A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [36]
I got out of the car and a few minutes later a mean-looking dude walked by. I suddenly morphed into Larry David and said these exact words: “Excuse me, sir, do you have any marijuana?”
Instead of assaulting me on the spot for massive nerdery, he pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket. It contained a handful of what looked like small, clear pieces of hard candy.
He said, “I got this and I think you should buy it.” I began to protest until he opened his coat and revealed a Crocodile Dundee knife. I was sold so I gave him Mike’s money and took the bag. I wasn’t sure of the proper crack-buying etiquette, so I thanked him, gave him a thumbs-up, and sprinted back to the car.
I threw the bag of crack in the front seat, told the boys that we were going to be fricasseed if we had any problems with the service at the drive-thru, and Mike floored it.
A serious debate followed as we tried to decide what we were supposed to do with a bag of crack. Do we smoke the crack? Do we eat the crack? Do we put a pin in the crack and wear it as a brooch? It didn’t take long for us to decide that we should get rid of the crack as soon as possible. So we stuffed it in the bottom of a Coke bottle and dumped it in the garbage. If there were any garbage-picking vagrants in the area that night, they found a whole lot more in that can than just orange peels and coffee grinds.
We arrived (crack-free) in Wichita and went to Christopher Love’s fancy adobe-style house. A guy dressed as a butler answered the door and announced in an overexaggerated serious voice, “Mr. Love will see you now.”
Sitting behind an oak desk, book-ended by a fat black man and a fat white man, was Christopher Love, who was fatter than both of them. He looked like a pissed-off Louie Anderson.
Love surveyed the three of us and from the way he stared at me as if I was a triple cheese with curly fries, it didn’t take Dr. Phil to figure out that he was quite gay. He introduced the white guy as the Zebra Kid, even though he looked nothing like a Zebra and less like a kid. He introduced the black guy as Rudy and nodded to the RUBBER CHICKEN Rudy was holding in his hand.
“Say hello to Rudy’s manager, Cluck.” We smiled at his lame joke, then noticed that nobody else in the room was laughing. Rudy’s gimmick was that he asked his manager Cluck for advice, except it didn’t seem like a gimmick—everyone took the Cluckster quite seriously.
Zebra broke the silence by complimenting Como on his signature move, the Shooting Star Press, which nobody else in the U.S. was doing. The move was similar to a gainer in diving and it was very difficult to do (I broke my arm attempting it, but that’s a story for another chapter). Como had been a trick skier and was agile as a cat. He had mastered the move as a result and had built his reputation on it.
“I’ve seen you do the Shooting Star Press,” Zebra Kid said. “I can do that too.”
Looking at the short dumpy guy in front of me, my mind drifted to a Weeble wobbling through the air. Then Love gazed longingly into my eyes and said, “Wow, you look just like Shawn Michaels. I can do a lot with you.”
I’m sure he could.
He had a party later that night to celebrate the opening of the company and—surprise, surprise—it was a freaking freak show. The guy dressed as a butler was there, Zebra Kid was there, Rudy was there, Cluck was there. The champion of the company was also there and looked as gay as they come with spiked dyed blond hair and an Errol Flynn mustache. Another wrestler named Rex King was trying to put together a crib for no apparent reason, but was too loaded to figure out how to do it.
The room burst into gales of laughter when one of the referees downed his drink after returning from the bathroom.