EPISODE 3 BROADWAY

My first day of school I walked in nervously, ready to take it all in.

There were a bunch of “theatre folk”—in touch with their feelings, open to emoting at any second, should the flicker of a sensation hit their being kinda folk—lining the hallways.

Having lived a quiet life of repression for the past few years, this was going to be quite the adjustment. On the flip side, no one was judgey and I liked that. It allowed me to try out this “being myself” thing from time to time.

The first year of the course was all about stripping back the layers and masks we wear in public or for other people. Some exercises were more peculiar than others; like watching chocolate melt and then becoming chocolate, which resulted in the class writhing on the floor and groaning like they were in some sort of weird chocolate orgy. Instructions like “drop into your anus” didn’t help make this feel any less weird.

But then there were less peculiar classes. During one Meisner exercise where the objective was to simply look across from your partner and repeat what they say while they make observations about you, the professor admonished me for smiling too much.

“That’s just how I am; I’m a smiler,” I retorted.

“No, you’re not” came the response from the rather determined teacher.

“But I am, really, just smiley; I’m always like this,” I insisted.

“It’s a learned habit. That’s not who you are,” he exposed me.

How the fuck did he know?!

I had been trying to mask how miserable I had been ever since I had given up on wrestling.

How could he so clearly see that I had plastered this fake yet authentic enough smile to my face for the past three years in the hopes that no one would know I was dying on the inside?

I was already getting more out of this course than I could have possibly anticipated, including being accepted to Columbia College for the semester abroad the following year. My master plan had worked and everything was going perfectly.

And when I thought it couldn’t get more perfect, I was told that for our first-year play we were going to be doing an adaptation of my all-time favorite book, Animal Farm by George Orwell.

I ran a victory lap of the classroom before the teacher and now director, Susie, continued, “There won’t be any auditions. You’ll do that for your third-year play. I’m just going to cast this one.”

Oh, great, I thought, aware that I wasn’t one of her favorites.

The next day, she posted the cast list on the wall, sending everyone clamoring to see their position, some yelping with delight, some rolling their eyes.

When the mob had dissipated, I approached the list with bated breath and scrolled down to see my name:

REBECCA QUIN—COW NUMBER 2.

Not even Cow number 1. Cow number 2. “Number 2” being a euphemism for shit. I was cow shit.

I’m still salty about it.

Nevertheless, I put in an arduous amount of work on the background of this cow shit. I examined her likes, dislikes, family history, even naming her shitty ass.

And now that things had taken a U-turn from perfect to shit, ol’ Susie kept on driving us down to Dumpsville. She announced that this particular play would in fact take place on an actual farm. Moreover, it was up to us to bring our friends and family in as the audience.

I told no one. I invited no one.

For the more-than-one-hour duration of the play, I knelt on the ground, avoiding actual cow shit and waiting to deliver my one big line.

“My udder is about to burst!”

Then it was back to staring at the ground and pretending to chew the cud.

Thoughts that I was once a regular main eventer in Japan or even that I gave up my well-paying job that brought me around the world swirled around my head.

We all have to pay our dues in any line of work. This was no different.

And even with this dues paying, I felt more on track than I had in four years if not longer. I was working towards something I wanted to be great at.

When summer hit and I had scraped the smell of goat piss from my pores, I set sail on my next adventure, bound for New York City on what was called a J-1 visa.

I still had cheap airfare, and a friend or two in the airline.

I booked myself into a grimy hostel beside Central Park that cost me thirty-five dollars per night for three nights. I had $2K in my bank account.

This should do me the summer, I thought. Heck, I might not even need a job!

After spending nearly six hundred dollars the first day on essentials like a phone and I’m not even sure what else, a slice of pizza, maybe, I realized I had underestimated how hard it would be to find accommodations or how expensive New York was. If I wanted out of this hostel, or to eat, I’d need a job yesterday.

I hounded every Irish bar in town, figuring they’d most likely have a soft spot for me.

