Mirror, mirror
On the wall
Who’s the fakest bitch of all
Well, Lydia,
The only fake bitch I see
Is the one staring back at me…
Everything we learn, everything we’re taught to care about… it unravels… that’s what Your Majesty Sophia Jackson said. Everything, the makeup, the lies, the Greek colors and letters I’ve lived by since I pledged in college, the fake pompous attitude I have hiding the weak marshmallow I am inside, the job I have that I sucked up to get and the work I’ve done that I wouldn‘t have been able to do if I wasn‘t a former beauty queen… it all unravels and you see how fake it all is and what do you do about it? You put your makeup on and you go right back into it. You lie to yourself and say that you’re changing the world, when you report the most depressing news and you go home empty inside because you can’t even face the man you love and the whore he’s sleeping with. Who am I without this makeup? Who am I without what people perceive as beauty? And most of all… does anyone care?
We tell our children to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy… then, we get mad when they lie about their homework. We’ve built a foundation, a world, on lies and being fake. We give promotions to the ones who suck up and keep the most hardworking among us down. This country was built on the backs of slaves and Native Americans, but yet, all these years later, we elevate the rich and keep the poor down. We look at a President with a White Mother from Kansas and a Black father from Kenya, and we condemn him because a White billionaire who lies about everything said that he wanted to see a birth certificate as proof that the President was born in America. I thought we were taught to believe in freedom, equality, all those ideas… but when you get right down to it, that’s why it’s called The American Dream… you always wake up.
I pop in the tape and I hear my voice asking her the questions. I’ve never felt so alone in my life. All the makeup in the world won’t cover up the cold in me.
------------------------------------------------------------
“Why? I mean; I know why the word offends me… but why does it offend you?”
That n word is what I hate. You know, some Black folks call one another that, and it’s just as shitty as when White people do it. In fact, I think it’s even more shitty because you’re taking that word and applying it to yourselves. When you’ve been called that and the spit or the shit or a hit follows it… when you really know what that word means and how many ivory nooses around ebony necks are hanging from it, how many people died, of all colors of the rainbow, because of that word and the meaning behind it… you hate it every time you see it and every time you hear it. They don’t understand. They think they can take something and spell it differently and think that erases the history of it… hell no. And there are people out there who see that or hear it, and they don’t have a problem with it. They do nothing but kiss ass to anybody, racist or not. Or they just don’t give a shit about the problems of the world and they go to their happy place.
“If you take the side of indifference, you take the side of the oppressor… Desmond Tutu.”
Portia was like that. She was unaware of everything. She was deliberately dumb, deliberately… what’s the word? Oblivious, and she was fine with that. She put herself right in that happy place and even though fear was what made her who she was, very much in the box, in her comfort zone, she pretended like she didn’t have any. I fought Portia and I beat the shit out of her. I took all that beauty and made up pretty and I rearranged it into a mask of blood, bruises, all that. The fight wasn’t even close and I could’ve ended it any time I wanted to, but I wanted to hurt her for what she was.
“And what was she?”
Why be a maid? Why is your gimmick a maid? You’re a fucking fighter… why do you even need a gimmick? All my life, I can’t think of too many times when I tried to be something other than what I was. That’s how you mess up. You try to be somebody else or fit in with some rule, and you lose who you are.
“I understand that…”
I fought all over the world now. I fought racism, sexism, homophobia… nobody gave a shit about me and nobody still does, but I was right there. I come over there and she’s a maid? I’m gonna lose to a so-called warrior who chooses to dress up like a maid just to please people? I don’t think so. I beat her bad.
“Do you regret it now?”
No… I think that if you’re gonna build something new, you have to tear the old stuff down. Portia was nice girl; she was really a good, strong girl too and she could take a beating… but she wasn’t out there. She didn’t have that heart or that killer instinct. You know what I mean? Of course you don’t. When have you ever really stood up to somebody, Lane? When have you ever really tried to get outside of your comfort zone?
“I haven’t done it like you’ve done it, but I have done it.”
How? Humor me.
