Post by reganvoorhees on Nov 5, 2022 22:55:11 GMT -5
My mother once dragged me off the stage at a beauty pageant for proclaiming to the judges, “Everything in the world displeases me: but above all, my displeasure in everything displeases me.”
Spouting Nietzschean rhetoric was a cliche for any aspiring nihilist, but please understand that I was seven at the time. I used his words to reject an archaic and toxic societal practice. The judges cowered before my candor, shaken by the juxtaposition between my words and my sparkly tutu. Mom told them my talent was ballet. She was incorrect. My talent was to look powerful people in the eye and speak the harshest of truths. To this day, I can even go for over six minutes without blinking. Invaluable when you’re trying to unsettle someone.
My ballet-enhanced flexibility allowed me to wrench free from Mom’s grasp long enough to run back out and continue. “That was Nietzche. Read a book!” Seven-year-old Regan went through quite the Nietzche phase, but that time my mother seized me by the waist and carried me off stage before I could embarrass her further. The car ride home was blissfully silent.
Dad thought I did great.
Such was my troubled existence. Speaking up on behalf of myself and others in the face of societal injustice. But this was only the first example of many. So long ago it felt like a dream that I awaken from every single morning.
My day began at 6 a.m. Instead of an alarm clock, water was dripped onto my forehead akin to Chinese water torture. An effective method for ensuring I’m not even tempted to stay in bed, and the discomfort snaps my brain into laser focus.
Atticus was allowed to sleep in, as he needed his beauty rest in order to look photogenic for Voorhees Farms promotional material. Still, I couldn’t help but smile as he snore-snorted and kicked his little trotters, his body mimicking his adventures in dreamland.
A steaming bowl of groatmeal and a chia-mango-spinach smoothie waited in my yoga studio, placed there moments before by a well-trained attendant. He knew the exact moment to leave my breakfast waiting, to ensure maximum freshness while also making sure to not encounter me directly. Dealing with other humans required a great deal of mental fortitude on my part, and I preferred not to test it in the morning hours before I was properly caffeinated.
I lotus-positioned myself onto the yoga mat and began to nourish my body, as the flatscreen on the far wall sprang to life. More promotional material needed viewing, snippets from my upcoming docuseries Not Your Villain. Today’s segment was an interview with my parents. My stomach churned at the thought.
The opening was every bit as inspirational as I expected. I even found myself speaking along with it, as the audio boomed in through the studio speakers.
“Regan Voorhees has been called many things.”
There was a shot of me clutching Atticus, as I fed him a piece of celery that he quickly snarfed down. I looked oddly happy in the footage.
“Activist.”
A collection of shots followed: me hitting Spayde Martinez with the Abattoir, the following pin, and me clutching the Action Wrestling Cruiserweight Champion. It was my first title win. This time, I looked more satisfied than happy. As if every swaggering statement I had ever made was proven in that single moment.
“Athlete.”
A particularly epic-looking image of me in black-and-white played next. The only color in the image was the orange flames dancing in my eyes. Obviously edited so that it appeared I was watching something burn. Probably the patriarchy, for the sake of heavyhanded symbolism.
“Dead-Eyed Sociopath.”
Perhaps we should cut that from the final edit. The last shot showed me at an autograph signing. I forced a smile as I squeezed a suitably adorable tween in for a side hug. Her enthusiasm seemed genuine and though I remembered feeling annoyed in the moment, my feelings now were a bit… warmer. An odd sense of satisfaction at the idea of playing the role model that I never had. Now I felt like much less of a dead-eyed sociopath.
“Feminist Icon.”
The voiceover lingered, then the title card faded in.
“Regan Voorhees: Not Your Villain.”
“Times New Roman, though, someone is getting demoted over that,” I said through a mouthful of groatmeal. Not the best of table manners, but I was alone for the moment. And then the screen faded in on my parents, seated together on a chesterfield loveseat in an especially vomitous shade of green. The dimensions of the seat meant they had to sit closer together than either would’ve liked, but they tried to angle themselves away from each other as best they could. A decanter of bourbon sat in front of them. Mom had already helped herself to a glass, and Dad was following her example.
