Post by Eric Dane on Aug 8, 2019 14:25:54 GMT -5
It felt good to be back in OCW.
Not to say that I wasn’t happy as a pig in shit over in Tampa, but for all the grey hairs that place was giving me, I figured I’d probably end up having to buy stock in L’oreal just to keep the brand alive. There’s something different about OCW, though. I hadn’t been able to put my finger on it until now, but chasing Logan around and powerbombing The Road Dog out of the ring helped me figure it out…
It was fun.
High Octane Wrestling was work. It was about maintaining a legacy and testing myself against the last pillars of a war that never really happened in the first place. HOW is where Eric Dane of 2012 had gone to die.
OCW, on the other hand, was where Eric Dane of 2019 has gone to be reborn.
“You know it’s just now eleven-oh-eight, right?”
Jan was a good kid, and a damned fine mixologist, but she had the kind of knack for giving me shit that made me want to set her little tiki bar on fire.
“Yes, Jan, and you were two minutes late, but who’s counting?” I’d already ordered my third Bloody Mary and she’d only been officially open for eight minutes. Six, if you count her being late.
She rolled her eyes and poured my drink.
“You are, apparently, Mr. Big Shot Day Drinker.” Sarcasm. Goddamn, I could have punched her in the face or given her a kiss. Either probably would have led to an interesting afternoon, to say the least. She jabbed a celery stalk and a few olives into my drink and handed it over. “Yanno, the only reason I tolerate your shit is because your tips alone actually paid off my car in just under a month.”
Shrugging, I took a lazy slurp from the vodka and tomato salad in front of me. I don’t overtip because I give a shit one way or another, I overtip because I like to get my way without having to ask twice.
“Less talk, more pour,” I returned. “I ain’t payin’ ya for your sparkling personality, kid.”
Jan’s eyes rolled and her lips pursed.
“Sorry my dude,” she jabbed a thumb at a hanging sign that I’d not noticed until now. “Three drinks in an hour, that’s the limit. Maybe you wanna sip on that one instead of pounding it like the Spring Break trash pounds shitty beer.”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“The fuck?” She doesn’t seem all that amused at my query. Quickly I quantify it with the kind of educated guess that only an addict would make. “That shit must be new.”
Her head shook back and forth.
“Nope. Policy. I’ve been breaking it.”
I gushed.
“Aw, just for little ol’ me?”
Her eyes rolled, again.
“Ah, no, not for you, for my car,” she quipped. “You just happened to have been the temporary benefactor of my nefarious schemes. If you’d like to negotiate a new contract, I’m currently drowning in student loan debt for a degree that I’m not using because bartending for pretentious assholes and rich guy rasslers pays pretty much triple what anything I can do with a Bachelor of the Arts degree does.”
I think I’m falling in love with Jan the bartender.
Or lust.
Yeah, definitely probably lust, I’m not entirely sure I’m capable of love.
“I’m not rich,” I said.
“Maybe not,” she gave me a smirk. “But you are pretentious and you are an asshole.”
She was right, of course.
The women in my life usually were. I took it easy on the drink, shifting my weight on the barstool so as to get a better view of the pool. It was early yet but the eye candy had been on display since the sun came up I’m sure. Those were the kinds of people who generally stayed at places like the Casa Marina, worshippers at the altar of the Sun.
Missionaries of tanned skin and toned bodies.
Key West may as well have been their holy land, a place to be fought for and conquered with sunblock and mai-tais, defended from rain clouds and the forty-hour workweek.
I scoffed at my own ridiculous train of thought.
It occurred to me that a lot of men had made a good living over the years in my own line of work with little more than bronze skin and a six-pack. The abdominal kind, not the alcoholic kind. Again I chuckled, infinitely amused at my own half-drunken musings.
“What’s so funny?” Jan asked as she busied herself polishing martini glasses and brandy snifters. I considered regaling her with my tale of suntan lotion and bronzing cream but decided against it.
