Living the Gimmick

  LIVING THE GIMMICK. Copyright © 2000 by Ben Peller. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. For information address iPublish.com, Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017.

  A Time Warner Company

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-2001-1

  First edition: October 2000

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  Contents

  LADIES AND GENTLEMEN . . .

  WELCOME TO THE FAMILY

  GREATEST SPORT IN THE WORLD

  MUSCLE MAN

  ROAD TRIPPING

  SOUTHERN WILDMAN

  BLINKING HARD

  8

  RICH MAN NOW

  WRESTLING DEATH

  CHASING SHAWNA, FINDING MOM, AND A FATHER’S ULTIMATE JOB

  SHOOTING WITH MYSELF

  UNMASKED

  MR. MICHAEL HARDING

  TRUE AMERICAN

  IN THE RING WITH THE DREAM

  MICHAEL AT LAST

  LIVING

  THE

  GIMMICK

  BEN PELLER

  iPublish.com

  To all the professional wrestlers I have ever watched or worked with, for making a small piece of my heart a place where dreams will always be possible.

  And to my father, for giving me the spark.

  What shocks the virtuous philosopher

  delights the chameleon poet.

  —John Keats

  1

  LADIES AND GENTLEMEN . . .

  I yank the final lace of my left boot tight, preparing to commit fraud in front of ten million witnesses. Most of them will be watching through closed-circuit television, but eighty thousand of them are just outside, seated on folding chairs lining the field of Giants Stadium or in the bleachers above. Their cheers ease dully through the dressing room’s concrete walls, all four of which are painted a blank white. Only a full-length mirror provides a pocket of variety; it stands in the middle of the far wall, intimidating and unapologetic.

  The crowd lets out another series of cheers. They have been growing more and more animated all afternoon, and now with evening, their moment of truth is almost here. Within minutes they will be watching two characters engage in a fantastic battle for a world championship belt that glitters high above an everyday life of mortgages and kids and bills and asshole bosses. I am one of those characters. The challenger. Mister Michael Harding, young lion seeking to fulfill a childhood dream. They are going to watch me attempt to defeat the World Wrestling Organization Heavyweight Champion in the main event of tonight’s annual professional wrestling extravaganza known as SlamFest.

  There is a knock and the door opens before I can respond. “Michael,” comes a voice I recognize as belonging to “Hippo” Haleburg, an executive for the WWO. “They’re gonna take it home in about five. Then you’re on.”

  I stand and pull up my yellow knee pads. In the mirror, a reflection confronts me. Long thick brown hair curling at the ends. Arms and chest and legs all shaved, and expanded from years of steroid use and weights. Bronzed, of course. A tan so blatant it looks like the skin has been permanently stained, forced to relinquish any hold on natural color.

  Michael Harding, I mouth the words to myself. The movement of my lips is strange. My tongue clicks against my teeth like an intruder. Sweat has already collected on the wide scars lining my forehead.

  “Whattaya say, Michael?” Hippo Haleburg prompts. “Ready to give ’em what they came here for?”

  “What did they come here for, Hippo?” I ask, even though I know what his reply will be.

  “Shit, if you don’t know that, we’re in trouble.” He claps his hands. “Come on, kid, let’s give ’em a good show.”

  This is the answer. They have come to lose themselves in the brutality of choreographed violence. They have come to see a world that is contained within the very chaos it exhibits. They have come to see if I can become a champion and achieve what I have long believed to be my dream. They have come for a good show.

  But there is no guarantee they’ll get one. Because there is a key variable that will make this bout like no other I have ever wrestled. Tonight, for the first time in my life, I will be stepping into a ring with absolutely no knowledge of how the upcoming match will end.

  Participation in the world of professional wrestling is desired only by a unique few. I was one of them. Throughout my career I met countless fall-ins, a term for those who found themselves in the business by default. They were former gym teachers, frustrated body builders, and football players who were forced into premature retirement because of ineffectiveness or injuries. One former amateur wrestling champion told me he considered professional wresting a basic career change. That’s like saying a switch from pauper to millionaire is a basic status change. They are two different worlds, pure and simple.

