A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [81]
Candido was right. There were people drifting in and out of the SMF on a nightly basis. There was no air-conditioning so it was ceaselessly hot and damp inside and I’d never experienced that kind of brutal humidity or the horrible amounts of pollen in the air. After a week of being red-eyed and bushy-haired, I was ready to stick my head in the microwave...if only the SMF had one.
Our groovy pad also boasted fake wood paneling right out of the ’70s and smelled like a mouse had crawled behind the fridge and died. Coincidentally, when I pulled it back, I found out that a mouse had crawled behind the fridge and died.
At least I got along well with my new roommate Anthony. He was into the metal scene and, like me, he’d been born in Long Island. He played guitar and I’d brought my bass, so we formed a glam band called Slippery Nipple. We were the first metal band in history without a drummer or any songs but we rocked all the same.
Living in Tennessee was a big lifestyle adjustment, as I’d gone from living on the Reeperbahn going out every night and meeting all the girls I could handle, to living with a bunch of stinky dudes in a cheap apartment in the middle of a dry county. A dry county meant that there were no bars in all of Morristown, which really limited the places we could go to hang out and meet girls. There was nothing to do, except watch The Real World on MTV (that Puck...what a rogue) and hang out at the brand-new twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart. Ain’t no party like a Wal-Mart party!
In old-school Southern territories one of the responsibilities of a babyface was to, shall we say, service the female gender. This was done to ensure continued attendance and the continued buying of gimmicks by enraptured female fans.
But Lance was married and I had standards, so we drove Cornette absolutely nuts.
“You’re not sleeping with any of the girls! What kind of a babyface are you?”
If Cornette had introduced me to ONE female SMW fanatic that caught my fancy, I would’ve been happy to play hide the blooming onion. But he didn’t, so I kissed no grits.
CHAPTER 26
TRUE TO THE CREW
The only pretty girls I met during my whole time in Tennessee were in a strip club in Knoxville called the Mouse’s Ear. I had to have a membership card to get inside, but it was worth it when I met a buxom lass with long jet black hair. I was so desperate to rock that it didn’t bother me when she said she was a vampire. However, it did bother me when she said she wanted me to unleash my life-force inside of her so she could absorb me into her spiritual being and live with me always. I unleashed my life-force out of her apartment and absorbed myself back to Morristown instead.
My sad-sack existence finally gained purpose when the Thrillseekers vignettes began running on television. As cheesy and overacted as they were, they still created a buzz and when we made our SMW debut at a TV taping in Dungannen, Virginia, the fans went nuts for us right off the bat. A lot of the reaction was garnered simply because we entered the gym from the babyface dressing room. To build us up instantly in the ring, Jimmy had brought in Well Dunn (Steve Doll and my short-term roommate Rex King), a former WWF team that had ended up in SMW.
They’d been around for years and cut a really good promo airing their grievances about the Thrillseekers. Even though I’d learned a little about promos from Bulldog Bob Brown, I was still so green that I thought that doing a good interview consisted of having the fans cheer every word I said. The fans didn’t really know me and I overcompensated for the lack of reaction by shamelessly mugging to them in hopes they would cheer. It was like seeing a bad stand-up comic (golden topping) laughing at his own lame jokes.
I mentioned that my dad had played in the NHL and I said in an overexaggerated babyface voice, “Since you guys are cheaters, we want to help even the odds. We want to face you in the very first penalty box match [crickets chirped]. In hockey if you do something wrong, you have to go to the penalty box for