6. Have some selfie respect. My darling daughter, if you would ever like to take a selfie, please wait until after I am dead. Ninety percent of selfies posted online are silent screams for the world to give the affirmation withholding parents never did. We get it, ladies; Daddy didn’t hug you enough and with each “let me cum on dem titties” tweet a forty-year-old living in his mother’s basement sends you, that hole in your heart is slowly filled. But despite my general disdain for an act so oxymoronically vain and insecure at the exact same time, I will admit that there are rare occasions when it is perfectly acceptable to take a selfie:
• While standing in front of a national monument.
• When using your phone’s camera to check if your makeup is holding up and your hand slips and accidentally takes a picture.
• As a polite time-saver after you get the permission of a celebrity who is clearly in a rush.
• When at dinner with a friend, but there are no strangers around who look trustworthy enough to hold your phone without trying to steal it. (Helpful Hint: Just ask the waiter.)
• If you are really trying to sneak a pic of someone behind you and don’t want to make it obvious you’re a creep.
• If a dog is sleeping adorably atop you and you don’t want to wake it up.
• When taking a pic of you and your significant other kissing. Those are actually adorable. (Helpful Hint: These are only cute when showing them to your friends or as a five-by-seven photo taped to a dresser’s mirror. Posting these pictures on social media is an awkward invasion of your relationship’s intimacy. I feel like people with fulfilling, genuinely happy relationships don’t have to keep reminding the world. You’d save time by just tweeting, “I pray every second this penis doesn’t leave me. #blessed”)
• When you’ve had your makeup professionally done and you want to try to re-create it yourself later, but will inevitably fail and just make yourself look like a hooker who had a really profitable day.
• If you are Mindy Kaling or Anna Kendrick, who can do no wrong.
• When showing off a delectable dessert. (Helpful Hint: Completely social media approved. Everyone wants to see the pure joy on the face of a person who is about to eat a donut the size of his or her torso.)
• When you want to show your guy your freshly salon-styled hair or superflattering outfit to help fester his insecurity about how hot you look when he is not around.
• If someone else is holding the phone. The shame is now theirs.
• If you can 100 percent guarantee the intention of your selfie is not a desperate cry for strangers to help make you feel pretty, but truly an act of harmless arrogance. Anyone so self-confident, so genuinely proud of her own image she feels the overwhelming desire to share it, deserves to take a selfie. If she is eighteen or older. No one likes Instagram jailbait.
7. Always bring a sweater. Self-explanatory. It would also be a good idea to make sure the following are either on your person or only a short, panicked sprint away: tampons, travel-sized deodorant, gum, an inhaler as you are sure to inherit my asthma, a fully charged Nintendo 3DS (there will never not be a new Pokémon), and a condom.
8. Eww, gross. My mom just said “condom.” Yeah, I know. You don’t want to associate the word sex with the person who cuts the crust off your PB&J. But guess what, your parents are goddamn bunny rabbits. How do you think you were accidentally created in the first place? Nevertheless, I promise to educate you about safe sex the second you unroll your first poster of [insert your version of Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer]. I want sex to be something you and I can openly talk about. I want you to be smart and knowledgeable of your lady labyrinth and not just assume babies are made when a bird and a bee love each other very, very much. (Note to self: “Lady Labyrinth,” possible name of all-girl rock band.) I would also appreciate if you try to be a virgin until you get your Ph.D. But just in case, it is my job to teach you to respect your body, to make only the choices you feel comfortable with, to help you understand that 92.3 percent of guys will give a detailed play-by-play of how far he gets with you to his garbageman if he’s willing to listen, and to provide you with condoms behind your father’s back.
9. Unconditional. No matter how much you fuck up or how badly you behave, I promise to always be your best friend and confidante. I will accept you for who you are and provide you with a safe, loving home for as long as I live.
10. On one condition. If you ever own a single piece of Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Marilyn Monroe basic ass paraphernalia, I rescind number 9.
