Post by stratford on Oct 22, 2022 19:58:46 GMT -5
I smile, casting my eyes up and down the form of Larry Tact, who’s question still hung in the air.
“If you could fight anybody, who would it be, and what would you say to them?”
I could still see echoes of the war he had endured at Level Up Wrestling’s 31st edition of its showcase broadcast “EXP”, several weeks prior. Television makeup did a splendid job of covering the worst of it, but a few layers of foundation can’t conceal lacerations from somebody who watched them inflicted. From somebody who followed each blow and delivered them, metaphorically speaking, right along with the person who sensationally ended his record-breaking Power Championship reign.
His face, along with his co-hosts - or co-conspirators - began to draw long as I kept them waiting for a response. The intrigue had soured into restlessness and then further into tension, before finally settling at perturbed.
Satisfied, I took one more moment to glance around the room. It was a small function room in a glorified brothel that was clearly an afterthought in Candice Wolf’s usually meticulous interior design masterclass. Curtains hung askew, a thin layer of dust lined the window frames, and I could swear that the glassware was mismatched.
“Let me ask you something, Larry.” I begin, finally.
“No, no. That is NOT how this works. WE ask the ques–” This time it was the man to Tact’s far left, Theo Pryce. He seemed the most impatient.
And I understand it. You’ve got several dozen guys with over-inflated egos coming into a boiler closet in the bottom of one of the most testosterone-filled buildings in the lower 48. It’s tiresome and repetitive every single person stood in front of them had likely been trying to swing their dick. So by now, they were probably sick of people being difficult about the questions.
“It’s okay, let him run with it.” The man between the two of them said calmly, with a warmth in his voice. The Sauce Boss, apparently. Not sure on the name, but his demeanor seemed cheerful enough. Almost like he was merely happy to be involved.
“Okay, so. Have you ever known a person who you care for deeply, but who continues to let themselves down? And by extension, lets you down?”
Larry looks back at me, almost as if trying to nonverbally determine whether the question was now rhetorical and I would expand on it, or whether I was pausing for an answer.
Subtly, I tilt my head toward him. Theo Pryce turns his attention from me to his colleague, but The Sauce Boss remains focused on the candidate in front of him.
“I think we have all exper–”
I straighten my glance abruptly and he pauses mid-sentence just as I begin to speak over him.
“There is a person in this world that I wished I could help, that I wish I could’ve saved from himself. And here’s the thing, usually I am good at that. I understand what makes people tick, their triggers, and how to operate within the scope of their understanding. But this one, whenever I thought I’d cornered him, he’d flip the script and do the unexpected.”
I pause again, studying the microexpressions of the three men sitting opposite me. Tact is listening, Saucy is engaged, and Pryce couldn’t be rolling his eyes further into his head without detaching his retinas.
“He disappeared almost a year ago, but I’ve heard the rumors of his resurfacing. I know he is lurking out there, waiting for his opportunity. Reinventing himself for the next great crusade.”
“Every so often, he will drastically change everything about himself. How he looks, dresses, speaks and acts. ‘Violent, sadistic and twisted’ gives way for 'vulnerable, broken and introspective’. He will arrive with all guns blazing and big plans to take revenge on all of the people who he believes have wronged him, including the ones that were merely trying to help.”
Theo Pryce interjects by holding a hand slightly raised from the chipboard table that his half-empty misshapen crystal glass rested on. My lips draw to a scowl as I glare at him.
“Sorry, who are you talking about?” he asks.
I could be talking about just about anybody, it seems. This is quite the archetype in our industry, isn’t it?
“I am talking about Brandon Moore, of course.” which was met with unanimous blank expressions.
“The problem with Moore is that he’s unreliable. He’s one of the most dangerous men that ever laced a pair of boots, one of the best to ever do it, but he can’t keep a needle out of his arm. And part of me wants to take him, care for him, get him on the straight and narrow.”
“He’s a mess, and he doesn’t want to change. He isn’t ready to change. He’s on his own spiral, his own pendulum. For him, the little boy inside that grown man’s body, the upswing is worth the downswing. And there isn’t anything I can do to convince him that there’s a better way. He has to find that for himself, on his terms.”
“He once was a brilliant man, but he is flawed. He had his demons, and he was consumed by them, drowned by them. Seeing him be the shell of himself, the pathetic excuse for a person because he’d sold his soul for a bag of china white, it made me question existence itself.”
“What did I work so hard for? To strive to be great, to end up like that?”
