The House That Blues Built

Painted faces.

Masked ones.

Layers of flesh we’ve tried to rip off because who we are makes us sick.

We’re not so different.

Hiding your true self is something I am accustomed to. It’s in my blood.

Everyone in the small Ontario town I grew up in thought my father was a good man. He had a job as a medical transcriptionist. He volunteered. He went to church.

But what he did after hours – that’s what he will be remembered for.

I sipped the head off the cool beer slamming the thick mug back down on the counter – designed for passive aggressive assholes just like me.

I get like that when I think of my dad. I bet a lot of us do. It’s one of the few normal things I share with the few other lonely bleeding hearts at the bar. Their daddies weren't around to teach them how to change oil, hold the wrench, ride a bike or drink in moderation.

I only have a few memories of my dad. One being the last day he lived as a free man.

I forget whole moments – whole fucking years – of my life.

It’s crazy the things you remember in fragments.

I think I was three years old.

The waitress slid a plate with a piece of cherry pie on top. The biggest slice my little two-year-old-eye ever saw. The beautiful oozing red falling out the sides of the buttery flaky crust.

I remember this moment because it was the moment right before my world became hell. I remember what my dad looked like. Unassuming. A meek fair haired man – slightly average build – slightly average in every way.

Quiet but charismatic.

Aren’t they all?

Serial killers.

My dad listened to The Beatles the whole way home from the diner. Mom sat shotgun singing along sipping hard liquor through the straw in a soda cup. We lived in a small trailer park in Hamilton Ontario. It was a town with a reputation for violence – but what my old man did put it all to shame.

I remember my dad's eyes shooting to the rear-view mirror like he was waiting for something. I remember because he would accidentally lock eyes with me every time he checked to see if something was coming behind us.

We pulled into the park and everyone was inside. It was a ghost town. Not a single car moving on the street, no kids playing. It was like they all dropped dead. I remember being carried from the car hearing only the breath of my parents.

Then sirens – cars on the lawn – my dad running inside and slamming the door. Mom’s screaming at him asking what’s going on. He has no explanation. The cops are kicking at the door. The sheriff on the intercom says his name – it rang in my ears even decades later.

“Clive Jones… come out…”

Dad opened the door – bit the nose off a rookie cop and spit it on the cheap tile floor of our mini-home. He headbutted the cop's  face unrecognizable until the rest swarmed him – beating him over and over with batons as my mother screamed.

I repressed that memory – locked it deep in a vault in my mind and opened it up two decades later along with my father’s throat – but that’s a story we just won’t tell.

For all the sick shit he did to women in Northern Canada – my dad never did hit my mom. He never talked down to her. Didn’t show much emotion at all unless they were both pissed drunk.

When he was slammed on the ground, cuffed and dragged to that police car.

She realized then she was a front – her whole life a mask for a man. The illusion of happiness – an actress cast in a role she didn’t sign up for.

She always wanted to be more than that. Hell, probably would have taken a couple smacks to the jaw for it.

I mean… I am.

“Do you want another,” the bartender says, cutting me out of my trance.

“Yeah sure,” I said, nodding and turning my head toward the stage where a man in his 60’s is just ripping away on a guitar wailing his fucking heart out.

“Pretty fucking good isn’t he?” The bartender said putting another pint of lager in front of me.

“Yeah, I swear I’ve heard him before,” I said, taking a huge swig of beer.

“No Tooth Tony is his name. He had some chart toppers in the early 2000’s made it pretty fucking big. Not Superbowl, but after party type of shit. A musician's musician.”

The bartender nodded and went to pour more liquor for the other sacks of shit drinking along on a weeknight.

I knew what that was like. Peaking too early – putting too many asses in seats. Trying to top yourself – your last championship run – your last fucking match — never quite stacks up.

The neon lights in The House of Blues bounce off the waxed wooden tables – makes the whole thing feel classic – it’s like a sign reading ‘bad motherfuckers only’. Everyone got that Samuel L Jackson wallet in their ass pocket. And we’re coming here with Pro Wrestling Excellence on Halloween night and I’m not sure half the roster will give em as good a fight as I saw when I got here at 10. Two truckers, one trying to scalp the other with a broken beer bottle and no one batted a fucking eyelash.

I finish my beer in three gulps, slap down more bills than are needed to cover my tab and wade my ass through the neon reflections to the exit. Bash Daddy is waiting for me outside – towering over me he stabilizes me with a hand.

“You want to head back to the hotel?” Bash asks.

“No,” I said, pointing upward to the big water tower-like structure that holds a huge blue glowing sign that says House of Blues.

