Have a Nice Day (6 page)

“Have you ever had sex before?” she purred.

“No,” I quickly gulped, “have you?”

She smiled as she sexily replied, “Lots of times.” Her questioning wasn’t over yet. “How about oral sex-has a woman ever done that to you?”

She was smiling seductively as I squirmed on Sue’s bed. I’d heard my friends talk about it, and I’d seen Kay Parker perform it, and from all indications, I felt it was something that I wanted to be a part of. “No,” I replied, “how about you, have you ever done it to a man?”

“Oh yeah,” came her sex kitten answer.

I pressed further, sensing what she was interested in. Yeah, I could smell what this chick was cooking. “Do you like it?” I had the nerve to say, with my right eye squinted like the Clint Eastwood poster I had hanging on my dormitory wall.

“Love it,” she simply said, as she snuggled up next to me, with a hand on my thigh and her blouse dropping down at the neck so that I was afforded a view of what looked to be paradise. Her next words were ones that I’d thought I’d never hear-“Can I kiss you?”

Man, this was too good to be true. I really felt that this could be my one way ticket out of the “V-Club” which, along with Chris Walker and John Ambria, I’d been a card-carrying member of for all my life. No doubt about it, this was the moment of truth. I leaned in and proceeded to give her the worst kiss in the history of Cortland, maybe even in all of the seven valley region. It was a kiss all right, but a kiss with no parted lips, no probing tongue-not even any real pressure behind it. Foreign soccer players kissed each other with more passion after scoring a goal. I’d blown it-underneath all the amusing anecdotes and leftover summer tan and (at that time) perfect smile, I was really just a dork, and she’d seen right through me. In a matter of moments, she too was gone, gone, all gone.

Actually, Amy would go on to be responsible for some of my finest passionate moments-it’s too bad that she wasn’t present while they were happening.

Kathy was different, though. I didn’t judge her by the stretching in my slacks, but rather how much fun I had talking to her. Her eyes would light up, and she would literally beam when I talked to her. It didn’t matter to me that she was my friend Kevin’s former girlfriend, and that he’d dropped her like a bad habit-I would be there to pick her up. She was too good for Kevin anyway. I could talk to her for hours, and I did so on that fateful evening. It also didn’t matter that she was slightly intoxicated and that the intoxication made walking quite difficult for her. I was there for that too. “Lean on me,” I told her, “when you’re not strong, I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on. Just call on me, Kathy, and I’ll lend a hand.” Well, maybe those weren’t my words exactly, but I’m sure they were pretty damn romantic.

The downtown area in Cortland was at the bottom of a hill that led to the campus. Kathy’s dorm was directly at the top of the hill, and I accompanied her on the walk home, while flurries of snow fell softly. Without warning, her cold little hand was in mine, and despite the winter chill, I started to sweat, because, believe it or not, I’d never been that far before. But Kathy’s presence calmed me down, because, after all, this wasn’t the same girl I was clumsily going to grope at the end of our stroll-she was my Kathy, dammit, and she was all I’d ever wanted in a girl.

When we got to her dorm, we talked for a few more minutes. I wasn’t about to weasel my way into her room, as I was confident that there would be plenty of time for that type of thing in our future. I thought of my Amy failure, and decided to show romantic fortitude for once. “Can I kiss you goodnight, Kathy?” I politely asked the Irish beauty with the glowing smile. Man, she looked incredible, even in a slightly drunken haze. She didn’t answer me verbally, but instead responded by reaching up and pulling my head down to her softly. I was ecstatic to be the recipient of a genuinely tender kiss that included neither parted lips nor probing tongue, but consisted of just the right amount of lip-to-lip pressure. I didn’t have a lot of experience to draw from, but it seemed to me like a perfect kiss.

Up to that point, it was certainly the most romantic moment in my life, and even now rates up in the top ten. I looked into her eyes, and they were smiling, as I gently rubbed her chilled cheek with my thumbs. “Good night, Kathy,” I said softly. “I had a great time with you.”

She responded with the words that buried my heart, but launched my career, “Good night … Frank.”

My whole life felt like a record needle being scratched across an album as I struggled to gain my bearings. Frank? There had to be an explanation. Maybe she was thinking of my middle name, Francis, and just figured she’d call me Frank for short. Yeah, that was logical. Yeah, my ass it was logical. Reality had bit me, and it was holding on hard, and reality was that this girl I thought so highly of didn’t know my name. My mind and heart were hurting bad as I bounded home, which was another half-mile away. I looked at my shadow on the wall of the Fine Arts Building, and I could see that my hair was getting long. After a lifetime of short hair, including unstylish ridiculed crew cuts, and a Mohawk that nearly got me thrown out of my house, I wanted to have long hair. Hair that would bounce when I dove off a top rope or cage-hair like the Superfly.

