HAVE YOU EVER WANTED TO BE A PRO WRESTLER? DO YOU HAVE THE GUTS TO STEP IN THE RING WITH A LIVING LEGEND? CAN YOU GET $1500 TOGETHER BY FRIDAY? THEN YOU MIGHT HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME A SUPERSTAR OF TOMORROW IN OL’ ROSS GRACIE’S INFAMOUS HOSS DOJO!
A large group of trainees gathered in front of the Hoss Dojo at dawn, just as they were instructed to do, but of course, no one let them in the building for another three hours. There were murmurings from a few new hopefuls that this was one of those old school wrestling tests; an attempt to weed out the weak by making them stand in freezing temperatures. The established trainees all knew what the deal was, though: Ol’ Ross Gracie and the day’s assistant trainers always parked out back and went through the rear entrance, Hoss had forgotten they were going to be there that early, and as such had also forgotten to unlock the door. Meanwhile, this was a day where Ace La Grange and Donita Zapata were his assistant trainers, and while Ace had genuinely forgotten about the locked front door, Donita more than likely remembered, but just didn’t care. In the meantime, Ace expressed concern for Donita and the broken neck she had suffered in a match just days earlier.
“Donita… Brother… Should you even be here?”
“What? It’s not like I’m gonna be one of the ones that gets thrown around today.”
“I know, I know… Brother, it’s just that shit’s no joke, you know?”
“Yeah, well…. I’m about to be out of work for a fuckin’ year, Ace. I’m not passing up an opportunity for a hundred bucks.”
Ace sighed sadly. “Yeah, I been there before, brother. I guess it should be okay today, though. Supposedly, we’re just going over some social media policy nonsense for most of today, anyway. I guess Nate and those guys don’t want people embarrassing the company over the Myspaces or whatever.”
“Yeah, this is probably over that time last year when PARTY TIGER accidentally posted a picture of her-” Donita paused with a confused look. “…Wait, did you really just say ‘the Myspaces?’ It’s just Myspace, and that site hasn’t been a thing in like a decade.”
“I dunno, I don’t do the internet, man, that’s nerd shit. Also, I kinda sold my computer a couple years back. Kinda… You know, kinda had some dark times for a while there. But I’m good now, brother. I’m good now.”
“Seriously? How the hell do you not ‘do the internet?’ I mean, you’re older than shit, but you’re not that old. It’s been pretty much a ubiquitous part of American life since you were in high school!”
“Hell, brother, I wasn’t doin’ computers in high school. I was a football player. I was too busy practicing and like… hell, I dunno, having sex with girls, probably.”
“But… But… Just… Like… How do you even pay your bills?”
“They got a little kiosk thingy at the shitty grocery store on the corner. You know, where you bag your own stuff, and all the boxes are dented for some reason.”
“Okay, fine, but what about your phone? You do have one, right?”
“Uhh… Well, it’s like this.” Ace then proceeded to pull out what may have been the world’s last remaining flip phone. The LCD clock display was cracked beyond function, and it generally looked like it had been involved in some sort of apocalyptic knife fight for control of a gravel pit. “Ain’t no Facebooks on this thing, brother.”
Donita was understandably shocked at Ace’s rustic technology. “Duuude… You know pretty much every cell provider will straight-up give you a smartphone with your contract, right?”
“Donita, this is a burner.”
“Jesus Christ. Like… Okay. My history is well-known, dude. I was born in the wilderness into a commune that pretty much worshipped the early nineties. Emphasis on early nineties. Between the two of us, how the fuck are you the one that ended up a total Luddite?”
“The hell’s a Luddite, brother? Is that bad, should I be worried?”
At the other side of the building, Ol’ Hoss had apparently realized the error of his ways and began letting the trainees file into the building. By the time they had been let inside the arena area, the group had been roughly cut in half, down to pretty much just the established students, so if it had been an old-school wrestling tests, the mission had been accomplished, I guess? Oblivious, Ace and Donita continued to discuss Ace’s technological deficiencies.
