I.
Pain.
Mountains of pain, canyons of pain, so much pain.
I blindly tug at my gym bag I’m using as a pillow, hear the bottles of pills rattling around in the zipped-up compartments. I grab one loose at the bottom and pop a few in my mouth. The acidic fruity taste makes me gag: it’s the Melatonin gummies I use to help me sleep. I tilt my head to the left side of the bench and vomit up the beer and Oreos I had before the match. The rookie enters the locker room and almost steps in the mess I just made.
“Vic? Are you okay?” he says as he kneels beside me.
I cough a little and find the words coming out without my brain approving them. “Call the medic, Shelby.” His ring name is Rex Arthur Danton with RAD sewn into the ass of his blue tights in red lettering that is supposed to look like blood but looks more like Christmas tinsel. He curtain-jerked tonight with Mosby Mulligan, set the crowd on fire with a 10-minute banger. His look of concern worries me more than the waves of pain rushing through my body. I feel it in my back, my arms, legs, chest, even places like the webbing between my toes and the spaces behind my ears. It all hurts the same, my body a pain factory. If I die, I’d be okay with it. It’s not Owen falling from the rafters, Misawa dying in the ring or even three of the four Von Erich brothers deciding to check out on their daddy Fritz’s ranch but ask them about their legacies now that they are dead.
A crowd gathers: ring techs, referees, a few backstage fans. “Just sit still, Vic,” Shelby says, holding my right hand, still slick with blood and pierced with fluorescent glass. I want to ask if he liked my match with Ash Levi, if he liked the ending where I fell off the ladder into the light tubes and table wrapped in barbed wire. The weapons were supposed to break my fall, but I overshot my mark and hit the ground headfirst. I sold the move as Ash pinned me, making sure to squeeze his hand to tell him I was okay before he played to the crowd. I see Ash looking down at me before the medics hustles their way through the gathering crowd and start shining lights in my face. It is a woman, cute, and far from a wrestling fan given how calm and almost bored she looks.
“Sir, can you tell me your name.”
I cough, taste a bit of blood before saying, “Vic Bradstreet.”
“Your real name, sir, please.”
I give the medic my real name and she starts doing her tests. She straps an oxygen mask to my face. She surveys my broken body, marveling at the blood, the fresh cuts and ancient scar tissue lining my limbs and torso. As they roll me out of the locker room, I try to tell her how easily barbed wire tears skin, how a bundle of light tubes smashed over the head is safer than an unprotected chair shot, but she tells me to keep quiet and I’ll be okay. In the ambulance, I fall asleep and dream about my first match. It was two states away in a building that normally housed farm equipment. It was against Chad Ruthless, better known now as Irish Lightning Conor O’Fallon when he got to WWE, better known to his friends as Jeff, one of the nicest guys you were ever likely to meet, who once found a stray kitten while on the road in Oklahoma and took it home to his daughters, who liked cocaine a bit too much and was eventually let go by the WWE and floundered on the indies for the rest of his life.
I dream of the last conversation I had before he was found dead in that Boise hotel room. We’re in a Denny’s at 3:00 AM, me ravenous, him on his fifth cup of coffee loaded with sugar. He asked me what I would do if I wasn’t wrestling.
“I don’t know Jeff, “I said, “I’d have to think about it.”
I couldn’t answer him then, and I sure as hell can’t now. The ambulance hits a bump in the road, and I wake up, gagging on the metallic taste of the oxygen tank. From there it is a blur, from the surgery on my head to the 4-day coma. The next thing I remember is the doctor. He’s a fan, not of me but of wrestling. He told me he watched it as a kid and still marvels at the time Undertaker threw Mankind off the Hell in a Cell. It hurts him to tell me I can’t wrestle again. The impact of the fall caused a subdural hematoma and required surgery. He told me I was lucky to be alive with the same enthusiasm as a judge handing out silver medals. No one visited me, but Ash texted me to tell me that I heard I had to go under the knife and asked if I was okay. I didn’t respond.
When I couldn’t sleep at nights in the hospital, I’d watch TV with the sound off and fiddle with the morphine drip. You could press it only so many times before it stopped on you, and you couldn’t administer anymore. I tried to gauge how many would put me to sleep, how many would kill me. The Canadian mob got Dino Bravo in his living room. They found Gino Hernandez in his car with a stomach full of blow. Three generations of Grahams put bullets in their head.
The doctor felt bad to release me, knowing I wasn’t ready, but I told him that was how things were sometimes. On my way out, he asked if I had ever met Stone Cold Steve Austin. I told him I had, and he said that was cool, even waited with me for the bus to come pick me up.
