Countdown To Lockdown (10 page)

Maxx briefly turned off the system as he considered my request. “You know, Jack,” he said, baritone booming (remember, I was Cactus Jack back then), “I have something you might like.”

Those words turned out to be something of an understatement.

I always thought I had an appreciation for diverse musical styles. As a halfway-decent college DJ from 1984 to 1987 I had been exposed to some great progressive stuff, and I always took a certain amount of pride in unearthing and exposing unheralded musical gems or dusting off some forgotten classics.

But, up until that night with “Miss Christine,” Tori Amos had eluded me. I was vaguely aware of the name but most definitely not the voice, which instantly struck me as an instrument of unique and incredibly emotive beauty. By turns haunting, tender, defiant, angry, vulnerable — sometimes within the same lyric, the first four songs of that Maxx Payne selection
Little Earthquakes
were altogether unlike anything I’d ever heard.

And then there was “Winter.” Is there such a thing as falling musically in love — love at first listen? If so, I fell helplessly, hopelessly, in love with that song from that very first time:

Snow can wait, I forgot my mittens

Wipe my nose, get my new boots on …

The sound system that had earlier seemed so invasive, seemed suddenly transportive, as if the Lincoln’s backseat was my own intimate concert hall, as if Tori Amos were sitting next to me on that cracked leather interior, singing her heart out for an audience of one.

When you gonna make up your mind?
she asks me, accompanied by the gentlest, tenderest of notes from the Bösendorfer piano she has somehow managed to sneak into the backseat of Maxx’s car.
When you gonna love you as much as I do?

Maxx and Nick had seen her play the song on Leno or Letterman, and were attempting to interrupt my private concert by describing her unusual piano-playing style. Apparently the late-night appearance had created quite a visual memory for them.

I didn’t even know what she looked like.

But I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.

I think it would be safe to say that I became a passionate fan of her music. But it wasn’t unusual to find passionate Tori Amos fans. Her music — too personal and thought provoking for true mass
consumption — imbued a fierce loyalty in her fans. But the vast majority of the passionate were female and were unlikely to do what I did for a living.

I saw placards and posters for her tour in several German cities I traveled to with WCW on our March 1994 tour of Germany. I thought about snagging a poster or two from a wall but opted not to, thinking it wrong to in any way jeopardize her potential audience for the sake of my own personal gain. I could almost hear a promoter say,
Sorry, Ms. Amos, the show would have done better, but apparently some wrestler was going around town, taking down all your posters.

I regretted that decision on March 17, 1994, when a wrestling ring mishap resulted in the infamous loss of my right ear, leaving me with nothing to listen to, read, or look at for two interminably long days in a Munich hospital. One of those Tori Amos posters on my hospital room wall would have made the experience a little less tenuous.

Two weeks later, April 1, 1994, with my head still swathed with enough gauze to pass for Boris Karloff in
The Mummy
, I took in my first Tori Amos show from the third row of the Center Stage Theater in Atlanta, using my WCW connections (we held our Saturday night television tapings at the venue) to gain a great perspective on what really did strike me as an unusual piano-playing style.

But it was not until leaving WCW, while on a tour of Japan in January 1995, that Tori and her music, particularly “Winter,” started playing a unique role in my wrestling career.

Willingly leaving WCW had been a bold move, one that had not been particularly popular with my wife. We’d just had our second child, and the thought of leaving a job with a guaranteed six-figure income (low six, but still six) for the uncertainty of the independent circuit didn’t seem like the greatest example of responsible parenthood. Especially during my first tour for IWA Japan, a small promotion with a heavy emphasis on wild matches — barbed wire, fire, thumbtacks, and blood — lots of blood.

I’ve got my own little theory on Japan, with its samurai traditions
and warrior ethos — and how the WWII defeat and subsequent dismantling of its military caused that warrior ethos to reemerge in other areas of its culture, like IWA Japan wrestling.

