For a while during the mid-70s, Stan Stasiak's home base was in my neighborhood. When he had a break from his grueling schedule on the road, he spent a lot of time at the Boston Fish House where I waitressed. Some days he brought a pile of stuff and cruised through the afternoon hours reading, snacking, chatting with the staff. It was the kind of place where you could do that.

He was very quiet in a congenial kind of way and acted reserved and shy in a friendly kind of way. We were awfully fond of our Fish House regulars and, except for an occasional autograph ambush by the FOBs (friends of the busboys), we didn't assault him with questions about his profession. We were rewarded for treating him like a guy named Stan instead of *Stan The Man* as the stories emerged through casual conversation.

His favorite perch was at the bar but he didn't consume alcohol. He described the occasion of his last drink as a dark and stormy night in Toronto. A dozen or more snowed-in wrestlers spent the day in a bar and by last call the room held over 3500 pounds of firewater-sodden flesh, brains focused on every one of the grudges, the jealousies, and all the other hurt feelings in their hearts.

Stan's eyes widened at the memory of the ensuing no-holds-barred death match. Hours later, the establishment's interior was rubble, several wrestlers were in jail cells, more were in the jail's infirmary, and some were hospitalized along with law officers injured trying to restore peace. He described it as one of the more terrifying experiences of his life and a costly one, too. He avoided alcohol and said he also avoided going into bars at night after that incident.

He didn't always sit at the bar, though. Sometimes he ate his lunch standing at the bar because he was in too much pain to sit. Do wrestlers call in sick, we wondered? Rarely. Work ethic is highly valued in Stan's trade. It's a show-must-go-on kind of thing. But how can you do what you need to do? He said that he'd be able to work around it with whoever his partner was on a night when his body was showing him who was boss. He always used the word "partner" and never the word "opponent." The Aquarian in me was charmed by that perspective.

Inevitably we got a group together to watch him wrestle at the Boston Garden. Bartenders, waitresses, customers, busboys and the FOBs. The evening held great promise and we prepared by working on a medley of cheers for Stan, who was definitely Our Man. If he can't do it, no one can. Stan hinted that we would be happy for him that night which was the closest brush ever with the pre-determined outcome question. He said it was going to be a 14-minute match, a respectable time slot. When one of the busboys asked him how he knew how long the match would last, Stan gracefully back-pedaled and changed the subject. These were simpler days and the busboy would have vigorously defended the "reality" of wresting to anyone who challenged it. A candid remark from Stan might have been devastating.

In those innocent times, cheering for the bad guy was not prevalent, as it is today. And Stan the Man was a Bad Guy, no shades of gray, no back-and-forth, no doubt about it. He had a penchant for concealing Illegal Foreign Objects on his person which he used often and he used well whenever the referee was distracted. The busboys and the FOBs could explain the difference between the man they knew at the Fish House and the man they knew in the ring. Something just comes over him and his dark side takes over. He just goes crazy for a little while but it only happens in the ring. He was a classic heel, but he was Our Heel and we were going to stand and cheer him on that night.

Never doubt that 2 dozen well-rehearsed cheerers with 14 minutes worth of material can be heard in a crowd of 10,000 booers. At first Stan appeared startled and I hoped I hadn't seen him stifle a grin. His partner, Billy "The Superstar" Graham began playing to our cheers with righteous indignation. The crowd caught on and together we raised the roof for one of the sweetest villains I've ever met. The next day he said it was a surreal experience for him and triggered a brief flicker of a desire to Turn Good. But he'd put the thought aside by lunchtime. Today, Rocky Maivia would sum it up this way: Know Your Role.

After the match he took the boys into the locker room. As they left, Billy Graham tossed one of them the t-shirt which had been bloodied after his encounter with an Illegal Foreign Object during the match. The mood in the car I rode home in was hushed, reverent, when Doubting Thomas in the back seat said, "You know, I really checked out the Superstar's head and I couldn't see a cut anywhere...and didn't you think him and Stan were acting kinda...friendly?" There was no response but the end of the innocence took a breath in the silence. I wanted to tell them it was real, real in a different way than they saw it now, and it was still fun, maybe even more fun. Instead I started to chant for Our Man Stan and we finally achieved a hoarseness that would linger long after the ride home.