I realize there is a chance my future offspring may be a boy. Here is the list of essential information you, my dear son, should know.
1. Morning boners are perfectly normal.
2. Try not to be an asshole.
3. Be good to women. They deal with way more shit than you do.
No one ever tells you what happens after “happily ever after.” The book gets shut or the credits roll, and we’re just supposed to assume that when the hero of the story gets exactly what they want, the story is over. But when you finally cross the finish line, slay the dragon, marry the prince, reach the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow—when you actually get ahold of whatever the hell it is you’ve been chasing like mad—there is only one thought that will cross your mind: What now?
I folded the aqua-blue quilt twice over so it would hopefully be thick enough to prevent my ass from falling asleep this time. After placing it on the freshly steamed carpet, I plopped myself cross-legged atop it.
In my new apartment in the Sunshine State, this quilt dutifully served as my only piece of furniture for quite some time. It was my living room couch when I used my laptop to watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia DVDs, it was my office chair every time I stole my neighbor’s Wi-Fi to check my e-mail, and, when I wrapped myself in it like a human burrito, it was my bed.
I was training at Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW) as a member of the WWE’s developmental talent roster. And even though the expensive transition of living on my own in another state meant I would have to get by without a car or furniture that wasn’t made of faux down feathers for a while, I was perfectly content.
I was adamant about saving as much of my weekly checks as I could. I knew money to be a fleeting thing, and if I could survive just fine without a proper mattress, then I wasn’t going to overextend my wallet chain to get one. Even if there were only Hot Pockets and Little Debbie’s Honey Buns in my refrigerator, at least it wasn’t empty. In fact, it almost felt like a grandiose splurge when I sprang for the Pizza Rolls too. (Nutrition was a lost concept to me at this point.) I had survived on less before. Knowing I had finally entered a real career—my dream career—made me feel like this was just a part of earning my stripes.
As I sat on the lumpy quilt, I opened a spiral notebook across my lap and uncapped my pen as if I were unsheathing a sword. Pen and paper were my weapons before my body ever learned to be, and it was comforting to return to the white and blue lines to plan my next moves. For a decade I had a singular mission: to make it to the WWE. To become a professional wrestler. I had done that. I had accomplished what had at times seemed unattainable, but what was I going to do now? I couldn’t rest on my laurels and be satisfied with simply “making it.” When you finally live out your biggest dream, the next step must always be: Dream bigger.
On a blank sheet of paper I wrote “My Ten-Year Life Plan” in giant letters. Visualization is important to me. I believe that imagining yourself, in agonizing detail, in whatever dream life you want, is the first step in getting there. Writing the words was a way for me to stare at my desires and be held accountable for bringing them into the world. Here is what was hastily scribbled on the page in hopes of willing the words into fruition.
MY TEN-YEAR LIFE PLAN
1. Make it to the main roster.
2. Win the championship.
3. Have an action figure made in my likeness, but with exaggerated body measurements.
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nbsp; 4. Be in a video game.
5. Be on a pay-per-view poster.
6. Find a haircut that hides my fivehead.
7. Have my own merchandise.
8. Have a match at WrestleMania.
9. Write an autobiography.
10. Adopt more dogs.
It was a lofty list, but it was also nonnegotiable. (Except maybe for the haircut as long as stylists were incapable of magic.) I knew what dreams I wanted to chase next, and even if they seemed impossible to reach, that only made me want them more. My dreams were the hot girl in high school, and I was going to convince them to go to prom with me, and then maybe get them pregnant so they were stuck with me forever. The realist in me (the tiny voice I regularly beat into submission) knew that this was not going to be easy.
I had scored a contract, and though that felt like the end of a long road, I knew it was only the beginning. Ahead of me was a high hill to climb. I would have to train hard and perfect my craft in order to be noticed among the fifty other developmental talents, some already having waited years for a promotion that had yet to come.
