Rhodes family - Cross Rhodes: Goldust, out of the darkness

CROSS RHODES

Copyright 2010 by World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

World Wrestling Entertainment, the names of all World Wrestling Entertainment televised and live programming, talent names, images, likenesses, slogans and wrestling moves, and all World Wrestling Entertainment logos and trademarks are the exclusive property of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. Nothing in this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.

This book is a publication of Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license from World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.

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Photos on pages 6, 8, 12, and 13 courtesy of Pro Wrestling Illustrated.
Photos on pages 210, 222, and 224 courtesy of Dustin Rhodes.
All other photos World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

First Gallery Books trade paperback edition December 2010

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Designed by Akasha Archer
Illustration from istockphoto.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rhodes, Dustin.
Cross Rhodes / by Dustin Rhodes
p. cm.
1. WrestlersUnited StatesBiography. 2. Rhodes family. I. Title.
GV1196.A1R47 2010
796.8120922dc22
[B]

2010022987

ISBN 978-1-4391-9516-1
ISBN 978-1-4391-9517-8 (ebook)

I dedicate this book to all the people in this world who are having trouble with drugs and alcohol, broken homes and broken families, mothers, daughters, sons, and dads confused about life in general. I dedicate this to my sobriety and the new life I look out at every day clean and sober.

To my family, especially my sister Kristin, once I was lost and now I am found. To my sisters Mandy and Teil, I love you very much. Its the least I can do to keep myself clean and sober for each and every one of you who have done so much for me. I owe it to all of you to be a better person and a better human being, and to leave something good in this world before I die.

To my father and mother, who have always been there for me, I love you very much. Despite all the trials and tribulations we have been through, you have been very good parents. You have taught me valuable lessons in life and Im happy that we are so strongly connected with one another. It means the world to me. To other mothers and fathers out there who dont have that kind of relationship with your children, find it. Fix your broken relationships somehow, some way. Do whatever it takes to get your family back.

To the angels in my life, my daughter, Dakota, and Ta-rel, the love of my life who has stood by me through thick and thin. Every day for the rest of my life I will treat you with respect, honor, and love. Dakota, I will never love anyone the way I love you. You are the angel who looks over me when I am on the road. When I say my prayers every morning and night, I am thinking about you. You are with me every moment of every day. You opened my eyes to how beautiful life can be when you took my hand and said, Its going to be okay, Dad. I love you, angel.

I started writing this book years ago while sitting in my pickup truck with a handful of pain pills circulating through my body and a bottle of vodka on the passenger seat. For a little while, the pain turned into more of a dull ache than the full-on attack that I woke up to every morning. With a black pen and blue-lined paper torn from a small notebook, those sessions might as well have been a therapists couch. I was looking for the truth about me, drug addiction, and the old-school world of sports entertainment that grabbed me as a small child and has never let go.

The first words I wrote are scattered across the top of the first page:

Dying to Get into the Main Event.

In one way or another, I probably was dying. I certainly wasnt living, at least not a life the average person would recognize. Hell, I barely recognized what was happening at the time. Looking back, it was just another example of my art imitating my life.

But that was then, when I couldnt see through a daily haze caused by an addiction to prescription pain medication and the limits of self-medicatings ability to dull the pain, no matter how high the pile of pill and vodka bottles. Yet through it all, one aspect of my life never changed and in some ways has never been stronger than it is today. My love and passion for the business of professional wrestling never wavered, not even in the depths of addiction.

My dad, The American Dream, Dusty Rhodes.

I got the fever as a young boy growing up in the long shadows of a big man in Austin, Texas.

The American Dream, Dusty Rhodes, is my dad. As a young boy, all I knew was that my dad was gone all the time. For the most part, my mother, my sister Kristin, and I were left to fend for ourselves. I can remember being five or six years old and seeing my dad come home after a long trip. I was like any other small boy. I wanted to crawl all over my dad when he finally walked through the front door. But he was too tired and his body too sore.

Back then, wrestlers worked territories, and they were gone for months at a time. He might spend two or three weeks in one place, come home, then head off to Japan for a month or more. He would take us places and we would get time with him, but it was always cut short by his schedule. My dad was naturally charismatic and very smart. I certainly didnt understand how smart he was about his career then, but as a little boy all I wanted was more time with him. He was larger than life to me.

On top of the world.

Then, one day, he was gone for good. My parents divorced right around the time I entered first grade at a private Christian school in Austin. I didnt get the chance to know him the way a young boy wants to know his father. I was seven years old when my parents divorced. I remember crying for hours at a time during the days, weeks, and months that followed his departure. Even though he was gone a lot before the divorce, I always knew hed come walking into the house in his cowboy boots and hat. Divorce meant the exact opposite. My father was gone and he wasnt ever coming back. In those days, his life was rolling along at one hundred miles an hour, and being home with family was the slowest part of his existence.