THAT’S A STEEL CHAIR!
- Jan 8, 2021
- 2 min read
by Rick White
The first time Dad catches me trying on a pair of Mum’s tights he doesn’t quite know how to react. I am maybe eight or nine years old, my body still boyish and delicate—an unfeathered bird, ribs like leaf veins beneath pink, translucent skin. I am naked from the waist up, yet thankfully still wearing my white cotton briefs (on the outside of the tights).
At first, Dad’s face is utterly blank and time, for a brief second, stands still. It is wonderful. Just when I think his brain has short-circuited, he manages to regain control of his faculties and belts me round the ear with an open palm.
A million tiny particles of light rush past my eyes, like when Han Solo makes the jump to light speed in the Millennium Falcon, travelling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy. My ears ring with a sound I’ve never experienced before. Its effect is dissociative—thrillingly so—severing my mind from my pale, prone body and transporting it to a place that is higher than pain. It’s actually the exact sound of a tuning fork hitting the note of A at 440 Hz (the standard concert pitch for most orchestras) but I won’t make that connection until much later in life whilst listening to Vivaldi’s violin concerto in A minor, crudely shackled to a doorframe as a man named Sebastian serves me a bump of Peruvian flake off the back of his hand, before proceeding to flog my Victoria’s Secret-clad arse with a riding crop, as once again I am transported to that magical place where I am nowhere and nothing and everything all at once, travelling through hyperspace.
But I’m not quite there yet. Today I’m only playing wrestling and I’m not going to let Dad stop me. In this moment I am lying, dazed on the canvas as Good ol’ JR says, “Oh my God! He just hit him with a steel chair! That’s steel!!”
The referee’s been knocked unconscious too so there’s no one to help me, except the crowd, who cheer for me to get up off the mat. And I will. I will get up, because right now I am “Macho Man” Randy Savage. I’m Brett “The Hitman” Heart, old man. I’m the motherfucking Legion of Doom.
Rick White lives and writes in Manchester, UK. His work can be found in X-Ray Lit Mag, Milk Candy Review and Storgy, among others.
