THE CLASSIC AMERICAN LOVE STORY

There there, Jerry. It's okay big fella. You'll get over it. No need to talk about it in a forum that makes it completely impersonal. No need to spew the story to all your fans despite the fact that it is none of their business. No need to tell us something that really, we don't need to know. Of course, you have, and you will continue to because, hell, that's what you've been doing for a few years now.

I suppose it is the classic American love story, the meeting of Stacy Carter and Jerry Lawler and the love they shared. Personally, it's a story that made me sick from chapter number one. I suppose the fact that I believe it is not my business totally flies in the face of writing an article about it. But I have to. I have to vent. I can't let another moment go by without screaming out my entirely unwanted opinion on the matter of Stacy and Jerry, sitting in a tree, about to commit a fel-o-ny. I hate it, and I want to get it out there. I'm sorry. I have to do this, I really, honestly have to.

Jerry Lawler and Stacy Carter's love story is one that truly bothers me. It is not as if I want to be bothered, by the way, and I hardly mean to send out the implication that most of what goes on in and around or as it pertains to wrestling bothers me. I like most of what wrestling has brought to me, and continues to bring to me. It's just that talking about what does bother me makes for far more interesting articles. And this 'romance' if you want to call it that, bothers and has always bothered the living crap out of me.

Why? Why? Because it is everything that is wrong with the world! It represents the epitome of a doomed romance and shallowness and arrogance and pedophilia. Well, scratch that last one. I think my days of incredibly offensive accusations are best left behind me. All the same, it's the kind of story that gives me the creeps.

Ever have that Aunt that never seems to be able to deal with her age? Acting as if it was a non-factor, like it's just a number that goes under her name on a voting form. She has a boyfriend half her age, and revels in telling the story of how they got together despite the fact that it embarrasses her relations and disgusts just about everyone. Well Jerry Lawler and Stacy Carter are wrestling's answer to this Aunt.

Jerry Lawler's story about meeting Stacy at a baseball game is, well, appalling. You'd think that the fact she went with her mother would have been a clue that she was a little young for him, but no. He sees the nineteen year old and is 'impressed'. He wants her very much. At this point Lawler is in his late thirties. Now, I don't know about most guys, but there are some men in their late thirties who would consider a nineteen year old to be off-limits. But not the King. God Bless him, at least he's not racist. Whoops. Sorry, that had no place in here. Now, Stacy does not want Lawler back at first. Why would she? He was an old man and she was nineteen. I mean, what kind of sick girl would go for someone Lawler's age? However, as the story goes Lawler gets his dream girl. To quote him: Stacy got money, jewellery, clothes, and cars until she was finally "overwhelmed" and she "officially" became my girlfriend. Okay. That's sweet. The creepy old guy buys the nineteen-year-old girl shit until she feels obligated to do something back to him for it. I can see the movie scripts pouring in.

Of course she gave in. At nineteen, we are still figuring out who we are as people. That's why we get into silly or 'immature' relationships of a romantic nature that don't typically work out. It gives us experience, knowledge, and clues as to who we are. We do stupid things, we learn from them, and we're better people for it. It's the state of development. Some are already very mature by nineteen. I doubt Stacy was one of those people, but even if we are to say, for the sake of argument, that she was, her still developing emotional and mental states could not have been helped by the prospect of an old dirty bastard trying to buy her love. And that is what he did. Lawler, by virtue of these actions, took the easy way out. He went out to smother her in gifts and few people can resist folding under such conditions. That being said, the person who goes out to buy somebody's love needs to understand something. They are not really buying love. They are buying attention. They are buying credit. They are buying information, information that says: "this guy will do whatever I want him to". And people take advantage of that, because we live in a world where it would be so hard not to. Lawler even details himself how long it took Stacy to 'finally say' those words I love you too. Too? That means he said it first, and finally means he said it a lot, for a long time, before she grudgingly said it herself. Considering these things, I don't think Lawler ever did buy her love, but bought what I mentioned before, attention, credit, and information.

It's not just the fact that seeing an old guy with a young hottie is gross that makes me object to these inter-generational relationships, it's that so many things work against such courtships. Who I am at fifteen is hardly who I am at twenty, or at twenty-five, or at thirty, or forty. It is not a given that we can't find someone to grow with us as we make a journey through these birthday milestones, and that we can't accept and continue to love a person as they change and develop their humanity, but for God's sake, if one person has already been developing and has already experienced these feelings and is now forty, it would be hard for them to relate to a person who is twenty years younger. That's not cynical; it's logical! The lessons Stacy was learning were too different than the ones Jerry was learning, too distant. Factor in the generational philosophies that seem to differ, the issues baby boomers might conflict with the MTV generation on, and you have a whole slew of reasons this dreaded romance was never going to work.

I hate shallowness, and yet I feel for Lawler. But nothing could have been more shallow than the way he set out to get with Stacy in the first place. That is basically the worst way to get into a relationship, but he makes it sound like poetry. If some woman doesn't want me, and believe me, that's a lot of women, I don't buy her stuff. That's practically begging. What kind of thirty-something man begs a teenager to have sex with him? It's just damned weird. Not only that, but Lawler then proceeds to showcase this girl everywhere he goes. He does TV in Memphis, so Stacy becomes a part of that. He is in the WWF, so Stacy becomes a WWF 'diva'. Lawler has sex with her, so his website posts nude pictures, or the crowd at Armageddon sees Stacy's dual airbags. Well that's cute. I won't call Lawler unwilling to share, but these factors don't seem to point toward a healthy relationship.

