March 23, 1997
Jeannie was by the window, legs drawn to her chest, her left side presented to the door with a stoic lack of rotation. Eating like a squirrel, the tiny round piece of cheese held in the chewed-at fingertips of both hands, each tiny morsel gulped down with a heavy gulp, a long sniff, and occasionally a headswipe at her shoulder, an attempt to rub at her eyes without letting go of her prize. She could make food last for aeons like this: miniscule portions rolled across her tongue, flattened on the roof of her mouth and half-dissolved before she'd finally chew a little. Her breathing was too heavy to sound comfortable, the result of a six-week dose of influenza, a probable chest infection, and a newly-broken nose that no amount of cheeks presented to windows would hide.
She'd shrugged into one of his shirts, gaining comfort from the soft overwashededness of it, drawing it down over plaid leggings as though it were a dress. Her hair needed a wash, or at least a good brushing: it was still in the high ponytail she'd thrown it up in three days ago, static and wear dragging it low, a tangle at the nape of her neck and entire swathes hanging down, half-obscuring the Walkman's headphones, little peeps of orange foam by her ears. The music was so loud that with the window closed to outside sound, it was shared with the empty room: Soundgarden creating another layer to hide behind. Her head was nodding between nibbles, between those catlike facerubs on the shoulder of his shirt, the almost rhythmic sniffs and gulps and underwater drag of her breathing.
The window squeaked as the teenage boy nudged it open, inched slowly with self-reminders to get a can of WD-40 or something the next time he shopp(lift)ed. The roll in from the fire escape straight onto the bed was years-practiced, heavy-booted feet clomping onto wooden boards dulled in years of unkemptness. Immediately he went to unlacing them, not needing to look to do so, eyes going to her immediately, appraising. "Hey..."
She nodded, dragging headphones down to rest on her neck, tucking hair behind her ears and holding the little half-round of cheese between her teeth while she rummaged in a rustling plastic grocery bag. Jeannie took a great deal of pleasure in grocery shopping on a normal day: counting out pennies at the register in the hope of getting the exact amount right, making ridiculous choices that amounted to anything in individual packaging, disastrous if it wasn't for his five-fingering. Today it was a six pack of soda-- generic brand, at least-- with two packages of miniature chocolate bars, four tiny boxes of raisins cellophane-wrapped together, and the little red string bag of cheese: single-serve rounds coated in pillarbox red wax that would end up being sculpted into little figurines to join their friends along the window ledge, letting off a thick, yet not unpleasant smell in the afternoon sun. "Gotcha a soda," she mumbled, rolling one along the boards to the bed without looking, retrieving the cheese and taking another toothscrapenibble. "And stuff. And pencils."
Oh, pencils. The last thing either of them needed, but if she were a packrat for anything, it was stationery: small spiralbound notebooks that would never be filled with words, but instead the lines colored between, rainbow after rainbow if you flipped the pages. Stars and pinwheels in margins, and occasional smileyfaces. Sometimes, in her best moods, smileyfaces in stars. Tiny stick figures flipbooking their way to disaster in the corners. She'd haunt Goodwill for children's books, and she'd color in those line drawings on the endpapers, tongue lodged in the corner of her mouth. Empty spaghetti cans held enough sets of pencils already that an entire kindergarten class could have gone for a year. Pencils and pens and magic markers and those new gel pens, the last two of which she'd use to draw tattoos on his arms, knees, the backs of his hands, at least when he'd sit still long enough. More of those Van Gogh whorls, brilliant in color, impermanent wannabes that still satisfied her. It was the pencils, more than anything else, that hinted at things not being quite... well, normal didn't seem like the right word, under their particular sky.
He pushed the window back down almost-closed, only a slight crack to let fresh breeze in, and juggled the can carefully in nimble fingers. There was a loud fizzle as it opened, but not enough to overflow-- a sip, then carefully sat on a deceptively-sturdy pile of books as he leaned forward to kiss her forehead.
