And then you have the all but certain demise of the country with the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation. How do you tell a happily married man who takes you to sporting event and respects his Nike-boycotting wife that there is no way I want to stand for a flag that represents a dead country. But I respect the man, so I should not embarrass him despite his wife has said that we cannot fault powerful men for abusing their power, unless they were communist revolutionaries.
I never got away with anything growing up. Being too honest has plagued me. Striving for decency deters me from a negative path. The point is, if I screwed up, I paid, and have always paid. If we have learned anything from the Me Too Movement, is that everybody should answer for their indiscretions. It is not vengeance, it is a means to encourage protecting those whose safety is the target of those in power.
Thus, I am pondering if I should make this rant relevant to the current theme of the blog by exploring the incidents of sexual assault and harassment that I have experienced from my time in professional wrestling. You could call it hazing bullshit, but the fact of the matter is if I broke these guys faces, I risked never being booked again by that promotion. What really hurts is that the promotion never used me again. To their credit, I was booked and wisely ended up being a healthy scratch on my last trip to Southern Wisconsin for a last minute appearance by Silas Young, so at least the promotion remembered me.
It was 14 years ago. I was victimized. You cannot hold it against me if I was bumped from the card for someone less prestigious that The Last Real Man in Professional Wrestling (do not hold the gimmick against him). The culprits and facilitators are remembered, especially those who boasted about it. The stories were something I laughed off with the guys in the business like it was just a permanent marker stunt on my face, but when normal people ask for crazy and obscene stories from the business, you realize that the ones that come to immediate mind demonstrate behavior that is not acceptable. You realize that you were abused and you feel you can only blame yourself since you still want to be a part of the business. You cannot blame the sport.
But, these guys (for the most part) are friends and a couple of them have kids. There is a slim chance their life could be ruined since I am already wrestling's persona non grata south of I-80. Why be afraid of going national? Should I wait till I hear about their next job opportunity? I have not killed their present, but why do I feel like I have paid for their constant happiness I have perceived?
I suppose I should just be happy not having post traumatic stress in regards to this issue, or am I just now showing that I suffer from these stunts? Time does not heel all wounds. If this would have been realized when I was in therapy in regards to abusive relationships and and failing to prevent a gas station suicide, perhaps the Supreme Court fulfilling the wills of sex offenders for the next 20 years would not leave me considering snuffing myself (I really needed a better therapist, so probably not).
Hopefully, Ronan Farrow gets wind of this blog and helps me decide if I will name names. Provided that we get over the mess of me being a Woody Allen apologist of course. Time wears away, it does not heal. So I guess the moral is not to wound in the first place.
With that said, I would like to apologize to "Lauren" at Big Al's in Peoria (2015) if I was too handsy to begin with. It was me testing boundaries, and regardless if I stopped when told, I did wrong to begin with.
I gotta at least answer for my indiscretions, before I get this blog back on track. If only I could hold off on the posting till WWE's Evolution for the sake of cultural relevance. But, releasing this a week later may be too much time from when I wrote this.
Anyhow this blog has all the stuff marks want in bold, so the intro and transition do not matter to anyone besides me I suppose. More reason to try and be brave about abuse and the regret that people may have givien a shit about me if my struggles were more relatable than just being in my head.
See the conclusion to this blog series at Rip 'Em System Tumblr.
No comments:
Post a Comment