A Cult of Two Personalities

For those of you who don't know, I'm a wrestling fan. I'm actually going to WrestleMania this year, since it's in Miami and I have a friend getting married that same weekend. Well, I was going to WrestleMania anyway: I bought my ticket before I was invited to the wedding. At any rate, I'm going.



My Twitter handle is a shout-out to Randy Orton, but my favorite wrestler at the moment is CM Punk. He says he's the best in the world, and I agree with that sentiment. He can talk as well as anyone, and he can wrestle as well as anyone. He's that dude. To top it all off, he's straight edge like I am. Doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't do any other type of drugs.

(He also abhors domestic violence like I do, as his Twitter issue with Chris Brown showed. Nevermind the fact that he hasn't called out Stone Cold Steve Austin on this yet.)

Punk will defend the WWE championship against Chris Jericho, who non-wrestling fans may know from Dancing With The Stars or the I Love The 80s shows. Monday night during Raw, Jericho cut a promo on Punk that cut a little close to home - for Punk in a storyline sense and for me in an actual sense. The last part of the previous sentence is why this note will never make it to Facebook.

The story - which Punk is following along with on his Twitter page - that Jericho proposed is that Punk is straight edge because his father is/was an alcoholic and Punk didn't want to risk the same thing happening to him. While my rationale isn't exactly the same, it is similar.

When I was growing up, my dad and I weren't really close at all. I just always gravitated toward my mom. Dad was the authoritarian parent, the "mean" one. Dad also drank - a lot. Now, whether he was an alcoholic is a matter of perspective. Offering mine would seem to be unfair. I will say that his drinking turned me off to alcohol (and I guess other drugs) before I ever got the chance to be turned on by them.

I don't think I ever thought I'd become an alcoholic - well, because I was too young - but I just knew I didn't like alcohol. I saw it as part of the reason my dad and I weren't as close as my mom and I were (my mom didn't drink) and why he just all around wasn't as nice as a person. So alcohol equaled bad to me. In many ways, it still does.

(As long as I've mentioned my mom, I have to mention the irony of the timing re: this entry. My mom and I got really close largely because she used to let me stay up late to watch NCAA tournament games when I was little.)

As many people know, I refused to date women who drank. Since just about every woman I know drinks - I know maybe two that don't...shoot, even my mom drinks now - that pretty much was a dealbreaker on its own. I just didn't (well, don't) want it in my life at all. What other people do is their business, but I don't have to deal with it. In a related note, this is part of why my giving up dating is/was/has been easier than many people expect.

In a little bit of further disclosure, I found out six years ago that my grandfather was someone other than the man I'd always thought he was. My aunt told me about him (she grew up with him, but my dad didn't). The only bad thing she said about him was that he drank too much. She then said my dad obviously took that up from him. That revelation closed up any possibility - however small - that I would ever drink. So I guess that part of my life mirrors Jericho's reasoning for Punk being straight edge.

So, to recap...we have my current favorite wrestler who lives a lifestyle similar to mine wrestling at the biggest event of the year and part of the storyline is something I can directly relate to. I obviously know the wrestling part is scripted, but it still hit close to home. I'm suspending my disbelief when I say this: I wanted Punk to beat Jericho anyway, but now I really want Punk to beat him.