Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Are you sitting comfortably? I don't really care, but you're more likely to keep reading if you're comfortable.
There's a moment for every pro wrestler, when you're standing backstage, waiting anxiously for the cue that sends you through the curtains, when time stops, the crowds roar dims, and you seriously leave yourself behind. A dead-mans moment, when you cease to exist, and find yourself held hostage by a character that may not be of your making. I was having one of those very moments. JessieLee departed, and Poison Ivy entered, stage left.

I watched the monitor, and ruminated on how the match wasn't working. The guys in the ring were both blessed with the kind of physique only ego and steroids could achieve, and although they looked the part, they weren't up to standard, and were so lacking in cardiovascular fitness that three minutes into the match they were showing signs of exhaustion. Their clumsiness annoyed me, in fact, most things in the business annoyed me..............

At last, I spotted my badly performed cue move, and as my the first notes of my theme music started, I burst through the curtains, aluminum shovel over my shoulder, paused for the camera, and then sprinted to the ring, rolled in, hit them both in of the back of the head with said trusty shovel, posed for the camera again, and then scarpered just as the comrades and/or sympathizers of the fallen came to rescue them.


Lets get this clear, pro wrestling is a hideous bitch goddess, and no good comes to those who worship at her temple. I was a veteran, and had done 18 years hard time as penance for being dumb enough to think it might be a fun thing to try. Which, by the way, it is. Fun, I mean. If you do it right. Otherwise I imagine it may hurt. The debate that has been ongoing since two atoms smashed together and started a chain reaction that culminated in life as we know it, over just how much of what happens in a wrestling ring is real will be put to rest now, by me. Its fake, mostly. But only as fake as repeatedly, intentionally falling down, sometimes from a fairly appreciable height. Take a moment now, if you will, and consider how much of your life you've spent specifically avoiding falling down, particularly from any kind of height, and maybe you can begin to appreciate the peculiar art that is known as pro wrestling.

We call it bumping, but it is the fine art of falling down without catastrophically injuring yourself. You learn, you train and it becomes natural. At least most of the time. Call it what you want- a sham, fake, faux, acting even, there's absolutely no denying that it is inherently dangerous, much more so than working at the supermarket, which I imagine is fraught with its own dangers. But they never ask you to throw yourself over a shoulder high rope, that I'd like to point out is designed to keep you in there, and land on the wooden dance floor at ringside. I've heard it speculated that it's actually padded and is cleverly disguised t look like a hard, unyielding wooden floor, but if that is the case, I must say that the masquerade is so perfect that the floor doesn't even feel padded. Every move is a bump. There's front bumps and back bumps, the occasional side bump, the arse bump and the rolling bumps. Add in some chain wrestling to make it look like you might really know what you're doing and that's basically it. Faces get cheered and heels gets booed, everyone gets paid, some people get the shits, and they all take off their tights and go home.

Except for the times when I wore the tights home. Which were many, because I firmly disliked getting undressed in the back of a truck surrounded by sweaty behemoths that smelled of wrestler, a unique and pungent odor particular to those who chose a career as a cartoonesque figure and then never washed their costume. This was to be one of the nights I wore the tights home, but thankfully it was by choice, and because they looked amazing. I may have been forty, by by god, I still looked good in spandex.

Spandex, as you may know, is a very unforgiving fabric. It's use in pro wrestling costumes is entirely justified because pro wrestling is an unforgiving vocation, and as surely as confused young men are drawn to the priesthood, thus sacrificing many of lifes pleasures, so we wrestlers also sacrifice. We sacrifice our bodies, our psyches, and our bank accounts, because let me tell you, rich wrestlers are few and far between. Conversely, there's an abundance of poverty stricken, injury racked, soon to he crippled workers out there, nursing bruises and waiting for old age and arthritis to do it's wicked form of magic on their aging and sorry carcasses.

My own carcass was feeling the toll. It's no career for a single mother. Do you know why? Being a single mother is a full time job. I was in the game as an income supplement. Cash in hand. And no one needs to know. It wasn't good money, $200 a show, but when we had a run of shows the tune changed. We were just finishing up a run of six shows and I was hoping to celebrate my suddenly cashed up status by getting gloriously drunk, telling some stories that veered between exaggeration and lies, smearing my mascara everywhere, staggering home as dawn broke, sleeping for three hours and then spending the afternoon alternately reminiscing on the evening before and regretting everything.
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Please note the above work is fiction. Any resemblance to anything is probably coincidental. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Yeah, well, the stupid upload deleted the ending.