▶Afterglow
It happens in the blink of an eye, every time.
One moment, I’m being thrown over the top and written off as out of the match. Except I’m not: I manage to get a decent grip on the rope and steady myself, both feet on the ring apron. Except they aren’t: Caledonia moves to grab me before I go over and the Ripper knocks into her, knocking her into me, sending me to the floor.
Instead of being angry about it, I’m oddly at peace.
After not being in a wrestling ring for five years, I just spent over thirty minutes telling a story about redemption, second chances, and punching an irredeemable Jacehole in the face. For me, tonight was never about a victory, it was about testing the logic, once again.
When I was four years old, and my father was wrestling in the finals of the NFW WEST, the line was ‘In this, the sport of Kings - your legend matters only while you’re there to add to your legend.’ Well, I haven’t been here in this sport of Queens for half a decade, and based on the reaction I’ve received during my run here of eliminating almost 20% of my competitors, it turns out my legend had grown.
For the moment, that’s secondary. The fans closest to me at ringside are chanting my initials, and I allow myself the luxury of closing my eyes and soaking it in. But only for that moment, because time warps around me and they all pop like crazy - and I know the match is over.
What I didn’t expect to see was Caledonia outside the ring, punching the floor. I move in to try and console her, but she brushes me off and leaves. Quickly.
Honestly, the fact that she’s so frustrated by being the Golden Intentions runner up is a clear sign that she’s exactly where she belongs: she still has the fire to compete in this sport on a full time basis.
My inner peace is telling a different story.
I look into the ring at the Ripper, celebrating like he just won the New York Marathon. In reality, it’s a massive deal to win this match, but he also did so by outlasting two women who were going at it, full tilt, for thirty to forty five minutes longer than him. Just by visuals, I’m completely soaked to the skin from sweat, while he looks barely damp.
But it’s his moment. We lock eyes, and he gives me the briefest of acknowledging nods, to which I return. I’m given a respectful round of applause by the fans closest to me as I leave, and a hand slap to a little girl of maybe ten years old is held onto for an extra few seconds.
I stop. I look at her and see the desire in her face: it wouldn’t surprise me if she was on this side of the guardrail in ten, fifteen years - even for one night only. And I make a decision.
She gets my shirt.
The air conditioning raises goosebumps on my flesh as I walk back up the ramp - for the first time in half a decade- and without even thinking about it, I raise my right fist like my dad used to do.
Ripper is getting his deserved attention in the ring, but I get at least ten percent of the attention on me. And I think I’ve earned it.
It is absolutely freezing as I step backstage: I get why they need to have the climate control set to arctic blast with so many sweaty bodies milling about, but we’re all going to catch a cold, not just those of us who were foolish enough to give away our soupy clothes so we’re standing around in just a sports bra.
Fortunately, an intern or someone’s kid working a summer job offers me a towel.
“Thank you,” I reply, drying off as much as I can. I don’t hand him back the towel; he might work here but he isn’t my laundry guy. I’m my laundry guy. Besides, I haven’t been to this town since I was a kid and don’t remember by memory which way is the locker room.
“Miss Flair? Miss Flair!”
I turn, and see a kid - really, probably my age or a year or two older, which just goes to show how time is imaginary - in a nicely tailored suit that he still looks like he might grow out of. I’m tempted to be flippant and ask him if his parents know where he is, but he’s got a CWF microphone in his hand and a crew member toting a camera behind him.
“Hi?” I say. What else is there?
“Miss Flair, my name is Ian Ambrose, backstage reporter for the CWF,” he explains, “I was hoping to ask you a few questions after your successful return to the CWF this evening, and coming in third in Golden Intentions. Now, we’re not going live, so if you’re not ready for something we can do an edit.”
He stands next to me and fixes his hair, and I’m suddenly aware that I gave my shirt away in the arena, every bit of clothing I have is stuck to me with sweat, including my hair, and I’m afraid to touch anything that wasn’t in the ring with me for fear of making it….really gross.
“We’re here with two-time former CWF World Champion, MJ Flair, after her shocking return to the sport after four years. MJ, with your success in the ring over the course of the Golden Intentions match, as well as your unfortunate elimination, MJ, are there any hard feelings over the way the eliminations shook out?”
I’m sure that an X-Ray of my head at this exact moment would show that monkey toy with the cymbals and drums, as the wall of words enter my ears but refuse to reorganize in an order that I can do anything with.
“Who are you?” I ask, finally, “Where’s Tara?”
He looks confused. “Tara?”
“Tara Robinson,” says the camera guy. “She was the main backstage correspondent when MJ was last here. Tara doesn’t work here anymore, she’s with another company now. I don’t remember which.”
