smile remained fixed, a beacon of teeth to match his suit. “All I can say is I have never before been so looking forward to a match between two WWO superstars. I see this as a battle between old and new. No offense, Dream.” He laughed. Logan just shook his head and continued to offer up his own smile for the photographers. “The WWO is a place where anything can happen,” concluded Rockart. “That’s what makes our brand of sports entertainment so much fun.”

  “What do you mean you’re not certain you want to do a job?” Thomas Rockart Jr. screamed a half hour later, after the three of us had gathered in his office. The only other living things in the room were the fish swimming languidly through the tank’s green water.

  “Don’t scream at me, Thomas,” Logan responded coolly. “You can scream at any other wrestler you’ve got working for you, but not at me.”

  “There’s a tradition, Sonny,” Thomas blustered. “When a wrestler leaves a federation, he does a job in his final match. If he’s a champion, he always drops the belt. I know Michael is young—”

  “It’s got nothing to do with Michael,” Logan said. “I’m serious, Michael.” He turned to me. “If I was ready to drop the belt, I would have no problem doing a job for you. But the fact of the matter is I just don’t want to drop it.”

  It was odd to see him explain this so rationally; if his tank top and stretch pants were a three-piece suit, he could just as easily have been dissecting a corporate takeover. Then it hit me that this could be considered precisely that; Brad Burner was taking over the license to “The American Dream.” An uneasy pang stitched its way across my side.

  “You don’t want to?” Rockart was demanding. “When the hell did you start booking this federation?”

  “I’ll be happy to wrestle Michael to a draw,” Logan maintained. “That way, nobody loses face.”

  “Bullshit!” Thomas Rockart Jr. cried. “That means you leave the WWO undefeated as champion. That means our heavyweight title is weakened. Sonny.” Rockart’s voice dropped to a husky whisper. If Logan was discussing a corporate takeover, Rockart seemed more like he was pleading with a departing lover. “You, more than anyone, know that this business is built on perception. People see a belt as having value only because of the person wearing it. And people see the person wearing it as having value only because of a company’s push of that individual. If that person’s real habits were made public, then the public might not accept him as quite a hero.”

  “What are you insinuating here, Tom?” Sonny Logan demanded. “That if I don’t drop the belt, you’ll issue a press release stating that I drink, do coke, take steroids, fool around on the road, et cetera?”

  “It’s a funny business.” Rockart gave a ridiculously affected shrug. “Things leak out.”

  Logan laughed. “We both know there’s no way you’ll ever let that ‘leak out,’ Tommy. Because if it does, it may weaken me, but it also destroys the character that’s been the cornerstone of your company for five years. And I know you, you’d sell your own kids to the devil before you’d do anything that’d damage the company.”

  Thomas Rockart Jr. stared at the champion of his company with a cool hatred. Sonny Logan stood and nodded at me. “Sorry, Michael,” he explained. “Again, it’s nothing personal.” I gave a numb nod, and Logan turned and left.

  After the door clicked shut, Thomas Rockart Jr. began a furious beating of his fingers upon the oak of the desk. “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” he chanted in tune with the steady beat of his drumming. I watched, fascinated, as he quickly turned to the portrait looming just behind him. “We’ll figure something out,” he told himself. “We’ll figure something out.”

  I headed quietly out of the office, leaving Thomas Rockart Jr. still staring into the stern eyes of his self-portrait.

  Out in the lobby I found Sonny Logan waiting for the elevator. We nodded at one another. The silence was heavy enough to make the ding of the elevator sound like a gunshot. Once we were inside, he said, “You know what we call him, right? Herr Rockart?”

  “He does have an ego,” I allowed. “I mean hell, how many people do you see with portraits of themselves hanging in their office?”

  Logan looked at me blankly, then shook his head. “That’s not him,” he said. “That’s his father. Thomas Rockart Sr.”

  “No shit,” I said. Suddenly I realized that the something I had sensed in Rockart the first time I met him, the same something I was lacking, was a father’s presence. Maybe, when he had accused me of wanting to dwell on Beastie’s death, he had understood. In his own way.

  “I met his old man once,” Logan was nodding. “My first year here was the year Thomas took over operations. He was
an even bigger hard-on than his kid.”

  The elevator reached the ground floor and its doors slid open. Sonny Logan and I both made simultaneous gestures indicating the other should go first. “I insist,” Logan said, in a tone that awakened in me some stubborn need to stand my ground. “After you, Dream,” I challenged, trying to keep my voice diplomatic.

  Logan’s hand flashed out and stopped the doors from closing. He stepped out of the elevator, and I began to follow. He stopped and turned, his massive frame taking up almost the entire elevator doorway. I stumbled and bounced lightly off his chest. He smiled down at me from his seven inch height advantage. “See you on Sunday, Michael,” he said evenly.

  Then he was walking away. I watched him until the elevator doors began to close once more. Then I barged through them, stumbling across the lobby and into a humid New York City spring.

  In any given week, the combined roster of WWO wrestlers received more than 5,000 fan letters requesting a reply of some kind, be it autographed pictures, personal meetings, or simply a written acknowledgment. During the weeks leading up to SlamFest, that weekly total had quadrupled. This meant a greatly increased workload for “the three priestesses,” the trio of women who made up the response department on the fifth floor of the Crystal Ship. Two of the three might have been more properly referred to as witches. Both suffered from severe middle-age; they were unhappily married, and their tired brittle faces matched their personalities. They seemed determined that every word or thought they shared be a cynical one.

  Via Kavanaugh, however, really did seem to be something of a priestess. She was a large-boned woman with facial features that were more comforting than beautiful. When she spoke, it was with a voice so cheerful that you were inclined to believe anything she told you. She was much gossiped about throughout the Crystal Ship offices, for although she had been working for the WWO for many years, she would talk to the boys about past and upcoming matches in such earnest tones (offering luck for the future and commiserating on losses) that many of us wondered if she wasn’t a little mad. It was as though the innocence from the thousands of letters she opened every week had seeped through her skin. She would often give us letters if she thought, as she put it, “we would especially like them.”