A Bad Idea I'm About to Do (14 page)

“No, that's one of the things you never told me about,” she said. “I never know what you're gonna come up with.” Then I heard her quietly giggle, like any Jersey girl would at the thought of someone tormenting a Princeton Tiger.

“So what's new with you?” I asked her.

“Not much,” she said. “I tried to send some people an email picture of a kitten, but it didn't work.... Have you ever heard of something like that?” She paused, and then said with a very heavy sigh, “Only me.”

It was then that I remembered where my fatalistic penchant for melodrama came from.

T
wo years after my mission to Princeton, I went back for the first time. I had to be in the area anyway, so I gave Rob a call. He invited me to meet up so we could get dinner together. As we crossed the still bucolic Princeton campus, he pointed to a dorm.

“Do you remember that kid Derek?” he asked.

“How could I ever forget?”

“You know,” he said, laughing to himself, “he lives in
that
dorm now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, actually in that corner,” he said, “on the ground floor.”

Well, I had to.

I walked over to the window. It was late spring and unseasonably hot, so Derek's window was open, with only a screen covering the frame. Again utilizing my God-given abilities as a born-and-raised Jersey guy, I jimmied open the screen and stuck my head in.

Derek was there on his bed, sleeping in his tightie whities on his back. An oscillating fan was pointed toward him. It was so peaceful, it was almost cute. I leaned farther in.

“Derek!” I whispered, harshly.

He shot up out of bed and reached to the windowsill for his glasses. He fumbled with them for a moment, then put them on and looked my way.

It was two full years later, but to my satisfaction, his jaw dropped open.

“Framsky?” he said.

“I'm always watching, man,” I said. “So you be good, Derek. You be good.”

I
f you asked me or my brother at the age of nine what we wanted to be when we grew up, we would have lied. We would have answered “police officer” or “teacher” or “astronaut.” Those are the things you expect kids to say, and we knew that. We would never have publicly revealed our real dream, because our parents had made it very clear to us that our dream was embarrassing.

What we wanted to be were pro wrestlers. It didn't matter that both of us were the smallest kid in our respective classes. Gregg's braces and lazy eye? No problem. My deformed elbows and knobby knees? Pay them no mind. No matter what, we had to be professional wrestlers. It was the dream. Nothing could stand in our way, not even our father, who did everything he could to crush that dream without mercy or remorse.

“I just don't understand why you like that bullshit,” he'd say, shaking his head. “Bullshit” was his description of choice when it came to wrestling, and it always made me furious. Then again, my father had good reason to hate the “sport.”

Growing up, Gregg and I often imagined our yard was a wrestling ring. Once, when I was in fourth grade, we were staging a match that ended when I emulated wrestling superstar Sting's finisher, the “Stinger Splash,” and came down unintentionally hard on my brother's chest.

“Stop working stiff, asshole,” he shouted. He leapt to his feet and jumped into the air. His knee crashed into my shoulder, breaking it in two. I screamed and collapsed.

My mother appeared at the front door and saw me on the ground.

“What's the matter?” she asked.

“My shoulder,” I sobbed. “It's broken.”

“It is not,” she said. “Stop being a baby. Now come inside and eat your dinner.”

For the rest of the day, even though my collarbone jutted awkwardly beneath my skin, my parents refused to believe I'd broken anything. That night we attended a Super Bowl party, where Gregg and I got into another fight. Only when I couldn't swing with my left did my parents realize I was actually hurt and took me to the hospital. My brother and I were so consistently violent that it took my inability to produce more violence to prove to them something was wrong.

After that, my father forbade wrestling. Gregg and I had to sneak around to watch wrestling, turning the volume low and quickly changing the channel if my parents entered the room. It was our own personal taste of what it must have been like to live under Stalin, if Stalin had hated pro wrestling instead of dissidents and organized religion. (The comparison may seem like a stretch, but my dad does sport a very Stalinish moustache.)

And like dreams of democracy behind the Iron Curtain, my dream of being a professional wrestler remained hidden and
suppressed, but never completely died. And one night when I was a freshman in college, for a brief, flashing moment I lived my dream. I broke through twelve years of secret obsession and came face-to-face with my ultimate destiny. For one night, I was no longer Chris Gethard, resident geek. For one night, I was White Magic.

Mere weeks into my tenure at Rutgers, the phone in my dorm room rang. It was an old friend of mine, another huge wrestling fan, Eddie.

“Dude, did I tell you I trained at Gino Caruso's wrestling school?” he asked.

“Yeah, I heard something about that,” I told him. “How'd it go?”

“I was a terrible wrestler,” he confided in me. “But I made a lot of connections.” He paused, allowing the tension to build. “One of those connections is an agoraphobic man named Carmine,” he said. It was the last thing I expected to hear.

“Like he's scared to leave his house?” I asked.

“The guy's scared of everything. But he's got boatloads of money,” Eddie said.

“Okay,” I said. “So what's this got to do with me?”

“Carmine is the owner of Stars and Stripes Championship Wrestling,” Eddie explained. “He made me the promoter.”

“Okay,” I said, still unsure of where this was going.

“I want you to come be a manager on our next card,” Eddie said.

Instantly, I was standing. A rush of euphoria overtook me and almost made me faint. I braced myself against my dresser and took a breath.

“Are you serious?” I asked. “This isn't some kind of joke?”

“No, dude,” Eddie said, “we're living the dream.”

