The Wrestler

I was writing another entry for today when my friend emailed me a trailer for Mickey Rourke's movie, "The Wrester." It threw me for a loop. I started thinking a million different things. I spent too much of my life in "The Oldest Gym in America" with gymroids and steroid users, ne'er do wells, bikers, bouncers, con men, criminals of every type, the mentally challenged, and the legally insane. It was a hoot. I first went in the '70s. At the time, I had hair to the middle of my back, a beard, and wore an earring in my left lobe. I didn't look like the rest of them. But I grew up with very bad people, so the crowd wasn't entirely strange to me, even if I felt so to them. It was the era when Arnold was winning his first body building titles, before people went to gyms, before there were gyms in every neighborhood. When I tell stories about the gym, my friends are fascinated. They all want me to write the novel. So do many of the old gym members. None of them ever will, and as bad as it was, they want to be remembered. I've never been able to find a spine for the tales, however. Maybe, at some point, I will tell the stories and try to find it here. God, I can't even remember it all.

But when Mickey Rourke quit acting to become a boxer, I thought I could box, too. Mickey and I are the same age, and when I saw one of his fights on TV, I thought I would go to Miami where he lived and trained and call him out. I thought that I had an even shot of beating him.

I guess I was emboldened by my friends, many of whom were professional wrestlers. One of them was the highest paid wrestler in America for a few years. You've read about him and his troubles in People magazine and the tabloids. His downfall was good fun for the press. He asked me to help him write a book about his life, but when I started the research, I did something that pissed him off and he didn't call me again for about a year. We weren't working together any more. The last time I was in a fight was a night on the town with him and another wrestler. We went to a big cowboy bar where everyone loved him. . . except three fellows. And of course, I was the one who got punched.

I wander in my haste.

I never fought Mickey, and now that he is on steroids, he is bigger than I am. I think he would win.

I'm looking forward to the movie, but if you haven't seen it, get a copy of a movie Rourke wrote, directed, and starred in called "Homeboy." I remember it as being great. It is about a punch-drunk boxer, a point of view film shot from the inside of that punch drunk head. But it isn't on DVD. You'll have to get the VHS.

This makes little sense. I just got excited by the movie trailer.