While some of the tools of this unique trade were new ones to me, the idea and practice of putting on wild, physical matches was not, and my baptism into this strange world of Japanese extreme wrestling was seamless and successful. Still, despite that initial success, the thought of the tour’s final night, a no-rope barbed-wire match with Terry Funk, was an ominous mental presence. Despite being twenty years my senior, Funk, a mentor and something of a father figure to me, was a veritable wild man in the ring. He was a genuine hero to Japanese wrestling fans who had come of age when Funk was a top foreign star for All-Japan Wrestling, at a time when that promotion did monster ratings in prime time.

Only 180 fans braved the cold to attend that last show in the small city of Honjo, in the prefecture (similar to a state) of Saitama. But the national wrestling media were there, and Funk and I both felt that an exciting match, captured in full color and seen within a few days by up to half a million fans (Japanese wrestling magazines were incredibly popular at the time), could serve as a foundation on which to build this small promotion. I understood that an exciting match would almost certainly lead to a regular role with the promotion — a valuable incentive for a father of two small children with a mortgage to pay. I also understood how dangerous these types of matches could be. The Japanese fans were sticklers for detail and authenticity, so the barbed wire would be the real stuff, sharp and uncaring, capable of catching and tearing flesh in a hurry. There was the distinct possibility of returning from this match in far worse shape than I’d entered it.

The conditions were near freezing in the dressing room (and not much warmer inside the gym). All the
gaijins
, sans Funk, huddled around a small kerosene heater just to get warm. Terry was on the other side of the building, leaving me no opportunity to speak with him, to talk over possible ideas for the match. I guess the reasonable
goal, looking back on the match all these years later, should have been just to get through it. Be safe and return home in approximately the same condition I’d left in. Unfortunately, my goals tended not to be all that reasonable back then. I wasn’t willing to settle for just getting through it. My goal that night was simple and nonnegotiable — to have the best no-rope barbed-wire match ever.

There was only one basic problem. I was terrified — a normal human response to the very abnormal prospect of being dropped headfirst, neck first, and yes, even balls first on hungry strands of jagged metal barbs. How exactly does a basically gentle, caring man (me) transform himself into a willing balls-first participant in a match of this barbaric nature? Inspiration — lots of inspiration.

I looked out the dressing room door and saw the Japanese preliminary wrestlers (from this point on respectfully referred to as “the young boys”) taking down the ropes, beginning the process of barbed-wiring the ring. I knew I had about thirty minutes before the wiring process was completed — thirty minutes to undergo some type of drastic mental transformation.

I took out my battered Sony Walkman, and after great deliberation selected a cassette, bypassing more obvious hard-rock selections in favor of something a little less conventional. I moved away from the warmth of the crowded heater, finding comfort in the solitude of a far corner of the backstage area, seeing a cloud of my own breath as I pressed the Play button.

Snow can wait, I forgot my mittens. Wipe my nose, get my new boots on.
Like I said, far from conventional, but there was just something about that song, that voice, that touched me in a way no other song ever did … or likely ever will.

When you gonna make up your mind?
Tori Amos asks me inside that frigid dressing room in the tiny city of Honjo.
When you gonna love you as much as I do?

And then I realize I’m going to be all right. Headfirst, neck first,
balls first — it really doesn’t matter, because by the fourth listen, I know I’m going to tear that place apart.

Tracy Smothers, a veteran wrestler I’d known for years, had witnessed my prematch disposition — rocking, shaking, fighting back tears — and correctly surmised that I might have something special on tap for the audience in Honjo. “Cactus, promise me you won’t do anything crazy out there,” he said.

At the time it struck me as the most absurd request ever made.

“You know I can’t do that,” I said as I stepped out into the gymnasium, fully intent on making hardcore history.

Looking back, after all these years, it is probably the match I’m proudest of. Funk once told Barry Blaustein, the director of the acclaimed wrestling documentary
Beyond the Mat
, that it was possibly his favorite match, quite an accolade given the Funker’s storied, legendary four decades in the business.