And pause there, as something smelled... off. Raw. Fresh. A few inches of space given, eyes scanning her face. "What... happened?" It was a question-- everything was always a question, and always free to not be answered here. It was a necessity. If she didn't wanna say, then he didn't wanna know, and vice-versa. Only way to survive.
She lifted one narrow shoulder in a shrug. "It doesn't matter. Just... somebody called the cops. Blerg." She dabbed experimentally at her nose, checking it and explaining everything in one simple gesture, and got to her feet, one hand going to check on just how safely that duct-taped Sony was held to the elastic waist of her leggings in a gesture that was automatic from the repeat. She walked gingerly: a round of the room: fingers reassuring that the deadlock was home, that the window over there was still nailed shut, a moment to press closed the window he'd just adjusted, twisting the lock with a nod. She paused, looking at the door: no, she'd checked that, everything was locked. One more check and then she continued that overcareful walk: this time to his side, sitting beside him with a squeal of protest from the springs. She held up the cheese in her fingertips, Jeannieteethmarks visible in the pale yellow. "You want some?"
His stomach had gone hard, because he knew well by now what that meant. No matter how much he'd wish, at fifteen he really couldn't defend her or anyone else against it, and that really just made it harder. The vivid ideations of superheroism had passed years back, somewhere around when he'd helped Ivy pick her teeth up off the front stoop; now it was only a shade of that.
All he could do was take the proffered cheese and roll to his side, leaving her more than half the bed to find her own space in. Little nibbles, fumbling in his own pockets for a small plastic square, throwing it down to share. Somewhere in some of those spaghetti cans were more than pencils and pens.
What she wanted to do was to throw herself down with him: curl up and draw covers over the both of them and hide together in their own little world. Make a blanket fort, maybe. Bring a flashlight inside and her coloring and a book for him and make like one of those sleepovers she saw on tv sometimes, watching from a corner booth in the cut-rate Waffle House ripoff where the spoons were never clean, but the coffee was free if you bought the first cup.
But he'd been shopping, too. Her tongue darted out, caught at the corner of her mouth, switched to the other side. She reached out towards his soda can, possessed by the sudden urge to pull at the ring tab until it broke off, tie it up with a loose thread from the shirt she'd borrowstolen and make him a necklace. Instead, her fingers withdrew, twitching lightly, and she picked up the packet, turning it in her fingers while her stomach knotted with a mixture of anticipated pleasure and guilt, the feeling so normal now that it was a comfort. "Ohhh," she breathed. "Can we? Already?"
He'd kiss her, if he didn't feel somehow it'd be intrusive right now. Better to let any affection come from her right now, really. If he had anything to offer, it was this sort of understanding. Instead he just nodded, and it was strangely earnest. "You wanna cook it up, I'll..."
yeah. He didn't really have an answer to that, just pulling himself up languidly and doing the same circuit she just did; giving her time, checking the window-locks and the deadbolt he'd installed himself that brought with it the glaring eyes he'd gotten from the rest of the house for doing so. Sometimes privacy was important.
"Fucking cops
again? Just had their little monthly raids, what more do they fucking want?" It was almost sharp but not-- the tone careful right now. A week ago, there were a half-dozen more people packed in this room hiding from the NYPD's careful eye-- and he never shared this room. Through all the odd people who passed in and out of this apartment of ill-repute and all the strange requests made of him, one thing was never asked-- sharing his space. Of all the shitty and strange that went on, having a place to retreat to (and for the last couple years, share with her) wasn't too much to ask. He got most of his own clothes, half his own food, and all his own school supplies, and he hadn't dropped out yet despite mostly-unspoken expectations.
Spaghetti tin. Supplies. She willed her hands to stillness enough to get the job done, sucking on her lower lip. Knelt by the bed for the anticipated closeness of his return. "What more they always want," she answered, voice so low that he'd have had to strain to hear. She shrugged again. "Doesn't matter, does it? I'm home now, for a bit, you know? You want first?" Always questions. Questions answered with questions that weren't meant to be answered. Layers on layers, like putting his t-shirt on over the cheap bra that would go with her leggings for work. Questions like armor against the world, because who wanted to answer
that? "Hey, I got an idea for a drawing. Like... rabbits, maybe? Can I put rabbits on you later?"
