The following is a work of fiction as are almost all Wrestling Tales. I hope you enjoy the new format for our website.
I watch them on television on Monday and Thursday nights. I watch them enter the ring and pose for the crowd. I watch them fight one another in the ring, and I watch them interact backstage. Sometimes my thoughts drift and I imagine I’m one of them.
My body isn’t flabby. I’m not only 5’9â€Â. I don’t walk with my neck and upper back bent forward, making it appear I have a hump. My teeth are perfect. My skin isn’t pale. My hair finally falls perfectly into place. My there isn’t one pimple to be found on my body.
I’m charming. I’m funny. I’m confident. I’m fast. I’m strong. I’m intense as anyone has ever been in the ring. I am everything that I know in my most horrible thoughts that I will never be in real life.
Then my thoughts become focused again. I’m not in the ring with the Rock. I’m at home, watching him in the ring with Stone Cold Steve Austin on my television. I usually just return to being entertained, but sometimes a flash of subconscious anger runs through me. Why them and not me? What caused them to get into such amazing shape, and why don’t I have that motivation? Why can they be cool and funny in front of millions of people, and I couldn’t even get myself to be somewhat confident when I hit on that drunk girl at the party I went to? Why can they do amazing things when there is simply nothing amazing about me? Why is it that they worked hard enough to fulfill my dream when I want it so much more then them?
The thoughts don’t last more then a moment. If they lasted longer, maybe I’d get off my ass and actually do something with my life. Maybe I’d get a gym membership and quit smoking and get myself into shape. I’d send my writing to places and actually believe it would be accepted. I’d talk to women and expect them to wind up back at my apartment with me. I know I couldn’t be a wrestler, but maybe I could be someone else.
But no. There are far more important things to do. I have to constantly check all of the Internet rumors for my column. I need to work on my plays and screenplays that I’ll never finish because I don’t believe they’re good enough to do anything for my future. I need to respond to that guy who insulted me in his wrestling column or else I’m not a man. I need to be a man by responding to an insult in a wrestling column. How could the shame coming out of my pores not stink to the high heavens?
Why are those things more important then creating a new life? Because they are easy to accomplish. Because I am a coward, and cowards always take the easy route. Because pro wrestlers have to work out constantly, and I can’t imagine myself on a stair master for more then 3 minutes. It is because having thoughts about changing is easier then actually doing so.
So I continue on with my bland, lonely, nerdy existence, and then it suddenly hits me one night. I’m watching wrestling, and the thoughts again enter my brain. I imagine Rocky cutting a promo against me, and I keep turning his words against him while telling him how badly I’m going to kick his ass in the ring. It’s a funny segment, and the audience is laughing. Then, for some reason, my gorgeous body disappears. My charm and confidence is sucked away. Rocky continues cutting his promo on me, but now I can’t get one sentence out. I’m ashamed of my gut and my pale skin and the dark circles under my eyes and my lack of muscle tone. The crowd is laughing at me as the big time movie star/wrestler destroys my fantasy by cutting me down to nothing. I’m a walking joke.
Then there is silence. The arena is empty, and it’s just me and the Rock. I’ve been defeated in a promo. There won’t be a match. There won’t be any of my imaginary matrix moves I do in the ring. There won’t be any kind of victory for me tonight. On this night, I am a total and utter failure. There is nothing redeeming about me. The Rock smirks at me, but it’s not a nasty smirk. It kind of looks like he’s saying, “Nice try.†You know? “Go home,†he says, “And stay there. Don’t come back until you’re serious about something, and it probably shouldn’t be this.â€Â
So I drift back to reality and switch off the television. The show wasn’t that good anyway. I try to come to grips with what The Rock said to me, well, not The Rock, but what I said to myself through the Rock. I wonder why I lost control of my fantasy, the one area of my life where I was truly happy. Then I sit at my computer and I open up one of the plays I started and never finished. I gave up on it because I didn’t believe it was any good, that everything I write is pretty much crap. I reread it and realize that it is good. It’s very good. I write very well.
I get to the line where I stopped writing, and I stare at it for a short while. Suddenly, I know what the next line should be. I write it, then another, and then another. Before I know it, I’ve typed 20 pages in two hours and my play is finished. It still needed some revisions, but it was a finished work sitting right in front of me, and it was funny as hell. I go online to check out what happened during the show, and then I open up my almost finished screenplay I kept revising and giving up on. I finish that also, and then I lay down to go to sleep. I’m not tired. I do thirty sit ups, and suddenly I am tired. I lay down one more time, and this time I fall asleep quickly.
In the morning, I’m not feeling the same way I did the night before. The guy who insulted me in his wrestling column was at it again, and I felt like my manhood had been challenged. I have to strike back with a nasty e-mail or prepare a response for my column so I don’t look like a pussy. I turn my computer on, and I had forgotten to close my documents before I shut it down the night before. Before I write my nasty retort, I deicde to click on the play I finished last night. It was good. It was damn good. Before I get to my internet nemesis, I make some quick revisions. A line here, a line there. Then I clicked open another unfinished play, which while not as good as the first one, was pretty great and could be fantastic if I worked on it. I decide to work on it.
A week later, the show is on again. I’ve sent my work out to theater companies and agents, I can do 100 sit ups at a time, and I’ve cut back a great deal on my smoking. The web jerk was little more then a joke to me, and my column was now a hobby instead of a representation of who I was. I had gotten my hair cut the way I wanted it to be, I was using medication to clear up my skin, and the only really difficult thing was reminding myself to stand up straight when I walked. I was building up confidence in myself, and I had actually finally given in to my brother and allowed him to set me up on a blind date.
The Rock came on television, and I allowed my mind to drift. There was The Rock, and there was me. Not the fantasy me, but me. The Rock cut a hilarious promo on my body, my stupid new hair cut, my new found sense of confidence. I tried to respond, but he cut me off and told me to just bring it. To just walk into his ring and get my ass kicked. I thanked him, but I told him no. He could beat me within an inch of my life, he could do things in the ring with no effort that I’ll never be able to do in my life, but that I didn’t need to compete with him. I could be entertained by him, but I now believed I could do amazing things with my life. I didn’t need to beat up the Rock in my head anymore. The Rock smiled and nodded his head, and I smiled back.
So the Rock turned around, and I entered the ring and gave him a flipping Matrix kick before running to the back amidst a torrent of boos from the crowd. My mind drifted back to reality, and I shook my head with a grin on my face. Just because I might be able to attain one dream didn’t mean I had to stop having my unattainable dreams. I would probably still have the pangs of jealousy when I looked at these wrestlers and their amazing feats, but maybe one day, just maybe, they’d feel jealous when they saw my play or went to the movie I wrote. Just because they were amazing didn’t mean I couldn’t be amazing.
That brings us to now. I don’t know why I told you all this. I don’t know if there’s a lesson to be learned or inspiration to be felt. I don’t even know if most of this made sense. I guess what I want you to know is that imagining yourself as somebody else is fine, but if you imagine yourself doing extraordinary things, they might actually happen.
Maybe. We’ll see.
