I would never let depression grab ahold of me the way it had before, but being bipolar means experiencing emotions to an extraordinary degree. So when I began to feel down, to lose faith in myself, it hit me hard. Living alone for the first time while doubting my own potential made for an isolating experience. Living in a new state, working at a new job, not knowing if I would ever make it up our corporate ladder, made me feel very small and very alone.
Some people seek out relationships to avoid seclusion, but I liked being single. I had a lot of practice and considered myself a professional. What I did miss, oddly enough, was having someone to look after. I wanted to take my mind off the 24/7 pressure without getting gonorrhea. I was stressed and in need of someone to talk to. Preferably someone who did not talk back. I thought of Mugsy. It often felt like the only time I knew what unconditional love could mean was when his fat ass curled up in my lap and made me sing him to sleep. Mugsy was now in Puerto Rico with my parents, but maybe it was time for a new rescue pup. I felt prepared for it. I had finally rescued myself, so why not share the wealth? Ultimately, I wanted to feel useful, like I was doing more in the world than waiting for someone else to decide my fate. And so I began chiseling away at my ten-year plan.
I found myself scrolling through the website of my local Humane Society. I lit up when I saw that a litter of pit bull puppies had just entered the shelter. Pit bulls were my absolute favorite breed, and I secretly hoped I could find one that had a head as large as Mugsy’s. And so I visited my local shelter, the Humane Society of Tampa Bay, to check out these pups.
Upon arriving, I filled out an application to visit with the litter of pits and impatiently hung out in the waiting room. As I looked around I noticed all seven visitors were waiting on meeting the adorable pups. After my initial competitive instinct to beat everyone in the competition for these dogs’ hearts subsided, I felt tremendous guilt. This building was full of older dogs, lying on the cold floor of a cage as every visitor passed them by to play with the shiny new puppies. I figured it couldn’t hurt to at least stroll through the rows of cages and see if any other little guys would catch my eye.
My barometer for human decency is to see if someone can make eye contact with a shelter animal and not immediately turn into goo. Within seconds I was bawling as I looked at the innocent, hopeful eyes, wondering if I was going to be the person to bring them somewhere warm and safe. And then I noticed the one dog that wasn’t rushing toward the gate of his cage.
A small, blond Chihuahua wearing a bright blue turtleneck lay shaking in a ball inside of his food bowl. Sure, dogs look adorable when dressed in clothes or as inanimate objects like when a wiener dog wears buns, but morally I am against this. No, lady, your dog does not “love” wearing that dumbass tutu. It’s not a human baby. It’s better than a baby because you do not have to teach it the English language or how to hold a sippy cup. And it will never grow up and talk back.
Upon further inspection, however, I found out this Chihuahua had to be covered up, because the building was chilly. And he was balding. The paperwork attached to his cage labeled him as a “special adoption,” requiring extra care from an attentive, committed owner who would be willing to administer his six different medications. Not only did he have kennel cough, a sick stomach that inhibited his eating and made him underweight, and a knee injury, but he had a skin disorder that caused his hair to fall out, presumably permanently. Basically, he was a winner.
The volunteers at the shelter told me he lay inside of his bowl because he felt safer being surrounded, and normally he was not very social. He mistrusted all humans, after surviving several harrowing ordeals. The Chihuahua exhibited strong signs of abuse and had been turned in to a kill shelter in another state when animal control found him limping in the street. The shelter discovered he was microchipped and contacted his registered owners to let them know they found their pup. But it became clear, when they refused to come pick him up, the owners were the ones who had hurt him and left him out on the street.
He spent a month in the kill shelter, and when it reached maximum capacity, he was put on the euthanization list. And that is when the world’s truest superheroes, the animal shelter volunteers, stepped in. The government will provide funding for a shelter if it regularly euthanizes its animals, to help clear up the homeless pet population. If an organization wants to be a nonkill shelter, it must rely on donations and volunteers to operate. With limited resources they do their best to visit and assess the behavior of animals who are closest to being euthanized at government-funded facilities and then will transfer the best candidates for adoption to the safety of their shelter. They may stick around the shelter for months, but at least they have a shot at life.