Like Superfly, I too was going to fly tonight. Physical pain always somehow seemed to relieve mental pain for me, and I was in need of some relief. And how did I spell relief? S-U-P-E-R-F-L-Y. I had a ritual that was a big hit with a few friends. They would fill the room with clouds of baby powder (our version of dry ice) to the opening chords of “Diary of a Workingman” by Blackfoot. By the time the tempo picked up, I would be pumped for my move, and the dive off my bed would take place just as Ricky Medlocke hit the high-pitched scream in the song. I felt like this ritual would make me forget about the whole Kathy incident, even if just for a little while.

I walked into the room, and Steve McKiernan was already there. “How’s it going, Mitch,” he cheerily said. He always called me by the wrong name on purpose, in honor of a guy named Bruce Schenkel, who never could get my name straight. I don’t get it-is Mick really that tough to remember? Anyway, I didn’t like getting into details, and I simply told Steve to get the baby powder and the Blackfoot album ready because I was ready to take flight. After the dive, which knocked the wind out of me, hurt my ribs, and drew praise from a couple of drunks who were hanging out in Bill and Dingle’s room, I was ready to talk.

I relayed the tragic story to Steve, who didn’t really know what it was like to be a flop with chicks. Steve was king of the bar room rap, and once he talked a girl into coming to his room, the deal was sealed. He had a surefire method for action known as a … guitar. He kept the damn thing in such an obvious place that girls would always ask about it, and once he started strumming, it wouldn’t be long before they started humming. Whenever I heard the guitar, I knew to look elsewhere for my beauty sleep.

“What are you going to do about it, Mitch?” he asked, without any real feel for the pain I was going through. I decided to handle this problem the way I handled the all-important events in my life. “Get the camera, Steve, let’s document this thing.” I had been given a Cannon AEl for Christmas a year earlier, and I had been wearing it out ever since. In much the same way I would react when my ear was torn off in Germany, I wanted visual proof of the important events of my life.

So there I was, looking forlorn in my red flannel shirt that I’d had since eighth grade. The shirt had been huge on me back then, and I remember vividly pulling a feather out of it and blowing it in the air during social studies class. While the rest of the thirteen-year-olds tried to address the Boche case, I was doing a heck of job keeping that feather in the air. Finally, the feather got away from me, and as I reached for one last blow, I fell out of my chair and tumbled to the cold, hard concrete as my classmates laughed at me. They had been watching my act for the past several blows.

The red flannel was also my shirt of choice during my infamous barbed wire match with Eddie Gilbert in 1991. It was also the reason that one girl had dropped her crush on me earlier in the year. “He’s nice,” she’d told Lisa Cerone, a fellow Ward Melville graduate, “but doesn’t he ever change that shirt?” The answer was, “Not often.” It wasn’t just my shirt, it was my jacket, my security blanket, and my friend. I finally had to stop wearing it in 1996, when I brought it out of storage for an ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) barbed match, because I had finally outgrown it. That shirt had seen me through good times and bad-it had been in MSG to see Snuka go off the top of the cage, and it had been on hand to see me get my feelings crushed. There will never be another shirt like it.

“Steve, I have an idea-let’s make a story.”

Steve seemed perplexed. “About what, ya weirdo,” he wanted to know.

“About tonight,” I answered. The dive had done me good, and I didn’t want to dwell on my problems, I wanted to capitalize on them. “It will be great, Steve, we’ll take pictures of my heartbreak, suicide attempt, rescue, and rehabilitation. What do you think?”

“I think you’re a weirdo,” Steve answered back.

Shot one was simple-the forlorn Foley walking into the room. The caption read, “Mick walks into his room after Kathy called him c Frank. It is clearly the worst moment of his young life.”

Shot two shows me attempting to jump out the window, with the caption, “Steve McKiernan, Mick’s roommate and close friend, tries to console him, but it is to no avail, and Mick makes an attempt to jump out the window.”

Shot three reads, “Foley disappears into the brisk January air, leaving McKiernan speechless and holding on to one of the big guy’s boots.”

