12. What's That All About
It's the LOVE essay!
Macho Man—a professional wrestling heavyweight, a pop culture icon, beloved by millions. But who did he love? “What’s That All About,” the 12th track on Randy Savage’s debut rap album, addresses his special baby girl. He can’t breathe without her. She completes him. She brings out another side of him. She always has his back.
None of the devotions in this track are at all profound or original, but I’m going to cut Macho some slack. Love has ripped the poetry from far better lyricists. Turned more than a few wordsmiths into stuttering buffoons.
Probably my best chance as a writer to say something impactful about love was my wedding, and I don’t remember my wedding vows. So, I looked them up just now, as we can in this age. I thought I’d have to dust off an old laptop, but no, I just plugged the word “vows” into my Gmail, and there they were. They’re not bad. They sound like me. But there’s nothing particularly original in there, and there are a lot of clichés.
Think about this for a second—who could love the Macho Man Randy Savage? How could one love the Macho Man Randy Savage? It must have been tough for him. We all have characters, and we all wear masks, but yours probably aren’t available for purchase on Pay Per View or hanging up in a plastic box at your local Wal-Mart. Imagine, and I’m being serious about this, being intimate with the Macho Man Randy Savage. He’s so larger-than-life, by the time you’ve gotten enough distance to consider him at the same size you would a regular person, you’re miles away.
I had a charmed childhood and adolescence, but the one piece that wasn’t in place for me for a long time was love. Looking back, it’s easy to diagnose. I was and still am the kind of extrovert who powers his life on the people close to me, but I’m useless among strangers. I’m shy. I’m afraid. I wanted romantic love so, so bad—the kind of want that people can see on you, like one too many spaghetti sauce stains on a white shirt. It makes people nervous.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how I might help my kid if he ever comes to me with a similar problem. I’m tempted to say something empathetic like, “Hey, buddy, this is hard for everyone.” But is it? I’m not sure I believe that now, and I certainly wouldn’t have believed it as a teenager. I mean, Randy had at least some success with love, and have you SEEN his neck?
I worry that the real advice, the only advice that’s ever worked for me, is simply to care less. It’s true that once I relaxed some of the rules that I was imposing on myself, dating got a lot easier. It’s true that the woman I ended up marrying was one that I hadn’t spent months pedestalizing before we got together. It’s also true that my problems and my solutions aren’t going to be my kid’s, and telling someone to care less who really should be caring more could be disastrous. Case in point, “Be A Man,” Macho Man Randy Savage’s debut rap CD.
And if I’m honest about it, the advice my father gave me back in day was basically a version of “Care less—it’ll happen when it happens.” He was right, but at the time, it didn’t feel very helpful. I obviously wasn’t there, but all reports indicate my father was “cool,” at least as a teenager. He played the guitar. He had a moustache in his senior class photo. I think I sensed his coolness. We, despite our near-identical heights, shoe sizes, snaggle tooths, etc., were not the same.
I’m sure that true facts probably say that far more children follow in their parents’ footsteps, but I have a theory about child rebellion. Both my parents were MBAs. I got an MFA. In that MFA, two of my creative writing professors had a daughter together. What became of her? Mathematics PhD. Many such examples. I joke with close friends who live in town that their daughter will be playing Pinehurst No. 2 with me while my son is cosplaying Miyazaki characters at Dragon Con with them. More and more these days, the pendulum swings.
If the theory holds, maybe my kid won’t need that talk. Maybe he’ll know, “What that’s all about.” Maybe I’ll show him this album someday. He’ll listen, and then he’ll say, “Hey, that’s pretty good,” and never think about it again.
2.5 out of 5 out of 10 courses at the Pinehurst Resort, founded 1895.