  The groundwork for my wish to become a professional wrestler was laid at a Cub Scout Father-Son softball game during the summer of my tenth birthday. I’d gone there with another boy, Max Egan, and his father. Max and I were in the same fourth grade class. He was a moody kid who loved attention. He constantly picked fights with others, then backed down the moment his opponent landed anything other than a glancing blow. Often there were two or three other kids following him around, latching on to the safety of his aggression.

  Max and I didn’t know each other that well, but his mother, a den mother with thin precise features, had insisted I tag along. “You two can be like brothers for a day!” she exclaimed brightly.

  When I got up to bat at the picnic, nobody called out any words of encouragement. Half the kids there probably didn’t even know my name because I rarely spoke at meetings. But still I felt that everyone was watching me, wondering which of the grown-up men was my father. The pitcher was studying me. Why didn’t he just pitch the ball?

  Two men standing along the first base line were whispering to each other. One of them laughed. My ears burned. Was he laughing at the fact I was here as Max’s “brother-for-a-day”? I cursed the fucking Cub Scouts for organizing this idiot event. The pitcher finally wound up and then the ball was looping through the air at me.

  I swung, wanting to get a hit, any kind of hit, just so I could get away from being so exposed at the plate. The jolt sent a satisfied vibration up my arms. I watched the ball fly away, half-expecting it to come rushing back and hit me in the face. Only when someone shouted “Run!” did I drop the bat and take off in the direction of first base.

  I made it to third, sliding in and triggering a mini-storm of dust. I leapt up and looked around, flushed with excitement and exertion from running. Mr. Egan was in the dugout, drinking a beer and talking to another kid’s father. Someone went up and motioned toward me, and Mr. Egan turned his whiskered face in my direction and hollered: “Good job, kid!” Even though the compliment came out in a bored and slightly slurred tone, it still felt good. My back became suddenly hot, invaded by something other than sweat. I turned to see Max standing in the outfield, his eyes narrowed and fixed on me.

  After the softball game, groups of fathers and their kids congregated with a shared economy. All of them were following a code involving high fives and enthusiastic tones that looked and sounded so easy, but remained a mystery to me. I retreated from their booming voices to the shade underneath an oak tree. There I sat, trying to eat a hot dog while constantly pressing my finger into the bun and then to my flesh. This was my habit for as long as I could remember, the need to touch s
omething in order to confirm its actual existence. The thing I most often touched was my own body; scratching my arms, poking my legs, anything to make contact. To make sure I was still here.

  A painful itch came alive on my arm. I looked and saw a large mosquito there. Its fang, no wider than a pin, sucking out blood.

  I slammed an open palm against this easy target. When I took my hand away, I saw its dead body lying tangled in a small smear of blood. My own blood. For an instant I felt victorious. I had conquered something that had made me itch. I was real.

  But then the fresh bite erupted. It felt like a million tiny bugs were inside its swelled red cap, tickling just under my skin. With this came guilt. The mosquito still lay mangled against my skin. I picked up its body between two fingernails. Then I pressed the evidence into the grass, digging my fingers under the dirt. Instead of being silenced, the itch now throbbed harder. I scratched the wound furiously, causing more blood to run. I took another bite of my hot dog and chewed miserably. The bun was stained with blood from my fingers. More evidence of the bug I’d killed so effortlessly, like everything in the world could be killed. I touched my arm hesitantly, then took a breath.

  Still alive. For now.

  “Hey, Mikey!”

  The words were like a high pitched shotgun blast. I knew they’d come from Max even before I opened my eyes and saw him approaching with a group of four boys behind him. My fingers tore at the hot dog bun. “Why are you here, Mikey?” Max spat. “You don’t have a father!”