The developmental roster, though spending most of every day collaborating and depending on one another while training and performing on shows, were in direct competition. If the writers and producers needed a new character for one of the two main roster television shows, Raw or SmackDown, they would pick whoever they thought was the most polished and prepared for superstardom. But sometimes, a promotion would be given to a wrestler who wasn’t entirely ready for the road, but had the look higher-ups were interested in. Essentially, it was a crapshoot. All we could do to control our own destiny was to make ourselves the best wrestlers and performers we could be, and be prepared when the opportunity presented itself. Though there is always the option of kicking in opportunity’s door like it owes you rent money.
It almost felt like we were doctors on call. Horror stories floated around the training facility of wrestlers getting phone calls at midnight and being asked to pack a bag and jump on the first flight at six o’clock that morning. In a whirlwind experience they would travel to whatever city the show was taping in, as the main roster traveled to five different cities across the country each week.
They would perform in the ring for agents and had a shot at debuting on television that night. Everyone wanted that call, but at the same time feared it, should the worst-case scenario happen. No one wanted to get in front of agents and be turned down, depressingly sent back to FCW to train for who knows how much longer. Some of the wrestlers had experienced the rejection several times, totaling anywhere from two to five years within the developmental system. Suddenly I realized why everyone in FCW seemed tired, dejected, and not nearly as naively bright eyed as I had entered.
I had worked hard at training in New Jersey, but once I started the rigorous schedule at FCW I realized what I once thought was hard work was almost laughable in comparison. FCW was not a place you could pop in for two hours, have a practice match, and call it a day. We had to eat, breathe, sleep, and bleed training. And I bled a lot.
I was now known as AJ Lee. In developmental we had to choose our own character names, but couldn’t use our real ones because the company wanted to own the copyright. I pitched “AJ” since it was my family’s nickname for me and “Lee” after Wendee Lee, a voice actress in my favorite anime, Cowboy Bebop. Initially, “AJ” was turned down because the company felt it was “too tomboyish.” But when legal rejected the rest of my pitched names and there was only an hour to submit a name to print in our FCW magazine, I got to sneak the name “AJ” in before anyone noticed.
I chose an apartment only a few blocks away from the warehouse we trained in, and each morning I would drag my giant suitcase full of extra clothes, kneepads, elbow pads, and towels down the road in the blazing Florida sun. I would be drenched in sweat before I even got in the ring, which made people really look forward to rolling around with me. A typical day of training started around 8 a.m. The roster would be split into groups and made to run training drills together. Since there were only a handful of women on the roster, we were integrated into drills with the guys.
After a few hours, we would be paired off with either a guy or girl to have a practice match on the fly. For performances on shows, there would normally be a game plan for the match, but in training it was essential to learn how to adjust in a moment’s notice and communicate without letting the audience know. We would then practice promos and study old matches. Three evenings a week we would travel around Florida and put on ticketed shows. If there wasn’t a show that evening, we would be allowed to go home around 5 p.m. But trying to expedite the training process and get to the main roster, I started staying until 8 p.m. to squeeze in extra practice.
Two new signees, Zivile, a fitness competitor who had won the Arnold Classic, and Trinity, a dancer with insane natural athletic ability, would eventually join me after hours. Our little crew of rookies was looked after by Tom Prichard, Norman Smiley, or Billy Kidman, former wrestlers and now trainers with the patience of saints and an apparent death wish. They would let us keep the lights on in the building for as late as we liked and were brave enough to let us use their bodies as crash test dummies. We beat the everlasting gobstopper of shit out of them during hours they were not even getting paid to work. A great teacher is selfless. And they just wanted to see their students, who had enough fire to spend an entire day in a humid warehouse, succeed.