“Okay,” says Ian, making a ‘cut’ motion over his throat to the camera, “let’s try that again. I’m–”
“No,” I interrupt. The guy with the camera thankfully stops filming, and lowers the lens. “I’m buzzing on adrenalin and dehydration, my brain is foamy, I reek of Fritos and there’s something damp in my boot.”
I’ve apparently rendered the young man speechless.
“Let’s leave it here,” I say, after a minute or so of his silent looking around at his camera guy, trying to figure out how to complete his assignment, “tomorrow, I’ll call you, and we’ll figure out the best way to do alla this, heard?”
He nods. “Off the record, I just want to say that your series against Loki? That’s what made me a wrestling fan.”
Despite my foggy noggin, I smile, and I offer my hand to shake. He seems as grossed out as I hoped, because despite being a twenty three year old woman, I have the maturity and sense of humor of a twelve year old boy. Side effect of growing up in entertainment, I suppose.
“One last thing, though?” I ask. “My stuff is in the private locker room because of the whole mystery entrant thing, and I’m very turned around. Can you point me in the right direction?”
Both of my parents have described the post-performance shower as the only time they ever felt complete solitude. I can’t speak for the locker room decorum of my dad’s heyday in professional wrestling, but my mom, being the only woman in a band with four dudes, had a room to herself the second they hit the ‘large ballroom’ era of their career.
It’s a wonderful time to reflect over the performance. What went well? What could’ve gone better? What can we do next time?
If I’m perfectly honest with myself, not-winning is literally the only thing I would’ve changed about how tonight went. I was sharp, I kept my wind, I saw most of the attacks sent my way coming. Even my elimination was a freak accident.
At the same time, I don’t feel that pull. I don’t feel that need to go back in and demand a shot at the World Title to validate what I’ve done, both tonight and in the past. I don’t feel that itch to continue indefinitely.
I remember my dad telling me a story around the time that I first decided to step away from professional wrestling and give college the ol’ college try. He told me about the first shot he ever had at the FWO World Title, against a monster of a man named Kodiak Vic Creed. Creed was also a father, and his kid, Alex, ended up in the wrestling business as well. Unlike us, the Creeds did not have a relationship of any kind other than cold antagonism.
Anyways, Vic told my dad that there was no way to be a World Champion and have a successful and fulfilling family life as well, and at the end of the day, every wrestler who gets to a certain level has to make that choice. This gave Daddy pause, because of the fifteen World Titles he would hold over the course of his career, the ten prior had all been before I was born.
He told me this story as a way to get the point across, that if you’re faced with that choice, there’s nothing wrong with choosing peace.
Of course, at the time, Daddy was also just two years away from winding his career down to part time work. Eleven years of three hundred or more matches annually, led to eight years of working about twelve days a month in order to ensure he had no regrets when he finally hung it all up.
Honestly, I feel like I understand that. Professional wrestling was never something I needed to dedicate my life to: I got into the ring because I felt like I would forever be compared to my father. The same way music was never something I needed to dedicate my life to: I played in a few tribute bands and did some session work because I felt like I would forever be compared to my mother.
Well, I won six Championships, two of them World Titles, before my nineteenth birthday. My Type-O-Negative tribute band, Bloody Kisses, got a standing ovation at TribFest 2022. And the love of my life supports me in everything I do.
Maybe it’s possible to have it all. Do I need to?
Or maybe I need just a little bit more?
Refreshed, I pack my used wrestling gear into a plastic bag and double knot it as a land mine to deal with later. I look at myself in the full length mirror and wrap most of my hair behind my head in a ponytail, noting the difference in how I presented myself when I was last in professional wrestling. It’s only been four years, but the difference between nineteen and twenty-three is a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon.
My parents understand the value of privacy, and while my dad is almost seven feet tall and never really gets any, Mom has turned nondescript into an art form when she needs to. I look less like a Professional Wrestler and more like a grad student working an internship, and I don’t hate it.
Pushing the door open, the extreme power of the A/C, previously a bane on my life, is refreshing as heck after the steamy air of the locker room and showers powerful enough to clean the grime off a tunnel wall.
“..fucking bullshit, is what that was.”
Turning a corner, I come across Dan and Caledonia Highlander, with Cali still rightly pissed over the way Golden Intentions ended.
“Is this a bad time?”
Two heads and four eyes suddenly turn to look in my direction. I wish I’d rehearsed this conversation.
“Dan… Listen, I’m sorry for tossing you–”
“No you aren’t,” interrupts Dan Highlander, in such an even tone of voice that I don’t know where he’s going.
I wasn’t prepared for him to extend a hand.
“The match only has one winner, and we all wanted it. You don’t need to apologize for taking an opportunity.”