“Oh, nothing,” I answered. “Nothing you’d be interested in anyway.”
“Try me,” she smirked again. “You’d be surprised.”
I considered this.
“Nah,” I took another sip. “You’d just give me shit about it.”
It was Jan’s turn to cock an eyebrow.
“Yanno, for a guy who runs around chasing after people like The Terminator on TV, you sure can be a little girl in real life.”
That one hurt, or it would have had I given half a shit.
Spoiler alert: I did not.
“What I do on television…”
Trailing off I tried to decide the best way to put it.
“Well, it’s not exactly an act. I take it up to another level, get myself all hyped up and I go out there and beat people up until I either win, get my point across, or get my ass kicked.”
“And that’s not what you do in real life?” It was a good question, I suppose, depending on your definition of real life.
“Well,” I stalled, trying to find the right way to kayfabe this. “In real life you have to worry about things like cops, assault charges, and prison.”
She seemed to accept that, so I continued.
“There used to be a time where you could be Billy Badass, walk around with your chest poked out and pick fights to prove how big your dick was. Those times have long since passed with the advent of smartphones, social justice, and a plague of supposed grown men who’d rather call the cops on you than take an ass-kicking standing up for what they believe in…”
“And so?” She seemed legitimately curious.
“Well, anymore there’s one of three things you can do.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“One, nothing. Doing anything in this day and age will likely get you hemmed up.”
She nodded.
“Two, go to jail. I’m here to tell you though, it ain’t worth it.”
She nodded again.
“And three?” She queried.
This was where I smiled, a genuine smile for once.
“Become a wrestler, develop persona that people can either like or hate enough to want to spend their money either buying your shit or buying a ticket to see somebody try to beat the fuck out of you, and figure out a way to get everything else that a normal person gets in life out of a business designed to chew up and spit out even the toughest of minds, bodies, and souls.”
. . .
There was a moment of silence between us, I don’t think Jan was ready for an answer with any sort of depth to it. The look on her face said she was fully expecting some fat load of rambling rassler man bullshit. I don’t blame her, I hadn’t really given her any reason to think otherwise in any of my previous visits to this particular resort and her particular tiki bar.
Funny thing is, I hadn’t even really said much, just a basic explanation of the way I looked at life and the choices that I could have made as opposed to the choices that I did make. I finished my drink and pondered how I would spend the rest of my day.
Jan started pouring and mixing another Bloody Mary.
“I’ll tell you what,” she started. “You keep being an actual human being while you’re at this bar or around this pool, and I’ll keep ignoring that sign.”
Just as she finished, she set a fourth drink on top of a bev-nap in front of me.
I smiled another real smile.
“Deal.”
“Hello, OCW.”
Waves crashed on the beach behind me.
“It’s good to be back.”
I’d much rather have cut this promo from my stool at the bar but a certain young bartender that I’d grown fond of had made it worth my while to take a walk. So there I stood, on the secluded beach that came as an amenity with my stay at the Casa Marina.
“Good for me, that is.”
The midday sun was pounding, but I’d lived in the South for most of my life and I was used to it. Besides, I had my shades and enough SPF 40 to fight off most of the cancer that Ra tried so desperately to bless me with. That and I didn’t expect for this particular promotional effort to go more than about thirty more seconds.
“For the likes of Logan, it means his days as Savage Champion are numbered. For the likes of The Road Dog…”
I can’t help but laugh, what a maroon.
“Let’s just say I hope for your sake that you’ve got some independent health insurance. I know for sure that OCW doesn’t provide any due to your status as an independent contractor, and I’d hate for you to get stuck with all those medical bills after the beating that you’ve got coming to you on Massacre.”
I’d managed to stifle the laughter down into a smirk.
“Bring everything you’ve got, kid, because I can promise you that I will. Understand that as far as I’m concerned you are every Champion holding gold right now in this business, and I’m going to make it my business to fight you like it’s all on the line…”
A wink accompanied my little morsel of wisdom.
“Because kid, as far as The Only Star concerned, it most certainly is.”
