Countdown To Lockdown (4 page)

I had one more personal training session to complete before heading out to Phoenix. In the backseat of my car, I had a box of books, each of them addressed and signed to people I had written of in
The Hardcore Diaries
— people like Dee Snider, the legendary Twisted Sister singer; John Irving, America’s greatest novelist; Victoria Wilson, editor of my novels at Knopf; and Christy Canyon, iconic eighties adult film star (with a brief mid-nineties comeback).

I had some reservations about including John Irving and Victoria Wilson in my book. What if they didn’t want to be in a wrestling book? As it turned out, my concerns were unwarranted; both Mr. Irving and Ms. Wilson kind of enjoyed it. A little later in the book, I will include a story about meeting one of my favorite performers, and my similar concern that this performer might not care to be included in a Mick Foley memoir. Who was it? How did it work out? Well, you’ll just have to keep reading, won’t you?

So, I drove out to the training studio, did an hour’s worth of elastic bands and rubber balls — challenging stuff, sure, but nothing compared to the agony I’d endured at the old gym as a teenager or on the trusty Cybex following Al Snow’s leadership.

Somewhere during the course of that hour, however, I felt a distinct burn in my lower back. Just a little one, like, let me see — like
if someone had some kind of access, via teapot spout maybe, to the inside of my body and poured just like a thimbleful of hot water into my spine. Just a thimbleful. No big deal. Besides, I thought I knew just what that slight burning was; the final small burst of pain needed to complete the healing process. I mean, what else could it possibly be?

I headed to the post office to send out those books, relieved that the healing was finally complete. But as I stood in line at the post office — a fairly long line — I got the distinct feeling that the little thimbleful of hot water seemed to be growing in volume, as if that little teapot had been upended and completely poured out. I felt a steady stream of pain cascading down my leg … and I didn’t like it. I looked at my books, no longer caring much about what John Irving or Victoria Wilson might think about me. Following that happy post office visit, I still had to pick little Hughie up at preschool. Even with my most precious cargo in the backseat, I began to seriously weigh the merits of running red lights on the way home, in order to get there that much quicker.

Let me see, risking my life and the life of my child versus getting home five minutes quicker? I’ll take that risk! No, I guess I’d better not. But I swear, it was a tough decision.

I stumbled into the house and headed right for my minor stash of hard liquor — a half-pint bottle of 100 proof Rumple Minze that will usually last me a good six months, given the infrequency of my imbibing and an almost childlike inability to down more than two shots without getting overly sentimental. I retreated to the relative comfort of the Tempur-Pedic bed, where, curled up in the fetal position, I let out the type of low moaning sounds usually reserved for particularly difficult childbirths.

You know who I felt sorry for? Me? Yes, that’s a given. But mostly I felt bad for my daughter, who had previously seen her dad as some type of tough guy. Boy, that image disappeared in a hurry, kind of like that budget surplus we had for all of about ten seconds back in 2001.

Finally, after hours of unrelenting agony, I lay down in the back of
my beat-up Chevy Venture and let my wife take me to the emergency room.

“Tell me how much it hurts on a scale of one to ten,” I was told.

“Ten.”

“No, on a scale of one to ten.”

“Ten.”

“Ten?” A question; a little skepticism.

“Yes. Ten. Ten, as in the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.”

“Really?” Look, I knew what they were getting at, and I’m sure the ER gets their fair share of pain med junkies faking injuries for the sake of prescriptions. And I realize I have long hair, I’m missing my front teeth, and I don’t dress well. But doesn’t a guy deserve the benefit of the doubt?

“Look,” I said, pulling up my hair on my right side, showing them a stump where once upon a time an ear had been. “In 1994, my ear was ripped off my head. When I was asked at the hospital how bad the pain was, I said four. That was a four, this is a ten!” Technically, I said
vier
in that hospital, because it was in Germany, but I think you get the drift.

I was sent home a little while later, diagnosed with a “muscle strain,” given a prescription for the weaker-level — 500 mg, not 750 — painkiller, by a doctor who just wasn’t interested in hearing about my history of disc herniations.