“I had a good friend of mine. She was a writer and there was another writer there too who was her friend.”
Do these people have names? I get confused easily with the he she shit.
“My friend’s name was Sophia.”
Is that a joke? I didn’t know little princess types like you had a sense of humor.
“That was her name. Her friend’s name was Susan. They were both White. Susan wrote a column that trashed interracial marriage. It said that White people who marry Black people or vice versa had serious mental problems.”
Sometimes, I think that’s true.
“But you loved a White woman.”
I said, sometimes. Was Susan your friend too?
“No. I couldn’t stand her. She was a snobby, pretentious bitch. The only time she wasn’t sarcastic and pompous was when she needed something. But she sucked up to all our bosses and I… I didn’t like her at all.”
But I bet you didn’t tell her that. And here you are, all dressed up, trying to talk about somebody else being snobby and pompous. Put on extra perfume today too, huh?
“Sophia and I were close… I thought we were close. I told her that I was personally offended by Susan’s column and that Susan was dumb for writing something like that. Sophia said that I should never call her friend dumb and Sophia defended the column.”
How’d that make you feel?
“I… it hurt. It hurt me that she just didn’t care about my feelings and didn’t care about those issues. Once she got Susan as her friend, it’s like my friendship wasn’t as important.”
Do you think that if you wrote some racist stuff, that she would’ve had your back like she did her fellow White girl?
“Of course not. Sophia had so much going on in her life… I don‘t know if she even understood what friendship really meant. I had to call her and encourage her to write so that she could keep her job. I would go over to her house when she was depressed and I‘d find her when she wasn‘t coming to work. She had no confidence. But I don‘t think she would‘ve had my back.”
And why is that?
“I just… kind of knew how things were over there. I was… well… I just thought she felt I was for granted. And it was the atmosphere there.”
What?
“It was a job. I made good money; I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t do that job and put up with those things. I… I felt like she stuck a knife deep in me, but it wasn‘t something that I could stand up and shout at her about.”
And where is she now?
“Still working there.”
Where’s Susan?
“I think she got married, had a kid, and relocated. I had a title; I had a job. I had to put up with it.”
No; you didn’t have to put up with shit. You never do. In these walls, sweetie, it doesn’t matter what you are. It’s not the titles that count; it’s the fighter who holds them. Anybody can have a title; it’s what you’ve done to get it and the challenges you face once you’ve gotten it that make you a champion. Look at Alicia Christmas… she was the face of the sport in the early to mid 1980s… who’d she ever beat back then? Look at little boxer Manny Pacquiao, fighting guys who are passed their primes or beaten to a pulp in the fight before, or drained down to some weight that has them coming in the ring dehydrated… but people eat that shit up, huh? They think Alicia and Manny are two of the greatest of all time at what they do, but she’d never have beaten me or any of those real fighters back then, and if he got off the steroids, he wouldn’t beat anybody either. You never faced off with your challenges… why not?
“I think I’ve met some challenges in my life.”
By doing what? You have a husband who cheats on you and you let his White mistress beat you in a fight and kick you out of your own house. You stayed at a job with a racist coworker who wrote racist columns and your only friend there got mad with you for telling it like it is and you didn’t do anything. You are a phony.
“What?…”
You look like your feelings just got hurt. You heard what I said… now, you want to take what I have to say about you as meaning something, huh? Now, my opinion of you matters, huh? You smell like a phony; you dress like a phony; you have a phony demeanor; you’re a damn phony.
“I honestly thought we were making a connection.”
I heard a quote once and I don’t know who said it, but it goes, “it’s never too late to become what you might have been.” You’re still a phony today. That doesn’t mean you have to be one tomorrow or the next day. You can get on that road home today when we finish, get in a car accident and die, but everybody will know you as Lydia Lane, the star investigative reporter and journalist, not Lydia Lane the wimp.
“Tell me about Portia. You… you beat her up in your match with her and you started training her after?”