  “Yes, I . . .” I dropped the shredded bun and scratched my hand. “I did.”

  “Then what happened to him?” Max asked, his voice tauntingly curious.

  My throat seized up. I jumped up and turned to walk away. “Chicken!” Max shouted excitedly. “Chicken!” My feet whirled around and ran toward a blur. When I regained focus, my hands were slamming into Max’s shoulders. He fell to the ground.

  One of his friends stepped over and shoved me and shouted: “Bastard!” The word was unknown to me, but the shove was familiar enough. So I shoved him back. Hands collided with my back. I stumbled and turned to face whomever had pushed me. A different pair of hands hit me from behind.

  The kids closed in, each of them chanting “Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.” This word saturated the surrounding air with hostility, a chorus of hammers striking steel drums. I stumbled through a hole in the ring of boys and ran. I kept running until the sound of their laughter disappeared completely, taken over by the sounds of younger kids playing on a swing set at the park’s edge. I ran all the way home, even though I wasn’t due back for hours. My eyes never left the pavement, where a blurred shadow remained a constant step ahead. I tried to catch up, pushing myself harder and harder until I stumbled and sprained my ankle. I jogged the rest of the way home with my eyes closed.

  Mom wasn’t home, so I let myself in with my key, which hung on a thin leather rope around my neck. The inside of my throat was dry, still on fire from the combination of running and tears. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water, avoiding my favorite big brown mug. Punishment for letting Max and the other kids push me around, for my lack of faith in my own body’s existence.

  I hurried into the living room, wincing on my ankle, and pulled a large dictionary down from its home on the top shelf of a rickety bookcase. The word was simple enough to sound out . . . bass-turd, bass-turd . . . and I tracked it down right away: Bastard 1. an illegitimate child. 2. anything inferior, spurious, or not standard.

  I slammed the book shut, but the word lay embedded in my stomach. The mosquito bite on my arm screamed and I clawed at it. If I just stood there I would vomit, so I limped over to the television and snapped it on. Then my hands went to my thighs. Tapping over and over. I commanded my hands to stop, but they wouldn’t. I cursed myself with a soft sob and focused on the unfolding light of the television screen. Two gigantic men were throwing each other around a ring. My hands became still. These two monsters were exchanging blows that looked crippling, but they kept getting up after every fall. The blows must have hurt; their faces registered intense pain. But they kept fighting. It was like they were invincible.

  Do men that big really exist?

  Two more titans in spikes flew into the ring. Three of them began to pound on one. The image made me think back to the park where Max and his gang had jumped me, and tears of outrage welled up. But then something amazing happened; the one man actually fought back with a flurry of blows so overwhelming that he knocked the other three men out of the ring. I watched, awestruck, as he stood triumphant in the middle of the ring and flexed mightily.

  When Mom arrived home a little while later she found me leaping around the room, my sprained ankle forgotten, throwing blows at invisible opponents in imitation of those dancing warriors on the screen.

  During the next week I went into the boys’ washroom every afternoon to examine the scab slowly growing over the mosquito bite. The third afternoon, Max and two other kids marched in while I was at the mirror.

  “Oh, look,” Max hooted, “Mikey’s posing. Think you’re tough, huh, Mikey? Think you can whip me?”

  I knew if I tried to fight Max the other two would jump in. Besides that, I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to be left alone. My face hovered motionless in the mirror as they got closer. Instead of fear, a hot anger was erupting inside. I imagined my blood was lava, coursing below a skin that felt weirdly foreign. I’d done nothing to deserve this treatment; for one of the first times in my life I felt right. I was a good guy being unfairly attacked, and remembering how that wrestler on television had fought back, I fastened my face into an aggressive sneer. Max’s grab for my shoulder was cut off when I spun around and knocked his hand away. “You want some of me, little man?” I roared in a voice that, although unfamiliar, was immediately comfortable. It seemed an inevitable discovery. The tiled floor under my feet became solid. “I’ll take on all three of you! But you remember one thing!” The words flowed so naturally, made all the more intense by my opponents’ stunned looks. “I will show you no mercy! I will beat you . . . One. Two. Three.” With the last word I shifted my weight toward Max, who retreated quickly.

