I worked a show in Tyler last night and after my match I went to the promoter to get paid and he tried to tell me that he had already paid me. I always try to get money up front but promoters rarely go for that because wrestlers are flaky even when they don’t intend on ripping you off, and also they’re often looking to rip you off. I knew that he hadn’t paid me so things got loud. I got pissed and left and started looking for stuff to steal.
Here’s the deal, remember before when I said that I wasn’t a criminal? Well there’s a tradition in the world of wrestling that if the guy running the show stiffs you (which happens) what you do is you steal whatever you can to make up for the lost income. I saw a guy walk out of a venue with a thousand Solo cups one time because he didn’t get paid. This doesn’t make a lot of sense because you’re not stealing from the guy that ripped you off, you’re stealing from the venue, which only hurts yourself in the long run because it makes the people that own the venue less likely to book another wrestling show there. But when you drive 8 hours to a show to work for twenty fucking dollars and then you don’t even get it because the asshole who hired you won’t pony up, you start looking for a way to get even. Not in the payback sense, I mean monetarily.
I’ve done this myself a few times, so I guess I am a criminal, but it’s justified by tradition like Alaskan natives hunting endangered whales. While I was looking for something to steal though I remembered that actually I had gotten paid in advance and I was pissed over nothing. I probably should have gone back and apologized but after you tell someone you’re going to cut their wife’s face off, the bridge is probably burned. I need to get an app on my phone to keep track of this shit. My finances are very complicated.
Before that drama though, I got lectured by a sixty year old man with a potbelly and skinny chicken legs wearing a werewolf mask. Or what was left of a werewolf mask anyway, it looked like he had been wearing the same one since the 80’s and some of it had worn away and the rest had fused with his bald head. I was going over my match with a woman whose name I forget – she was wearing a school girl outfit which along with cheerleader is the outfit of choice for 35% of independent lady wrestlers. And probably similar ratio for strippers. While I was talking with the schoolgirl, the fat werewolf came over to bless us with his veteran advice. He asked me what my gimmick was and I told him that I didn’t have one.
He got pissed because he said you need a gimmick to make it in this business. I declined to point out that he was working the same shit show I was. He asked what kind of story we could tell with a schoolgirl in one corner and then a no gimmick in the other. I asked him what kind of a story can you tell with an adult woman in a school girl outfit and anyone else? Besides porn.
He has a point I suppose, but what kind of gimmick can I have that doesn’t really cost any money in the form of new gear or props or anything and also doesn’t require me to do or say anything? That’s a very narrow window for creative thinking. Maybe I should steal El Generico’s gimmick – he’s dead so he doesn’t need it anymore. I’m not sure how I feel about wrestling in a mask though.
Rocket Cat 