Just Between Us

by Mario Lopez

  Did I mention my dad could outdrink anyone? That’s what they did back then. He could hold his liquor like nobody. Well, except for one time when he and Mom were hosting a house party and I happened to see him quietly head outside to throw up near the garden hose. To my shock, afterward he rinsed out his mouth with the hose, went right back inside, and continued to drink. Other than that time, I never thought he had a problem—that is, until I got older and I would notice how much he could knock back. A whole bottle of Bacardi 151 like it was nothing. Yet he was never sloppy. Never. That said, I might have decided at a certain point when I was growing up that some moderation when it came to alcohol could be a good way to go.

  As for moderation with wrestling, that never crossed my mind. Our practice at the Boys Club was fun, but it also involved serious training and I found that I thrived with the challenge. We did single-leg takedowns, fireman carries, head and arm maneuvers during which you’d be on top and try to work the ground control. We did half-Nelsons and guillotines, as well as pinning techniques, where you would try to pin your opponent so that both shoulder blades touched the ground for at least a second, until you heard the slap on the mat from the ref. When you got a pin, that was like a knockout. There is nothing like hearing the sound of the slap on the mat when the pin is yours.

  “Mario, where did you get that move?” Coach Walt would ask whenever he spotted me horsing around before or after practice, especially if I was trying out some outlandish wrestling maneuver that I’d seen on TV. These moves would never be allowed in practice, but we all attempted to try them out on each other. If I liked what I saw, I would mess around and test out the possibilities on the next unsuspecting kid I was set to spar. None of those intricately choreographed moves that you’d see on WWF would ever work in a real contest, but they looked so good, we all attempted to incorporate elements of them.

  My favorite move for a time was the “suplex.” When I saw it on WWF, I knew before practice that I had to spring a hard-core move like that on my next sparring partner, Hector Cruz. The suplex starts as you grab your opponent and put your arm around his head—like a headlock, but from the front, a rear naked choke. You grab him in a headlock and put your other arm behind his head. Then you grab him by his pants, jump up, go backward, and slam him down on the mat. Almost like a back flip. Now, on TV the mats are probably expensive and have more padding. But most mats in youth wrestling are not that thick, only about two and a half inches at most. So when I went for the suplex move and had him by the neck, I was aware enough to try to soften his landing when I threw him backward over my shoulder and jammed him onto the floor. Bam!

  Hector definitely got the wind knocked out of him that time, although it could have been worse. After coming close to really doing damage, I backed off of doing the suplex. Another move I’ll never do again is the figure-four leg lock, especially after the kid sprained his knee. There’s no real way to get out of that move unless you have a Taser or a knife.

  I should emphasize that back in my early wrestling years not only did we all attempt some of these ridiculous moves, but we all had the wind knocked out of us or got dizzy enough to see stars. Later on, when I got to high school and competed at meets, I would become known as a vicious competitor on the wrestling mats, combining my training with a high level of intensity. That will to win was just part of who I was, and, well, accidents did happen—for example, the times I broke one opponent’s shoulder, or another’s collarbone. There was one instance when I suffered a broken right ankle, forcing me to wear a cast. Impatient to get back into competition, I cut off the cast myself and had my coach tape up my foot and ankle. But in my next meet against a rival high school, my opponent zoned in on my right foot and kept coming at it so intentionally, I not so accidentally warned him in the clinch, “Lay off or I will jack you up.” The next series of moves proved he wasn’t going to lay off my ankle, so I proceeded to take him down with a move he didn’t see coming—a move that audibly broke his arm.

  Could all of this explain why friends nowadays will not get into any sort of ring or on any sort of mat with me? Even though I got the reputation for going too hard and playing too rough during my younger days, friends apparently still worry that as soon as I step inside the ring, I become the wrestler—or, as my later interests took me, the boxer. Maybe they’re right. Even back in my Boys Club wrestling days or just fooling around with friends, the odds increased for someone getting hurt. It happened so often that as soon as someone was injured, my parents instantly thought, “Mario wrestling . . .”

  The truism that your reputation almost always precedes you, even when you’re innocent, is one of those lessons that I discovered. A case in point later on was the tree-climbing episode that happened one afternoon when I was hanging out with my pal James Garcia and my parents were not home—they might have been visiting across the street at my uncle’s house. The tree in question in our backyard offered ideal tree-climbing practice: a tall, smooth trunk with thick, forked branches that I loved to climb really high. The way to get to the very top required one particular death-defying crux move—a big jump from one branch to another, Tarzan-style.

  Fearless in a prone-for-trouble way, I had the benefit of agility honed in wrestling, so this was no big deal, and James figured if I was going to climb, so would he. Why not? Going up ahead of him, I demonstrated the flying squirrel move—jumped and grabbed the high branch, scampering close to the trunk to make room for James to follow suit. Oh, he jumped all right, but as he went to grab for the branch—I watched it unfold as in slow motion—he missed the branch and nearly swan-dived as he fell to the ground with a thud and a crack.