He recognized the last question as one he could answer and nodded, collapsing on the bed, near the wall again, mostly on his stomach. "I'll get first..." It was a strange privilege, yet they pretty well knew by now he'd leave more than enough for her. Weird sticky gold drawn up in a syringe... "Rabbits, huh. Reminds me of... uhm... I remember reading
The Velveteen Rabbit way back. Velveteen Rabbit and Velvet Underground and..." plunger depressed. Rush. Eyes cloudy. And yet... still waiting for her, because...
It was inexplicable, but he knew once she joined him, he could hold onto her without hurting her any. It'd been a rough day and it was an early night, but...
Imagination shifting. He'd find an out, somewhere. He was good at seeing things hiding in the greater distraction of everything else. If he had a talent, that was it.
She listened, nodding along with his words while pulling on the Hello Kitty shoelace tied around her arm, waiting patiently. It was better to let him go first: there were times when it was tempting to take it fast, shoot the whole lot and just sleep. Switch off without care for whether on was an option again. Today wasn't one of those times, but she couldn't trust herself, not really.
Her turn. Eyes closed, a deep inhale, and then the soft focus clicked on. "Velvet gloves," she added. "Sorta squashylike." Another slow lick of lips and she dropped the syringe onto the nightstand before curling up beside him: one arm sliding around his back while her face dropped onto his shoulder. She was going to wake up stiff, she knew it, and probably with a crick in her neck, but he was warm and comfortable and safe and of all things,
nice, although she wouldn't tell him that, because he wouldn't get it, not with how she'd say it. He was smarter than her, and had more of a way with words. "I got chocolate, too." Words starting to comfortably slur together. "S'like velvet in your mouth, mhm."
Velvet.
June 18, 2001
New acquisitions were a curious thing. There was the novelty of the new face in your little personal crowd, the little game of finding the right place for this particular puzzle piece, the pleasure of arranging the collection for admiration.
Mathew, lean and close-shaven, brooding by the window. Jay, hands in pockets by the door, waiting for instructions for where to drive them, and Max, of course, the final piece in this little tableau. She wanted to run her hands all over him, pet his face, knowing already that he didn't like that much, which made the pleasure of doing it somehow magnified, slide her fingers into his hair and tug until it hurt, and then smooth it down and kiss it better with a press of lips to the centre of his forehead. Iron hands and velvet gloves being very much a part of her life, now, with only her allowed to do the wearing. Her security, her driver, and him, everything rolled into one with the added pleasure of being able to toss him in a ring and claim his victories as her own. Which they were, of course. Without her, what was he?
Just a seesaw of rage and uncontrolled drug use, really. Barreling out of control too much to win his own fights, full of disqualifications and fumbled opportunities that gotten him knocked on his ass hard. Incapable of negotiating with the people that needed more politeness to get things done. That he'd defer to her and her alone was quite a bit of a power rush. Toying with him was like playing with a venomous snake; it might be pretty basking peacefully, but that terrifying chilling beauty that came out when it raised up in threat was a different class altogether.
She sat beside him, letting the tips of her nails drag lightly up his forearm, lips curving upwards to match the rise of the hair there, pleased at the reaction. "We're going to go, in a moment. When you're in the ring tonight, remember how pleased I'll be if you win. You do want to make me happy, don't you? Of course you do. You'll win, and when we get home, I'll give you a present." No need to tell him what, although of course there was only one reliably-well-received gift she could give. "Doesn't that sound nice?"
His head tilted to the far side, flexed hard enough to pop, edgy tension in his hands as well. The grin that came up wasn't pleasant, but it was promising. "Mmm, I get it. No more DQs, no more mistakes. Lots of rules here."
