On the Metro one recent afternoon on my way back from lunch with The Girlfriend, I locked eyes briefly with a woman I recognized from my past. She was sitting diagonal from me about three rows down the car and she looked just like I remembered her. Her hair was bleached platinum blonde like I remembered and her shoulders were broad, tanned, and sculpted like the last time I saw her. For the life of me, though, I couldn't put a name to the face. I tried, closing my eyes and flipping through my mental rolodex, but it just wasn't coming to me.
She was reading a magazine whose title I couldn't make out when she got up to exit at the station before mine. I fumbled for my phone and punched it to camera-mode with the dexterity of a retired, arthritic catcher. I figured if I got a picture of her and looked at it long enough, the name would come. She collected herself as the train pulled into the station and I think she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, that I was rotating the lens outward and centering her in the frame. The train jerked to a stop, she made her way to the door, and just as I was about to click "Capture," she turned toward me and said in a deadened, gravelly voice, "don't you dare."
That's when it clicked. It was Zap...from American Gladiators. She was a little bronzer and a little older, but there's no way it wasn't her.
Sure, it's been 10 or 12 years since I last saw her, but it's hard to forget that voice she would use to dress down those unfortunate contestants in the post-Breakthrough & Conquer interview with Mike Adamle. She would stand on one side of Adamle with her hands on her hips and her helmet laced in her fingers. The freshly whipped contestant in the horrible teal-colored spandex and the unfortunate 90s perm would be on the other side lamenting the fact that, despite all her best-laid plans, Zap was just too tough. Adamle would then turn to Zap with an "I'm banging Todd Christiansen" chuckle and a wry smile would emerge on her face. He would ask her about her approach and she would say something about staying focused and her opponent not having enough to cut it.
I always loved watching the women compete on American Gladiators way more than the men. At the time, I think I liked it for the same reason I liked watching women's college soccer when I was at Berkeley. There was an increased likelihood of breast-on-breast contact AT ANY MOMENT between two sweaty young women that could just as quickly lead to a grappling catfight as they rolled around on the ground. In retrospect, the women's competition was simply more dynamic.
The men--contestants and Gladiators alike--were all cut from the same cloth. The contestants were always in pretty good shape, they'd all played some sort of sport in high school and college, and they were either ex-military or enthusiasts of some kind of physical outdoor activity. The gladiators were all gigantic, chiseled Adonises. Their only true distinguishing characteristics were skin color and hair length. "Gemini" was black. "Thunder" had long blond hair. "Laser" had short brown hair. That was it.
Every female Gladiator, though, had a gimmick. Sometimes it was in the name. "Lace" was the sexy, sultry one who spoke in a manner, soft and cryptic, that was supposed to be mysterious but really sounded like the product of years in the sex trade under a domineering pimp. "Siren" was the deaf one...I'm not kidding.
Sometimes the gimmick manifested in physical appearance and attitude. "Blaze" was the hyper-aggressive black one who managed to pull off an understated elegance thanks to long braided hair and a silver turtlenecked collar on her costume that was reminiscent of the Masai tribeswomen in National Geographic with the series of silver rings around their necks. I imagine her to be what would result if Pam Grier and Mike Singletary had a daughter. According to The #1 American Gladiators Fan Website, Blaze "holds the Gladiator Arena-record for most all-time disqualifications, many of those disqualifications result[ing] from elbows or tackles at or above head-level." Spec-TACULAR.
Zap was best known for her freakish muscularity. I remember her as the only gladiator whose name was onomatopoeia. Wikipedia remembers her as a former amateur bodybuilder and paralegal who posed for Playboy in 1996 and starred in the pilot episode of JAG.
I was intimidated by Blaze because she seemed like the kind of woman who would stab you in a Costco parking lot for taking the last case of Vitamin Water. I was scared of Zap f or much the same reason. Mindful, I was never physically intimated by either woman because, despite all their physical attributes, they were still just women. I don't care if their parents were He-Man and She-Ra. I was confident then at 15, and I am confident now at 27, that if we bumped into each other at a bar and either wanted to go, I would be able to fuck those bitches up.
What scared me about Zap were her narrow, almond-sliver shaped eyes that, on white people, bespeak illegal handgun ownership and methamphetamine use. In my experience, they're the single most reliable indicator of white trashdom and the willingness to settle minor disputes between neighbors with homicide. Think Scut Farkus--the bully from "A Christmas Story"--or Jamie Pressly. There's a reason she pulls off her role in "My Name is Earl" so well. And it has very little to do with talent.
I've been acutely aware of this trait since 2nd and 3rd grade when I fell victim, in two separate instances, to the constant tormenting of sliver-eyed trash. These kids are the reason I didn't eat liverwurst sandwiches between the ages of 7 and 19, and they are the reason I will never have a son whose nickname ends with a 'y' sound. I will get to their transgressions in the next entry...
Posted by nils at 11:08 PM