  I was surprised to find my arms rising. They locked outstretched at my sides and I stood in imitation of a pro wrestler poised to leap off a turnbuckle. Although this stance left me wide open to attack, my body remained frozen. My heart was beating so loudly I was sure it was audible throughout the bathroom, but if they could hear it they gave no sign. All three just kept staring at me, their jaws hanging open in vacant surprise. They may as well have been looking at an alien. “You’re weird,” Max finally pronounced, then turned and walked out of the bathroom. Their leader gone, the other two kids looked at each other and found matching confusion. They left.

  Max was right. I was weird. I was also victorious, without even having to throw a blow. A feeling of freedom fanned out inside of me like a warm blanket gliding cleanly onto a bed. This was something I could use. I turned and faced the mirror. The scab on my arm was still visible and ugly. I picked at it and watched the blood run.

  Max and his crew didn’t ever bother me again and the bite eventually healed, but left behind a scar as small and unique as a snowflake.

  I turned fourteen in 1984. That was the year I attended my first World Wrestling Organization show at the Rosemont Horizon. The main event featured “The American Dream” Sonny Logan defending his WWO Heavyweight Championship against “Cowboy” Jesse Buke. Logan stood 6'7" and boasted twenty-three-inch biceps (which he referred to as cannons). In between successfully defending his title for the past three years, he’d been steadily spouting an all-American rhetoric with such grace and charisma that he became a fixture on late-night talk shows. Logan won that night, of course, then flexed as a sea of flash bulbs exploded. Before the house lights came on, I scurried underneath the bleachers and slipped backstage. After hiding behind a mountain of sound equipment for a half an hour listening to voices and footsteps pass by, I stepp
ed out and launched myself blindly up a flight of stairs. In the bare light of the stairwell a hulklike form was descending. As the figure approached, I recognized it as belonging to Sonny Logan himself. His face stretched into a smile and he extended his hand. “How’s it goin’, brother?” he asked.

  “Hi, Dream,” I whispered, taking his extended hand. His grip was relaxed, but his eyes reached forcefully into mine. His skin was stained with a permanent tan, and strands of blond hair cascaded from the sides of a prominent forehead. It was the first time I ever shook hands with one of the men whose image I had taken from the wrestling ring and used to fill the vacant place in all the pictures of my mother and me. Then his touch was gone and I was watching the World Gym insignia on the back of his leather jacket descend down the next flight of stairs.

  I followed quietly, stopping at the door that led out to the cavernous cargo area. I peered outside and saw technicians and workers rolling up cables and loading pieces of the ring into a truck. Sonny Logan was standing by a limousine, talking to “Cowboy” Jesse Buke. They shook hands and then Sonny Logan got into the limousine while Jesse climbed into another car. Witnessing this brief exchange only fueled my excitement. I was privy to a special secret; something meaningful had just been laid out before me.

  It is an illusion. They will do this night after night and all will work out as it should.

  A few minutes later I floated out of the arena into a night sewn together by sticky heat. I felt a peculiar absence of fear. Everything was all right. A hero had touched my hand and acknowledged my individual existence; suddenly, I could be anything or anyone I wanted to be.

  Two extraordinary things happened that next week. I didn’t feel the need to touch that hand to confirm its existence, and I began lifting weights.

  My desire to be a professional wrestler was with me all the time, as powerful and well-defined as other kids’ dreams of becoming a magician or an astronaut. Although pro wrestling was as esoteric as those professions, it lacked their respectability. This made it even more appealing. Although not technically an illegitimate child, the world had branded me different and inferior because of circumstances I couldn’t control. I savored the idea of being at odds with that world.