Why I can't watch The Wrestler without bawling my eyes out
Reflections on the recent Tyson vs Paul match, The Wrestler (2008), and my dad
Unless you've been living under a rock, you're aware of the recent Tyson vs Paul boxing match. Spoiler alert:
And while I cracked a joke in Notes about Tyson's buttcheeks, here's the truth: the whole thing made me incredibly fucking sad.
It was like seeing my dad, walking around with cirrhosis of the liver and a back brace, after growing up with him as the biggest baddest motherfucker in town.
I'm not exaggerating. No one messed with my dad. In a school yard game of “my dad could beat up your dad” no one could counter my claim. He worked in the mines, and could haul heavy equipment on one shoulder up and down mineshafts, equipment that would normally take 2 or 3 guys together to lift.
He boxed a bit, but was more known for when he fought just for fun, and he earned himself a reputation. He was so feared, one time our car was stolen and the cops just had to spread the word that it was M's car and the thieves returned it to our driveway.
Ali was his hero. One item I kept after my dad passed away was a VHS tape of Rumble in the Jungle, my dad's handwriting on a brittle old label. I almost named one of my sons Cassius so my dad could remember the name (turns out being drunk for 40 years and too many knocks to the head can fuck a guy's memory up.)
And then M got sick. He passed away at 56 years old of liver failure.
Last time I saw him he looked 96, a few weeks before he died.
But when I was a little girl he was my hero.
I don't have a Netflix account but I don't think I could have watched the whole Tyson vs Paul fight anyway—technical difficulties aside. Just watching reels on Instagram of it gets me choked up.
I'm not the only one to cry. Lots of kids recorded their dads crying and posted them for likes. And I'm willing to bet those tears weren't just because watching your hero get old is really sad. I'm sure many of them were reflecting on their own greatest nemesis: time. The kids posting the videos don't understand that yet.
(By the way: I don't blame Tyson for agreeing to the fight. Everyone has bills to pay. Jake Paul, however, is a massive cunt.)
But what I have watched several times and I probably will again soon: The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke.
Even though it makes me cry. Maybe because it makes me cry. The father/daughter relationship hits way too close to home. “I just don't want you to hate me.” That line. I'm crying as I type this.
Whew. Breathe, Lisa.
Yes, my dad was my hero. It's also true that he was an asshole who routinely cheated on my mom, hit her a couple times, was a compulsive gambler, and was just plain not around for major events such as birthdays, holidays, etc. He would take me to the bar with him and let me play on the pool tables as a form of bonding. Instead of normal bedtime stories I got fight recaps, especially if my dad won his bets. But even that was pretty rare (the storytime, I mean—lets not talk about the gambling right now, that's a whole other post.) He really wasn't home a whole hell of a lot—working in the bush only accounted for some of the times I asked where my dad was. He did make it to my highschool grad though, which was nice. As my sister once put it, he was a great dad but not a great father.
And he had a lot of regrets about this fact. Just like Rourke’s character. Just like Mike Tyson.
(For those who have read it, you may have noticed I dedicated The Highwayman Kennedy Thornwick to my dad. A couple characters in the book were massively influenced by him, or his friends. The book, in some parts, was a bit of a grief-write. Just a bit.)
What The Wrestler also shows really well is what we all saw with Tyson the other day, how a man's physical strength is sometimes all he (thinks) he has, and that time of peak strength is so incredibly short, when it goes a man can feel like he's already dead. (Here’s some nice Mike Tyson Existentialism.) And if your livelihood depends on your strength, being unable to work is a fucking blow to a man's sense of self. A fictional tale of an aging wrestler expresses this so, so well. Especially since, as a woman—yes we have our own hangups with aging—it's through fiction we can process what we can't really understand, just like a man can never understand what it's like to give birth, or a person from Germany might read about a person from Ethiopia to understand things better. Fiction is the most pure way to achieve this empathy. As a writer, when I write men, all I can do is absorb stories (especially the ones told to me in real life) and try my best.
A motorcycle fell on my dad's leg and wrecked his knee. I was still young when that happened, 7 or 8 years old, but between that and the fact all his friends were dropping dead from having similar rough lifestyles, I know now that his busted knee was like a physical reflection of the grief and regrets, and was the beginning of the end for him. He was still working, though, until I was 14. He was doing work for a highway project and caught blastomycosis, a fungal infection in his lungs that lives in soil and got churned up and breathed in (an influence in Pallas.) The fungus ate through his lungs, and his spine, and left crater scars on his back. He almost died—in a way he probably wished he did, because after that he wasn't able to work, he had fewer and fewer living friends, he could barely stand.
He couldn’t ride his bike.
He had a lot of pride, and having to live on workers comp crushed his soul.
All his bad habits became worse. He would joke about how the vodka helped his meds kick in faster. In the end, his liver gave up.
He didn't want to tell me about his liver, but I knew, because he was actually sounding drunk. See, when he was healthy, you couldn't tell he was starting his day with incredible quantities of Smirnoff. I've never known anyone else who could drink like that and function. But the liver can only take so much abuse.
I won't spoil The Wrestler for those who haven't seen it. But the abuse of one's body does catch up with us. Time is a bitch.
Watch The Wrestler, forgive Tyson.
Hug your dad, if you can.
Obligatory book links:
The Highwayman Kennedy Thornwick
I love stories of how movies (and books et al) affect people on a personal level -- when there's a spark of recognition there.
I find The Wrestler great because you can feel his body succumbing to gravity.
This got me. I didn't watch the fight, either. Couldn't. My dad wasn't a drinker, but he was like your dad in a lot of ways. I keep putting off writing about him because it's still raw. In March he'll be gone two years. Everything about him was larger than life and most of what he did made my life more difficult. Loved him more than words.