It didn’t quite happen like that, but let’s say it did. I was so fed up with the way things were in the US; the state of our sport had just gone to the fairies and it just so fucking corrupt. It was 1984; Ms. Flex was still out there cracking people’s necks… Alicia Christmas was running around, pretending to be a fighter… you had the corrupt male promoters, bringing girls from slave trades over to fight, training porn stars, Korean and Vietnamese defectors… all kinds of shit going on. It was making me sick and I brought all that with we against Portia and when it was over, she asked me to train her. And I tell you this… I trained her for one purpose only, that was to beat Destiny Brown.
“Why was that so important to you? Destiny had done nothing to you and she was the greatest fighter to ever live, according to you. Why are you so jealous of her that you trained the second woman you claim to have loved to beat her?”
I have never been jealous of anybody, especially not Destiny. I knew that my fighting days may very well have been over after all that, but Destiny was still fighting and still undefeated. I knew that Destiny was getting up there. She was still undefeated; she had beaten Madame Slaughter, who was a slave trader and vicious fighter. She had those battles with just about every fighter out there and she was this hero after beating Tatiana… but you know, Ebert and his money and his influence, they did Destiny the same way she was done before. Those people who cheered for her and loved her so much, they forgot about her the second Alicia Christmas smiled. It was bullshit. And you can guess how Destiny dealt with it… she just smiled and kept on going. I would never have dealt with that shit. I would’ve demanded a fight with Alicia Christmas.
“But you didn’t. You left the country.”
I know what I did, okay? I had reason to leave. You go through all this bullshit fighting to get accepted; you see all the few friends you’ve made in life turned to dust and fucked over… you’d leave too. No, you wouldn’t leave, Lane. You’d stay and be a fucking doormat like Destiny.
“Destiny fought whoever was in front of her. Did you ever fight Destiny?”
I trained Portia to throw lead right hands, something that I did all the time. I trained her to be unpredictable and do show a lot of confidence in there, something I did all the time. I let her keep her maid attire because let’s face it; she hadn’t earned the right to take it off, but what I was filling her up with made her hate that dumb ass gimmick.
“What did her training entail?”
We would jog every morning. It was really the mental stuff that helped her though. I mean, we trained hard on those techniques and I was her sparring partner. I kept her beautiful, just like I kept myself, but I kept her on her toes and training and sparring. She knew who Destiny Brown was and she knew that was the greatest fighter anybody had ever seen, whether they want to admit it or not. She kinda fell in love with me. She would make me breakfast every morning and we’d enjoy our lives out there in Gay Pari. I wanted to stay there, but my girl was winning matches and gaining a following, so we got the call from Ebert to come and do some dates.
“Did you go back to the States?”
At first, I wasn’t sure what to do. I was her trainer, but at the same time, I felt like Ebert was fucking up the business with that puppet ass bitch Alicia. She was beating girls who were gassed out or told to lose. It was getting so fake and she started challenging girls in the audience because people were catching onto it. So, it went from getting credible fighters and paying them to lay down for you, to telling people, “Hey, you think that I’m a fake fighter, I’ll wrestle you” knowing that she could at least beat a fan in the audience. But you know, that perception shit will get em every time. I’ll show you I can wrestle by beating somebody with no wrestling experience. Bullshit. I may have let Portia go over there and stayed where I was. I had to think about what happened with Fancy, and how I had gotten so big and so hated, that she felt neglected and her career suffered. Portia was on the rise and I didn’t want my dislike for Ebert and those fuckers in the US to stop that.
“So, you didn’t go?”
I went back. Portia begged me to come back with her. She was terrified of going back and fighting in the US, so I went with her. But we stayed in Paris another two months to prepare for that. I told her that she would work those dates for Ebert and APW, but I would die twice before I ever let him pay her to job to Alicia Christmas or any of those other bimbos over there. When we got there, Ebert and Alicia were so happy to see me with that phony shit. They wanted me to work some dates to, but I told them up front that I was there to help Portia and that was it. They talked to me about the creative shit too, and that’s when I heard about what was going on with Missy and Dina Majors and how some fat fuck named Hearst had come along with Madame Slaughter and taken over that promotion, filling it up with girls from the slave trade and cokeheads and addicts and psychopaths and all that stuff we kept out. I was disgusted with what I heard and Ebert wanted my creative mind to help make Alicia and APW even bigger than it was, knowing I had worked with Missy, Dina, and helped train their young strong redhead, Charlie Champion. That’s so fucked up….