A friend of mine from the airline had mentioned an Irish bar called Shades of Green down on 14th Street. She said they always looked after Irish people.

Résumé in hand, eyes wide with wonder, and as much pep in my voice as a semipro cheerleading squad, I asked, “Do you have any jobs going?”

“We don’t at the moment, no. But here, where are you from?” the bartender asked with a heavy Kerry brogue, clearly detecting my accent.

It’s a thing Irish people do, possibly more than any other nationality. When we hear an Irish twang anywhere else in the world, we want to know all about that person and if we have any relatives or friends in common. We usually do. There may be over 4 million of us, but we still feel like a tribe. And if one of us is lost in the wild, we try to take care of them.

“Dublin. I’m over for the summer on a J-1 and I gotta say, I underestimated how tough this city would be.”

“Ah, ’tis, ’tis. Sure look it; won’t you sit down here and have a drink now, won’t you?”

“I will,” I said, beginning to worry if I was going to have to pack up and go home within a week.

“Where are you staying?”

“Up at Central Park in a hostel.”

“Ah, Jaysus. And how much are you paying up there?”

“Thirty-five dollars a night.”

“Well now, we have a room upstairs. It’s nothing fancy, but you could stay here while you search. I’ll charge you five hundred dollars for the month. How does that sound?”

It sounded good. And much cheaper than anything I had looked at on Craigslist.

When he said it was nothing much, he really meant it was nothing much.

The room had a sink, a twin bed, and barely enough room to put a suitcase.

There was a communal shower and toilet down the hall.

The room next to mine housed a couple of drug addicts who had lived there for years under rent control and would return home at 7:00 am from god knows where and yell at each other for no less than an hour every morning. That was my wake-up call each day.

Although they were very nice to me, I’d never dare leave my door unlocked.

Running low on funds and in the midst of a mild panic attack, I got a call one afternoon from a bar called Hibernia up on 50th Street.

“Would you be willing to come in for a trial?” asked the manager.

The place had been dead when I went in there, so apprehensively I said, “Sure, when would you like me to come in?”

“Tonight? Around five?”

That’s in two hours!

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there!”

At five o’clock I rocked up, and much to my shock, the place was happening. The regulars were welcoming; the staff was awesome. The tips were flowing.

The place was like Cheers—the Boston basement bar of the iconic eighties sitcom—in that the same people were there every day and the staff made a conscious effort to get to know them.

I was their first experiment in hiring a waitress. I wasn’t the best, but I could banter, so the customers liked me, tipped me, and it meant I kept my job.

One such customer who often came in for the chats went by the name of Ryan Callahan.

“Hey, what did you do before you did this?” he asked inquisitively.

“A lot of things, flight attendant, pro wrestler, perso—”

“Wait, you’re not Rebecca Knox, are you?” he interrupted.

Taken aback, I thought no one knew who I was, nor would anyone remember me.

“Eh, yeah, that’s me.”

“Everyone wondered what happened to you!”

I don’t think he was actually speaking about “everyone.” Ryan was a dedicated wrestling fan, knowing the ins and outs of the whole business, including the indies. He would go on to become the lead writer of Raw and SmackDown less than a decade later.

Even when I had moved on from wrestling during those years, it would find little ways to pop up and say hi. And I would have to nod politely, give it a quick wave, put my head down, and keep moving as fast as I could.

Which, in a way, was a metaphor for living in NYC.

I was too cheap to get taxis home and too scared to take a subway after midnight, so I strolled the streets of Manhattan every night after my shift ended.

Contrasted to the hustle and bustle of the daytime, there was something beautiful about that late-night, hour-long walk. It was just me and the city that had been so overpopulated hours ago, now empty. The buildings were all shut down for the night, the bright lights still on. The bags of garbage on the street and smell of spilled beer and piss interacting at each corner and alley were somehow charming rather than repulsive. Realizing that I had come here with near nothing and had somehow made it through, built relationships, and was making enough money to survive was a reminder that sometimes you have to follow wherever that gut feeling leads you.