Shot four is fairly self-explanatory, with a caption reading, “A battered Foley lies at the bottom of the hill-a mere shell of his former self. To add to his problems, it’s cold out, and he’s only wearing one boot.”

Shot five shows me being carried into the room. With nothing else to use, we smeared grape jelly on my face for the “busted wide open effect.” The caption reads, “McKiernan enlists the aid of ‘Battling’ Bill Esterly, who, with biceps bulging, carries Mick up the stairs.”

The final shot is completely ridiculous as I lie in a comatose state, with Steve holding my hand, and a shirtless Esterly giving me Last Rites with Rosary beads in hand. Around me hang my posters-Jimmy Snuka, Candy Loving (the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Playboy Playmate), and the American flag. The caption is equally ridiculous, reading, “Not knowing whether he will ever regain consciousness, his friends gather close in a touching display of brotherhood and faith.”

The pictures were an immediate hit among my tiny circle of friends. “Photos were good, but this story needs to be put on film.” I thought, and we began to put The Legend of Frank Foley onto eight millimeter film. I guess I’m dating myself when I talk about eight-millimeter film, but videocassette recorders were fairly new in 1983, and video cameras were practically nonexistent. So we borrowed an eight-millimeter projector, and in January 1984, decided to record the events of December 1983 for posterity.

The ancient camera required a huge spotlight for lighting, and the glow attracted an overflow crowd to the doorway of room 317 to see what was going on. They were treated to a cloud of baby powder, a high-pitched Ricky Medlocke scream, and a now-220-pound weirdo in an old red flannel, diving off his bed onto a teddy bear. Unbeknownst to the spectators, I had put a mouthful of red food coloring into my mouth as I climbed up the bed, and upon impact, “Wiffpt,” I spit the whole thing out. Again my wind was knocked out, but even in my pain I heard a female voice cry out, “Ooh, that’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.” I vividly remember thinking, “I’ve got to get some more of that response.”

Unfortunately, the filming was a flop, as the ancient camera broke, and I was left with a room of splattered red to clean up, a spool of useless eight-millimeter film, and a desire to disgust as many people as I could. “Hey, if they won’t love me, maybe they’ll at least hate me,” was the way I felt about it. Man, that sounds kind of serial killerish, doesn’t it? As the months rolled by I couldn’t get my story out of my mind. I never did recapture the magic of that snowy night with Kathy, but I at least got her to semi-admit a “kind of” attraction a year later. To this day, I’m not sure if she realizes what a big influence she had on my career. Also, I wonder if she has the special “Kevin” cover of TV Guide hanging on her wall.

I got home from school that summer and immediately made The Legend of Frank Foley a priority. In a few short days, we rented a video camera and proceeded to put together thirty minutes of horrible acting, bad jokes, and even worse wrestling. Many people are familiar with the second movie we made, called The Loved One, but it is a little-known fact that Dude Love actually made his first appearance in this fiasco. I’ll bet the Internet fans would clamor for a look at this piece of history, where the Dude actually does a three-minute posing demonstration while wearing a tinfoil-covered weightlifting belt with “WWF” written on the front. Believe it or not, at 220 the Dude didn’t look all that bad.

Dude Love was my fantasy creation of what a man was supposed to be. I never envisioned a freak like Mankind or a weirdo like Cactus Jack to be in the cards for me. No way. As the Dude, I was going to be all the things that Mick Foley never was-rich, successful, and the recipient of more ass than a toilet seat.

The June 1984 Dude was quite a bit different from the Dude who finally entered the World Wrestling Federation in 1997. He wasn’t a shucker and jiver-he was more of a laid-back cat. Actually, his interviews were pretty impressive, as he talked about his spinning sidewinder suplex and hawked his “Love Potion” protein drink. I actually felt like a different guy when I put on the Dude’s ensemble of long brown wig, orange headband, mirrored shades, and pajama top. For some reason, to me, nothing said “cool” like a pajama top. Many nights, I would actually go out with my friends while dressed as the Dude. The results were impressive as the girls actually flocked to the cool antics of the Dude. I was also much more prone to cutting a rug when I was parading as the champ, simply because, as the Dude, I knew the secret of being a good dancer-do nothing on the floor. I would get out there and barely move a muscle, except for an occasional nod of the head or a snap of the fingers, and I actually looked cool doing it. Unfortunately, underneath it all, I was still the same Mick Foley who’d laid that pitiful lip lock on Amy, and when it came to closing the deal, I was far from shagadelic.