Through The Shattered Glass

by Jeanie Clarke

  On 27th January 1986, the two were set to face each other in another hair match in Fort Worth. During the end of the contest, Gino threw some hair remover cream at Chris, seemingly blinding him.

  When Chris returned on television, he was filmed with bandaged eyes. He stated that he was unable to wrestle and would be gone from World Class. The angle was the first step to set up a return grudge match. The eye injury was a device to explain Chris’s extended absence, which he was using to visit his family back in Britain.

  While Chris was away, I had the key to his apartment. I saw Gino from the balcony about to go for a tan. He waved and called out for me to join him, so I went over and we hung out together. Since Vicky was at home with Jade that evening, he asked if I would go out for a few drinks with him.

  He took me to The Rio Room, a private and highly-exclusive club. It was renowned for its very strict guest list and was only open to the extremely wealthy. No matter where Gino went, the doors were opened and everyone wanted to party with him.

  He was so outgoing, and came across as the coolest guy in the world.

  Once we got in the club, we both sniffed a line of cocaine from Gino’s never-ending stash. I tried it out of curiosity and figured I needed to try it if I was going to fit in at such a classy venue.

  We were flying really high and we had an amazing night in the club. When we got back to the complex, Gino asked me to carry on partying at his apartment.

  As soon as we got inside, he reached for a cereal bowl from the top of his kitchen cupboard. It was full to the brim with cocaine.

  He started chopping out long, thick lines of the powder and sniffing them up at a rapid pace. He was talking extremely quickly, most of it garbled nonsense, and peppered his speech with crazed laughing. And then, just like if a switch had been flicked, he went very quiet.

  A look of sheer panic and paranoia crossed his face.

  He stood up and rushed into the kitchen. With worried urgency, he turned on the taps full blast. He put the plug in the sink and the water started overflowing, spilling onto the floor.

  I went to turn the taps off, but Gino came up from behind and grabbed me in a vice-like grip around my shoulders and waist.

  “Be very quiet… don’t move,” he whispered.

  “Can you hear that?” he snapped, with wide-eyed panic.

  Gino kept his grip on me and I couldn’t move. There wasn’t any noise other than the dripping of the water.

  I grabbed the door of the fridge to try and escape his clutches but it was an impossible task, as he was extremely strong. I managed to wriggle and twist around slightly and saw that Gino had a loaded gun in his hand.

  “Don’t talk. Don’t move,” he breathed.

  All the time, his eyes kept glancing between the door and the window as if someone was outside.

  For fifteen minutes, I just froze in complete silence, praying for my life.

  All of a sudden, Gino let me go and then walked back to the couch to snort another huge line of coke. I sat down next to him to reassure him that everything was okay.

  Everything I said just fell on deaf ears. All of his paranoia was fixed on looking at the door, interspersed by the consumption of even more cocaine.

  He rose up again, and stormed over to the window, craning his head to peer into the inky blackness of the night, and then came back to the couch to do another line. Five minutes later, he repeated this bizarre cycle. It continued on and on for about an hour.

  I was extremely afraid and wanted to go home.

  “Don’t go. Do not go near the door!” he warned.

  I sat with him for several hours trying to calm him down and get him to relax but it was hopeless. Suddenly, the day was breaking and, just as the first rays of sun came through the window, he snapped out of it. The fear of whatever was out there in the night had passed. He finally laid down, content and safe that nothing was going to get him.

  I saw him later on that day and he came up to me with a sheepish look on his face.

  “I’m so sorry Jeanie, you must think I’m a moron,” he winced.

  I could tell he’d tortured himself over the ordeal, so I wanted to give him reassurance.

  “Of course not, but I’m really worried about you,” I softly smiled.

  Gino apologised again before reverting to his cool, cocky self and tried to laugh off the incident. It was clear that Gino’s drug use had spiralled beyond a recreational pastime and was now a serious problem.

  A week later, he was coming back to the apartments after picking up a peach pie. He loved sweet pies and used to buy them from an expensive deli. Whether it was clothes, cars, drugs or food, Gino always sought out the very best.

  “Hey kiddo,” he shouted across to me.

  “The pie’s looking great Gino, save me a slice,” I replied, waving across to him.

  “Sure thing, come across in the morning for one,” he flirted.

  Later that night, I was getting ready for bed after watching TV, and happened to glance out of the window. Gino had come back from another night partying at the Rio Room and I could see he had dumped his Porsche at a strange angle in the parking bay.

  The next morning I went across to see him as arranged and knocked on the door. There was no answer. I knocked harder and there was still no reply. I looked through the window to see if he was crashed out on the couch.

  The peach pie was on the table but there was no sign of Gino. I presumed he was sound asleep in bed. He must have crashed out after another hard night of partying, so I headed out into town.

  When I returned, I saw that his car still hadn’t been moved. I went up to his apartment to see if he had awakened. I banged on the door but there still wasn’t any response.