“Right now I have no idea whether the Brandon Moore that set the world alight for so many years is in a locker room somewhere, or if he’s in the recovery position, bubbling bile through his nostrils as his latest willing companion searches their go-bag desperately for another needle, the one that brings him back.”
“Brandon Moore needs to get clean, get straight. For himself and the family he started and then walked away from.”
I close my eyes. Then I open them and look back at the three men listening to me.
“And what would you say to, uh, Brandon Moore?” Tact speaks as though still trying to digest my monologue and recall the name at the same time.
“Oh, and if you want to save him, why are you opting to fight him?” The Sauce Boss adds.
“Just.. listen.” And now it is my turn to express exasperation.
I stand up, pressing my boots into the worn carpet and narrowing my brow. It is awkward to put yourself on the spot, acting as though you’re delivering this scathing deconstruction of somebody’s character in a dramatic fashion, when your surroundings are so incredibly comical and jarring in the context of what you’re about to say. But the truth is, I know Brandon will see this. So does it matter where I am? I hope he hangs on every word.
“Did you ever stop and wonder, as you sit there in your dark alleyway with a tourniquet constricting your veins, why nobody survives Hollywood? Why is it that everybody who achieves some level of fame finds themselves falling in the same pitfalls as you, too many people bowing down and blessing you, feeding the hype, feeding the little adrenal gland in your head, giving you have happy feeling that your parents didn’t ever give you? You want it again and again, but the next hit is never as good as the last, and before you know it, you’re sat in the locker room, waiting for a road agent to give you the special knock on the door so you know if you plunge RIGHT NOW, the dope will hit just as you get to the ring.”
“You up the ante in search of the next high. ‘Can I be on junk live on TV and go unnoticed?’, ‘can I show my trackmarks and still get a world title shot?’, I’m sure there are more.”
“What would success look like if you were able to get on the straight path?”
“Part of me pities you. But I care for you, too. The world would be different without you.”
“We have had our ups and our downs, through your struggles and in the sober moments, too. Brief as they’ve been. But beneath the surface, you are good and you are kind. I have tried everything else, but now I feel I have no alternative than to completely shatter you if only so we can put you back together without all of the broken pieces.”
I stare at the three of them in front of me once more. I’m talking to them, now.
“You have no idea what that man could do, if only he could get out of his own way.”
I look down at my feet, no longer interested in their reaction. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care for their approval. My only thought was on how I could make this more than just hypothetical.
“If you could fight anybody, who would it be, and what would you say to them?”
I could still see echoes of the war he had endured at Level Up Wrestling’s 31st edition of its showcase broadcast “EXP”, several weeks prior. Television makeup did a splendid job of covering the worst of it, but a few layers of foundation can’t conceal lacerations from somebody who watched them inflicted. From somebody who followed each blow and delivered them, metaphorically speaking, right along with the person who sensationally ended his record-breaking Power Championship reign.
His face, along with his co-hosts - or co-conspirators - began to draw long as I kept them waiting for a response. The intrigue had soured into restlessness and then further into tension, before finally settling at perturbed.
Satisfied, I took one more moment to glance around the room. It was a small function room in a glorified brothel that was clearly an afterthought in Candice Wolf’s usually meticulous interior design masterclass. Curtains hung askew, a thin layer of dust lined the window frames, and I could swear that the glassware was mismatched.
“Let me ask you something, Larry.” I begin, finally.
“No, no. That is NOT how this works. WE ask the ques–” This time it was the man to Tact’s far left, Theo Pryce. He seemed the most impatient.
And I understand it. You’ve got several dozen guys with over-inflated egos coming into a boiler closet in the bottom of one of the most testosterone-filled buildings in the lower 48. It’s tiresome and repetitive every single person stood in front of them had likely been trying to swing their dick. So by now, they were probably sick of people being difficult about the questions.
“It’s okay, let him run with it.” The man between the two of them said calmly, with a warmth in his voice. The Sauce Boss, apparently. Not sure on the name, but his demeanor seemed cheerful enough. Almost like he was merely happy to be involved.
“Okay, so. Have you ever known a person who you care for deeply, but who continues to let themselves down? And by extension, lets you down?”
Larry looks back at me, almost as if trying to nonverbally determine whether the question was now rhetorical and I would expand on it, or whether I was pausing for an answer.
Subtly, I tilt my head toward him. Theo Pryce turns his attention from me to his colleague, but The Sauce Boss remains focused on the candidate in front of him.
“I think we have all exper–”
I straighten my glance abruptly and he pauses mid-sentence just as I begin to speak over him.
