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 mo
nths 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.
More than anything, The Legend of Frank Foley was about wrestling. After being called Frank by Kathy, who was played by my friend Diane Bentley, I used creative license to drive away, instead of walking, and drove up to my house instead of a dormitory. Waiting for me was an open driveway with two mattresses and some cardboard boxes in the middle, upon which was placed my opponent, Chris P. Lettuce. I think because of Chris P., I’ve always hated punny names in wrestling, like the evil dentist Isaac Yankem, D.D.S., from Decay-tur, Illinois. To add to the drama, Danny Zucker was calling the action, as I suplexed, pile drove, body slammed, and elbow dropped the lifeless doll on the cold concrete driveway.
I set Chris P. down on the mattresses and pulled up the garage door as Danny speculated on what I was doing. “Oh, he’s cleaning house, the Dude’s cleaning house,” my skinny Jewish buddy yelled, as I emerged with a vacuum cleaner. Then I pulled out a ladder, and set it up against the basketball backboard where I had spent so many hours practicing my shot and proving the theory that “white men can’t jump.” With all the grace of an African bull elephant, I navigated the steel ladder, taking only a brief time-out to swig red food coloring out of a vial. Finally, I was there. “Look at Foley, he must be twenty, thirty feet in the air,” yelled Zucker, as I stood perched atop the ten-foot rim. I wonder if that same technique would work if I hired Zuck to announce my sex life-“Look at that penis on Foley, it must be thirteen, fifteen inches in length and just as big in diameter.”
Taking a deep breath, I surveyed the situation, flipped the Snuka “I love you” sign, and took to the sky. A second later, Chris P. was history as I rolled triumphantly off the landing pad. With “blood” running down my chin, I approached the camera and prophetically stated, “Do you know who you’re looking at? You’re looking at fat Mick Foley. You remember that, Vince McMahon, you remember that!” Following the match, “fat Mick Foley” decides his life isn’t worth living and tries to end it all with a plunge out the window. He is nursed back to health by his buddies and reemerges as the cool and talented Dude Love.
Six months went by, and still I was obsessed with being Dude Love. Even though I went to a school where girls had about as much resistance to sex as the Swiss army has to a military invasion, I was still unable to turn on a light switch. I did kiss a pretty senior, but found out later that she was prone to blackouts and didn’t remember it. I was real close to receiving oral sex once when my back went out on me. What the hell?
I was completely consumed with wrestling at this point in my life, and no longer saw everyday things for what they were, but instead saw them in terms of how they could be used in a wrestling match. I was living in a place called the Towers now, which consisted of two bedroom suites that I shared with Steve, John Hennessey, and a guy named Mac who hasn’t crossed my mind in fourteen years.
One night, Mac had a drunk girl in his room, and as I walked in I saw not an easy target for sexual fulfillment, but instead an easy target for an elbow drop off a desk. (No, I didn’t drop it, but it wasn’t for the lack of wanting.) One night I was at a party halfway between the Towers and downtown. I wasn’t a very regular drinker, but when I did, I did it right. I probably drank only twenty times during my few years in Cortland, which has got to be some kind of a record, but when I did-look out. Out of those twenty nights, I probably got sick on fifteen occasions. I was on fire that night, and was actually “catching raps” left and right, when I suddenly bailed out of the house. Twenty minutes later, Bob Spaeth, who was like a hero to John, Steve, and me because of his exciting sexual adventures and even greater verbal embellishments of them, saw me standing on the front lawn, looking up at the roof. I heard, “What are you doing, Mick?” and it shook me out of my spell. I answered, “Oh nothing, Spaethie, I’m just thinking.”
“What are you thinking of?” he asked, with real concern in his usually jolly voice.
“Oh, nothing really,” I lied, which he picked up on immediately.
“Come on, Mick,” he urged me, “you look like you were in a trance out here.”
“Well,” I slowly started, because even though I was drunk, I had enough sense to know the oddness of my thought, “I was just wondering, if I dove off that roof [which had to be a legitimate fifteen feet], do you think that garbage can would break my fall?”
He looked at me in a strange, but appreciative way, and said, “Let me get you another beer.”
I haven’t seen or heard from Bob, who used to refer to sex as “jukes,” in over twelve years, but I heard from my old roommate Steve that Bob wanted me to speak to his class at school. If I did, I would have to serenade him with an old song I wrote, which is sung to the tune of the New York Yankees jingle. Sing along if you like.
The song is meant as a joke, but I had to watch myself when I drank, or else my sensitive side would sneak out. I was entertaining as hell, especially when I ran into Kathy after inhaling six shots of Jack Daniel’s in an hour, while she stood with (believe it or not) Kevin on her arm. (This was about nine months after the original “Frank incident.”) Yeah, they were back together again, at least for a few days, but that didn’t stop me from telling her about The Legend of Frank Foley and Dude Love, and how her heartbreaking name negligence was going to one day make me a star. She was still beautiful, and was still beaming, but in truth, it seemed to be more of a scared beam-as if she thought if she didn’t give me the beam of old that I might come off the bar with a big elbow. I wouldn’t, but hell, even if I did, I’d make sure in true Foley fashion that I absorbed most of the punishment.
I remember feeling funny when I saw them walking up the hill. Not really
sad anymore, but just at a loss to explain human emotions. What the hell did Kevin have that I didn’t? I was the storyteller, I was the jovial drunk, I was the guy she beamed at-even if it was a scared beam-I was the basketball rim diver, wasn’t I? For crying out loud, she had a chance to shag Dude Love, didn’t she, and she let it slip away for what? Kevin?
Later that night, despite my best effort, I let sensitive, drunk Mick Foley rear his wimpy head. I reached for my wallet, and though I tried to fight it, I pulled it out. No, not a condom, even though I had one packed away just in case. Eventually, when I tried to use it, in the summer of 1988 on the Caribbean island of Dominica, the damn thing was so old that it literally crumbled in my fingers. I never knew latex could crumble. What I pulled out were the lyrics to a Kinks song called “The Way Love Used to Be,” and when I showed it to my friend Joanne Adams, I could literally see her respect for me disappear. As far as chicks go, some sensitivity is a good thing, but “The Way Love Used to Be” is probably a little much. In six days from this writing, on my way from Hershey Park in Pennsylvania to Santa’s Village in New Hampshire, I’ll be stopping by Joanne Adams’s house with my wife and kids. I wonder if she’ll be able to look past the missing teeth, missing ear, barbed-wire scars, and seventy-three-pound weight gain and see the love struck loser who showed her the sappy song.
As Christmas of 1984 rolled around, I was well aware that Mick Foley had dropped the ball. It was high time that the Dude picked up the damn thing and ran with it for a while.