II.
I meet the organizer in the bar of the hotel. He’s a total mark: overweight, stinking of Cheeto dust but with an air of superiority that a certain breed of wrestling fan clings to and ruin the fun for everyone else, but he’s paying me to come here and sign autographs for two hours, so I keep my mouth shut.
“Vic Bradstreet, “he says, “I’m glad you could make it.”
I scratch the side of my head, the hair growing over the spot where they cut me open. “Glad to be here.”
He asks how I’m doing, if I’m okay, and he seems content with my one-word answers. He shows me to the booth where I’ll be signing autographs and taking pictures with fans. He shakes my hand, wishes me good luck, and leaves me to my spot.
It takes me a while to get comfortable, to not run off bawling like a baby. Fans pass by in wrestling shirts. Some wave and say hello, others avert their eyes as they move on to who they came here to see. The table next to mine is occupied. It is Stavros, or Admiral Ashanti Youngblood. He walks with a cane now, the gig marks on his forehead from years of blading the only visible clue that he was once the scariest men to ever lace up a pair of boots. He could make kids cry, make the squeamish fans vomit when he licked up his own blood as well as his opponents. Outside of the ring, he struggled to pay child support to his three wives and last I heard lived in an extended stay motel outside of Joplin, Missouri.
“Good to see you,” he says, in his thick Greek accent, before taking the seat next to mine. He tells me he heard what happened and wishes me the best before a gaggle of middle-aged fans crowd around him, willing to pay for pictures where the Admiral poses with a rusty fork. One even asks if the blade trick was real. It is said that Admiral would hide the blade in tape wrapped around his fingers and gig himself before the bell even rang. Stavros, the Admiral, says that those who found out didn’t live to talk about it. The fan asks if the Admiral can gig himself like he has at other conventions. Stavros tries to shoo the eager fan away, but the money the fan offers is too great. The fan provides the blade. Stavros tapes the blade to his pointer finger and dabs at his forehead until the blood starts to pour out, covering his face in a crimson mask, his eyes with that faraway look in them that used to strike fear into the heart of wrestling fans, but now they cheer him on as he cuts deeper and deeper. Blood gets on the table, onto stacks of photos that Stavros has set up. This goes on for ten minutes until security escorts him out, dripping blood onto the carpet as his howls disappear with him.
I leave the table, and head to the restroom. In the toilet someone has left a program for the event lodged into the top of the toilet paper dispenser. I flip through it, but don’t see my name anywhere. I read the fine print of the last page and in all capital letters, it says CARD SUBJECT TO CHANGE. I chuckle and leave the program where I found it before heading back.
III.
The pain is manageable. I don’t need any help with it anymore. I was scared when I flushed the pills down the toilet, but things got better. I just had to give it time. Cactus Jack, my brown tabby, reminds me to get up and start the day.
I’m making breakfast when I get a call. It is from William Latrice, an old, retired referee whom I have not heard from in a couple of years. He sounds grave when he says hello.
“Did you hear the news?”
“No,” I say, flipping an egg smoothly so I don’t break the yoke.
“Wilson’s dead.”
It takes me a few seconds to recall who he is talking about. On the indies he went by the name Wade Slade, an 80’s surfer type who could get heat like nobody else could. We had a match once where I drilled him in the head with a wiffle ball bat with thumbtacks glued all around it. It curled against his bald head, and a number stuck into his bare skull, making him look like a damaged robot. I can’t remember any other crowd being that loud.
“What happened?”
“He hung himself in his wrestling school. His wife found him yesterday.”
I peek out of my backyard. The grass is dead in spots, like little graves. I can’t help but see all my friends climbing up and dragging me back with them. Cactus Jack jumps on the stove and I drop the pan and the phone. The egg is ruined, but William is still on the line.
“Everything all right.”
“I don’t think so, William.”
William’s chuckle is laced with defeat, but any sense of tragedy that might be there is gone.
“We’re still here though, Vic,” he says, “that’s got to mean something.”
“William,” I ask, “if you weren’t a wrestler what would you be doing?”
William thinks about it. I hear his tongue clicking against his teeth, and for a moment I think the question was so stupid that he’s hung up and I’ll never speak to him again.
But he pipes in. “I don’t know. Let me get back to you.”
“I’ll talk to you later William. Thanks for telling me.”
I ponder the mess on the floor as Cactus Jack licks up the yolk. I pick up the pan and grab another egg from the fridge. After all that, I’m still hungry.