“Read a book, goddammit. And good God, he’s letting them in now, put that phone away before someone sees it. Some of these idiots look like they have hopes and dreams, and they probably think there’s still a future in this shit, so we should probably try to expose them as little as possible to the absolute state of your sad-ass life.”
Ace quickly tucked The Phone That Time forgot into his Dojo-issued Zubaz pants, (Donita had just showed up in her regular street clothes, but no one said anything, because she had a fucking broken neck) and the two took a step back, while Ol’ Hoss wheeled in a dry-erase board with the words “SOCIAL MEDIA” scrawled on it, looking absolutely furious the entire time. Once everything was in position, he began laying into trainee and trainer alike, as only he could.
“Look at ya! Buncha goddamn slack-jawed, lily-livered varmints! Ain’t one of ya worthy to lick the dogshit off my boots, ya no-good cocksuckers! You think you can wrestle in my goddamn ring? Well, I think you can all kiss my wrinkled ass! Look at this bullshit!” He held aloft a crumpled stack of stapled-together papers. “Ain’t nothing I’d like better right now that to have every one of you pissholes in that ring right now, screamin’, bleedin’, and dyin’! But first, we gotta do this pussy-ass horseshit! Home office wants you fuckasses to do some kinda goddamn sensitive snowflake goddamn training. Well, I didn’t go to Vietnam so I’d have to put up with this hippie bullshit!”
Suddenly and unwisely, one of the trainees spoke up. “You went to Vietnam?”
“What!? Christ, no, I didn’t go to Viet-fuckin-Nam! I just told you that, you ignorant dicklick! And that’s why I gotta put up with this hippie bullshit.” He smacked the papers with the back of his hand, “Well goddammit, I want no part of it! So these two motherfuckers are gonna take over for the day!”
Ace and Donita stepped forward. Hoss continued, “this is former world champion and absolute fuck-up Axe La Croix, and this little lady with the fucked-up spine is Dorito Zapruder, and I don’t even know what her fuckin’ deal is.” Donita frowned and started to try and correct him, but Ace just sort of nudged her and said nothing. He had been around for a while, and knew it was a hopeless cause with ol’ Hoss. “Anyway, these two are gonna tell you some nonsense about ‘social media conduct,’ and I don’t even know what the fuck that is, because I’m extremely old and the future is bullshit! I’m gonna go take a nap.”
Hoss stormed past Ace and Donita, and on the way there, thrust the documents into Ace’s chest, before stomping off to the back of the arena, entering the restroom, and slamming the door behind him. Moments later, he reappeared, gave the restrooms sign a confused look, and then stomped a few yards further down the wall and repeated the door-slamming process with his office. Ace looked down at the pages Hoss had given him, sighed, and decided that it would be best to get this over with. “Okay, everybody be quiet. I gotta go over… Y’know, whatever the hell this is.”
“Okay, so…” He began to read the copy, “As trainees at the Hoss Dojo, you represent the next generation of professional wrestling.” His words had the choppy, monotone delivery of an elementary school kid who was utterly uninterested in the reading material. “However, it is important to note that as wrestlers and potential local celebrities, you represent not only yourselves, but also STRUGGLE Pro Wrestling, and its parent company, Ruggle Family Body Bags, LLC. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that one… conduct… ” He trailed off as he skimmed ahead. “What the hell is this shit?” He put the pages down and decided to wing it.
“Okay, look. You kids are always out there on your little nerd-computers and nerd-phones, and you’re all doin’ the Facebooks and the Twitters and whatnot. But listen, brother, once you start gettin’ in that ring and making a name for yourselves, you gotta be careful with that shit. Like, I dunno, you could make the company look bad, and you could end up having little kids follow you on there and see you cussing and being a shithead, so chill out with that shit. Basically, what I’m saying, brother, is that when you do the internets, don’t be an asshole.”
Donita chimed in, “Yeah, also, don’t be a Nazi, either.”