"Think how pleasant life would be, if we all followed the rules. The alternative doesn't sound at all nice, does it?" A sunbeam of a smile, before she kissed his cheek. "No more mistakes, dear. More mistakes might indicate an error on my part in my faith in you. Comme triste…" A whirl of skirts as she stood, that grace lost for a moment in the girlish motion. "But for now, we need to move. Come along, darling." One hand, slim and white, wedding ring glinting, extended to him, and there was an implied further command in the motion. "Don't be despondent, darling, you're much better with me on your team. You're mine, and it's just perfect this way. Tonight you'll win."
He vibrated with the urge to grab her by the thick over-coiffed hair and smash her face into the wall. The main thing holding him back was the simple urge to not land back on the streets. The anger had better uses elsewhere, and he had better uses here.
For now.
"Monsters..."We fade in from black to a backstage hallway-- not PWP, not live, but from Rhode Island. Insurgency Wrestling. Dim notes of somebody's entrance theme filter through, too jumbled by crowds and walls and concrete to make out. The man speaking is ready for a match, taped hands and shoulders, elbow pads, black track pants with platinum stripes down the side, the heavier closer sound of boots audible over the show noise as he paces.
"There's some people in this business who get designated as monsters. It's not really the sort of thing you can give to yourself. If it carries any weight, it has to be earned. It also has this magical effect of seemingly erasing everything that came before whatever you did to earn that status. Sometimes people don't even remember what you did to earn it in the first place, actually. And some... some who are put into that category forget themselves what came before as well, buy into their own hype, let it encourage them to dispose of what's left of their humanity, push themselves more definitively into that category.
"It would be easy to accuse me of that with the names I go by, the way I play my cards close to my chest and keep my personal life-- comparatively, at least-- off twitter. Part of this whole 'monster' designation probably derives some from the 'mysterious' designation I get from that stuff as well. I can't refute it as something I've never tried before, either-- way back when I left Evo21 the first time, before I was quite on the level of real boogeyman, I tried to make it a clean break. Shaved my head, changed my gear, altered my tats and got more of 'em, and of course changed my name. I moved on, back when it was a bit easier to find a different territory and escape a reputation, back when you'd lose any good rep you'd earned as well. I might bitch idly about having to reprove myself since Platinum Dynasty fell, but this business is less intense than it used to be in that facet.
"I told myself I wasn't my past, not just my last company but that I wasn't where I came from. It worked for awhile. I think a few of my old coworkers figured out where to look, but nobody wanted to show up to the new promotion I was slumming it in to call some shitbird on their crap when you can almost always count on those people to out themselves anyway.
"It didn't really take long to realize that it was a lie.
"I kept up the façade for much, much longer of course. That's the way of things on these big unpleasant realizations, I think. Maybe other people said things to you before, but you kinda laughed at it; then one day it pops up in your internal monologue, derailing whatever thoughts you were having in the moment, unavoidable and unignorable for a moment.
"You don't take to it usually, not right away. You'll try to push it off, not realizing you just embedded it deeper because those sorts of realizations have hooks. It'll come back later, work its way back to the surface like shrapnel. Or worse, into vital organs. It'll maim your ass worse than anybody you can step in a ring with. Ruin your life if you let it, especially if you try to avoid it.
"No, I didn't always used to be some boogeyman who stands alone and unflinching in the face of any challenge. I spent years, years being labeled a coward, dismissed as a scavenger that ran with a whole pack of similar hyenas, maybe many of them considered better wrestlers than me. Just a street rat, everybody else waiting for some hero to come along and punt me back into the gutter once and for all-- and all that was before the extracurricular drug abuse dirt hit the sheets. After that, I was left getting used to being called out as a piece of needle-using scum on top of it all, a further level of inhuman waste, that level of heat where people don't just want to kick your ass but to run you out of the business by any means necessary.
"As far as I know, none of those other hyenas I ran with are still in the game.
"As far as I've picked up, the heroes from then are all gone as well. Maybe a stray one or two here and there, but they don't seem to actually be active. Every one of those people that made calling me a cunt into a meme back in '07, I outlasted them-- and at this point, save for one of 'em, I consider myself to have surpassed all of them. Some of 'em might challenge that statement, but they'd be doing it from their couch at home, which isn't the strongest statement.