I don't know much about women, but I would think, judging from the dozen are so that I know very well, through friendships, family relation, or dating experience, that few of them would have wanted the life Jerry Lawler brought to Stacy. The showcasing, the bragging, and the way he acted all the time. What women would want to proudly say, while the TV is on, that 'that guy's my husband.'

"What, the fact hick?"

"No, the guy with his face on Sunny's breasts."

Or the guy acting like a twelve-year-old whenever a woman comes out! Or the guy wrestling like a blind hermaphrodite, punching crappily and then doing the worst piledriver ever seen on television. Or the guy saying that Goldust's father doesn't love him because he 'goes around kissing men on TV like some kind of flamin' faggot.' Or the guy who is sort of fat and has a whiny voice. Yeah, him. Ideal husband indeed.

Jerry Lawler was also the person who shone the bright lights of the WWF in the face of his young bride. He exposed her to a world that most men ten to fifteen years her senior can't even handle, but he supposed she could. He put her out there in competition with other more beautiful, physically mature women for the attention of a bunch of armchair romeos who like to chant 'show your tits'. And that is what he never should have done, because this business ain't pretty ladies and germs. If ECW showed us anything, with it's rampant violence and racy content, it was above all that a misogynist sells. There's an inborn hatred of women, from the sexually frustrated male wrestling fan that seems to be dominant. Otherwise the multiple piledrivers through tables and the degrading 'bra and panty' matches wouldn't have ruled. This business does not value women, it only exploits them, showcases them, and then throws them out and releases a unanimous message to anyone who might try to employ them in future. "She's just tits and ass." She doesn't matter. She's worthless, she's a slut. And wrestling does something else that other industries would never get away with. It gets its fans to say the same. As soon as Sable began to fall out of favour with the WWF, the internet stories totally against her began popping up here and there. Same with Chyna. Who do you think is responsible for that? The internet wrestling 'reporters' who have no real impact on the business, or the people of the WWF itself, who know these peons will say whatever 'the fed' wants up to and including licking a camel sack to get on Vince's good side? I'll let you guess.

Look what they did to Sable. They made her a bigger star than 90 percent of the male roster, had her at a level where she was second only to Austin in terms of popularity, and when she decided she would want something for that, that she could play politics like any other top draw, she got shit in her bags, literally! Now, I am assuredly of the school that believes Sable was not that instrumental in the success of the WWF, but to believe that she had nothing to do with the 'rise' of the attitude era is just being short sighted and foolhardy. And she was not a 'dime a dozen' because only Chyna ever got to that level of mainstream popularity as a female in the WWF. Trish, Lita, Terri, B.B., and whoever else they make in that mould may get the hot pops, but not one of them has shown the ability to draw in people from all over the many medias the way Sable did. But when she wanted what she had reason to believe she deserved, she got eaten up. Sure, she got full of her own shit. So did any number of men in the WWF. But something about this testosterone-driven, misogynistic business made it unthinkable, an insult, for a woman to get the same mindset. Sable became more famous than Shawn Michaels ever did in the mainstream, but he can drag the locker room down with his injury-faking, bullshitting, me-first attitude and be accepted. However, if Sable wants some more cash it's on par with holocaust in the crimes against humanity department. It's okay for a guy to do it, but if a woman does it, oh my God, sound the fucking alarm, time to shove shit in people's bags. How dare a woman think she means something in sports-entertainment? Doesn't she know, whoever she might be, that she's only female? That she's just a surgically augmented sidebar in this soap opera for guys? Fuck her! We'll teach her!

It's the nature of the beast, when that beast is professional wrestling, and its most defining physical features are chairshots and bladejobs. This is what Lawler wanted to bring Stacy into? I'm sorry, but if my business had a history of degrading and disposing of women with the fervour of the porno mags and the impartiality of a Salem Witch hunt, that'd be one aspect of my impermanent existence I wouldn't want to share with her. Sure, you don't hide it from her. If you love this girl, you don't tell her that your particular occupational existence is 'no place for a lady' because hell, this ain't the thirteen hundred's anymore and she has a right to know! But Jesus, there's a difference between sharing the business that brings you the most joy with the person that brings you the most joy, and shoving a meek and reluctant young woman through a curtain in Memphis, and the latter is the course Jerry chose to take.

All of this is what Jerry's 'dad' probably knew and why he warned him not to bring the woman into the business. I don't mean to mock anyone, because I feel the world is divided into two groups of people, really, those who love has scorned and those who love is still getting around to scorning. So it's not like I want to laugh at Lawler's current misfortune, and I even respect him for not being the typical grunting Neanderthal that we men most inevitably turn out to be when we're hurting inside, and pretending he's not hurt which most of us would do. What I do want, however, is for Lawler to stop acting like he's a victim and like it came out of nowhere, because the writing was all over the wall, and he either chose not to see it, or was too much of a dumbass not to see it, and either way, it's embarrassing me as a wrestling fan.

               To use my catchphrase, and please don't react to this comment unless you          know   what it means by reading previous articles of mine, I suppose you could say, Jerry Lawler hates blacks.