A Wrestling Tale: The Heel

Archive

This is a work of fiction

‘That was piss. That was some punk asshole’s piss. THAT WAS FUCKING PISS!’

The heel turned towards the crowd.

“WHO THE HELL THREW THEIR FUCKING PISS AT ME?”

He waited for a response that obviously wasn’t coming. There was a kid in the second row who had a sign calling the heel a ‘REALY FAT IDIAT’. It was the kid. It couldn’t be the kid. The kid couldn’t hold the sign and throw the piss. IT STANK! He was going to have to wrestle Brad smelling like this? Covered in some jerk mark’s piss?

“YOU LITTLE ASSHOLES!”

The heel turned back towards the ring and took a few steps. Then he stopped. He turned back towards the crowd.

“KILL MY MUSIC! KILL IT!”

The heel’s music was turned off. He looked over the now very confused group of teenagers and kids and the occasional parent. There couldn’t have been more than 30 of them. A couple of them were booing and screaming how he sucked. The heel just stood in that freezing f*cking gym and waited for them to be quiet. They needed to be quiet. He needed to say this, and it didn’t matter that he would probably not be paid and it didn’t matter that Brad would be standing backstage waiting until he was done. This had to be said now.

The crowd was finally quiet after a few minutes. The heel addressed them.

“Who knows my name?”

“BOOGER,” screamed the kid with the sign. The crowd began to chant, “BOOGER! BOOGER!”

Booger stood there for another minute and waited for them to be quiet. He didn’t react to their cheers. The crowd quieted down.

“My name is Robert Jefferson. My mother, who died last year, named me after her brother who died while saving children from a nursery fire. My name isn’t Booger. That was the name given to me by Vince McMahon.”

From the crowd came a loud sigh as the geek stood up. “Give me a break,” said the geek. “What is this, another ‘real life’ angle? Man, if you’re going to pull this same old crap, do it somewhere where it matters.”

The heel looked around at the audience of about 200 in the gym and then looked at the geek. There were probably a few more like him in the gym. Truth be known, the heel related to the geek better than most wrestlers did. The heel loved Star Trek.

“This isn’t an angle, kid. Sit down.”

The geek rolled his eyes. He sat down.

“You all remember me when I was in the WWF, right? I guess now it’s the WWE.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t ENTERTAIN US,” said the geek. A couple of other geeks laughed.

“Whatever. Everyone thinks that when you make it to the WWE, you’re in the money. That wasn’t exactly true when I was there. Sure, guys like Bret and Shawn were making good money, but guys like me, sideshows, humor guys, well, I’m not going to say it was awful. I mean, we made more than a school teacher, probably more than a doctor at a shitty hospital.”

The kid with the sign was now completely bewildered. The geeks were looking very interested. Most of the marks were feigning interest. The heel tried to bare his soul.

“So there I was, making okay money every night and then going out with the guys and getting wasted. I never did coke. I smoked a little weed, but a big fat guy taking coke is begging for a heart attack. I drank a lot of beer. I out drank every son of a bitch in the locker room. Usually there were a couple of ring rats floating around and I’d go talk to one. All the liquid confidence, you know? Usually I’m pretty shy, being a fat ugly guy and all, but I was able to sleep with a ring rat or two. I just had to tell them what good friends I was with Shawn. I’ll never forget in Atlanta, this one girl actually puked after we made love. She kept saying, “No offense!” It was it was horrible.”

He felt a tear coming out and fought it with all of the strength in his far body. It went back in.

“I was never dumb enough to drink in front of the boss. I didn’t do much in the ring so I was never injured. I showed up everyday, sometimes hung over, but I was there damn it. That’s more I can say for some of those assholes. Anyway, even with all the whoring and drinking, I’m sorry, I was addicted to prostitutes. That was the point of the last story about the girl in Atlanta. I stopped trying to meet women despite being on national television because I was afraid. So, even with the whoring and the drinking, I still managed to take care of my son from my only marriage. Ex-wife, it lasted only 3 months after the pregnancy before she kicked me out. The way it started, well, I was on the football team and she liked f*cking anything. You wouldn’t know it looking at me, but my kid is so damn handsome. He’s so special. 15 now. Solid B+ student. Won’t talk to me.”

