Posted in: Just Business Just Business #34 - Shot
By Plan
Aug 7, 2009 - 2:18:22 PM
#34
Shot
My name is ‘Plan and I, like all of us, am an addict.
In a world where our ‘E pushes forwards the darkest vices of a man as a positive thing, pushes being different to the expense of one’s health and social acceptance, I will be the first to step forwards and admit that I too suffer from an addiction.
I am not addicted to drinking or snorting or injecting or sniffing. I am not an abuser of substances. I am something much worse. I am an abuser of the health of my fellow human being. I am a task-master. But I am not ashamed of this. I am proud of this. I am happy to admit it because I love our little world with a great deal of passion and so, it seems, do you.
The question remains; is that a good thing?
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.”
This is not a job. It is a lifestyle choice and a massive one at that. You have to sacrifice everything you may want in life in the hope of making it big. You have to cling on to that ideal where the world chants your name and hang on your every word whether they adore it or hate it. It is unlike any other industry there is. It is unique as is every experience you suffer in that small arena.
Other people do not fully understand it. Some even have the audacity to write on Internet sites pretending they can take a reasonable guess at what it is like. You can not hate them for it. Most of them do it simply through their dedication.
Their dedication….
You should appreciate it. You recognise it for what it should be; their virtue, their prerogative, their right. But who are they to judge us? They sit and they cheer or they jeer like they know things. Sure, they may know little things but they do not truly know what it is like. Not really. Why do I owe them my everything? Why should I sacrifice my family, my home, my health just to please them, to give them a two hour fix every week?
They do not understand. They do not experience it every night in their beds. It does not keep them awake. They do not feel chained to the demand for more. They do not feel the things you feel or see so closely the things you see. It is one thing to watch as a skull cracks on metal from a distance; it is another for it to happen directly in front of your eyes, up close and personal.
But you do not break the pretence. Break the pretence and they despise you for it. They decry you and crucify you for it.
You have to meet the demands.
“Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.”
The interviewer sits there with his cigarette in his hand and his ten year old t-shirt proudly exclaiming some outdated catchphrase and sporting the visage of a man now nought more than a ghost.
He will look at you like it is his business. It is almost as if he feels he is owed something, owed the right to know things. He wants information. He craves it. He only wants to share it, to share it with the people. Those wonderful dedicated people who do not turn their backs on you. Those wonderful dedicated people who venomously refuse to forgive you for wanting to go and springboard into a different career as if it is the greatest sin possible simply because this industry is so unique, almost contained.
And with that thick choking blanket of smoke in the air he asks you questions. Endless questions, prying into business not his or the people’s to know.
In your eyes, what is your greatest match? You sit and you think.
As far as you’re concerned was that spot really necessary because it certainly didn’t look very good? You sit and you think.
How did it feel? What is your favourite match as a fan? Why did you get into it? Was it tense in the locker-room? Who was your greatest enemy? You sit and you think.
How, what, why, was, who, how, what, why, was, who, how, what, why, was, who, questions, questions, questions.
You think only one thought.
“I’ve watched C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.”
The thing of it is there is no middle ground. No two careers are similar, because anything can happen at any single given moment. Every experience is different. Each career is unique.
I have felt my arm break. I was there when his skin tore open beneath my fingers. I felt the blood of a fellow man slither down my arm like a crimson serpent. I heard the genuine screams of anguish. I have had the silver little tacks puncture my body like a cushion. My vision has blurred as I was concussed, my world sent spinning as my equilibrium told me I was no longer allowed to so much as stand up straight.
And it has not ended there. I am the man you hear of who can not lift himself out of bed in the morning. I am the man who walked around with an ice pack strapped to my spine simply so I could stand up. I am the man that blacked out, that collapsed, that left rivers of blood on every continent just to please the rabid dogs that sit in their cages barking for more. More. MORE.
When you walk out beyond that curtain the world disappears. There is just that moment. The noise. The lights. The cool conditioned air. The long walk under the spotlight, over ten thousand eyes trained on you and you stand in the eye of the storm and for that fleeting moment in time…
…everything stops.
Then it rushes back to you. The world hits you square in the face. There is just that anxiety. The barking. The dark uncertainty. It is like an oven down there. The long mile, countless pins sticking into you demanding you sacrifice yourself and it lasts for an eternity…
…every single night.
The golden belts, the fame and fortune, the first class flights, limousine rides and threesomes are a pat on the back. But your life becomes about one thing; pleasing them. Going out and putting on a show that does not disappoint. Kicking yourself when it does, piling the pressure on yourself endlessly when it does not. All the pats on the back in the world can not take away that feeling that you have left them empty.
