Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (66 page)

After a desperate climax of false finishes, I wrapped Davey up in an old-school Oklahoma roll for the pin.

When I got back to the dressing room, the commission doctor declared, “It’s a cut from the stairs!”

as he put five stitches in my head. Dave Meltzer described it as “yet another five-star performance.”

Slowly, I was earning Meltzer’s respect. And I was proud of the fact that Meltzer and all the other wrestling fans could never say for sure that I bladed intentionally.

After the TVs the next day, a bunch of us were up in Curt’s room drinking beers. Razor had taken a handful of Somas and wilted in a slow-motion sit-up; soon he was floating off to dreamland while the rest of us sat around telling war stories. Mabel was really bummed out, having taken some heat for collapsing on Taker while delivering an elbow drop, shattering Taker’s eye socket. Luckily, Taker would be able to work around it as long as he wore a protective purple mask, resembling something out of Phantom of the Opera. Curt sang my praises while denouncing the clique to The 1-2-3 Kid.

Staring at Razor, Curt rummaged through his toilet bag, hit the switch on an electric shaver and casually buzzed off Razor’s right eyebrow. Kid took up for Scott as Curt menaced the other eyebrow:

“Don’t do it, Curt, c’mon!” At first Curt heeded Kid, but when we all thought he’d forgotten, he suddenly blurted out, “Fuck you, Kid.” He hit the switch and shaved off Razor’s left eyebrow. Razor never budged, only managing a dreamy smile.

35

THE SNAKES ARE DOCILE

BY JANUARY 1996, Vince was looking high and low for talent. Just in time for the Royal Rumble he brought in four-hundred-pound Vader, who had quit WCW after being thumped good by Paul Orndorff in a dressing room argument. Even Jake The Snake slithered back. He’d left the business to find God, vowing never to return, and when he reappeared in the dressing room, he seemed weathered and humbled. He was broke and divorced and still appeared on Sunday morning evangelical shows to tell everyone who would listen how Jesus helped him beat his cocaine addiction. I was happy to see the arrival of Steve Austin, now called The Ringmaster, with Ted DiBiase as his manager.

Royal Rumble marked Shawn’s first appearance since his face was mashed, and he won for the second year in a row, dancing and twirling around the ring and pulling his tights right down past the pubic line. Things like this made me and a lot of the boys wonder about Shawn.

That night Taker and I also worked our first major pay-per-view. He was wearing his protective mask from when Mabel had fallen on his face. For the finish, Taker tombstoned me in the middle of the ring and pinned me with my arms folded across my chest, just as Diesel lumbered down the aisle and pulled Earl out of the ring, stopping him from making the three-count. The pay-per-view ended with me bent over in the ring having injured my knee for real, lucky to still have the belt, and Taker stalking Diesel all the way back to the dressing room. I have to say it did little to build me for WrestleMania XII.

The following day, at Stockton TVs for Raw, I taped my sprained knee and managed to work a reasonably good match with Dustin Runnels, son of Dusty Rhodes, who did more than look after me.

He was working a gimmick as a transgendered freak named Goldust, who wore a gold latex jumpsuit, gold face paint and a long, blond wig that he took off just before he wrestled to reveal a white buzz cut. Goldust was one of the better characters the WWF had come up with in some time, and Dustin was doing a great over-the-top job of portraying an androgynous weirdo. Vince got bombarded with hate mail and phone calls from gays and parent groups because kids were chanting “Faggot,” and he ate up all the controversy with a confident smirk. If fans loved it or hated it, they were watching; it’s when they didn’t care that he had something to worry about.

Vince’s latest project was “Billionaire Ted” skits, which mocked Ted Turner as a redneck and mocked his acquisitions from WWF as over-the-hill has-beens. He had two old men spoofing Randy and Hogan as Nacho Man and The Huckster. Vince had built them up, and now he was knocking them down. When I went out to do a live promo with Vince, he told me just to shoot about everything. But when I sarcastically asked him whether I should say the WWF was the Shawn and Diesel show now, he stammered nervously and stopped me.

