Some Thank Yous

Dear Wrestling,

This will be a post I do fairly often as I am a creature made mostly of gratitude and weltschmerz.

Thank you Kevin Owens for being mindbogglingly talented and sharp on the mic, for being 827 comfortable with your body, and for shutting down fat shamers like there's no tomorrow. Thank you for your beautiful family and what you and Karina share of them. It's a scary, messed up world and my own family was pretty much a trainwreck. Seeing yours gives me hope, and a sense of solace--that it's not all bad out there.

Thank you Sami Zayn for being at least 43% of my inner self come to beautiful frenetic life, for suffering *gorgeously*, and for showing me what it means to fight forever. Thank you for using your fame to draw attention towards those who need help in the world--and thank you, thank you, a million times thank you, for your role in bringing me back to music.

Thank you Kenny Omega for making me feel included in this fandom, even my weird, queer-as-hell self. Thank you for being as out as possible.

Thank you Neville for inspiring headcanons about how you're secretly a fairy prince, pissed as hell to be stuck among mortals. You'll never know and you certainly didn't mean to, but god, it brings me so much joy.

Thank you Mithen for writing the very heart of me in your essays. I have no idea how, but you write what I would if I could--and here I am, still trying anyway.

Thank you Robert Heinlein (hang on, stay with me here), for writing about carnies as human beings who care for each in Stranger in a Strange Land, and thus kicking off a lifelong interest.

Thank you Brian the Guppie for being kind and answering my dumb questions. I've always wanted to go to Montreal, and if I ever do I'll make y'all those biscuits.

Yours,
Autumn

Thank you, El Generico

Dear Wrestling,

This is a story about abuse and music and art. So far, it has a happy ending.

Once upon a time I lived in a place that was far better than it had any right to be. I went to good schools, with diverse classmates, I had friends, we went out to coffee shops and smoked cloves--it was the perfect 90s adolescence.

Then, when I was 16, my parents moved the family to Clay County, West Virginia. Whatever you think you know about that place, you’re almost certainly wrong. It’s worse than you could possibly imagine, and that was years before the opioid epidemic.

I was surrounded by people I didn’t understand, who didn’t understand me. Mostly they assumed I was some version of queer (true) and hated me for it. But there were a few weird kids like me, less than 10. They had all been a group of friends for years and had recently split into two factions in a pretty bad break-up.

I picked the wrong ones.

Her name was **** and she listened to punk music and danced ballet and wrote and was massively better read than me. I thought she was the coolest girl I'd ever met. We got along like a house on fire for awhile. We considered each other sisters, and got matching tattoos. We planned on being crazy old cat ladies together some day. She didn’t hit me often, but she did. More than that she constantly derided me. She was mostly recovered from an eating disorder and felt infinite social pressure, and I don’t think it ever occurred to her to not apply that to me. So I was dumb for being a geek, I was stupid for missing a social cue that may or not have happened, I was such a fucking idiot for anything that didn’t please her. She was my maid of honor, and in her toast to me she called me, in front of all my friends and family, “the smartest dumbass I ever met.” She was bitter as the day is long, and had a chip on her shoulder that colored everything she saw or did or said.

She introduced me to so much music. She was nearly as poor as me, but this was in the days of $3 punk samplers at Hot Topic, and of Napster. She taught me about The Get Up Kids and The Anniversary, The Bouncing Souls and why they were called that, Less than Jake and Reel Big Fish and Save Ferris, Bikini Kill, Rancid, Alkaline Trio, Catch 22...ska and punk and emo when it was new and raw. No one goes to West Virginia on purpose, so we drove to DC, to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, even Indianapolis to see bands. Cowboy Mouth goddamn near saved my soul one night.

It finally ended in 2005, not long after I got married. I didn’t listen to music for at least five years, maybe more. I slowly started easing back in. I started with Scottish bands--bands that couldn't possibly have anything to do with her, and which would never appeal to her. Frightened Rabbit, the Twilight Sad, There Will Be Fireworks, We Were Promised Jetpacks. I finally went to my first show in 2015, and Frightened Rabbit helped heal my battered heart. But I still couldn't listen to punk and all those bands I'd loved.