Mom was the first to chime in, as usual. “Regan has always been… headstrong.”
Dad poured his drink as he spoke, pacing himself with the practiced movement of a chatty drunk. “Yep, ever since she was a kiddo. Pulled one of her cousin’s teeth out with a pair of pliers over a paintball game.” He gulped his drink instead of sipping.
“Jesus Christ,” said Mom. “Don’t bring that up in the video. And for fuck’s sake, pace yourself.”
“I am,” Dad said. “I’m pacing myself to be drunk by noon. But anyway, I always tried to encourage Regan, whether it was sports, art, school…”
“Drinking,” Mom interrupted, putting away some alcohol herself.
To his credit, Dad ignored her. He was always better at drinking socially than Mom was. “Which brings me to my point, some advice for all the dads out there.” He pointed at the screen for emphasis. “Support your daughters.”
“Just like our daughter, you’re a feminist icon,” Mom added.
Dad managed to stop himself from chugging the contents of his drink. But the argument, fueled by years of loveless marriage, continued. “Fuck you, dear.”
My fingernails practically dug through the remote as I shut the screen off. That clip would obviously fail to be included in the docuseries. Perhaps it would live on as a blooper. I had always heard about children who disappointed their parents. Not that I could relate. But I was always endlessly disappointed by my parents.
The groatmeal made my stomach churn, so I chugged my smoothie and then focused on my breathing, along with harnessing the endless rage that welled up inside me. The same rage that made me quote Nietzsche at pageant judges. The rage that pushed me to pummel people for a living and force my moral and dietary beliefs upon them by any means necessary. The rage that I feared would never, ever go away until it ate me alive. An appropriate enough ending for the meat heiress. Perhaps making myself… ugh, relatable… was more difficult than I imagined.
Instead, I decided on a more… natural approach. In the middle of my yoga, I turned the camera of my phone on.
“Hi,” I said, holding the lotus-position perfectly, except for the one hand that recorded me. “I’m Regan. I’m not what you would call… likable. Chalk that up to my brain chemistry, my upbringing, a divine creator’s insidious sense of humor. Whatever makes sense to you.”
I cracked my neck to one side, the sound echoing like I was just dropped from a gallows and stopped by a length of rope. “I was an odd child.”
The camera cut to an hour later, when I sat in my kitchen. The temperature of my yoga room left me a sweaty mess, but I decided to expose my vulnerability. To be more human than the ice queen I’m so accustomed to being. Atticus sat beside me on a stool, happily munching uncooked spinach from a porcelain bowl.
“You may notice, I’m less immaculate than usual,” I said, to the phone. My actual smile was lips-only, hiding my teeth. I saved the showing of teeth for displays of dead-eyed aggression, like any good predator defending their a kill from the competition.
“And you’re in my home,” I continued, giving a wave at the especially sterile room where my meals were prepared, the gleaming stainless steel surrounding me and my closest living companion. Atticus kept munching on his spinach, giving me the occasional look of support.
“Showing you a-day-in-the-life of Regan Voorhees is mortifying to the point that I want to vomit all over this counter. Fortunately, it’s quite easy to clean. After a morning of hot yoga, I like to feed my pig. You might construe this as me being ‘just like you.’ You have pets, I have pets. Look at me, being relatable.”
The video fast-forwarded to me in front of three separate monitors, reviewing designs for Voorhees Farms merchandise. My own face was traditionally marketable to a number of female demographics, but Atticus was the true power behind my merchandising empire. The precious porcine was destined to end the practice of human meat-eating with a little help from his loving mommy.
I cycled through a number of prototypical posters. ‘P0rk Is The Future’ and ‘Friend of Atticus’ variations abound. But there was still one that made my heart soar with just a little bit of personal pride. ‘I Believe In Regan Voorhees.’ If I were a crier, I might tear up at the sight of it. The idea of a girl with no other idols devoting all her faith to me. The sort of hero worship I myself was never able to partake in. I was an odd child. A lonely child, who never found any sort of connection with other people. Even my parents, flawed as there were, loved me dearly and it pained them to see my struggles. Unless they were blacked out, of course. But animals never judged little Regan and all her weird, off-putting, nihilistic tendencies. They would let her feed them treats and pat their heads, and she would feel a little less alone in a bleak and uncaring world.