“Yeah, seriously, don’t be a Nazi, and – Wait, does that need to be said, like, is that really still a thing, brother?”
“What? Yeah. Seriously, Ace, they pretty much run the place now.”
“Wow. But yeah, anyway, another thing is that you gotta remember that people can be real dicks online, and you gotta just let it slide, brother. Like you can get on there, ya know, and people will be all, ‘fuck you, you suck,’ and you just gotta ignore it, brother. Like even when they get real personal, all ‘hey, you’re not any good anymore, and you’re fat and bald and your ex-wife will never take you back, and you’ll never be the champ again,’ and you gotta let it slide, no matter how much you wanna say something, you know? No matter how much you wanna just say ‘look, motherfuckers, you can all kiss my ass, I got more talent in my left nut that you got in your whole body! I can beat all your asses, you little piece o’ shits! I’ll show you who sucks, fucker!”
Donita look concerned. “Uhh, Ace?”
“Fuckin’ idiots! You think my wife’ll never take me back? Well, at least I had one, you dry-dicked little shits!”
“Ace!”
“And what? Fat and bald? I’ll show you fat and bald!” Ace grabbed his crotch luridly. “I got something fat and bald right here for you little bitches!”
“AAAAAACE!”
“Uhhh… Shit, brother, I got… Uhh… Got a little carried away there.”
“Wow. That came from somewhere. I thought you said you didn’t do Facebook?”
“Well, ya know, I did for a while, but I had to stop. My therapist called it ‘self care’ or some shit.”
“Okay, just let me take over for a minute before you kill somebody, okay?”
“Yeah, brother. That’s, uhh… Yeah.”
Ace tried to collect himself and stop focusing on those damn teenagers while Donita addressed the group. “Alright, back on track here. Okay, now I see a few ladies here, and that’s great, but I have to give you guys a warning. Now that you’re involved with professional wrestling, you’re going to have to familiarize yourselves with the worst aspect of this sport. And no, it’s not the grueling travel schedule, the sketchy promoters, the general instability of your life from now on, the inevitability of eventually stumbling across the corpse of one of your coworkers, or even the compounding head injuries. It’s the fans.” Ace suddenly looked up with an expression of mild shock, like he absolutely needed to jump in and say something, but he was too slow. “Simply put, the male wrestling fan is the lowest creature on Earth; a legion of slow-witted, greasy-haired, wet-faced, worm-lipped, smelly perverts whose existence is wholly unjustified. If a medical test existed to smoke them out at birth, the only treatment for this disease would be to dunk them headfirst in a bucket of water until their little legs stopped moving. And now, they are all your problem.“
Ace tried to interject something, but no one heard it, because Donita just sort of waved him off and continued. “Listen, there are only two joys in the lives of these worthless fucks.” She held up two fingers to illustrate her point. “Two fleeting distractions that stave off their inevitable suicide or mass-shooting. And these two things are watching wrestling and beating off. And if they can combine the two,” she crossed her fingers, “that’s Holy Grail shit for these subhumans. So your burden and responsibility in the information age is to lock your shit down.”
“Remember, you are no longer civilians in this war, you are enemy combatants, and all is fair game to these human rats. Anything you have floating out there in the ether will be found, and you’ve got to get as much of it under wraps as you can. No more ‘password123’ shit; when something tells you to come up with a wildly complicated password, there is a reason for this. If you see anything with the words ‘cloud storage,’ check the box marked ‘no.’ Cloud storage is a tool of The Devil, and Satan invented it so he could see Jennifer Lawrence naked. Do not be like Jennifer Lawrence.”
“And it’s not just about security, you’ve got to control your own narrative here. Any direct line of communication with the fans needs to be severed. If you leave your DMs open on any platform, you are never more than moments away from untold horrors: Leave the door open, and your home will soon be full of pictures of strangers’ penises. And not nice ones, either, I mean, seriously fucked-up looking ones. And once you get past all the weird dicks, there’s the bad fan art of you as an anime girl whose physical composition is like seventy-five percent boob, sweaty pervs endlessly saying ‘show feet sweety,’ offers to buy your used ring gear for impure purposes, and dirty old men offering you fifteen thousand dollars to fly to Kuwait and smack them on the cock repeatedly with a rolled-up issue of the Wall Street Journal.”