Shaking his hand, I feel myself unclench.
Partly.
Caledonia still looks feral.
“That was fun, huh?” I ask, trying to break the tension.
Her eyes soften, just a little. At first.
“Bring it in, girl,” she finally says, reaching forward to hug me. I squeeze her tightly in response. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Me?” I ask in response. “Where the hell have you been? When the hell have you been?”
They look at each other. “That… is a very long story, my friend,” replies Caledonia. “First, the Institute–”
I hold up a hand. “That’s all I needed to hear.” It makes sense that the Municipality would somehow acquire real power, and then use it to go to the future and… sponsor professional wrestling.
Sometimes a cult is just filled with idiots.
“Listen, I don’t want to interrupt anything you were planning to do for the rest of the night, but do you feel like getting some late dinner and a drink? I wanted to ask you–”
The moment breaks up at the squelch of a walkie-talkie. We all turn towards the corner of the hallway, and a security guard walks around, towards us. “Yeah, she’s right here, over,” he says into the radio, and walks towards us. “Miss Flair, we have a gentleman here who says he’s your partner? He’s not on the list but we thought we’d check with you, all the same. Skinny guy, beard, has a bag of food with him…”
“Is his name Kevin?” I ask, walking towards the corner. I can feel Dan and Cali following behind, curiously.
“Did you see that? I just saw it,” I hear Caledonia whisper to her husband, along with a gentle slap on the arm. I’m assuming she’s pointing at the ring on my finger.
Halfway down the hall, behind another guard, I see him.
And I break into a jog, then a run, dropping my bag and practically throwing myself at my guy, who has the foresight to put down the bag he’s carrying and catch me.
“I thought you had that big party tonight,” I ask him, between kisses, “When did you get here?”
Bouncing between being held in the air and feeling my tiptoes touch the ground, he holds me tight. “Prep finished way earlier than we thought last night, and Chef Sean insisted that they could hold things down while I came here.”
He puts me down and I keep my eyes on his, my hands moving from his chest to his hands, holding them tightly.
“Now, I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t know if I’d be able to get on a flight to surprise you, and it was actually a pretty close call, I only got in about six hours ago. Luggage and car rental, I sat in my seat just in time to see your entrance.”
My mental math rewound the clock: I’ve been here almost all day, in gear, tunnel - visioned, while this lovely man was dealing with travel and TSA and car rentals. “Tomorrow–”
“Yeah, my flight tomorrow leaves at 12:05 PM. A whirlwind tour of Philly.”
For a moment, I feel silly. For nearly five years, I’ve seen this man nearly every day. We got together when the last chapter of my wrestling career was winding down, and we’ve lived together for three years. I saw him four days ago, and would have seen him again the day after tomorrow. I’m acting like this is a grand reunion.
But he took the time to show up. He inconvenienced himself quite a bit… to show up. I haven’t had a ton of relationships so far, but I can almost confirm nobody else would have rearranged a weekend at a high stress job to get on a plane, only to get on another one less than 24 hours, all because I would appreciate it.
“Oh!” he suddenly exclaims, reaching for the bag he dropped. “TSA loved this, I brought you some food.”
He hands me the bag, and I guess the contents immediately, pulling out the greatest sandwich ever made: the Full Sized Cuban from our favorite coffee - and - lunch spot. I sniff it, and look at him with a smile. “I should marry you before someone sneaks off with you,” I joke.
“MJ?”
Shitfire. In all this hubbub, I left two people hanging. I’m sure both Cali and Dan got a laugh out of my flinch, but I turn around and look at them, now standing right behind me.
“Oh, I’m so sorry guys!” I say, putting my dinner away and looping an arm around Kevin’s waist. This is my fiance, Kevin. Kev, this is Caledonia and Dan Highlander.”
“Pleased to meet you,” he says, offering both a firm handshake, “Mariella has barely stopped talking about you ever since she agreed to do this.”
“Same,” replies Caledonia, “We haven’t really had a chance to talk so far, but I have no doubt she was about to do the same.”
The four of us stood together for a long moment.
“Well, we’re going to get a late dinner and plot some revenge,” says Dan, shaking hands with Kevin again. “Good to meet you, I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”
“Likewise, sir,” replies Kevin.
“Wait,” I interrupt, “Cali, I still need to talk to you, can we join you?”
Like I said before, my brain is foggy after taking hits for the first time in like, half a decade.
“I promise we’ll catch up later,” replies Caledonia, “He’s gotta get back on a plane tomorrow, go use your time well. Kevin, lovely to meet you.”
She smiles at the boy, but her eyes are screaming at me, “Girl. GIRL.”
But she’s right.
There will be another day.