  I went back to my apartment and asked Vicky if Gino had been over but she hadn’t seen him. I told her about the gun incident from the previous week and said that I was extremely worried about his mental state. I wanted to check up on him, but felt I couldn’t call anyone for help. The last thing I wanted for my friend was to have him arrested if the police found the large amount of drugs that were in his apartment.

  The day after, I heard a commotion outside and saw a group of people outside Gino’s apartment, breaking down his door.

  A body bag was carried out of the complex. It was then wheeled into an ambulance.

  My heart sank, as my worst fears were confirmed. In the short time we had spent together, we had become much more than friends.

  Shaken, I called Chris in England to let him know our friend was dead. Toni answered the phone, and her blood-curdling scream chilled me as I told her the devastating news.

  We were all in absolute shock. It took me about six months to stop grieving over my friend’s tragic death at just 28 years of age. Whenever I thought about him, I would burst into tears. He may have faltered to addiction, but Gino Hernandez was a kind and caring man.

  Gino’s death hit me hard. I couldn’t bear to see his apartment anymore so I told Vicky that I needed to move out of the complex. I needed to make a fresh start in Dallas. Reeling from the pain of Gino’s untimely demise, I moved into a new rented apartment on Greenville Avenue.

  To help with the additional expense, I started to look for a source of some extra income. A friend of mine was working for Eastern Onion, a company which specialised in novelty telegrams. She would turn up at workplaces, bars, and even restaurants and then perform a dancing strip routine on anyone who had been set-up to receive this service. She told me it was a real laugh seeing these people get a show in the middle of a public place completely out of the blue. When she told me how much she was making I was amazed.

  I looked up the company in the Yellow Pages, and after contacting them, I was offered the opportunity to work as one of the dancers.

  As the appointments always took place in a public area, no nudity was allowed. Once the music hit, we simply stripped down to a bikini or lingerie. It was actually rather tame and quite a good laugh.

  After a yea
r of working for the agency, I decided that I could create a more comfortable life if I was self-employed. As my own boss, I would have more flexibility to schedule my appointments around valuable time with Jade. Having successfully launched a make-up venture in Florida, I had a new dream. I wanted to open my own telegram firm, and set about designing a business strategy for my fledgling company.

  I called it Genies, and set about creating a number of ‘characters’ for my new venture, which was due to be launched in early 1987. I purchased outfits as a police officer, a nurse, a business lady and a few others. Each persona would turn up at the specified location acting perfectly normal, before the surprise of booming music hit and the dance routine started.

  From the onset, I was swamped with so many gigs. Due to the demand, I couldn’t cover it all and had to draft in some new girls to cover the workload. It was a roaring success and it quickly became the biggest telegram company in the whole of Dallas. Eventually, we grew to a close-knit team of ten dancers. I was blessed to employ so many lovely people, including my friend Laurie Rogers, and we all formed such a wonderful social circle.

  Laurie Rogers, friend and former Genie’s entertainer: “Jeanie and I met around 1989, a magical time in Dallas, when the 80’s where in full form. Jeanie owned a unique company that set our industry on fire. She was beautiful and smart, and I was so excited to begin working with her. I was hired as a dancer, or an entertainer as I liked to be called, and I would wear different costumes for the performances – it was a blast! We soon became the best of friends, hanging out at the best clubs and meeting exciting people. We were enjoying life to the full!”

  Even though I had moved from the complex in Lovers Lane, I remained a very close friend to both Toni and Chris. We spent Christmas together and I quickly offered Toni a position at my new business.

  As Toni joined the roster of Genies, Chris also decided to set up a little private enterprise of his own. He wanted to open his own wrestling school, and filmed adverts which would appear throughout World Class programming.

  I was excited for Chris as he aimed to open the training camp in 1988. Genies had been going strong and afforded me the financial security to buy my very first house in the Garland district of Dallas. I used one of the rooms as a little office, and would sit and write little skits for the routines based on the costume and occasion.

  With some of the money that I had earned that year, I wanted to use it to reach out to my brother back in England. I had only seen Phil sporadically since we were children, and I yearned to spend some quality time with him.

  I arranged to fly him out to Texas, and I was so excited that we would be reunited.

  All those lost years didn’t make any difference, and we clicked straight away. In the years since our childhood, Phil had become such a talented artist and musician. He had excelled academically, and he was studying towards a Master’s Degree in Fine Art. I was so proud of my big brother.

  During the visit, we went to the famous Southfork Ranch where they filmed the hit TV show Dallas, and even travelled to Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion in Memphis.

  We had the best time together, and I was grateful to get the chance to reconnect with my brother. He loved getting the chance to meet his niece, who was now a cheerful little seven year old. It was great being a little family again. I was just saddened that he couldn’t stay.

  Not long after Phil went home to Canterbury, I got a call from Chris. Once again, he wanted to pursue the idea of me returning to the business. But this time, he was not going to take no for an answer.

  Chris had been training some new recruits at the Sportatorium and wanted to pair me up with one of his students in a storyline.

  He spoke with a conviction that I rarely heard from his voice.

  Chris was certain that this rookie possessed some real potential.