This Chihuahua was one of the lucky few brought into the safety of the Humane Society of Tampa Bay. But no one was interested in taking home a sickly, bald Chihuahua. This poor little guy was unwanted, unloved, abused, and alone in the world. Having been homeless, incarcerated, and placed on death row, he clearly had enough street cred to make a rap album. He was a survivor.
I delicately reached through the bars of his cage and scratched at his rough head.
“Are you my tiny furry soul mate?” I asked while he lifted his head and gently inspected the hand petting him.
I got lost in his giant, watery eyes. He stood up in the bowl, and I was sure this was a sign that he had indeed chosen me too. And then he proceeded to puke all over my hand.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Strolling through a pet supply store with the newly christened Nacho Cheese Mendez was an eye-opening experience. Customers looked at the meek little man the same way people look at homeless people in the street, with a sad look of sympathy before quickly averting their eyes to avoid being rude. Or maybe they just thought I had stolen a half-eaten rat from the snake tanks.
Nacho Cheese. Putting it out there.
I had removed Nacho’s blue sweater, and though he was visibly relieved, the bald patches on his body were now exposed to uneasy passersby. One customer shopping with a beautiful, fluffy golden retriever puppy actually directed a pitying “Bless your heart” my way. An employee told me he thought Nacho’s skin condition looked permanent and I should consider some cute outfits to cover him up. I clutched tighter onto my wonderful little freak and whispered to him, “I think you’re perfect just the way you are.”
Though pet store employees and even some veterinarians doubted Nacho could blossom into a healthy, beautiful flower, after months of medication and TLC, that’s exactly what he did. He was my very own puppy chia pet, growing all his glorious, fluffy fur back and shaking off the harsh memories of his past. His indomitable spirit and tenacity were inspiring. If Nacho Cheese could overcome the odds, so could I.
—
And as if he knew I had a new companion to carry the torch of looking after me and providing an unwavering source of unconditional love, Mugsy began to let go. “I don’t think he has long left,” Dad warned me as I entered the farmhouse in Puerto Rico during Christmas vacation. I had two weeks off the nonstop schedule each year to visit family during the holidays. I would not be able to travel back to Puerto Rico for another twelve months.
I hesitantly entered the bedroom Mugsy spent most of his day inside. On a small mattress, he stayed lying on his side even as I approached. In my mind Mugsy was still the hulking brute of his youth, but he was an old man now. My eyes always had to adjust to the withering sight of him. Having once been a ball of vibrant energy, he now couldn’t find the strength to lift his head. I watched his thinning tail lazily smack the soft surface as he wagged upon realizing who I was.
My little guy. My beautiful chunky monkey. He had been through so much as part of the Mendez clan. Though my father rescued him from a life of violence, he ended up on every harrowing journey we endured. When we lost our home, so did he. When we slept in a car, he was right there curled up in my lap. He shared a couch on a screened-in porch, and a mattress in a motel roo
m. When I feared the danger of our neighborhoods, he was at my side to make me feel safe. He was never a dog. He was a member of the Mendez family. And I could see in his eyes, he would be gone soon.
Stroking his now rough fur, I knew he wouldn’t make it to next Christmas. His breathing was labored as he noticed my lap and tried to prop himself up to sit on it. But he was too tired. And so I lay down beside him on the mattress, wrapped my arm around his warm belly, and sang to him for the last time. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”
Purgatory is a place in Tampa, Florida. It had been almost two years since I first stepped foot in FCW, and though in some ways I was living a completely new life, it also felt like I was running in place.