Sure it was bloody — but that’s kind of a given. Every barbed-wire match is. But aside from the almost obligatory forehead laceration, there was so much innovative if ridiculously dangerous stuff, not done simply for the sake of being dangerous or ridiculous but with the sincere belief that a classic match could put our small promotion on the map. Make no mistake about it, some of this stuff (fire chair, flaming branding iron, that balls-first barb-drop I made mention of) was ridiculously dangerous.

Perhaps most ridiculously of all, I fully intended to hang myself in the barbed wire that night in Honjo. Well, maybe not literally hang myself, but close enough: propelling my body over the top strand of the wire, while catching my head between the second and third strands — creating a very realistic illusion of hanging. Unfortunately, this
illusion
of hanging requires … um, you know … the actual act of hanging — and the ramifications of such a move were bound to be severe. After all, it was this same move, sans barbed wire, that had been responsible for the loss of my right ear. The same move done
in barbed wire? Probably not the best idea I’d ever had, even if I did have the foresight to concoct what seemed like a foolproof exit strategy.

In addition to the buckets of water and wet towels to be used in case of any type of fire mishap, each of the young boys had their own personal wire clipper, and were under direct orders to start clipping in earnest the moment I got hung up in the wire.

But, those poor young boys never got the chance. I nailed the move, but never foresaw the possibility that the wire wouldn’t hold. Instead of holding me, supporting me, hanging me, the wire sagged and tore under the stress of my weight and momentum, sending me down to the gym floor in a precarious seated position, my arms extended, stubborn barbs still lodged inside both pinky fingers.

A quick tug was all it took to break free of my predicament but not without serious consequences. Angry chunks of flesh peeked up at me from both my pinkies. After the match, Tracy Smothers, he of the absurd request, would help me drip stinging antiseptic into the holes and pack the chunks of flesh back into the fingers with the benefit of white athletic tape.

Back at the Con, I take a close look at both my pinkies. Gone are those angry chunks of flesh, transformed over the years into something oddly beautiful: distinct souvenirs commemorating a night where Terry Funk and I overcame the small crowd, the frigid conditions, and the foreboding specter of near-certain injury to lay down the foundation on which our little promotion was built. They’re my little “Winter” jewels and I wouldn’t trade them or take them back (especially the left one), even if I could.

It’s not like I’m proud of every scar, either. Some of them do serve as evidence of sacrifices worth making while others are minor sources of shame, reminders of a time when I thought more was always better instead of usually just being … more. Those scars are like gaudy
tributes to excess — the keloidal equivalent to the gold rope chain you can’t just remove, the bell-bottoms you can’t just take off, or the embarrassing mullet you can’t just clip or hide the photos of.

Not that I have a lot of room to talk about fashion faux pas. Especially on this day at the Con, where the attire I’ve selected for the day — cutoff red flannel, light blue Grumpy (of Seven Dwarfs fame) T-shirt, and tie-dyed sweats that my wife snagged on eBay — strikes me as a particularly weak ensemble, even by my relaxed standards.

A security guard approaches my table. “You can go up there anytime you like,” he tells me. “Okay, thanks,” I say. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

Despite my trepidation and limited sense of style, I’d made a couple of moves in preparation for this possible opportunity. About a half hour before the Tori signing began, with a large line of her fans already beginning to form, I’d introduced myself to the guards in charge of her queue. Thankfully, they knew who I was.

“I’ve written about Tori Amos in a couple of my books,” I said. “Do you think I’d be able to come over and say hello?”

I’d also given fifty dollars to a particularly avid wrestling fan, asking if he could go purchase a copy of
Comic Book Tattoo
, the massive coffee-table collection of stories inspired by Tori’s songs that was her reason for visiting the Con. Sadly, the fan came back empty-handed —
Comic Book Tattoo
was all sold out. Yes, he did give me the fifty dollars back.