And that, as they say, was that.
Not to say that I wasn’t happy as a pig in shit over in Tampa, but for all the grey hairs that place was giving me, I figured I’d probably end up having to buy stock in L’oreal just to keep the brand alive. There’s something different about OCW, though. I hadn’t been able to put my finger on it until now, but chasing Logan around and powerbombing The Road Dog out of the ring helped me figure it out…
It was fun.
High Octane Wrestling was work. It was about maintaining a legacy and testing myself against the last pillars of a war that never really happened in the first place. HOW is where Eric Dane of 2012 had gone to die.
OCW, on the other hand, was where Eric Dane of 2019 has gone to be reborn.
“You know it’s just now eleven-oh-eight, right?”
Jan was a good kid, and a damned fine mixologist, but she had the kind of knack for giving me shit that made me want to set her little tiki bar on fire.
“Yes, Jan, and you were two minutes late, but who’s counting?” I’d already ordered my third Bloody Mary and she’d only been officially open for eight minutes. Six, if you count her being late.
She rolled her eyes and poured my drink.
“You are, apparently, Mr. Big Shot Day Drinker.” Sarcasm. Goddamn, I could have punched her in the face or given her a kiss. Either probably would have led to an interesting afternoon, to say the least. She jabbed a celery stalk and a few olives into my drink and handed it over. “Yanno, the only reason I tolerate your shit is because your tips alone actually paid off my car in just under a month.”
Shrugging, I took a lazy slurp from the vodka and tomato salad in front of me. I don’t overtip because I give a shit one way or another, I overtip because I like to get my way without having to ask twice.
“Less talk, more pour,” I returned. “I ain’t payin’ ya for your sparkling personality, kid.”
Jan’s eyes rolled and her lips pursed.
“Sorry my dude,” she jabbed a thumb at a hanging sign that I’d not noticed until now. “Three drinks in an hour, that’s the limit. Maybe you wanna sip on that one instead of pounding it like the Spring Break trash pounds shitty beer.”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“The fuck?” She doesn’t seem all that amused at my query. Quickly I quantify it with the kind of educated guess that only an addict would make. “That shit must be new.”
Her head shook back and forth.
“Nope. Policy. I’ve been breaking it.”
I gushed.
“Aw, just for little ol’ me?”
Her eyes rolled, again.
“Ah, no, not for you, for my car,” she quipped. “You just happened to have been the temporary benefactor of my nefarious schemes. If you’d like to negotiate a new contract, I’m currently drowning in student loan debt for a degree that I’m not using because bartending for pretentious assholes and rich guy rasslers pays pretty much triple what anything I can do with a Bachelor of the Arts degree does.”
I think I’m falling in love with Jan the bartender.
Or lust.
Yeah, definitely probably lust, I’m not entirely sure I’m capable of love.
“I’m not rich,” I said.
“Maybe not,” she gave me a smirk. “But you are pretentious and you are an asshole.”
She was right, of course.
The women in my life usually were. I took it easy on the drink, shifting my weight on the barstool so as to get a better view of the pool. It was early yet but the eye candy had been on display since the sun came up I’m sure. Those were the kinds of people who generally stayed at places like the Casa Marina, worshippers at the altar of the Sun.
Missionaries of tanned skin and toned bodies.
Key West may as well have been their holy land, a place to be fought for and conquered with sunblock and mai-tais, defended from rain clouds and the forty-hour workweek.
I scoffed at my own ridiculous train of thought.
It occurred to me that a lot of men had made a good living over the years in my own line of work with little more than bronze skin and a six-pack. The abdominal kind, not the alcoholic kind. Again I chuckled, infinitely amused at my own half-drunken musings.
“What’s so funny?” Jan asked as she busied herself polishing martini glasses and brandy snifters. I considered regaling her with my tale of suntan lotion and bronzing cream but decided against it.
“Oh, nothing,” I answered. “Nothing you’d be interested in anyway.”