“There is a person in this world that I wished I could help, that I wish I could’ve saved from himself. And here’s the thing, usually I am good at that. I understand what makes people tick, their triggers, and how to operate within the scope of their understanding. But this one, whenever I thought I’d cornered him, he’d flip the script and do the unexpected.”
I pause again, studying the microexpressions of the three men sitting opposite me. Tact is listening, Saucy is engaged, and Pryce couldn’t be rolling his eyes further into his head without detaching his retinas.
“He disappeared almost a year ago, but I’ve heard the rumors of his resurfacing. I know he is lurking out there, waiting for his opportunity. Reinventing himself for the next great crusade.”
“Every so often, he will drastically change everything about himself. How he looks, dresses, speaks and acts. ‘Violent, sadistic and twisted’ gives way for 'vulnerable, broken and introspective’. He will arrive with all guns blazing and big plans to take revenge on all of the people who he believes have wronged him, including the ones that were merely trying to help.”
Theo Pryce interjects by holding a hand slightly raised from the chipboard table that his half-empty misshapen crystal glass rested on. My lips draw to a scowl as I glare at him.
“Sorry, who are you talking about?” he asks.
I could be talking about just about anybody, it seems. This is quite the archetype in our industry, isn’t it?
“I am talking about Brandon Moore, of course.” which was met with unanimous blank expressions.
“The problem with Moore is that he’s unreliable. He’s one of the most dangerous men that ever laced a pair of boots, one of the best to ever do it, but he can’t keep a needle out of his arm. And part of me wants to take him, care for him, get him on the straight and narrow.”
“He’s a mess, and he doesn’t want to change. He isn’t ready to change. He’s on his own spiral, his own pendulum. For him, the little boy inside that grown man’s body, the upswing is worth the downswing. And there isn’t anything I can do to convince him that there’s a better way. He has to find that for himself, on his terms.”
“He once was a brilliant man, but he is flawed. He had his demons, and he was consumed by them, drowned by them. Seeing him be the shell of himself, the pathetic excuse for a person because he’d sold his soul for a bag of china white, it made me question existence itself.”
“What did I work so hard for? To strive to be great, to end up like that?”
“Right now I have no idea whether the Brandon Moore that set the world alight for so many years is in a locker room somewhere, or if he’s in the recovery position, bubbling bile through his nostrils as his latest willing companion searches their go-bag desperately for another needle, the one that brings him back.”
“Brandon Moore needs to get clean, get straight. For himself and the family he started and then walked away from.”
I close my eyes. Then I open them and look back at the three men listening to me.
“And what would you say to, uh, Brandon Moore?” Tact speaks as though still trying to digest my monologue and recall the name at the same time.
“Oh, and if you want to save him, why are you opting to fight him?” The Sauce Boss adds.
“Just.. listen.” And now it is my turn to express exasperation.
I stand up, pressing my boots into the worn carpet and narrowing my brow. It is awkward to put yourself on the spot, acting as though you’re delivering this scathing deconstruction of somebody’s character in a dramatic fashion, when your surroundings are so incredibly comical and jarring in the context of what you’re about to say. But the truth is, I know Brandon will see this. So does it matter where I am? I hope he hangs on every word.
“Did you ever stop and wonder, as you sit there in your dark alleyway with a tourniquet constricting your veins, why nobody survives Hollywood? Why is it that everybody who achieves some level of fame finds themselves falling in the same pitfalls as you, too many people bowing down and blessing you, feeding the hype, feeding the little adrenal gland in your head, giving you have happy feeling that your parents didn’t ever give you? You want it again and again, but the next hit is never as good as the last, and before you know it, you’re sat in the locker room, waiting for a road agent to give you the special knock on the door so you know if you plunge RIGHT NOW, the dope will hit just as you get to the ring.”
“You up the ante in search of the next high. ‘Can I be on junk live on TV and go unnoticed?’, ‘can I show my trackmarks and still get a world title shot?’, I’m sure there are more.”
“What would success look like if you were able to get on the straight path?”
“Part of me pities you. But I care for you, too. The world would be different without you.”
“We have had our ups and our downs, through your struggles and in the sober moments, too. Brief as they’ve been. But beneath the surface, you are good and you are kind. I have tried everything else, but now I feel I have no alternative than to completely shatter you if only so we can put you back together without all of the broken pieces.”
I stare at the three of them in front of me once more. I’m talking to them, now.
“You have no idea what that man could do, if only he could get out of his own way.”
I look down at my feet, no longer interested in their reaction. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care for their approval. My only thought was on how I could make this more than just hypothetical.