What do you think about a bloody tampon being used as a weapon in wrestling match?
Well… You see…
*Wiggles in his seat a bit.*
I...um…
*Sits up straight with resolute dignity.*
Okay. F*** it. Let’s get into it, shall we?
*Places left pointer-finger on cheek, gently pinching chin with Stone-Cold-pointer-finger and thumb.*
First, though, let me share a quick story about the time I made Tommy Dreamer say, “That was the most disgusting sh** I have ever been a party to!”
This story starts in Fayetteville Middle School. When wrestling had just become something that was no longer an interest that got me ridiculed. Thanks to the Monday Night Wars, wrestling had crossed over into the mainstream and as a natural contrarian I had to deal with the fact that all these d***s - that used to make fun of the fact that I had “WCW: Where The Big Boys Play” written in white-out on my black school binder - were now telling each other to “suck it” in the halls, between classes, in their nWo Shirts.
Damn it, wrestling was my thing! Now, the only thing I had over these f***s was love of Punk and Metal music and the fact that I read (without buying) wrestling magazines and knew more than those “casual fans” did.
I share all that to explain that I was the only Team ECW kid in FMS. E-C-Dub was mine and only mine!
So, many years later, when I was booked to wrestle Tommy Dreamer and New Jack in a tag match, in Wilmington, North Carolina, it was an *read in Joey Styles's voice* extreeemely big f’n’ deal to that flickering fanboy inside of me.
***Cinematic Jump Cut To Post Match***
“You really need to get stitched up!” Said many concerned, reasonable voices in the dressing room after the match.
I smile, my shy smile and reply, “I’ll just rub some dirt in it. I’ll be fine.”
I look like Victor Pascow from Pet Sematary and Cactus Jack in Japan had a bastard blood-baby.
I know: I wrestled New Jack and came back from the match with people thinking that I need to go to the hospital or I might die...big surprise!
The big surprise is: it wasn’t New Jack that had me pouring unplanned puddles of people-juice on the lucky-for-them black canvas of Modern Vintage Wrestling. It was the “Innovator Of Violence” Tommy Dreamer.
Kendo stick? You ask.
Nah, bruh, nah. I reply.
Chair shot? You might guess.
Nope. I say.
DDT on the floor? You throw out there.
Not even warm. I say.
We give up. You say.
He hit me with the…
*Looks to the right, pauses, looks to the left, pauses, looks you dead in the eyes with a down-turned head.*
...Dusty. Elbow.
You look at me like you walked into your kitchen to find me solving a Rubix Cube naked while I listen to French language music.
That’s right: a perfectly placed Bionic Elbow is what had my bath water the most disgusting color of brown-pink you’ll ever pukily ponder.
So is Dreamer just that damn Strong Style?
Nah, bruh, nah.
You see, what had happened was…
***
Once upon a time in Mexico, a young man named Jason was standing on an announcer’s table yelling, “¡Chinga tu madre!” - which means “F*** your mother!” when the Mexican man that was on the receiving end of those less-than-kind words promptly and semi-skillfully javelened the PVC pipe staffed American Flag at his gringo (foreign) cabeza (dome piece). I say semi-skillfully because I imagine the Mexican man was aiming to hit the foul-mouthed foreigner flush in the mush, but instead the edge of the plastic staff edged off a good chunk of foreigner flesh and made the died-black braids rain sangre (blood) on the Sonoran sand.
“Estás bien, guey?” (“You okay, bro?) Asked his Mexican tag partner in the dressing room.
“No problemo, amigo.” Replied Jason. “I’ll just rub some dirt in it.” He added in English.
***
A month or so after I signed pictures for Mexican children in - at their demanding request - blood (“No! En sangre, por favor!”), Tommy Dreamer’s elbow hit me square in the flag-spear stab-scab.
Moments later, I was on top of Dreamer raining down elbow strikes of my own, but, also, suddenly and shockingly to everyone involved, I was April showering my opponent in liquid lifestuff.