The heel paused as he heard the voice of the promoter screaming at him from the back. The heel didn’t even hear what the promoter said.

“DON’T PAY ME! I NEED A FEW MINUTES!”

The promoter came out to say something to the heel but as the heel continued his story, the promoter began listening. He was silent.

“So, my son, right? Great kid. My ex-wife tells me he has a lot of girlfriends and he keeps in great shape. He makes me ashamed to be who I am, to look how I look. Anyway, my ex-wife wanted to send him to some fancy private elementary school. I thought public school is better for kids, but what the hell did I know? I was on the road all the time. She never let me forget that whenever I tried to provide some input into raising our son.”

The wrestlers from the back began to wander out to see what was going on.

“So, I didn’t have enough money to pay for the tuition. Maybe if I hadn’t bought so many rounds, if I hadn’t screwed so many repulsed whores. I figured, hey, my character gets booed, I’m over, I show up every day, I deserve a raise. I went to talk to Vince and pleaded my case. He told me he’d think about it, and he did.”

“He’s an asshole, right?” The geek was standing again.

“He offered me a slight raise when I told him why I needed the money. Times were tough for him. WCW was heating up. I never should have threatened to jump. It was the worst damn mistake of my life. Vince wasn’t a saint, but he wasn’t a monster either. He’s just a business man. He does what’s good for business. So I took a 5% raise offer as an insult. I told him it was bullshit and I’d do better as a Monster of Mayhem or whatever they were called in WCW.”

”Dun ”

“Dungeon of Doom. Thanks kid. Sit down. Vince was nuts about loyalty back then. He fired me on the spot, gave me WCW’s number and two months severance. He didn’t have to do that. I called up WCW and they laughed at me. I couldn’t believe it. They told me they had enough big fat guys but to give them a call in a few months. I crawled back to Vince. He didn’t even have to give me a meeting. He did. He didn’t have to invite me to be in the gimmick battle royal at that Wrestlemania. He did. This isn’t about him. Look, he gave me a meeting and offered me my job back with a 50% pay cut. I told him no. I couldn’t. I mean, I had a family to support.”

The crowd of wrestlers behind the heel slowly grew. A couple of people flashed photos, but the distraction was minor.

“I figured I could sell cars. I was a quasi-celebrity, a friendly guy. I knew a bunch about cars. I tried to sell cars. Didn’t work. See, I thought a fan would recognize me and talk to me and be so impressed with me they’d buy a car, and I knew not everyone liked wrestling but I figured enough people did that I could sell them cars. I actually did talk to a couple of fans while on the job but they weren’t impressed. They wanted to know about the big time wrestlers. Once they had the information they came for, they left. I was left confused, you know? I mean, I had been someone. Didn’t those fans, didn’t the people I worked for, didn’t the world know I was Booger? I mean, I was over. Fans didn’t want to buy a car from me and non-fans didn’t even want to talk to the 350 pound disgusting car salesman. So I opened a wrestling school.”

The geek laughed, but only him. The other geeks didn’t laugh.

“Yeah, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have opened the school. There are teachers you seek out, teachers who’ll teach you how to make it. I was one of the teachers you went to if you wanted to waste a couple of thousand. Then a couple of hundred when word got out I sucked. Then, ‘What’ve you got in your pocket kid? I’ll make you a star!’ I swear to God, I’d heard so many horror stories about the indies while I was in the WWF that I didn’t want to go there.”