  8 A STUNNING DISCOVERY

  For almost five years, I had resisted the urge to return as an on-screen performer within the wild and wacky world of professional wrestling. But Chris was determined that the time was right to run with a storyline involving two feuding couples, as he had fostered a promising talent at his fledgling wrestling academy.

  Chris’ classes at the Sportatorium were notorious for being brutal. He harboured an old-school mentality to protect the wrestling business from outsiders, as the secrets of the industry had been closely guarded for generations.

  During his seminars, he would often punish young trainees to establish if they had the desire to come back for more. In his mind, only the elite who could persevere through his sadistic stretching and in-ring bullying would stand a chance of enduring a career in professional wrestling.

  From the opening of his school, he had encountered lots of young wannabe wrestlers, many of whom did not have the desire, skills, or physical attributes to make it in the industry.

  There was one exception, a former college football player from North Texas State University.

  After dropping out of college, this rookie had been scraping a living by any means necessary. He had secured a job in the small city of Denton by loading boxes on a freight dock for Watkins Motor Lines, until enlisting in Chris’ wrestling school at the Sportatorium.

  In this newcomer, Chris had found someone who could help realise a storyline that he had developed for half a decade. He wanted to know if I would hear him out on his new idea, as he was convinced that my involvement would be critical to its success.

  Having grown comfortable as a performer during my time with Genies, I decided to listen, and visited Toni and Chris’ apartment. It was not long after I arrived that Chris started to describe his notion for the angle involving me.

  His plan was to engage in a series of matches with his top trainee in a ‘student versus teacher’ rivalry, but wanted the story to escalate into a personal issue. To make it a truly bitter feud, he needed a foil. And that foil would be me.

  Using our former real-life relationship as a precedent, Chris wanted me to portray his evil ex-wife, the scorned lover who was intent on doing anything she could to exact her revenge on ‘The Gentleman’. To further antagonise him, I would align myself with his ungrateful student, as Chris would struggle against uneven odds.

  When the time was right, Chris would introduce his current wife, Toni, into the fray. He was certain the story would connect to the Dallas wrestling faithful.

  Meanwhile, Chris wanted to retain a sense of intrigue over the story, which he intended to play out over the course of a year, and he wanted my reasons for harbouring such a grudge to remain unknown. My motivations would be slowly revealed in a slow-burning, episodic tale. We were going to create a soap opera storyline, complete with twists and turns, and all set within the genre of pro wrestling.

  I wanted to know more about my character, so I asked Chris for guidance.

  Being from an English background, Chris’ envisaged me as a pretentious (albeit elegantly-dressed) wicked lady. He referenced the character Alexis Colby from the hit television series Dynasty, a power-dressing vixen brilliantly played by Joan Collins. Chris wanted me to base my performances on her character, and even wanted me to claim that I had spawned from Royal descent.

  Far removed from who I really was, it was the pantomime-villain aspect of the ‘Jeanie Adams’ character which really fascinated me. I would arrive in luxurious evening dresses, flaunting my wealth and insult the local fans as Chris, the people’s champion, would defend their honour.

  His idea sounded fun, and I knew I could easily arrange cover at Genies which would allow me to participate in the saga. I told Chris I would do it.

  Excited that his storyline was coming to fruition, Chris wanted me to make an immediate impact. He asked if I could be in attendance at the next schedule of tapings held at the Sportatorium the following Friday night and Saturday morning. Before he could finalise the commitment, he needed to get approval from the new booker of the Dallas territory, Jerry Jarrett.

  For so long, the territory had been the ex
clusive stronghold of the Von Erich family, as World Class Championship Wrestling became a staple of Dallas sports culture. Due to financial pressures within a decade in which the wrestling industry was changing, the majority of promotion was sold.

  WCCW merged with the Continental Wrestling Association, a Memphis-based outfit owned by Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler. In an attempt to create a national promotion, both were unified under the banner of the United States Wrestling Association.

  Jerry Jarrett, former USWA promoter: “We had an exclusive contract with the Sportatorium, so we had access all week. Chris and I began a wrestling school. He did the actual training, and I handled the business end of the school.”

  For World Class, Chris had been one of the company’s top stars, and he was keen to make a good impression to Jarrett. He carefully laid out his vision for the ex-wife angle, knowing it could really raise the profile of the new USWA.

  Jerry Jarrett, former USWA promoter: “Jeanie Clarke was first introduced to me by Chris Adams. Looking back even now, the story seems surreal. I have been divorced, and based on my situation I had never seen a situation where the ex’s were civil, let alone friends. Anyway Chris introduced us and also suggested we might do a little ex-wife angle.

  To say Jeanie was an attractive woman would be an understatement. She was a real knock-out. She was attractive, had a great body and was well endowed. Chris’s wife at the time was also attractive. I immediately saw box-office potential to the ex-wife soap opera so we began the program right away.”

  After his meeting with Jarrett, Chris called and said the idea had been approved, but Jerry had requested some publicity photographs of Toni and me. After seeing them, he was convinced that he could really put something together with what he had seen, and wanted us to go to the April television tapings.

  Days later, I headed to my first show for the USWA.