  “Please, God,” I started to pray as I descended from the tree at record speed. “Don’t let him be hurt.” How bad was it? Well, let me put it this way: that was the first time I witnessed a bone break through the skin. It protruded through the inside of his forearm, broken for sure.

  When I ran inside to call 911—the first time I ever had to make an emergency call myself—the operator assumed that I’d broken James’s arm. What? Who had she been talking to?

  She kept repeating, “Now tell me again—how did you break your friend’s arm?” and I kept repeating, “I didn’t break his arm—he fell out of a tree!”

  How she came to that assumption, I never knew.

  When my parents came home a short time later, before I could tell them the story, the first thing my dad said was, “Mario, how many times do we have to tell you to stop the WWF wrestling moves?”

  “No, Dad, we weren’t wrestling. He fell out of the tree!”

  He and Mom both looked at each other as though I had to be kidding.

  Eventually, James did convince my parents that it wasn’t my fault and had nothing to do with wrestling. He survived, thank God, though not without a significant scar from the fall—and from the operation he had to have to set things right again.

  • • •

  “Dance class?”

  That, apparently, had been my only reaction when I was three years old after Mom first enrolled me in the most basic of all dance classes. Who was I to question my mother? As time went on, it became more obvious that because Mom loved to dance she wanted me to learn. And with her grand design to keep me busy and out of trouble she may have chosen dance as an activity that might balance out my more rambunctious side.

  Whatever her intention, as the years of elementary school went by I continued to be enough of a mama’s boy not to object to dance class. And so I became the only dancing wrestler I knew. My classes were in jazz and tap at All That Jazz, a dance studio in Chula Vista. All That Jazz was exactly what you would imagine when you think of a dance studio in a border town like Chula in the early eighties: a simple little studio in the middle of a strip mall.

  Every time I started a new series of classes, I’d walk in and enter a familiar scene: parents hovering over their little girls as they waited for class to
begin—and then there was me and my mom. Most of the time, I was the only boy in the class. Was I embarrassed about that? Yep. But I stuck it out because I couldn’t let Mom down. Even knowing that the boys at school would tease me, I couldn’t bear the thought of making my mother sad or, worse, breaking her heart. She was into dancing!

  At about nine years old or so, I remember no longer feeling as awkward about being the only boy in class—especially now that I was beginning to notice girls more. It started to dawn on me that I was learning to move well and that girls liked that. Then I really embraced dance. Other boys would come in every now and then, but they’d always quit and I’d continue to rule the roost.

  My ambivalence about dance class subsided even more whenever All That Jazz held contests and recitals. The theatrics were kind of exciting and so was the idea of competing for awards. Mom was in heaven, throwing herself into all the preparations as if she had found her true calling. All of sudden, as dress rehearsals loomed, I became her little toy—a living, breathing action figure she could dress up however she wanted. She’d make all of my costumes and take care of every detail until I looked like I was on some early version of Toddlers & Tiaras. Mom’s competitive streak really came out at these times. If the girl dancers were going to be made up by their mothers, then she was going to give me makeup too. That’s right: Mom brushed my cheeks with blush and costumed me in boy versions of sequined outfits for all the performances that she could. My repertoire in tap and jazz had me dancing to every over-the-top hit song of the eighties, including “Disco Duck” and John Travolta’s performance of “You’re the One That I Want.” Or then there was classic rock and roll with choreography to the likes of Elvis’s “All Shook Up.” The first award I won from my studio was for a dance I did to “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” by Michael Jackson—a memorable experience that could well have shaped my eventual path in entertainment.

  Maybe not. What I do know as an adult is that all I have to do is hear the intro to anything by Michael Jackson—like “Off the Wall” and “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)”—and in a flash the music takes me back to all the dance competitions in those years. MJ was my favorite and still is. For me, it’s impossible to listen to any Michael Jackson hit and not get up and dance. To this day, I still know the choreography of every one of his music videos, mainly because I incorporated all those routines into my own dance recitals and competitions.

  As much as I would never have admitted it then, dancing was a perfect outlet for me—a way for me to channel my excess energy like nothing else ever had. And nobody got injured in the process.

  My complaints didn’t end immediately. I mean, what cool boy ever took a dance class? But the happier that my dancing made Mom and the more I realized I had a knack for it, the more I accepted that dance was a part of who I was. Even before lessons, I could always move and groove, and loved dancing around the house. And now I loved dance class. At age ten, I was just beginning to understand how being the only guy in class with all girls certainly couldn’t hurt. Well, as it became apparent later, the only straight guy anyway, which was just as good. But I eventually saw that any activity where you’re the only guy in a room of attractive females wearing tiny little outfits was not a bad thing.

  To my surprise, dancing even helped me with balance, agility, and grace in sports. It complemented all the other guy stuff I was doing. As soon as I realized that, I developed a genuine love for dancing, a love that has never died. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t teased. “Mama’s boy” didn’t bother me so much, because it was sort of true. “Sissy” was not cool, but I dealt with it. But when a kid called me “fag” one day, it was enough already—on top of the menacing way he said it—and that really bothered me. I didn’t want to say anything back because I was a nice guy and generally not confrontational. But I could only take so much before it was time to stand up for myself and for anyone who got called names of any kind.