"Except at the time, back then? They weren't necessarily wrong.
"I ran in a gang because I was afraid of the likes of somebody like Decker Watts beating the snot out of me. I didn't believe in myself, and all the proof made the case for a lack of faith. I numbed my shit good, to the point where I wasn't just ignoring it, but agreeing and goading them to exterminate me.
"So when I say I understand where you are, don't take that as me just being patronizing.
"The thing about not just hitting rock bottom but shattering on it, about-- as my old benefactor dubbed it, not just being broken, but ruined-- is sometimes you find something in the shards that didn't seem to exist in the whole.
"This isn't some hero's journey where I eventually learned to believe in myself and healed. I hit a level where didn't want people around me. Where it didn't matter if I was afraid of getting destroyed, I just jumped to the trainwreck headfirst on maybe a sort of deathwish. I didn't hold anything back. And that non-method... worked. At the least, as well as what I'd been doing before. It wasn't due to some philosophical learning to believe in myself, not really, because I was the last to believe it. Everybody else seems to believe it more than I do even still. Every time I walk out there and that crowd roars, some part of me feels like I walked onto a movie set. It feels unreal.
"That's why if we'd gotten here via any other means I'd be encouraging you, but we didn't get here any other way.
"You didn't just ask me to fight you. You goaded and pestered me into this, Whiskey. I tried to deflect it, pitched you a door prize, would've laughed it off. You didn't shut up about it until Josh Duncan spotted gold and this match got booked. I'll say this, once you get a thought in your head, you don't let up. Unfortunately, the thought in your head was a shitty joke that just kept snowballing long after the punchline timing had passed. And really, considering how many championship-worthy women are in this business and at least one transgender champion that I know of, to some this joke of trying to put me in a dress as a way of being demeaning was probably really insulting.
"A lot of people try to write off the whole thing as just being words on the internet. I might be someone who doesn't usually get on camera and talk in any kind of length at all-- this is truly an anomaly-- and I might be that guy who'd rather step into a ring and handle my business with violence, but I'm not the kind to discount words. There are probably at least just as many men and women who've gained historical immortality for their apt and still oft-quoted words as have gained it through actions. Empires have risen and fallen on the speeches of great men. Nations still come to a grinding halt as their governments fight over the meaning of words in law, new and old. And in our little bubble these days, promotions live and die on a social media service restricted to 140 characters, regardless of how vapid you could call the goingson. I know as well as anybody could that little trick of advertizing, where if people hear something often enough, even if they know what's being repeated is totally meaningless or a big sack of horse shit, it starts to stick in their mind and shade their perception.
"And then, to learn that this whole thing is to use me as a trial run to muster yourself to go against Legacy after a losing streak?
"Bull fucking shit.
"Asking would've been one thing. Even if it'd been done in a hostile manner, it'd be one thing. A respectable thing. A foolish thing, because if Brad Jackson and Gryphon got crushed by Legacy, there's nothing I or anyone else could do to really prepare you to try to take that on. But to try to goad my anger out and use me?"Those viewers at PWP might not know how rare a sight the anger on his face is, or the jump in his tone of voice. But some out there... they know from experience.
"Nobody uses me anymore, Whiskey. It doesn't matter why. You might know what I mean by kintsugi. My fractures are all old, seamed back together by something stronger. Yours are fresh and unmended, still laying on the floor in pieces.
"You'll hit a point in this match where you'll realize that you can't beat me, that all it is is me tormenting you, torturing you. And at some point as you lay there rent into pieces and praying for it to all be over, and as I just keep hauling you up out of the pin, you'll be wishing you found some other way. Something easier to use. You'll find out that the bottom has basement levels, and that I am the king of them.
"And maybe in a few years, if or when you've healed from this as I have, you'll be ready for your quest for the Holy Grail. Maybe you'll thank me. Maybe you'll surpass me then. But never say..."He pauses, a breath, the crowd somewhere beyond roaring again.
"Never say I didn't warn you."