Eddie knew I was a funny guy. He thought I had the chops to pull off the part and had convinced the agoraphobe owner of a wrestling league to grant me a job interview.

“This is amazing,” I gushed.

“Come up with a character,” he instructed, “and I'll call you back around seven tomorrow night. I'll be on three-way with Carmine.”

I spent the evening cycling through some of the alter egos I'd created during my youth. There was no way I could pull off my two favorites—the Japanimal and the Haitian Sensation—due to the obvious racial implications. I had to leave my childhood wrestling fantasies behind as I made the transition to my adult wrestling reality. By evening's end, I'd come up with the most despicable persona I could muster: White Magic, an arrogant pimp dressed in a smoking jacket and top hat who would tout his money and girls to the very working-class wrestling fans he was paid to incite and degrade.

Standing in front of my mirror, I took a quick assessment of myself. I weighed 135 pounds. I was pale, and had huge glasses and a bowl haircut. White Magic would be everything I wasn't: smooth, a ladies' man, cocky, and quick with an insult. This was the first chance I'd ever had to redesign myself, and my instincts led me to instantly embrace a character that was in every way my opposite. After all, the dream of being a professional wrestler had never just been about professional wrestling; it was more about having the traits wrestlers had that I didn't—strength, resiliency, and the ability to wear who you are on your sleeve.

By seven fifteen the call still hadn't come, and I began to feel the sinking sensation of despair. I was heartbroken. Maybe Eddie had overstated his influence with the owner, maybe he was just playing a prank. Maybe the agoraphobic was in a particularly fearful mood and couldn't even manage to talk that day.

Just as I was about to give up hope, the phone rang.

“Hello?” I answered, trying not to sound too eager.

“Chris,” Eddie said, “I'm on the line with Carmine.”

“Hi, Carmine,” I said.

“Hi,” he said, tersely. “Real nice to meet you.” He sounded terrified.

“Thanks for this opportunity,” I said. “This would really be a dream come true.”

“Why don't you tell me about your character?” he said.

“I'll call myself White Magic,” I began. “A smooth-talking showoff pimp.”

I could tell the gears in Carmine's head were already turning.

“Could you tell me a little bit about what you look like?” he asked. He had the cadence of an early-era Marlon Brando, if Brando had spent his entire life indoors and was convinced that the world was out to get him.

“Well,” I began, “I weigh 135 pounds. I have glasses—”

“Say no more, my friend,” Carmine interrupted. “I can see how that would get a crowd real hot. Why don't we do some role-play?”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“WHITE MAGIC! You sorry son of a bitch,” he began. “Where do you get off coming 'round these parts?”

I was thrown, but recovered and dove into character.

“White Magic come 'round any parts he wants,” I told him. “ 'Cause I got hos in ALL THE ZIP CODES!”

“Well, you need to step off—'cause around here, nobody messes with me,” Carmine bellowed. For an agoraphobic, he was turning out to be awfully aggressive.

“Nobody messes with you? I mess with who I want,” I yelled at him. “Yo momma. Yo momma's momma. Even yo baby daughta if I feel like it. I'm White Magic, baby—casting pimp spells and raising pimp hell!”

Carmine didn't answer. After a pause, I heard him giggle and I knew I was in.

He explained that there was an event being held that Saturday in an auditorium at Seton Hall University in South Orange. I'd be managing a man named Vicious Vin who, like me, would be participating in his first match ever. He was scheduled to go up against a local indie wrestler named Flash Wheeler, who had been around for a while. I had a few days to get an outfit together and come up with a routine that would get the crowd to absolutely hate me.

As luck would have it, I happened to have a top hat that I previously wore to my junior prom (I was
that
guy). My friend Andy had a Hugh Hefner–style smoking jacket, because he was a classy dresser with an appreciation for the finer things in life. Down the hall lived John, a fellow wrestling fanatic and a graphic designer. He took a white T-shirt and painted the words “White Magic” on it in an obnoxious font. Inside the pocket of the shirt I pinned two Phillies Blunt cigars. The master touch was a mahogany cane. I looked in the mirror and realized that I fit the part. I was on the precipice of living my dream. I was giddy, nervous, and overwhelmed. I needed support, but this situation was ludicrous. My next step was to call the one person I absolutely knew would back me up.

“Gregg?” I asked when my brother picked up. “Are you sitting down?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Is everything all right?”

“I'm going to be a manager in a pro wrestling league on Saturday,” I told him.

He paused.

“I'll be there,” he said. “I've never been more proud of you in my life.”

I glanced back at the mirror. I was fired up. I was dressed correctly. I was ready.

I was White Magic.

On the day of the event, a handful of people I knew came to watch. My brother was there to witness a dream fulfilled, sitting next to my girlfriend Veronica. John came to see how the outfit he designed played to the crowd. All of them knew how much this meant to me.

Before I left them to get ready, my brother turned to me. “Dude, you're in,” he said. “Make it happen.”

“Thanks, man,” I said.

My girlfriend said nothing. At the time, I assumed it must have been because she was overwhelmed with pride. I was too young to realize it was probably shame.

Eddie was in a cordoned-off corner littered with equipment, going over the lighting design with a handful of technicians.

“Eddie,” I said as I approached. “Thanks for having me, man.”

“It's gonna be great,” Eddie said. “I'm glad I get to be here for your debut.”

He directed me to the changing area, which actually wasn't even a room—just a corner of the auditorium partitioned off with a large freestanding wall and a number of attached curtains. There, I met “the boys.”