“What?”
Missy, Dina, Charlie… they’re all dead now. I went and I saw one of their shows and that was my first time seeing this little chick with whitish hair that had a pink shine. You could tell she was very young, but she was an early bloomer. She was coming to the ring, all coked up and on heroin too. She smelled good, but she smelled like an orgy too and when she fought, she was strong as shit and tough. Great hard strikes and kicks and one of the best submission fighters I’ve ever seen. She was a beast for 5’5” and hell, you just knew Ebert and them didn’t send scouts to watch these girls. He would’ve seen her and history would’ve been altered because he would never have put Alicia in against her.
“Who was she?”
You don’t know? Her name was Siena Blaze.
“Wow.”
Alicia was ducking all the fighters who were worth a shit. She beat Ms. Flex, but what the fuck was that? Ms. Flex was on that shit; we all knew that. Charlie Champion idolized Marie Flex and patterned herself after her, but Flex was an addict and a bitch in person. Destiny Brown had beaten her several times over the years and Marie was off that shit and slow as she could be. I know she got a payday when Alicia “beat” her because she might not have been able to win even if she wasn’t paid to lose. Alicia ducked Destiny; they never fought. She ducked Trinity Love, who was really, really popular at that time and was calling her out. If she had the heart and preparation that she put in after she came out of retirement, ten years after Siena beat her, if she had that courage back then… she still would’ve lost. I asked her why she wouldn’t fight Trinity or Destiny or even me. I told her I would fight her.
“What did she say?”
She said she does as Ebert tells her. She said he has her best interests at heart and she follows what’s best for APW and women’s fighting and wrestling. I take nothing away from the fighter she would become. She got her shit together and came back strong, but then, now, whenever, she wasn’t fit to throw away those fighters’ dirty pads.
“So, did you talk to Siena?”
I did. But not at the show; I saw her later on in an alley, buying crack. She was wearing a fur coat and had two girls who looked twice her age on her sucking either side of her neck. I did talk to Dina at the show. It’s funny and sad at the same time. She joked and told me that if she ever got out of this, she’d have to write a book. She just wasn’t herself; she was down and I could tell. I offered to take her away from them. She could come back to Paris with Portia and I or we could all just leave the business together or hook up with Destiny and Trinity and start our own promotion. But she didn’t want to leave Missy and those other girls who she came in with. Dina was loyal to the people who were loyal to her and that’s something that I will always admire about her. But anyway, Siena. She came up to me after she bought the drugs and she was like, “Do I know you?” and I said, “I’m Your Majesty Sophia Jackson.” She said, “Yeah; you took a dive against Lilly White. You‘re a fuckin joke.” And then, she was staring at the stars, the ones around her head and the ones in the sky. I dropped her with a right hand.
“You punched Siena Blaze?”
I sure did. She was just a teenager back then, but I didn’t take that shit from anybody. She wanted to act like a grownup, so I treated her like one. I went to Dina Majors’ hotel room later on and we talked all night about what was happening with them and how she wanted to go home and retire, but she couldn’t because she was worried about Missy with the Hearst creep and Charlie Champion was almost fully recovered from an injury she suffered. Dina said they let Siena run loose and she said there were plenty of nights when she had to get Siena out of trouble and then, talk Hearst or Slaughter out of beating Siena up. She felt like her name was being ruined just by being the great moral symbol of female strength Dina Majors and going into those seedy places with pimps and rapists and thugs, just to protect Siena. I told Dina that if she ever did write a book, that I didn’t want to be in it. That’s why when she wrote her book, she hardly mentioned me in the text, but I got a pretty lengthy thank you in the dedications. And yes, she called me “Your Majesty Sophia Jackson.”
“Why didn’t you want to be in the book? You are so upset about your accomplishments being ignored, but here she was, willing to give you credit and you didn’t want any part of it.”