(A week later, an MRI would show four disc herniations and two bulging discs — a hollow victory of sorts, especially given that my fight to avoid payment for the incorrect diagnosis was unsuccessful.)

I was about three hours into the five-hour flight from New York to Phoenix when my double dose of pain medication wore off. I had weighed the pros and cons of taking the flight at all, and in truth, had it not been for my monumentally important return to
Raw
to promote my latest literary effort, I might have opted to stay home.

Two more seemingly interminable hours in the air, followed by an agonizing taxi ride to the arena, followed by a couple of the most
painful conversations of my life. Painful, as in I was in so much pain during the course of them, though the content may have been quite painful as well.

Then a visit to the doctor, who suggested inserting a needle about a foot long into my spine. The shot, he told me, had about a 50 percent chance of working. Fifty percent? No thanks. Not a real big fan of any needles, let alone really big ones. Don’t like pricks of any size entering me, let alone twelve-inch ones. Wait! I probably could have put that a little better.

I was back at the doctor’s in ten minutes, no longer quite so picky about things like foot-long spinal injections or 50 percent odds. You know, I never did ask what that other 50 percent might entail. Paralysis? Death? A lifetime of impotence? I didn’t really care. I wanted the shot.

A considerable part of my left leg went numb to the touch and stayed that way for a while — like for about a year. And I didn’t care. The pain went away, with the aid of another double dose of pain medication.

The doctor told me the pain might come back in ninety days, or it might not come back at all. I’m not afraid to admit that I lived in fear of that most unwanted return for weeks, months, even years. To this day, I don’t want to do anything that might hasten its return. Like work out too hard. Or train my core … at all. Seriously. I know how to interpret a sign from God when I get one. And God does not want me to work out too hard, not even for a Kurt Angle match.

I made a decision back in 1988, before heading out to Tennessee for my first full-time wrestling job, that I wouldn’t mess with pain medicine unless I was really, really in a lot of pain. Even as a young guy in the business, I’d heard way too many tales of wrestlers falling prey to the allure of pain medicine. So over the years, I would see guys take more shots than Kobe on a hot streak, and would see pills popped like cherry Pez — all the while extending my definition of what “really really in a lot of pain” meant. For those of you keeping score at home,
here are the only three occasions that merited the taking of more than one pain pill in a single day:

1. Bruised shoulder — Cactus Jack and Maxx Payne versus the Nasty Boys, May 1994
   
2. Veritable laundry list of injuries — Mankind versus Undertaker, June 1998
   
3. Multiple disc herniations — taking bad advice from Al Snow, March 2007
   

Following my visit with the doctor and the needle, I had a deep talk with Joey Mercury (now wrestling as Joey Matthews), who was coming back to WWE after a difficult drug rehabilitation. Joey thanked me for a couple of letters I had sent him during his rehab, citing them as a great help during a very tough time. I nodded numbly, recognizing the irony of accepting heartfelt thanks for helping with a dependency problem while being more or less stoned myself.

But hey, at least I had my big return to look forward to. That returning-star pop that would do wonders for both my ego and my book sales. Right?

Let’s revisit Otis of “Wait until Otis sees us” fame. Remember the gang in
Animal House
who showed up at an all-black club and were under the mistaken impression that Otis Day was going to love them just because he’d played at their frat party? Well that was my big return in Phoenix, possibly the lukest of all the lukewarm responses I’d received in my career.

It was odd being out there, almost like being in a parallel universe. I’d already done a couple book signings for
The Hardcore Diaries
, and they’d been big — my biggest since 2001. Recognition in public was right up there at near 2001 levels, too. Maybe not quite up there with my real glory days, but bigger than 2003–2005, for no easily digestible explanation. Yet, in my big return, the most recent of all big wrestling returns, I’d received a smaller reaction than the basketball
team’s mascot — the Phoenix Gorilla. Imagine that, the Hardcore Legend playing second banana to a gorilla. Yes, at least I’ve still got my best-selling author’s gift for wordplay! Banana — gorilla? Good stuff, right?

