A Wrestling Tale: Isaac And Pete

Archive

The following is a piece of fiction.

Isaac Greenberg, better known to the fans as Drako, loved the insults from the crowd. He loved when they chanted asshole. He loved when they said he sucked. Thousands of people would scream those words at him, and when they did it meant he was moving up the card. Isaac even enjoyed the random fan’s insult, the single voice that called him a bastard or described what Isaac’s mom does for profit. It was all in good fun.

That’s why this time he couldn’t understand why he was so angry this time. It should have been obvious to him and deep down it was, but he couldn’t understand why he was hitting Brent, his opponent, a little bit harder than usual. Brent sure looked pissed off and confused. As Isaac stiffed Brent with a forearm to the shoulder, he thought about his grandfather’s wrist. The numbers.

“YOU KIKE!” The son of a bitch said it again! Brent heard it this time and it looked like he understood why Isaac wasn’t holding back, but at the same time Brent wasn’t calling Isaac a kike. Isaac recognized the look of pity and annoyance on Brent’s face and the look of anger on Isaac’s face disappeared for a moment, replaced by an apologetic look. Brent barely nodded and they went on with the match.

“FUCKING KIKE!”

Isaac threw Brent out of the ring. He was supposed to follow him out and get thrown into the post, but instead he walked around the ring pretending to taunt the fans. He was begging God to let him see a skin head or a kid with some kind of anti-Semitic sign. The voice was close, so maybe Isaac could they all looked the same. They all had a look of bemused hatred on their faces. And that little coward wasn’t going to say it while Isaac was looking at him. Cowards never say what they feel to your face.

As Isaac rolled under the bottom rope and “KIKE” the bastard apparently got his courage back, he remembered the last time he had seen his grandfather whom he was named after. Grandpa Isaac’s final Passover Seder 5 years ago wasn’t pretty. His mind was mostly gone by that point. He tried to complete the tradition of telling his story of the Holocaust, and it looked like it was killing him to not be able to get it all out. Isaac was disappointed that the story he grew to despise as a child wasn’t able to be clearly told to his 5 year old son. At one point Grandpa Isaac grew so frustrated that with great effort he pulled up his shirt sleeve and pointed to the numbers. There wasn’t a dry eye at the table. When Grandpa Isaac died a new tradition began. Every year after telling the story of the Jews’ Exodus from Egypt, a different family member would tell their grandfather’s story. Isaac wanted his 10 year old son to tell at least part of the story at the next Seder.

Isaac tried to throw Brent into the post, but it was reversed and the crowd went nuts. Brent rolled Isaac back into the ring and Isaac struggled to get to his feet. This was what he got for working on Yom Kippur. This is what he got for being a 3 time a year Jew and actually missing one of times this year. “Kike!” That one was almost inaudible over the face making a comeback cheers, but Isaac heard it.

As Brent came back in and started throwing Isaac all over the ring with his “creative” suplexes, Isaac stopped looking out at the crowd and tried to forget to be angry about the slur. The guys in the back gave him crap about being a Jew all the time and it never got to him like this one pathetic smark. It had to be a smark. Drako wasn’t a Jewish character. The only way that asshole knew he was Jewish was by knowing his real name. So not only were smarks nerds, they were anti-Semitic nerds.

Brent went for another suplex but Isaac reversed it. The crowd quieted down, a couple of scattered boos. At this point Isaac would usually flip off the crowd to get them chanting, but instead he just went to work on Brent’s leg. He told himself it was because he wanted to concentrate on his work, but that was a lie. He wanted to hear the next slur clearly. He wanted to know what direction it was coming from. Isaac wanted to find the punk and “KIKE!” THERE HE WAS! Well, at least he was one of the guys to the left of the ring. Isaac was getting ready to kill his career, leave the ring, jump over the barricade and start assaulting an anti-Semitic looking guy when he heard it.

“EXCUSE ME? YOU CALLING ME A KIKE?”