Dina Majors was… good. She was also really, really modest. She was type of woman who would starve if it meant you could eat, but she stood up for herself and she was loyal to her friends. I wanted Dina Majors’ Story to be Dina Majors’ story, not my story or anyone else’s. And I didn’t think she was really gonna write a book anyway. I could see how she would say that she hated Siena Blaze in the book. I couldn’t stand Siena those first few times I saw her either. She always had cocaine or heroin in her system or on her. She was always tailing Dina and talking about all the shit she had done and the sex she’d had… and there wasn’t a title belt around that she didn’t try on. She always put Dina’s on too. And when I think of how she fought Dina years later when Dina was passed her prime and had her kids and all that, and how Siena broke her neck… it just pisses me off with her. Either she was too fast or she was too slow and too mellowed out. Or she would mix coke and heroin together and go from one extreme to the other and she did this before her matches. She’d go back and have orgies in the street. Portia would do a show for Ebert and come back out with me and watch this stuff and I was falling for Portia hard. But not in a lover’s way; I felt like I was more her mentor and mother figure than a lover, even though we were.
“Do you have any kids?”
If I have kids, I’m in their lives and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t talk to them. But I’m not going to tell you if I do or don’t; you just assume what you want because I’m not bringing them up in this story. You’re an investigative reporter, so I’m sure you could find that out for yourself. Destiny came into town and we all hung out together.
“You and Destiny, hanging out?”
Destiny was working some dates for Ebert too and she, me, Portia, Dina Majors, Missy, and Siena Blaze all spent a day together.
“That’s something.”
(she shows me a picture of the six of them together and smiling. She’s got one arm around Destiny Brown and the other around Portia)
We all hit the town and Siena was clean that day. When the woman was clean, she was cool. We got in the gym and even did some sparring. Dina was as sharp as ever. I had Portia play very close attention to Destiny Brown’s tendencies.
“Did you spar?”
Yes I did.
“With Destiny Brown?”
No. I can tell you this though. For all that stuff about Siena having an unbeaten streak of 12 years… she got her ass kicked that day. Dina Majors and Destiny Brown made her look like an amateur. Maybe she was a shitty fighter when she didn’t have her drugs to rely on. I sparred with everybody except Portia and Destiny. Siena was very ferocious, but she was easy to control and as long as you didn’t let her get you on the ground, you were good. She told us she wasn’t really into it that day, but she got her ass kicked. Dina really took out all that frustration on her, but Dina didn’t hurt her. Dina was safe with her. We had a lot of fun, and that was the last time all of us would be together at once. A few months later, two events would happen to change the face of the fighting world.
“And they were?”
April 1, 1985... Portia fought Destiny in New York City. By then, we had broken up. It turned out, she was just using me to get more into the business. It was like Fancy; Portia and I had gone about as far as we could. She wanted to be a big star and she wanted the limelights and all that other bullshit. I just wanted… hell, I didn’t know what I wanted. I had taught her what she needed to know to beat Destiny and she went in there, threw those lead right hands and… she won.
“There had to be more to it than just the lead right hands. Destiny was the best you’d ever seen. That’s what you said.”
Styles make fights. Some of the greatest fighters of all time have lost to fighters who had the right style. I made Portia a counter puncher and a girl who would engage, then disengage. She was awkward, but she was methodical in her awkwardness. Destiny didn’t know how to deal with that and it confused her enough that Portia could land her shots and beat her. That’s how I know that I would’ve beat Destiny Brown. I fought the same way back when I was champion. I would’ve swatted her punches, stuffed her takedowns and knocked her out.
“If you felt that way, why didn’t you fight her back then? Or why didn‘t you fight her at all?”
How many times are you going to ask me that? Destiny Brown got her first loss from a fighter that I trained. And I was sitting in a Harlem bar watching the fight, bragging about how I trained the Creole girl who beat the high and mighty Destiny Brown… and those motherfuckers got mad and attacked me.
“You know… I’m not surprised that happened. She had a big following among African Americans.”