“You started in the WWF? Don’t you have to ”

“Kid, come on! I was discovered by an agent when I was working as a bouncer. I was trained in-house. It doesn’t matter. All the boys in the WWF could talk about when they talked about the indies were crooked promoters, low paydays, freezing or hot as hell gyms and inexperienced wrestlers hurting one another. So after my school shut down in a year, I took about 4 jobs. I was bouncing, part time body guarding, I even worked as a janitor’s assistant. I worked and I ate and I drank and I sent whatever I could spare to my ex-wife and my kid. I didn’t know she had remarried because I was too ashamed to call. I just sent envelopes with cash and no return address. Not much cash. Anyway, she married rich. Good girl. Smart girl. I found this out when I knocked out some guy at a club I was bouncing for and called her to see if she’d bail me out of jail. She wouldn’t, but the charges were dropped. She did tell me that she didn’t want anymore envelopes and she never wanted Robert our son. His name was Robert Jr. Now he’s just Robert.”

The heel couldn’t hold back the tears this time. He paused for a good fifteen seconds to silently cry. Some wise ass yelled out, “BOOGER SUCKS!” Some shushed but a few people laughed, including the heel.

“Yeah, I sure do. So I get out of jail and by now, the fans don’t even recognize me. My life was ruined and I didn’t even have my fans anymore. I missed being someone. Even if it was a fake someone, even if it was a professional wrestler, I missed being someone. So I gave in. I called a couple of friends from the WWF who were now in similar predicaments as I was and I asked them how I’d get involved in the indies. They gave me a couple of phone numbers to get me started and before long, hey, here I was again. Gyms filled with people who kind of remembered me. I worked on this one match with my new friend Brad, you might know him as Dragon Skull, good indie guy. That’s the match you’re going to see tonight. We do it all over the country. It has a couple of fat guy comedy spots, well, you’ll see. Always gets the crowd to laugh. I’m getting booed, I’m getting some admittedly much uglier ring rats approaching me, it’s getting okay again. But I’m not making much money. I’m not a marquee name, not even for an indie. I’m terribly lonely. I tried to call my son yesterday. It took some of that liquid courage. I told him I was his father. He said, “No you’re not. My dad is in the room.” So I told him I was his real father, and he told me he knew who I am. Then he hung up. I was hoping we could well.”

For the first time since he started talking, the heel paced a step. He looked at the ground. Then everything inside him burst out.

“It’s over. My life is over. I’m this close to dying from a heart attack at any second I’m so fat. The only thing that matters in my life is my son and I’ve only seen him in a Christmas card that my ex-wife’s new husband sent to me out of pity! I have no savings, no retirement fund, no health insurance and no pension! I could die tomorrow and I don’t think there would be any proof I existed except for a joking wrestling site that calls me crap! I’m nothing! I’m shit! WHO THREW PISS ON ME? GODDAMNIT, THIS IS MY ONE PART OF MY LIFE I’M SUPPOSED TO ENJOY! THE PART WHERE I AM SOME ONE! WHO THREW THEIR PISS AT ME? WHO’S KILLING WHAT LITTLE LIFE IN ME I HAVE LEFT? WHO?”

There was absolute silence. Then the little kid, still holding the sign with one hand, picked up his juice box.

“I thought it would be funny if I sprayed you with juice. I’m sorry.”

The little kid began to cry. The heel felt like a jerk.

“Kid, I mean, I thought Kid, stop crying.”

Brad walked up next to the heel.

“You made one of my fans cry? What were you going to do, eat him?!”

A couple of fans laughed. The kids didn’t stop crying. His father looked piss. The heel got it.

“Yeah! GET IN MY BELLY, TINY! ARGH!”

The heel made to go for the kid, and Brad hit him. They fought towards the ring. The geeks were telling their friends that was a horrible payoff for an angle that took so long in a freezing gym, and the kid was obviously a plant. The marks didn’t get it. The kid had stopped crying and was watching the match. The promoter was pissed but was still going to pay the heel. Brad was concerned about his friend. The wrestlers in the back were thinking about the mistakes they made in their lives.

The heel was wrestling a good match. He was hitting all his spots. Then mid-match he oddly, slowly climbed the turnbuckles and jumped to floor head first, killing himself instantly.