A couple of days later, I received a consolation of sorts —
The Hardcore Diaries
entered the
New York Times
Best-Seller List at number seven. It would peak a week later at number six. Sure it wasn’t number one, like the other two had been, but the playing field had shifted since 2001. A large number of wrestling books were being released every year, making it highly unlikely that any one of them would ever see number one again. Still, I was happy and relieved to be on the list at all. Besides, this book had a long-term marketing plan — it was going to be on that list for a long time to come.

A conversation a week later with the Texas Rattlesnake, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, would prove to be prophetic. I just realized that Austin had more than one nickname, kind of like the old days on
Monday Night Football
, when Howard Cosell would refer to “Dandy” Don Meredith as “Danderoo,” apparently not realizing that “Dandy” was quite possibly enough nickname to go around.

Anyway it was Washington, D.C., and Stone Cold/Texas Rattle-snake/Austin 3:16/World’s Toughest SOB/Stunning Steve/Hollywood Blond/Steve Austin came over to me, brandishing a big grin, like he had a story he’d been wanting to share, and the HCL (Hardcore Legend) was the only guy suitable for the task at hand.

Warning
: It’s tough to find a balance between keeping a book PG-13 and staying true to the authenticity of Stone Cold’s dialogue. You know what, I’ll go PG-13 here, but I will affix a little asterisk to the words I’ve altered, allowing you, the reader, to use your knowledge of Steve Austin and your imagination to authenticate it yourself.

Here we go:

“Hey kid, did you see that promo I did on ECW last week?”

Indeed I had, and told him so.

“Gosh darn*, wasn’t that the drizzling poops*?”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“Not that bad? Shoot*, it was the freaking* poops*. Now listen, kid, I’m not trying to put myself over, but last week on
Raw
, gosh darn*, I went out there and got a heckuva* reaction. Then the next night on ECW? Shoot*, freaking* nothing.”

I laughed and told Steve that it probably had more to do with the crowd being drained by the time ECW went on the air live at 10:00 p.m. Eastern.
SmackDown
, clearly the A show, was taped first, and would end whenever it happened to end, sometimes as early as 9:00 p.m., leaving an often tired crowd to wait up to an hour for the B show to begin. Kind of like watching the Yankees play a game at Yankee Stadium and then being asked to wait around an hour for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Triple-A farm affiliate to take the field.

I had a great time for most of that night, reconnecting with some old friends — Scott Armstrong, Kane, and too many others to list — as well as making some new ones, like Shelly Martinez, who had heard, quite accurately, that I had found her vampire character Ariel to be quite entertaining.

I was always grateful for the tremendous respect I received from the younger wrestlers, whether they’d met me or not. It’s a special thrill for me to talk to guys like Ray Gordy and Harry Smith, whose dads I had worked with before their untimely deaths. I feel a special bond with those guys sharing stories about their dads they may never have had occasion to hear or, in some cases, just liked hearing again.

Yes, it was a good night, until I went out there for the ECW show, just about an hour after the A show closed up shop. I was looking for a way to explain the treacherous actions I had taken almost a year earlier on ECW stalwart Tommy Dreamer. I wanted to portray my actions as doing Tommy a favor, giving him a gift of a barbed-wire bat shot to the back as a way to focus public attention on him.

ECW writer Dave Lagana asked me if I had some ideas for my upcoming promo.

“How about some honesty?” I said.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Well, what if I just go out there and say, ‘Look, I could have made a fortune if I’d hit Batista in the back. I hit you instead!’”

Lagana nearly choked. Too much honesty, apparently. I told him I’d work on something.

Shoot*, I could have used a little of that freaking* honesty out there. The reaction was even luker than that lukest of lukewarm reactions I’d received a week earlier. Gosh darn*, it was, like, really freaking* luke. Had it not been for a cricket I heard faintly chirping at the three-minute mark, or a pin dropping in the upper balcony a couple minutes later, I’m not sure my appearance would have been accompanied by any sound at all.