“Uhchk!” Dreamer dry-heaved. “You’re bleeding...uhchk...in my f***ing eyes...uhchk!” He added as he pushed me off of him with a repulsed fervor.
After the match, I slowly picked myself up to my knees. Looking down at a small pond of neon-crimson that was getting wider by my looking down at it. Without much thought, I scooped some of it up into a hand-bowl and poured it into my mouth.
“I’ve done a few gross things in my time.” I told someone later, before adding, “But pouring mama’s milk warm, chunky with coagulation blood into my mouth will haunt me with icky remembrance for a while.”
I spit the blood straight up into the air and the moment was caught on camera with snowflakes of gore falling all around me as I kneeled with my arms wide and embraced my own suffering like a freed prisoner embracing sunlight.
A short clip of me walking to the back through the stage curtains spread around Facebook and Mad Man Pondo sent me a message and said, “Damn, son! What did that? Btw, don’t steal my damn gimmick!”
Lots of people told me “Great blood!”. I printed out the photo of that blood spitting moment and probably made hundreds of dollars in profit at the merchandise table by signing them to strangers who appreciated the strange artistic beauty of the shot.
No one told me I was killing the business or I had taken it too far. No one.
So, as a person who has bled into other’s face-holes without anyone having a problem with it, do I have a problem with-
-But wait right there, bucko! You might interrupt in a 1950s movie-cop sort of way, before adding, Head blood is different from menstrual blood. Blood from public parts are icky but blood from private parts is extra-icky. And purposely putting private part blood into someone else’s mouth is extra-extra-icky!
I remember being a child and jumping up and down in excited joy when Mick Foley pulled a sweatsock from his sweaty crotch area and shoved it in a deserving bad guy’s mouth. (We can talk about what that says about my childhood development another time. ;-D). I remember being a teen watching bloody wrestling matches and not caring that the wrestlers were bleeding into each other’s open wounds and heavy-breathing, open mouths.
So, if you’ll let me continue this time, do I, as a person who cheered on non-reproduction-related private part bodily fluid and blood swapping throughout much of my upbringing, have a problem with a used tampon being used as a weapon in a hardcore wrestling match?
Like most questions it has (at the very least) two answers.
No, it doesn’t phase me. Freedom of expression is my sh**, y’all. As long as someone else is not hurting someone else without consent, it has my mind-my-own-business-minded consent, whether I personally enjoy it or not.
No, still, but I do feel the need to answer the question with a question:
Why is vagina-source blood notably worsley reacted to than head-sourced blood or penis-sourced sweat?
You can argue all day about the personal, subjective opinion of whether or not it actually is worse, and I’ll be glad to not join you in that, but the numbers-based, objective truth that is actually reacted to as worse is far more interesting to me than the act itself.
I think, maybe, we should all ask ourselves why we as a culture, as adults, refer to the shedding of an old, unused human-egg nest with the childish code name that means “a length of time”. It’s normal to call menstruation a “period”. That might be normal, but it’s also f***ing weird; for grown ass (literally) f***ing people to be using soft placeholder words for natural processes is f***ing silly.
“What’s wrong, Bob?”
“My doll’ter jus’ got ‘er first length of time, Tim. She ain’t ma baby now that she can have some babies.”
“Gross dude! Don’t talk about your daughters length of time! What the f***’s wrong with you?! I like to pretend that women don’t have lengths of time or go boo boo in the potty, it helps fuel the secret fantasies that I later feel ashamed about after I’m done having a talk with my little buddy, Bob. It’s immature to speak of such things, ya dillhole!”
Sound silly?
It would be like if we referred to toilets as “restrooms”. Wait. Never mind. I’ll go take a nap in the restroom, now .
So, yeah, it makes total sense that people are more sensitive to seeing a used-tampon enter a woman’s mouth than they are to seeing “normal” things like people getting hit in the brain-container with heavy, hard objects…
….It just kind of doesn’t make total sense that it makes total sense, ya know?