On the one hand, things had never been better. Not counting the sciatica, the stitches in my mouth, or the need for brain medication to avoid punching strangers in the face, I was healthy. Finally educating myself about nutrition and making enough money to buy more than one avocado at Whole Foods, my out-of-shape stomach had tightened into what almost resembled an ab. I could finally afford to buy furniture, which was now covered in Nacho’s newly grown, and surprisingly abundant, fur. And I had moved Erica to Florida to live with me after she had outgrown our small town in New Jersey and/or burned an ex-boyfriend’s house to the ground and needed to lie low for a while.
But on the other callused hand, progression through the wrestling ranks was painfully slow. For two years I had spent every waking hour training in one form or another. Occasionally I would see a glimmer of light when I’d get an invite to travel with the main roster. However, at the time, when a female wrestler went on the road for a trial period, it was only in a hosting capacity on untelevised events. While the guys got to have matches on the “house shows”—smaller arena shows where wrestlers and producers would try out ideas for the TV programming—the women would “host” a fan trivia question or dance contest.
Women had more opportunities in speaking/character/valet roles than in the ring during this era. So we hopefuls had to first demonstrate we could be bubbly and charming before we would get our chance. The host was only required to do two things: wear a dress, and speak to the audience without stammering. One out of two would have to do.
I didn’t own any dresses at the time, so when I got my first phone call to travel on house shows, I rushed to the one store I depended on for all my clothing needs, Burlington Coat Factory. (This was years before I would start making Target clothes money.) All of the women on the roster consistently stunned in skintight designer dresses, but I knew that (a) I couldn’t pull those off, (b) I didn’t want to flash my vagina to an audience of thousands just yet, and (c) I could buy an Xbox and two games for the same price as one of those fancy dresses. After pillaging the bargain racks at Burlington, I finally found a dress that fit my prepubescent frame. Sure, it was a child’s medium, but buying it would get me five dollars off a KitchenAid toaster and I couldn’t resist such a deal. Pairing the dress with the kitten-heeled shoes one of the girls in FCW had sweetly bought for me at a thrift store, I really thought I cleaned up well. For about five minutes. When I walked backstage in a half-sequined, half-floral-patterned shift dress that resembled an art project a five-year-old would make out of curtains she inherited from her dead grandmother, I was met with perplexed eyes. A sexpot, I was not. One of the wrestlers walked up to me, put his hand on my shoulder, looked deep into my eyes, and said, “You look really good.” He then busted out laughing when he thought he walked out of earshot. I had no clue how to style myself, let alone walk in even the smallest of heels, so when the time came for my inaugural walk through an official WWE curtain, I stumbled in front of the crowd looking like a baby deer on ice, who was somehow also drunk and pregnant. As I steadied myself, I realized an audience of thousands was quietly staring at me, awaiting something charming to fall from my trembling mouth.
I had never been in front of so many people, let alone had their undivided attention and a microphone in hand. It occurred to me that nothing was really stopping me from violently shouting “Douchebag balls!” into the mic besides a desire to not be fired, even though it would make a helluva story.
Customarily, the host would welcome the city by name before picking a child in the audience to answer her trivia question. A kid who answered right would get to sit ringside for the upcoming women’s match, which for a long while had involved lots of hair pulling, prop balls, and at least two spanking spots. So it was important to pick a child young enough to hit puberty on the spot or at the very least return to the child’s parents with a lot of uncomfortable questions.
As I opened my mouth to welcome the crowd, I suddenly forgot where we were. The crippling stage fright that came over me made it impossible to remember which city we were in. But I had already begun making unintelligible sounds into the live microphone and couldn’t turn back now.
“Uuuuurrrgghh…heh…HELLOOOO…guuuuuuys?” I was off to a great start.
“How is everything going tonight?” A question as exciting and personable as Some weather we’re having, huh? But at least I stopped making guttural noises.
“Who likes trivia?!” I asked like a second-grade substitute teacher.
When the child I called on was too young to form words, the second child I forced the microphone on answered incorrectly. Well, shit, no one prepared me for what I was supposed to do if the damn kid got the question wrong! Instead of saying anything…anything at all, into the mic, I just turned to the ring announcer, Tony Chimel, and nervously shook my head. He was kind enough to bail me out and let the kid sit ringside anyway. At least I assume so. I had already kicked my heels off and hauled ass behind the curtain before I could spontaneously combust.