This time, Ace just had to intervene, and he actually got in a word for once, even if it was less than eloquent, even by his lofty standards. “Uhh brother, I mean, uhh, I get what you’re going for, but I dunno if that last example, uhh, that was a little… I dunno, that might offend somebody. Or something, I dunno.”
“Offensive? You wanna talk offensive? Offensive is when you get done, and he tells you that you gotta pay for your own flight home!” Donita immediately put on a big, shit-eating grin as sort of a silent rimshot, as Ace just narrowed his eyes and frowned. “Come on, it was a joke. I’m joking, dude.”
“Okay, brother, whatever, we should just wrap this up.”
“Right, right.” Donita turned back to the students and continued. “and from now on, everything’s gotta stay above-board. Even if you think it can’t be traced back to you, it will be. So whatever weird, debauched online life you had before, it’s over now. Boyfriend having a bad day? Well, the days of shoving a phone at your crotch and texting him a quick pick-me-up are over.”
“Uhh, brother, I’m not sure that you should-“
“And any of those little secret accounts you might have? They’ve gotta go, before they stop being secrets. Secret dirty Tumblr account? Delete it. Secret dirty TikTok account? gone.”
“Okay, brother, we get the point, so maybe just-“
“And dont stop there! Secret dirty Twitter account? Shoulda deleted it years ago! Secret dirty Spotify account? Kill it with fire! Secret dirty Neopets account?-
“DONITA!”
All of a sudden, Donita stopped speaking, and realized for the first time that the audience of trainees was staring at her as though live scorpions were pouring out of her ears. The time for damage control had begun, even though it was already far, far too late.
“Well, I mean, heh. It’s not like I actually did any of that stuff.”
Ace just looked at her with the stern disappointment of a father who has just caught his son cranking it to bootleg Dragonball Z porn.
“Well, you know… I mean… Uhh… Well, it’s not like I did all of those things…”
“Brother.”
“Well, just… Fuck you, okay? I-I just get bored sometimes. You know… When it’s late at night, and I’m at home… Alone… And I’ve been drinking…. At home… Alone.”
Ace immediately got a concerned look and leaned in close, speaking quietly. “Uhh brother, do we need to have a talk about something?”
Donita frowned. “It’s nothing. Just, y’know, just forget it.”
“I can’t forget it, brother, this is how it starts!”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about, brother! First it starts with booze, next thing you know, it’s pills, and it snowballs from there!”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Ace, I promise you, I am not-“
“And you think it’s all good, you’re livin’ it up, doing blow off some stripper’s ass or whatever-“
Donita’s eyes grew wide. “Uhh, duuuude, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
“…And the next think you know, you’re leading the cops on a high-speed chase through three counties, and-“
“Ace, just stop! I get it! But for fuck’s sake, I am not you! You do not have to worry about me, you know, doing all of that.”
Ace suddenly reached into his pants, pulled out his horrible little cellphone, and shoved it toward Donita’s face. “Look at it brother!”
Donita acually looked frightened for a moment. “What- What are you you doing, get that thing away from me!”
“Don’t look away from it, brother! It’s the future, Donita! This is your future, if you don’t turn things around, and do it now!”
“Goddammit, just stop! Fuck you, okay!? Just get off my back! Just… You don’t understand, man. Look at me. Everything’s fucked, Ace. For fuck’s sake, man! I was raised by a cult. My little sister is a fugitive from a Whitensake video, and my neck is fucking broken! I’m gonna be out for a year, Ace! I’m probably gonna have to get a real job! And I bet I’ll end up having to move in with a roommate! Adults don’t fucking do that! Losers do!”