You could put on the show of a lifetime…but there would be something. That intangible that makes you push yourself further the next night in the hopes to make up for it. And you do. And you wake up the next morning with one word in your head.
More.
“All those…moments will be lost in time…”
What is a man? A fleeting second in the Universe, if that.
And how do we spend our second? Pandering to others. Now you have to push yourself further than you did last night. The same will not do. You can not disappoint them. This is your life now, this is how your second will pass; shackled to the need to meet expectation.
Addiction is a destructive force. It can tear a person apart from the inside. It makes them lose friends. It makes them lose family. It isolates them. It keeps them alone in a vile cycle that never seems to end.
The addiction of these sickeningly dedicated people is exactly the same, just not to them. It is worse. It does not destroy them. At the worst it simply leaves them unsatisfied for a couple of days before the next circus travels into town. No, to them their addiction allows them to belong to a community. To them it is nothing more than a talking point, a flashing second of excitement, a moment to be lost in. They do not know anything.
That moment to be lost in breaks a bone. That flashing second of excitement loses a man a year of his life. That talking point is the shattered and ruined everyday dreams of an entirely ordinary man being forced into doing extraordinary things for the fear of simple criticism.
And before you know it, your chance has gone. Now you do not have the time on your hands to raise yourself a family. Now you do not have the chance to go home at five o clock every evening. Now you do not have the possibility of waking up without aching. Somewhere down that line you got lost among the ravages of their addiction and now you have to make do with an empty house and, if you are one of the lucky ones, a fat bank account balance.
But you have your memories at least. That one great match you had. That one show-stealing feud. That intense championship match set to go down in the history books as one of the greatest of all time. A cemented legacy to always be remembered with satisfaction by those you spent your life trying desperately to satisfy.
That said…you sit…and you think…and you come to the realisation. What is a page in a chronicle? A fleeting moment of attention in history, if that.
“…like tears…in rain.”
It is almost enough to cry about.
That question; what was it again? Who was your greatest enemy?
You can recall everything you want. Wrestlemania. Summerslam. An entire given year. Maybe more. Perhaps a group; D-Generation X, Evolution, The Hart Foundation, Legacy, The Four Horsemen, The Main Event Mafia. A champion. A two-time, three-time…maybe even a sixteen-time champion.
That is when you realise. That is when it all clicks.
They say you are one in a million. It means you are special. It means you are one of a kind, once in a life-time, not to be repeated, difficult to match, impossible to best. You are meant to know things because of the rewards that were meant for you. It is your destiny. Only they do not mean what they say. What they should say is you are one of a million.
It is not those that shape how you are remembered. It is the people. If you do not win the people, you have nothing. They are the addicts. They are the ones forcing you into doing more to satisfy their cravings, they are the ones that decide if, in the end, you ultimately did enough to be remembered. When you realise that “there was always something” then your world shatters. All those little pats on the back, all those condolences you had for yourself at the end of the long road through hell are gone.
Who was your greatest enemy, he asked. I answered him with the name of the same people that made me.
“The fans.”
“Time to die.”
Some have the desire to live forever. In this hell, with a million rabid animals snapping at your ankles to do more, to do better, to be more impressive, to fall further, to fight longer, to slam harder…with there always being something you sometimes find yourself hoping to be that one candle that burns twice as bright for half the time.
And then you face the unflattering truth; you’re a slave to the same people that worship the ground you walk on.
“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.”
A wrestler is nothing without us loyal fans chanting their name and wanting to see them again the next night, preferably in a more high profile manner. That is why a wrestler has every right to hate us.
It’s a strange, strange world that we live in. What are virtues in the real world can so easily become vices in this one. You’re considered a success when your fan base grows, when your fan base is fiercely loyal, when your fan base holds you up in adoration and idolisation. But you could, by the same said token, be so easily considered a tragedy.
Each one of us is an unmerciful task-master. We crave more. We always want something better. We demand something bigger every single week and decry them when they don’t deliver the goods.
It’s too bad they won’t live. But then again, who does?
My name is ‘Plan and I know I’m an addict. Are you?
(Author’s Note: This column is dedicated to every wrestler who ever became a victim of our expectation in the hopes of showing them we are aware of just how callous we can be.)
Written with thanks to the creators and crew behind “Blade Runner”, the film from which the quotes used here are derived.
Feedback to: planm4n89@hotmail.co.uk
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PS: This was originally to be Spandex Fortnightly #2 which, unfortunately, due to ongoing mitigating circumstances continues to be delayed. But it IS coming. The column you have just read is to be followed up tomorrow. Eyes peeled people.