I would drag my suitcase home, wash my annihilated workout gear, eat dinner on my quilt, ice my entire body, and fall asleep watching DVDs. In the morning I would peel myself off the floor and do it all again. Day in and day out, every second not sleeping or eating was spent either in the ring or watching tape, trying to perfect every facet of the art form. So deep within the grind, I began to literally dream of performing in the ring. The nightmare was always the same. I was pushed through a curtain in front of an audience of thousands, but I didn’t have time to put on any of my wrestling gear. So I would be forced to wrestle in whatever my cruel subconscious decided to torture me with: a sundress, pajamas, laundry-day underwear. There was rarely a moment my mind was on anything else.
Inevitably, there were growing pains. And I mean that quite literally. Through a new rigorous weight-lifting regime and healthy diet now made possible through a growing bank account, I gained ten pounds of muscle. My body quickly transformed from a stick figure to a stick figure with teeny tiny guns. Naturally, I invested in several tank tops. But just to make sure I wasn’t getting too confident about my body, it began to fail on me as often as it could. I suffered two more concussions, a dislocated elbow, two dislocated kneecaps, herniated discs in my thoracic spine, and a charming hole in my face.
During an intergender tag team match, I dove out of the ring and onto an awaiting Zivile who was standing, arms outstretched, on the ground below. She was so concerned about my safety in landing, she wrapped her arms tightly around my waist, and the snuggle made my mouth connect with her forehead. Pulling away I noticed a gash on her dome and freaked when I realized my tooth had somehow scarred her face. I freaked even further when I realized that my determined snaggletooth had actually punctured through my own face to get to hers. The bottom half of my face was quickly drenched with the warm blood I couldn’t help but dribble out. For the rest of the fifteen-minute match I poked my tongue through the hole above my lip to freak out the children sitting in the front row. After the show, Zivile drove me to the emergency room, where I spent the night waiting to get my face stitched. I got a cab directly from the ER to the airport to fly out for my first shows with the main roster. Every time I look in the mirror and see that little scar above my lip, I remember carefully chewing my airport dinner/breakfast burrito on one side of my mouth and then falling asleep across three chairs at my gate while still clutching the wrapper.
The days began to bleed into one another. Before I knew it, months had passed and I was no longer the rookie on the female roster. So many women had come
and gone through the system that somehow I was the female wrestler with the most experience. It was a strange adjustment. I was used to looking to others for guidance, and seemingly overnight I was given the responsibility of the locker room leader. As a sort of “passing of the torch,” in early 2010, I won the title of “Queen of FCW” in a taping of our local cable show. Up until that point it was the greatest match of my career and came with the distinguished perk of having to balance a small plastic crown on my giant lollipop head during every show.
The group of girls I spent my days with in developmental were smart, tough, and eager to learn. Watching them blossom into full-fledged performers made me beam with a momma’s pride. Not only was I growing as a wrestler by leaps and bounds, I was helping shape the future of the main roster’s women. It was a hell of an honor. My trainers began to put so much faith in me as a leader that for the next five years almost every woman who had a tryout with the company had her tryout match with me. Agents would even ask my opinion of the potential of the girls in the ring and their personalities in the locker room. As much as I loved being trusted with that responsibility, I was essentially putting my body on the line in situations where I would never see most of these women again. A lot of wonderful experienced indy wrestlers came through tryouts, but a ton of ladies who were getting into the ring for the first time got to learn the ropes using my 110 pounds of bony might.
Along the way I realized that I was being treated like a “utility man.” In wrestling, that is a person who is well rounded enough to be counted on to make their opponent look good and help them learn. I was Old Reliable. And though that was flattering, that meant I would probably never get out of FCW. I would be used as the person to help more exciting and more beautiful women graduate to superstardom. I don’t think anyone looked at me and saw a potential star. A year and a half had passed. I had been brought on the road a few times but was always sent back down. I bought some glue and glitter to decorate my pity party hat.
Crazy Is My Superpower: How I Triumphed by Breaking Bones, Breaking Hearts, and Breaking the Rules Page 16
