Blog Love Omega Glee: You Don't Want Your Bladder To Explode (5 April 2012)

At a run-down warehouse on the west side of Cleaveland, Jake and North show up at their first evening of wrestling training. There's a half-collapsed ring and about fifty cats roaming around. "Hello!" Jake says, looking for their instructor, retired wrestler Lew "Life of the Party" Zsyrjba, whose gimmick used to be wearing a lampshade to the ring.

"Yeah, what you making such a racket for?" the bentover old man shuffles out of a far corner's shadows, taking a swig out of a bottle in a brown paper bag.

North whispers to Jake, "Dude, I told you we should have gone with the school run by the younger guys!"

"But he's a legend!" Jake whispers, "Those other guys never wrestled outside of Ohio."

"He's a drunk," North hisses.

Lew stumbles towards them, and points at the ring, "Get in, boys. Time for your first lesson."

As North climbs in the ring, he says to Jake, "It smells like cat piss in here and it's freezing too."

Jake just sighs, and slides beneath the ropes into the ring.

Lew has set down his bottle and dragged himself into the ring, "OK, first lesson: How to land on your feet from the top rope."

North raises his hand, "Um, this is our first lesson. Shouldn't we learn how to do a headlock, or take a bump or something?"

"Boys!" Lew shouts, "This one time, I was about your age, and I was wrestling in Malden, Massachusetts, and it was one of my very first shows in this business, and I was lacing up my boots and Jack "Hot Stuff" Pepper, old Jack was in the locker room, and he said, 'You better use the toilet before we wrestle' and 'I said, 'Ah, we got plenty of time. I want to wait until it's closer to when we go on.' and Jack said, 'You better go,' and I ignored him, and started combing my hair, I wanted to look good for the girls, and the promoter, oh, what was his name? He was a mean old son of a blender. Oh, what was his name? . . . Chuck! Chuck Kerouac! That mean old son of a button Chuck Kerouac came back and said you guys are on now, and I said, 'But I'm not ready. I still have to use the toilet.' And he said, 'I don't care what you have to use. You get in that ring or I'll find somebody else.' So I went in the ring, but I really had to piss, and I wasn't concentrating on my wrestling, I was just trying not to piss myself, and Jack put me in a suplex and when we landed my bladder exploded. Boys, let me tell you something, you don't want your bladder to explode! It does not feel good! So I had to go to the hospital and I was almost out of the business, but I came back and I learned my lesson to listen to those veterans, they know what they're talking about, so I want you to listen to me, and when I tell you the first thing we're going to do is learn how to land on our feet from the top rope, then the proper response is for you to jump up on the top rope."

Jake and North look at one another and shrug. Jake climbs up on the top rope in one of the corners. It's hard to stay balanced. With a grace surprising for his age, Lew jumps up on the middle rope and grabs Jake's right arm, tugs, and sends Jake to the mat with a loud thud.

"Ow!" Jake says, lying on the mat, his back spasming in pain.

"That," Lew says, pointing at Jake, "Is not how you want to fall from the top rope. Here is how you want to land."

Lew scoops up an orange cat lying down on the edge of the ring near the apron and sets it up on the top turnbuckle. The cat meows. "OK, Killer, show 'em how it's done," Lew says, then he picks the cat up by its belly and chucks him into the air where he tumbles tail over head.

Jake and North shoot out their hands in horror and almost look away--Jake notices in the midst of the tumble that the cat appears to have a very clean butthole and he wonders why his cats never have buttholes that clean--but somehow the cat lands on his feet, and appears to take a bow before running to Lew, who takes a treat out of his pocket and feeds it to the cat, while petting him. "Good boy!" Lew says.

"OK, your turn," Lew points at North.

North gulps.

When Jake and North leave later that evening, they never knew the human body could experience such pain and still live. They shuffle out bentover to the car, and North says, "Dude, that is one crazy old man. How can he wrestle so well drunk?"

"I don't know, but when he started beating you with the lampshade, I thought we both were going to die. Are you going to come back?"

"Let's see if I can get out of bed tomorrow."

"Ha! I just hope I can get into bed tonight!"

"I'm just glad my bladder didn't explode."

"I think everything else did though. Why did we want to be wrestlers?"

"We're idiots."

"No, we're idiots covered in bruises and cat hair."

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.