Last night (Jun 19) I learned that El Generico came out to Ole by the Bouncing Souls--I hadn't seen a video such that I could really make out the song. I remembered how much I liked them. Today at work I spent 8 hours with a massive headache, so my boss let me listen to music as we closed. I pulled up a Bouncing Souls playlist on youtube.

I haven’t felt music move my heart this way in years--even the bands that I have found and loved on my own haven’t hit this part of me. I listened to them sing about friendship and loyalty and the limitless power of music and hope, and I wondered at the grin on my face and thought, “I’m not broken…”

In spite of everything, in spite of her and worse in my life, I haven’t yet become too cynical for punk. In other words, I’m still alive, I still have hope and fight in me. I haven’t given up, on my life or my dreams or my ideals.

I think it got really close there for awhile. I think I’ll be ok. I think wrestling has saved me at least twice this year--first through itself, and now through music as well. It's such a strange thing to say thank you for--'your walk-out music in the indies brought me back to myself'--but I am nothing if not compulsively grateful. I know he could never have known and certainly didn't mean to. But this is why we do art, isn't it? For the beautiful, salvific coincidences that we could never plan but which give us life and joy and hope. And that, I am certain he gets. Yours, Autumn

Smitten

Dear Wrestling,

This is how you got me, and this is where I am now.

My sister was the infection vector, and her friends were for her. The academic in me wants to trace that line on back to its beginning. She was watching with her friends, and then this group came on that basically defied every single thing I thought about wrestling.

Every.
Single.
Thing.

It was the New Day. So, Black, not white: more nerdy than not, Xavier especially; brightly colored, not...how do I put this? Motorcycle-gang-color. Black denim, you know. They were so high energy, and talked about the power of positivity. That was the beginning of the explosion of my preconceptions. This all started in the winter of 2016.

I feel stunned with love for you. I've only been paying attention for about nine months, and over the last 2-3 I've fallen so hard, I don't really know what to do with myself--besides more of this, of course. I went from totally misunderstanding what you are, to having an idea, to getting it and falling hard in love--sort of.

It turns out, I always loved what you actually are. I've always loved live theatre. I've always loved stunt work and feats of physical excellence--whether in a sport or not. I've always loved strong characters, and simple ones too. A story can be profound when a character knows one thing about themselves--and especially if they are wrong.

I've always been someone with large feelings. People tend to think I'm more angry, more happy, so on, than I am, because I emote loudly or not at all. I think this makes us a pretty good match. But, the downside tends to be that the more I feel, the less articulate I become. The more I have to articulate, the less I am able to do so. This is the closest I've ever felt to one of the Romantics, gods help me. The words are lacking, but by damn the emotion is there!

I was so wrong about you for so long, and I'm so sorry. I don't really know how or why I didn't get it--pure snobbiness, at a guess. I thought you were a cruel moneymaking scheme to deprive stupid people of their time and cash. I feel terrible even typing that now: I'm not sure I could have been much more wrong.

Here's what I know now, or think I do: you're art. You're proper fucking art and I love you. You're commedia-style theatre with live freaking stunts and I don't understand how anyone doesn't like you. Sure, not all your characters are super well-developed or deep but god, isn't that true in life too? And like life, you're still going, there's all the vast future to improve and get better and innovate and fuck up and LIVE.

I love you the way I loved music when I was a teenager. I love you the way I love listening to punk rock on a long car ride. I love you like I love that one perfect strawberry every summer. I love you like laughing until I'm genuinely concerned about loss of control. I love you the way I love Night of the Living Dead when I got to that final scene the first time. I love you the way I love the Princess Bride and my lowball estimate is that I have seen that movie at least 2,000 times.

I have a memory of escaping my house when my parents were fighting and riding my bike to the church park at the end of the block, and swinging on the swingset as the sun set. It was early fall, the grass smelled warm but cool in the shadows, and whenever I catch that scent I am transported back, body and soul--a perfect madeleine moment.

I love you like that.

I kind of can't shut up about you, and it's only getting stronger.

Yours,
Autumn