On January 27 I arrived at the brand-new Bryce Jordan Center in University Park, Pennsylvania, to find a huge story breaking in the dressing room. The Road Warriors and Miss Elizabeth had shown up in WCW, and word was that Diesel and Razor were considering jumping too. This was a shock to everybody, especially Shawn, who looked anxious at the thought of being left behind. Despite the overall tension between the boys and the clique, Shawn and I had never let on to each other that there were any problems between us. He told me that he hoped Diesel and Razor would stay because after he became champion at WrestleMania XII he figured on working with them. I suggested he had fresh guys to work with, such as Vader and Austin. He nervously chewed on his nail, spit out a piece and shook his head. “I think I’d rather work with Hunter and do another little program with The Kid.” I had spoken up for Owen, Jim and Davey over the years, but I never pushed them to the exclusion of everybody else, as Shawn fully intended to do with his clique. I realized then that The Heartbreak Kid didn’t have the heart to be champion.

Shawn was only working a few select bookings so he could train hard to prepare for WrestleMania XII. I thought it was odd that without even consulting me, Shawn and Pat had already decided that we would meet in a one-hour marathon match that would go into overtime, during which Shawn would somehow beat me with his finishing move, the big superkick. Shawn was trying to read my face when he told me about it, and I could tell he was fully expecting me to balk at putting him over.

He perked right up when I told him that I’d put him over clean in the middle, and he thanked me profusely.

I told Vince that after Wrestlemania XII I’d be taking six months off to do a full season of Lonesome Dove. I felt I was due to give my face a rest in North America after twelve straight years, but Vince said he really needed me to work the foreign tours. I told him no problem. Working the foreign tours would keep me from getting too much ring rust, and besides, I liked seeing the world.

On January 31, 1996, I took Julie along on a tour of India. On the plane, Razor shaving-creamed Savio Vega, a Puerto Rican black belt, then drew all over his face with hot pink lipstick. He should have known better than to mess with a fiery Latino. Soon enough, Razor was stumbling up and down the aisle holding his detached ponytail in his hand, asking passengers in his phony Cuban accent, “You see who cut my hair, man?”

Owen sat talking with Louie Spicolli, a good kid who was one of very few TV jobbers to find their way to working as a preliminary boy appearing in the opening matches for the WWF. Sadly, Louie had developed the worst case of slow suicide since Rick McGraw, much worse than Razor, Shawn, Kid or Davey. The day before the India tour, Louie suffered a drug-related seizure, but there he was on the plane. I heard Owen warn Louie that the pills would kill him if he didn’t smarten up. Louie said he’d seen the light, and I wished I could believe it was true.

The Leela Hotel in Mumbai was a fortress that locked out the poor. A hotel guide offered to arrange a tour and, after sleeping off the long flight, Tatanka came along with me and Julie to see the sights.

The prisonlike gates of the hotel parted, and we drove down Mahatma Gandhi Boulevard past pristine temples, shrines, churches and mosques. I found it hard to appreciate their beauty or even their spiritual significance when they were surrounded by slums. It was Manila all over again.

Those more fortunate buzzed around in taxis and small motorized buggies called Jeepneys. They honked and churned past the destitute, who struggled to navigate oxcarts and scooters through a fast-moving maze of buses and trucks that billowed black exhaust into a hazy sky.

In this exotic land filled with penury, I suddenly looked up to see a giant billboard that announced Hitman jeans. Some creep was posing as me, with long hair, a big nose and a fat gut, shirtless, wearing the pretend name-brand item. At first we got a chuckle out of it, but the more I thought about it the more it pissed me off that on the other side of the world someone had stolen my name and was making money from my sweat.

I always thought it would be quite something to be able to say I’d touched every ocean, if only because there aren’t many people who can say they have. When the guide stopped our taxi at a beach, it was plain that he was uncomfortable just being close to the water. The Indian Ocean at Mumbai was a scummy-green soup littered with garbage. In the air were incense, spices and cooking oil combined with sweat, piss and shit. As we made our way to the shoreline, watching people casually defecate in the sand, we were besieged by friendly beggars, most of whom were small kids.

Hundreds of poor walked alongside us in happy anticipation, tapping us frantically on the arms.

There was a tiny girl of about four carrying a naked baby who couldn’t have been a year old. With bright smiles and big eyes they somehow managed to be polite and respectful in their poverty.

I dipped the toe of my hiking boot into the slimy water just as a young boy stepped into a pile of human shit that squished through his toes.