It was a long – slightly drunken – climb to the top but Bash kept me stable, holding a hand up when he thought I may fall.

I’m slightly winded when I get to the top, but nothing a cigarette won’t handle. I hang my legs off the water tower looking at the glowing bar below. I’m washed in the blue neon of the House of Blues sign dangling behind me. I place a cigarette between my lips, light it and blow a cloud out high above Orlando. I squint and pull myself up using the rail – a drunken grunt escaping my lungs. I start pacing the narrow walkway in front of the sign for the venue I’ll be wrestling at Halloween night.

Bash Daddy can read my body language by now. He pulls out his Iphone, flips it landscape and presses record.

“Excellence,” I said, taking a sharp puff off my cigarette.

“You can go insane chasing that shit. Trying to become the idea of perfection – the goddamn embodiment. I’ve seen countless wrestlers burn out, fade away or die chasing that. But here I am back in the fucking ring at a place with the word in its name. I’m here to do what I always have done – redefining the industry and maybe I need to shift your whole perspective of excellence. Is excellence hitting the perfectly angled armbar so that her arm just pops… is perfection doing everything by the book? OR is it winning at all costs. Is it willing to push a thumb into someone’s eye until you are knuckle deep in brain matter? See that… that I can do.”

I take a few more puffs off my cigarette and walk into the camera Bash is holding, almost forcing him into the corner railing – the big blue neon hanging over my head.

“I’m not a professional wrestler – I’m The Unprofessional – I’m the one willing to do whatever it fucking takes to get to the top once more. I spit on your traditions. I’ll make a mockery of these oiled up men, slender bodied bitches and masked manic depressives in between.”

I back up off the camera shrugging and letting smoke billow from my mouth as if to say sorry.

“Victoria Lyons and El Landerson – my big debut for PWE. A luchador – now Mexico is not a place I have wrestled a lot before I’ll give you that Landerson. Let me tell you this though, your battle royal wins, your cruiserweight heart won’t be able to hold the weight this industry puts on your shoulders. Your tag team prowess means nothing here. Everything you have accomplished means fuck all Landerson until you step in the ring with me and attempt yo prove you are marketable. Not just another lucha shipped out of Mexico to increase sales in America. I am going to do you a favour at Victory. I know. Florida isn’t for everyone. Landerson I’ll even get you a one way ticket to head back home so you can die in California.”

I take a long puff off my cigarette, trying to let the nicotine fuel me through the rest of the promo.

“Everyone seems to have this family tie to violence, to professional wrestling in particular – me – I was branded with a whole different type of gore and I carry the scars. Internal bleeding might be the only thing keeping these veins circulating. Every second wrestler I come by got into this because it’s the family business and I couldn’t wish more moms and dads worked in sewage and sanitation. Victoria Lyons… that’s why you do this right? The family does it. Like that will have them roll out the nepotism red carpet to the main event. Well little Lyons, I’ll roll your body up in that carpet when I am done and drop it mafia style off the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.”

“Lyons your lineage means nothing to me. I’ve spent years trying to carve out my own and not live in the shadow or another man’s violence. You, you’re content aren’t you – trying to fool these people into thinking you are some twisted blood thirsty big cat. Well I have no problem waterboarding you in my own blood. Cutting myself and letting it pour til you fucking drown on the crimson you say you love. And when you gargle and spit and try and cry out these people will hear that minuscule meow escape your lungs and then… well then they know – but more importantly you will – that the scream of a martyr replaces the roar of the lion.”

Everyone wants to be the face of this or that – the one that leads the soldiers into battle. Fuck that. See while people were slapping on makeup trying to be menacing, hiding behind masks to eliminate the docility I was ripping mine off in backyards and warehouses getting in stapled back on trying to find out who the fuck I am and where I belong in all of this.

I look down at No Tooth Tony in the courtyard now playing for free music night just callousing his fucking fingers for a few bucks and an adrenaline rush. I could jump – end it all – splatter and ruin everyone's night. Take that fame all these other wrestlers long for.

Bash slaps his hand on my shoulder – I let my cigarette fall instead. Bash takes his phone off record and slips it into his pocket.

He helps me down off the last few steps as I light another cigarette as an award. He steps in front of me as some scrawny kid walks up with a camera hanging around her neck.

“I don’t talk to the fucking press,” I said, spitting on the ground as I obnoxiously blow smoke out simultaneous.

“Well, I just wanted to know if you knew someone,” the journalist swallowed hard.

“Clive Jones – The Cleaver Killer.”