When I got to Rockport and went to the venue, the promoter told me that I was off the show because he had booked too many people. I was one second from going apeshit when he told me I was still getting paid. I was stunned. Half the time when I actually work, I end up getting stiffed, I could barely even wrap my mind around the concept of getting paid for not working.
I never heard of such a thing, booking too many people? What does that even mean? We’re not on TV, it’s not like we have a schedule we need to keep. He said he was worried about the show being too long. I guess that makes sense. I told him that since I was getting paid I felt like I should do something – I said that I could be someone’s valet but he looked me up and down and kindly told me in so many words to just take my money and leave him alone.
In the wrestling world there’s an unspoken rule that you go around and introduce yourself to everyone else working on the show so they can ignore you or haze you or whatever they want to do depending on their status and your status and a bunch of other high school shit. I usually do that, but otherwise I’m not much for small talk. Because I’m not really a talker, it was awkward going around to see if anyone could use me in their match but I did it anyway. I’m not great at talking to people. I should work on that since the wrestling biz is built 88% on a network of bullshitting.
No one was too keen to use me for anything. I can’t blame them since they had no clue who I was. I had resigned myself to just watching the show when during intermission, Paris Torissi came up to me and said that a friend of hers had been bumped off the show too. She was scheduled to work a singles match with the imaginatively named Jean Sena and she asked if I would team up with Jean so her friend could team up with her and they’d turn the match into a tag. Paris was the only wrestler there I had ever heard of, having been in Women of Wrestling for a couple years – which I found out is owned by the woman who owns the fucking Lakers! Is that crazy or what? The woman that owns the Lakers also owns a wrestling promotion.
I told her that I would love to do the match but that I had never worked a tag before. She said that was fine and the three of them would help me through it. It was fine I guess but it didn’t feel fine. A tag team match probably doesn’t seem that complicated when watching it, but I felt lost having to keep track of two more people. I know a lot of rookies cut their teeth on tag matches before they do singles, that now seems crazy to me. Instead of three times more complexity it seemed like each person exponentially increased the difficulty.
It wasn’t a terrible match but I didn’t add much to it either, mostly I just stood on the apron while they did all the work. Afterwards they all told me I did a great job but that was just blowing smoke. I know that in their minds they were thinking “no wonder this fucking idiot wasn’t on the show”.
Something else for me to work on.