The guide made it very clear that we shouldn’t give the beggars any handouts, but Julie broke down and pressed American dollar bills into their grubby hands. One after another the lucky children were brutally pounced on by older kids, who were pounced on by even older kids until only God knows where the money ended up.

There was a young boy with a spider monkey tied to a tattered rope. He shook a small electronic toy drum that rat-at-tat-tat-ed Michael’s Jackson’s song “Beat It” for about twenty seconds, during which the monkey did somersault after somersault. Not to be outdone, a desperate snake charmer of about the same age was trying to play a flute with one hand and arouse a cobra with the other.

The snake was docile, likely because the boy kept whacking it hard on the back of the head. It would rise up swaying only to receive another crisp crack.

In India they spared the cows and the rats. We stopped at a Jain temple where thousands of rats roamed everywhere, well fed and cared for like pets. In the department stores, I saw sacred cows strolling down the aisles, bulls in a china shop, only they were so accustomed to roaming among the wares that they didn’t damage anything. Clerks hurried to clean up their droppings.

When our taxi pulled up inside the gates of the hotel compound, I was accosted by five angry Indians shouting and waving pairs of Hitman jeans. I explained rather curtly that the bum pictured on the back pocket wasn’t me. They fiercely contested this as they surrounded me shouting excitedly, pleased with themselves for actually having found me. Finally, I pointed at the red heart-shaped tattoo on the impostor’s biceps. I rolled up my sleeve to show them I bore no such mark. They were rendered speechless for just a moment and then took to arguing fiercely among themselves. I left the bellhops to shoo them off.

That night I defended the title against Yoko, who, along with several others, was ailing from Bombay belly. We’d all been warned not to drink the water or even get it in our eyes or noses. It was, to say the least, a shitty night, with most of the wrestlers soiling their trunks. Yoko looked sickly pale as he did his bonsai drop. I made extra sure to get out of his way in plenty of time. Yoko weighed more than seven hundred pounds now and could barely get in and out of the ring. I figured that soon Vince would see him as a liability.

The following day I was asked if I’d mind going to visit some school-kids. The girls, in their blue-and-white uniforms with their hair neatly tied up, were the picture of courtesy, kneeling on the floor with their hands folded. In contrast, the boys were so delirious with excitement the teachers lost control of them and they stormed the stage. Julie was touched to see how happy they all were to see me.

When we were whisked away by a limo, I looked out the back window and made the bullhorn sign to the boys, who chased after us with huge smiles. I wonder if those children ever had any idea that it meant more for me to meet them that day than it did for them to meet me.

On February 3, we left for Bangalore, the computer capital of India. Bangalore was hot and dusty, and seemed less poverty-stricken than Mumbai, yet there were still numerous people sleeping on sidewalks.

At Martha’s urging, Owen decided he had to see the Taj Mahal, but the promoters in Delhi explained that it was simply too far. I thought it was something that Julie would appreciate too, so I joined in on the request. Reluctantly the promoters hired a big bus for the four-hour drive to Agra. Upon boarding I wondered why the driver sat in a compartment encased in bulletproof glass that he locked from the inside. Owen had talked many of the boys into coming, some of whom were still sick with the runs; he told them they’d never forgive themselves if they missed seeing one of the eight great wonders of the world.

The bus jerked and shifted gears, weaving through the bustling streets of Delhi. The sky was curry-brown from pollution. Barefoot kids played soccer. Skinny, mangy dogs wished they were sacred cows instead. Elephants working at construction sites like living bulldozers reminded me of the woolly mammoths on The Flintstones. Workers balanced huge bricks on top of their heads three at a time. Whenever we made a rest stop, young girls begged, with cheerful smiles.

A little way out of Delhi I noticed what I was sure was a dead body, neatly covered by a white sheet, laid out next to the trash. After seeing three or four more such bundles I asked the guide about it and was told that I was right: A caretaker’s wagon came around to retrieve the dead for cremation.

As we got farther into the countryside, the highway thinned to a dusty, two-lane road barely wide enough for one vehicle. The driver shifted gears, swerving side to side to miss the worst potholes and avoid traffic; by the time we got to Agra we all had motion sickness. It was hard for me to appreciate the sparkling, diamond-encrusted marble of the Taj Mahal after having seen such human suffering on the way.