At this comment, trainees Halle Burial and Baddie Page, the duo of former roller derby players collectively known as The Rolling Blackouts, turned toward each other and shared a knowing look, and then collectively looked down and slouched their shoulders in shame.
“…And in a few days, I’m going to get knocked out, whereupon someone will cut my throat, reach inside the hole, and then fuck with my spinal column in ways I’ll never understand! And wrestlers don’t have insurance, so for the privilege of all of this happening, I get to be in crippling debt for the rest of my life! Hooray for me! So excuuuse me, Ace! Excuse the fuck out of me for maybe partaking from time to time!”
At the end of this outburst, there is a stunned silence from both Ace and Dojo trainee alike. And Donita has suddenly lost any and all ability to make eye contact with anyone, as the situation grows more and more awkward by the second. Finally, the silence is broken, as trainee William Nilly, best known for his penchant for flesh-colored tights, raises his hand, like an obedient fifth-grader.
“Um, excuse me! Mister Ace? Miss Zapardo?”
“Zapata.”
“Oh, sorry, uhh, Miss Zapodo?”
“ZAPATA.”
His hand was still raised. “Miss Zorpino?”
“Fuck’s sake, it’s Zapata! ZAPATA! It’s Spanish for ‘shoe,” and it’s not that fucking hard! Also, don’t call me ‘Miss,’ it makes me sound old.”
“Oh, sorry. Uhh, Miss-“
“Stop! Goddammit, just ask your question. And for God’s sake, put your hand down.”
“Oh, uhh.. Well, Miss Borracho-” At this, a furious Donita started to say something, but was once again elbowed into silence by Ace. “I uhh, I just wanted to ask, uhhhh…”
Ace tried to be more diplomatic in his attempt to coax out an actual question. “Brother, just ask whatever you’re gonna ask, it’s cool.”
Nilly paused briefly. “So, uhhh, it’s just that, uhhh…”
“Spit it out, brother.”
“Are… Are you guys gonna be okay?“
Another silence ensued, this one longer and somehow more awkward than any of the ones that came before.
“Well, brother. Okay is really kind of a loaded term, isn’t it?”
After the day’s training session had mercifully ended, an utterly defeated Donita exited the building, and was immediately blinded by transition from fluorescent light to the actual sun. When her eyes adjusted, things didn’t improve much, she was confronted by her estranged younger sister, the masked wrestler known as The Phantom Rocker. Whatever she was going to say was something Donita had no desire to hear, however.
“Whatever it is, no. Just get out of my way.”
“Well, I mean, I just thought that-“
“NO. When I said I was done with this bullshit, I meant it. So just because my neck is fucked, don’t think you can use it as a way to ooze back into my life and be my sister again. You’re dead to me. So fuck off, Lita.”
“Well, you know, it’s just that…”
“What!?”
“…Your shoe’s untied.”
Donita looked down. “What? Oh, goddammit…” She kneeled down to deal with the situation, and in the process, instinctively turned her head downward, and while her neckbrace helped ease the blow, it didn’t do enough.
“OW! Son of a motherfucker! Fuck!”
“You know, I could-“
“NO! I got this. Just… Just go away.”
The Rocker did nothing of the sort, watching as a flustered Donita soldiered forth, head locked dead ahead, blindly fumbling with the laces. In the end, the results were disastrous.
“There, it’s done. Now, once again, go away.”
“Dude, that’s somehow less tied than when you started.”
Donita, not willing to repeat the mistake of looking down in her present state, stuck her foot out, and surveyeyed the loose snarl of laces. “Oh god damn it…” Even more flustered than before, she somehow did an even worse job the second time, as The Rocker observed her efforts.
“Yep, that’s a knot.”
“Not it isn’t!” Donita held her foot up once more, and upon seeing the horrors she had wrought, cringed, as The Rocker folded her arms and smiled smugly.
“You want me to…?”
Donita said nothing, but instead responded with a defeated sigh that slowly turned into a high-pitched whimper. Taking this as a signal, Rocker immediately knelt down and went to work.
“Wow. Hold still, this looks like it might take a while.”