There were still scattered boos throughout the arena, but to the left of the ring you could hear a pin drop. A huge bastard in black, must’ve been a biker or something, was standing up with a look of fury on his face. He was staring at a pimply, fat teenager in the front row. The teen looked terrified. Isaac put Brent into a single Boston Crab so Isaac was facing the left side of the ring. He wanted to see this.

“BITCH! I ASKED YOU A QUESTION! YOU CALLING ME A KIKE?”

The pimply teen mumbled something.

“WHAT? I DIDN’T HEAR YOU, BITCH!”

The biker’s girlfriend or wife looked embarrassed. For some reason, Isaac began to feel a little sorry for her.

“No sir.”

“NO SIR, HUH BITCH? WHY YOU YELLING KIKE THEN, HUH?”

The pimply geek started to point at Isaac, but stopped when he saw Isaac looking right at him. He mumbled something again. The crowd was becoming more interested in the impending fight than the match. Brent started struggling to get out of the Boston Crab but Isaac held fast. Brent was getting pissed again. Isaac didn’t care.

“YOU DON’T KNOW? YOU JUST LIKE YELLING KIKE FOR NO REASON? HEY, THAT’S FINE! I LIKE POUNDING BITCHES FOR NO REASON!”

The biker crashed past the two rows between him and the geek and grabbed the geek by the shirt. Security was on it in a second, restraining the biker and escorting him roughly to the back. His girlfriend/wife followed him, embarrassed. The geek looked like he pissed his pants. Brent was now really struggling, and Isaac let Brent crawl to the rope. Isaac bitch to the ref (who had no idea what the hell was going on) and then tried to pick up Brent by the hair. “Man, let’s just end this crap,” Brent said. Isaac shrugged and let Brent wrap him up in a small package. A slow, slow three count later (the ref was some kind of special idiot) and the match was over.

Isaac pounded on the mat in frustration and turned to the referee. The ref sincerely shrugged his shoulders. Brent quickly left the ring and jogged to the back, just like most winners via small package do. Isaac would buy Brent a bottle of champagne or something to smooth this over. Isaac rolled under the bottom rope towards the left side of the ring, still pretending to be disappointed. He jawed with a 35 year old fan in a Black Sabbath t-shirt, took a few steps and stopped right in front of the nerdy anti-Semite. Isaac looked at him, but the piece of human garbage couldn’t look at Isaac. He looked at his feet and stole glances at Isaac, but he didn’t say anything.

Isaac wanted to tell this kid about his grandfather. He wanted to rip the bastard’s head off and also make him understand why the word kike was so awful. This kid didn’t go to KKK meetings or love Adolf Hitler. He called Jews kikes on the Internet and yelled slurs in big crowds so he couldn’t be distinguished. The kid just thought it was cool to do a horrible thing and not have to pay for it. He was the type of kid who’d press a button to kill someone random like on the Twilight Zone. Isaac wanted to tell him there were consequences, that he wasn’t Isaac. He couldn’t be Isaac Greenberg, same name as his grandfather, at work.

Drako said to the kid, “That was crap! He got lucky! If I see him on the street HE GOT LUCKY!”

Drako pounded on the barricade, making the kid jump. Drako then stormed off to the back. The nerd turned to his friend.

“Piece of shit kike couldn’t even ”

“SHUT UP PETE! DAMN!”

“YEAH, SHUT THE HELL UP YOU SHITHEAD!”

“RACIST PIECE OF SHIT! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”

A 6 dollar cup of beer hit Pete in the head. The physical violence was scary enough for Pete to get the hell out of there. He grabbed his coat and motioned for his friend to come with him, but his friend was pretending that Pete didn’t exist. That sucked, because his friend was his ride. The insults were still coming, and who knew what else they’d throw. Pete went to go wait in the parking lot.

And in the backstage area and the parking lot, the Jew and the anti-Semite wondered why the world hated them.