  As I thought about how to respond, I explained to Mom that I didn’t want to get into trouble but that I had to defend myself.

  Mom was very clear about how she felt. “Mijo,” she said, “if this guy or some other guy picks on you like this and you don’t kick his butt, I’m gonna kick your butt.”

  I’ll never forget the intense look in her eyes. I nodded but hesitated. Did she really mean that?

  My mom continued: “I’m not going to fight your battles for you. You do what you have to do.” She then offered that when the school day was over, she would pick me up a couple of blocks away from the usual spot. What did she suggest? She went on, “I want you to wait for him after school. You tell him what the deal is. And if he doesn’t apologize, then you kick his butt.”

  When the kid walked out of school the next day, I was waiting for him. He looked like a badass, cocky and cool in dark jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a pair of Vans. After I strode right up to him, I locked in on his eyes and said, “Hey, you know what, man?”

  “What?”

  As I got closer to him and started to let him know that he needed to leave me alone, he took a step toward me and soon we were talking back and forth at one another. With his short fuse, I didn’t need to say much to trigger it. Finally he closed in on me, and instead of just walking away or ignoring him, a switch flipped and I went into full-on wrestling mode. Unless you’re trained, you could never win a fight against a practiced wrestler. In no time, I got him in a double-leg takedown. And then he was just on the ground. Boom. I started pounding him. After a minute or two, he said, “All right, all right.”

  As planned, my mom picked me up a couple of blocks away. We passed the kid as he was limping his way down the street and Mom pulled up next to him, rolled down the car window, and yelled, “You deserved it!”

  You have to love a badass mom. For sure, she preferred for me to resolve conflicts by keeping my cool. But Mom also didn’t want any wimps in the family. She wouldn’t stand for it. Nor could she tolerate it when her kids acted indifferent or wishy-washy.

  On the other side of the spectrum, I had to learn restraint. Once I became a good wrestler, I couldn’t fight with anyone just because I felt like it. It wasn’t the right thing to do if they didn’t have the training I did. But that wasn’t a problem as far as the teasing went. Once I handled myself with that particular kid, I was set. Word travels fast in school and after that day everybody was cool with me. Dancer or not, no one called me names again. I could have danced in the middle of the cafeteria and not heard a single word about it.

  That rite of passage was a golden ticket to the future. I learned that if you’re going to be a dancer, or an actor, you’re going to get teased. That’s just how it is. The lesson is just to let those idiots say what they want and ignore them the best you can. Stand up to the ones you can’t ignore. And, as I truly am today, be grateful for the kids who were mean—they toughened me up for some of the harsh realities I’d encounter later in showbiz.

  All in all, as I look back on the preparation for life that I was given growing up in my family and in Chula Vista, I’m grateful to everyone and for everything that happened. Do I have any regrets? None really. Except, well, I would have spent more time with my grandparents, both sets of them. You have to love family while you have family. If I could go back, just once, I’d memorize the moments and never let them go.

  CHAPTER 2

  CHILD ACTOR

  As if it was yesterday, I still remember the moment when the trajectory of my life suddenly changed course—even if I had no idea at the time. Ten years old, I was backstage, standing in the wings of the massive auditorium at Grossmont High School in El Cajon, California, where I was waiting for the start of a recital to include All That Jazz and many of the other dance studios from across the region. At this big annual competition, the different studios were there to compete for what to me was some cheesy old trophy. But judging by the buzz backstage, as dance teachers and stage moms gave last-minute instructio
ns to nervous dancers, you would have thought we were opening at Carnegie Hall.

  Just before Mom left to take her seat in the auditorium, she double-checked my costume and the full makeup I had to wear for this show. After giving me a thumbs-up, she was starting to leave the backstage area when we both overheard a group of mothers next to us telling their daughters that there were a lot of dance industry talent scouts out in the audience. One of the moms said in a loud whisper, “I heard that Christine Guerrero, a talent agent, is here!”

  Apparently, the San Diego–based agent had shown up to scout possible new talent to add to her roster. She represented children and young models and actors, securing bookings that were mostly small-scale local commercials and locally sponsored print ads. The moms next to us were all excited. Christine Guerrero, another mom explained, was there to see if any of the girls competing in the recital had what it takes.

  This was not the first time that I had overheard dance parents telling their children that they had to start auditioning for jobs like dance shows—and if they were lucky, they might break into commercials and print modeling, and then maybe book something really big and earn a lot of money. And I had also noticed many a starry-eyed dancer who couldn’t help tugging on a mom’s sleeve, begging to be on TV or in the movies. Yet the concept was foreign to me.

  Did I have dreams of the future at that time? Well, between us . . . yep, I did. But not as a child actor; not that young. My dream was to be a professional wrestler. I loved Hulk Hogan and the WWF, Roddy “Rowdy” Piper, Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, Tito Santana. The appeal was about what they did and their larger-than-life personas—not about being on TV.