But I am an African American too and my fighter was Creole. I bled for Black America. I was the evil Black Savage Queen who everybody hated. How the hell could they do that to me? Destiny Brown would shuck and jive for those people. She put up with their racism and she didn’t stand up for herself or anybody else. She was deliberately dumb to the world and the hate in it and when somebody like that loses, it’s a damn good thing. But no, they attacked me, the real hero. They took me outside and beat me up and threw me in a dumpster that night. That’s what they thought of my sacrifice for them.
“You should’ve thought about what you were doing. She was loved, really loved, and you told me that a lot of Black people didn’t like you because you didn’t defend your title against other Black fighters and you had a White girlfriend. The main person they would’ve wanted you to fight was Destiny Brown, but you avoided her.”
I didn’t avoid her.
“Okay, you didn’t fight her. Then, you train the girl who beats her, and you go right into her territory, among her fans, and you brag about it to them while they’re drunk and angry. What did you expect to happen to you?”
Clearly, you don’t understand.
“No; I don’t. Humor me, Your Majesty. And why would you be so proud of someone who you admit was only using you, beating a woman who was nothing but nice to you, even though you were badmouthing her behind her back? Why would you root for Portia over Destiny?”
Every parent is proud of her child whether that child loves the parent or not.
“But you won’t even tell me if you have children.”
Because it’s none of your fucking business.
“You don’t see how you could’ve changed things by simply fighting Destiny Brown? What happened after that?”
They had a rematch a month later.
“And how did that go?”
Destiny beat her easily. Portia sort of burned out. I guess I had prepared her to beat one fighter and once she did that, she really didn’t have that much left. But three days after Destiny beat her, on Siena Blaze’s birthday, May 4, 1985, the fighting world changed forever.
“I already know what you’re referring to, but for the record, what are you referring to?”
Hearst put Siena in the audience as a plant at an APW show, and Alicia Christmas picked Siena as her opponent. Siena got in that ring and a few moments later, she had her finger deep in Alicia’s navel and it was bleeding and Alicia was crying. Siena was the new APW World Champion and all hell would break loose. I was 39 and so was Destiny; Destiny had lost again, to Brooke “The Line” Dixon, White brawler about of Boston… she overwhelmed Destiny and knocked her out with hammering her stomach until she crumbled. But Destiny would fight the girl six more times and beat her all six. While Siena was going from promotion to promotion and beating the champions, taking the belts, Destiny was beaten by young South African fighter, Sheba the Great, but she beat Sheba the next two times and those were three brutal fucking fights. They were in the scorching heat and you know, Sheba fights with those drums beating. Destiny fought her with everything she had the first fight, but she passed out and it had to be stopped. I’d never seen two women lose so much blood in a fight. I was surprised they both made it out alive.
When I think of how Siena came over there and got her ass kicked by Sheba, but those judges and referees stopped the fight after Siena knocked Sheba down… it’s bullshit. Siena robbed a lot of good fighters because the judges and referees were so afraid of her. I don’t know what Rachel Apache did to not get robbed by Siena Blaze. I lost money on that fight Siena finally lost to Rachel because I thought as good as Rachel was, Siena was going to find a way to either outsmart her and beat her, or screw her out of a victory. Destiny even beat Porsche again and after Missy, Charlie, Hearst and Madame Slaughter were all killed (see “Dina Majors‘ Story”), there was no stopping Siena Blaze from taking over. They say she made a deal with the devil… I believe them.
“We’re going to stop here, but when I come back, I want you to tell me about Destiny Brown fighting Siena Blaze. I know that fight took place and I’d like to know why Destiny took a fight in her forties against Siena Blaze in her late teens.”
Sure, I’ll tell you… and when I finish my story, I’m gonna ask you for a favor.
---------------------------------------
The tape hisses to a stop and I’m still staring in the mirror… the makeup is gone, all that’s left is me… Lydia Lane. The tears run and wipe away all the fake that I am. What was I, if I was ever anything, and who is it that is coming to the surface…
TO BE CONCLUDED…