“Try me,” she smirked again. “You’d be surprised.”
I considered this.
“Nah,” I took another sip. “You’d just give me shit about it.”
It was Jan’s turn to cock an eyebrow.
“Yanno, for a guy who runs around chasing after people like The Terminator on TV, you sure can be a little girl in real life.”
That one hurt, or it would have had I given half a shit.
Spoiler alert: I did not.
“What I do on television…”
Trailing off I tried to decide the best way to put it.
“Well, it’s not exactly an act. I take it up to another level, get myself all hyped up and I go out there and beat people up until I either win, get my point across, or get my ass kicked.”
“And that’s not what you do in real life?” It was a good question, I suppose, depending on your definition of real life.
“Well,” I stalled, trying to find the right way to kayfabe this. “In real life you have to worry about things like cops, assault charges, and prison.”
She seemed to accept that, so I continued.
“There used to be a time where you could be Billy Badass, walk around with your chest poked out and pick fights to prove how big your dick was. Those times have long since passed with the advent of smartphones, social justice, and a plague of supposed grown men who’d rather call the cops on you than take an ass-kicking standing up for what they believe in…”
“And so?” She seemed legitimately curious.
“Well, anymore there’s one of three things you can do.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“One, nothing. Doing anything in this day and age will likely get you hemmed up.”
She nodded.
“Two, go to jail. I’m here to tell you though, it ain’t worth it.”
She nodded again.
“And three?” She queried.
This was where I smiled, a genuine smile for once.
“Become a wrestler, develop persona that people can either like or hate enough to want to spend their money either buying your shit or buying a ticket to see somebody try to beat the fuck out of you, and figure out a way to get everything else that a normal person gets in life out of a business designed to chew up and spit out even the toughest of minds, bodies, and souls.”
. . .
There was a moment of silence between us, I don’t think Jan was ready for an answer with any sort of depth to it. The look on her face said she was fully expecting some fat load of rambling rassler man bullshit. I don’t blame her, I hadn’t really given her any reason to think otherwise in any of my previous visits to this particular resort and her particular tiki bar.
Funny thing is, I hadn’t even really said much, just a basic explanation of the way I looked at life and the choices that I could have made as opposed to the choices that I did make. I finished my drink and pondered how I would spend the rest of my day.
Jan started pouring and mixing another Bloody Mary.
“I’ll tell you what,” she started. “You keep being an actual human being while you’re at this bar or around this pool, and I’ll keep ignoring that sign.”
Just as she finished, she set a fourth drink on top of a bev-nap in front of me.
I smiled another real smile.
“Deal.”
“Hello, OCW.”
Waves crashed on the beach behind me.
“It’s good to be back.”
I’d much rather have cut this promo from my stool at the bar but a certain young bartender that I’d grown fond of had made it worth my while to take a walk. So there I stood, on the secluded beach that came as an amenity with my stay at the Casa Marina.
“Good for me, that is.”
The midday sun was pounding, but I’d lived in the South for most of my life and I was used to it. Besides, I had my shades and enough SPF 40 to fight off most of the cancer that Ra tried so desperately to bless me with. That and I didn’t expect for this particular promotional effort to go more than about thirty more seconds.
“For the likes of Logan, it means his days as Savage Champion are numbered. For the likes of The Road Dog…”
I can’t help but laugh, what a maroon.
“Let’s just say I hope for your sake that you’ve got some independent health insurance. I know for sure that OCW doesn’t provide any due to your status as an independent contractor, and I’d hate for you to get stuck with all those medical bills after the beating that you’ve got coming to you on Massacre.”
I’d managed to stifle the laughter down into a smirk.
“Bring everything you’ve got, kid, because I can promise you that I will. Understand that as far as I’m concerned you are every Champion holding gold right now in this business, and I’m going to make it my business to fight you like it’s all on the line…”
A wink accompanied my little morsel of wisdom.
“Because kid, as far as The Only Star concerned, it most certainly is.”
And that, as they say, was that.