Normally, our trainers at FCW would receive reports on our performances while traveling on the main shows, and I was sure my first would be the death of my career. It was tragic, but not for the reason I had anticipated. Sitting in the trainers’ office in Tampa, Tom Prichard tried to gently break the news to me.
“This is not a big deal, but I wanted to give you a heads-up on something,” he warned as I braced myself for the scathing review.
“I just want to say that I personally think you’re one of our best female wrestlers here. It’s just that sometimes that’s not enough. Have you considered repackaging your appearance?”
Wait, what now? I had Hindenburged my first hosting gig, and the only feedback I was getting was about my looks?
“They didn’t like your dress. They said it looked…a little conservative…matronly.” He was visibly uncomfortable, so I tried to help ease his mind by yelling.
“Matronly? I swear it was from the kids’ department at Burlington!” I wasn’t helping.
“I just thought you should know. And personally, I’m not saying it’s right, but it would probably be a good idea to start practicing makeup and all that other girl shit. I just don’t want our bosses to walk in here and see all your dolled-up competition and look right over you because you’re wearing a hoodie.”
He was undoubtedly relaying the message of my superiors softer than they had intended, but it still stung worse than that time I fell into a red anthill on the farm in Puerto Rico. As a host on house shows, a woman’s purpose was to look stunning and act fun and flirty so the audience would remain entertained in between matches, and I couldn’t do either. I wasn’t a good fit for the job. I was naturally unkempt, and even when I tried my hardest to doll up, I still looked homely. So it made sense when I wasn’t invited back on the road the next week.
I was getting far on skill alone and had secretly hoped I could help change the minds of WWE executives into thinking that was enough. But to be fair, this was still a business. A business that had a successful formula when it came to their women, and I wasn’t going to change that overnight. It takes time to start a rebellion.
This was my face and body when I got signed, but now the pressure was on for me to change. The question was no longer What makes a good girl? It w
as What makes a girl good enough? And whatever that was—body, hair, or looks—I, apparently, wasn’t enough.
But when I got inside of that ring, people paid attention. They cheered for me because they related to me. They felt connected to me and shared my pain and didn’t give a crap that my eyeliner wasn’t straight or my body was that of an athletic preteen boy. I needed to make my bosses understand this. They needed to see it in action. But it was hard to grab their attention when I was a singular voice in a crowd. I wasn’t going to have an army supporting my cause. I had to become a one-girl revolution.
A few weeks later, I was surprisingly brought back on the road. The last time, I had tried to mimic what I had seen before me and essentially just came off as a shitty version of a hot chick. I was not going to outsexy the rest of the female roster. So I had to find whatever it was I did best and embrace that. And what I did best was wear sensible shoes. Luckily, success is when opportunity meets preparation.
The first night on the two-night house show loop, I asked a fan a trivia question, the kid got it right this time, and my work for the evening was done. I sat ringside with the fan for the women’s match that followed my segment. It went gut-wrenchingly bad. I know how hard females in the industry work to be respected, and when a match does not go well, it hurts all of us. Mostly because the decision makers felt it was only proving their point: that a woman’s time in the ring should be limited. On television the women’s matches were a meager two to three minutes compared with fifteen to twenty-five for the guys. So watching the ladies crash and burn that evening made me feel genuinely sorry for them.
One of the “top guys,” a phrase to describe main event wrestlers who are such attractions they sell the most merchandise, garner the highest TV ratings, and are essentially considered the reason fans buy tickets, was vocally disappointed with the match. And when I say vocally, I mean he threw a water bottle at the backstage monitor while the match was on the screen, breaking the expensive TV set, and yelled at the producers, “Get some fucking talented women wrestlers on this show, please!”
Crazy Is My Superpower: How I Triumphed by Breaking Bones, Breaking Hearts, and Breaking the Rules Page 17