“I have to wonder, do you believe in Regan Voorhees?” I asked, whoever might be watching this. The sort of question would make for an excellent snippet in a documentary trailer, but the question was one I actually wanted the answer to. Atticus certainly did, but I’m his primary source of comfort, companionship and food. A small contingent of wrestling fans liked me. But did they believe in me? As a person, as a competitor, as someone who genuinely wanted to change the world. Did my parents?
I liked to think they at least did, when they had just the right percentage of alcohol swirling through their bloodstreams. That much was comforting. But in spite of the sadism, the nihilism, all those delightfully awful -isms that made me want to hurt people professionally… That need for connection lingered. To my great disappointment, I Regan Voorhees, remained as human as anyone else. It was as tragic as it was comedic.
Atticus hopped into my lap, sensing my mental anguish. I scratched his ears in solidarity, to remind him that he would never be alone so long as I was still breathing. I thought about all the other little girls like me, who weren’t so fortunate to have a slew of animal friends to comfort them, on those darkest of days when they utterly gave up on the human race. I wanted nothing more than for them to believe in me. How fucking silly.
I did not look back at the camera. “I suppose on a good day, I do believe in Regan Voorhees.” I said the words to myself, to the viewer, to anyone who needed to hear it. If they even existed. I sincerely wished that they did.
Because if they did, then I offered some semblance of hope in the shit-stained hellscape that we keep waking up in. I made their entire world better.
What the fuck have you done today?
Spouting Nietzschean rhetoric was a cliche for any aspiring nihilist, but please understand that I was seven at the time. I used his words to reject an archaic and toxic societal practice. The judges cowered before my candor, shaken by the juxtaposition between my words and my sparkly tutu. Mom told them my talent was ballet. She was incorrect. My talent was to look powerful people in the eye and speak the harshest of truths. To this day, I can even go for over six minutes without blinking. Invaluable when you’re trying to unsettle someone.
My ballet-enhanced flexibility allowed me to wrench free from Mom’s grasp long enough to run back out and continue. “That was Nietzche. Read a book!” Seven-year-old Regan went through quite the Nietzche phase, but that time my mother seized me by the waist and carried me off stage before I could embarrass her further. The car ride home was blissfully silent.
Dad thought I did great.
Such was my troubled existence. Speaking up on behalf of myself and others in the face of societal injustice. But this was only the first example of many. So long ago it felt like a dream that I awaken from every single morning.
My day began at 6 a.m. Instead of an alarm clock, water was dripped onto my forehead akin to Chinese water torture. An effective method for ensuring I’m not even tempted to stay in bed, and the discomfort snaps my brain into laser focus.
Atticus was allowed to sleep in, as he needed his beauty rest in order to look photogenic for Voorhees Farms promotional material. Still, I couldn’t help but smile as he snore-snorted and kicked his little trotters, his body mimicking his adventures in dreamland.
A steaming bowl of groatmeal and a chia-mango-spinach smoothie waited in my yoga studio, placed there moments before by a well-trained attendant. He knew the exact moment to leave my breakfast waiting, to ensure maximum freshness while also making sure to not encounter me directly. Dealing with other humans required a great deal of mental fortitude on my part, and I preferred not to test it in the morning hours before I was properly caffeinated.
I lotus-positioned myself onto the yoga mat and began to nourish my body, as the flatscreen on the far wall sprang to life. More promotional material needed viewing, snippets from my upcoming docuseries Not Your Villain. Today’s segment was an interview with my parents. My stomach churned at the thought.
The opening was every bit as inspirational as I expected. I even found myself speaking along with it, as the audio boomed in through the studio speakers.
“Regan Voorhees has been called many things.”
There was a shot of me clutching Atticus, as I fed him a piece of celery that he quickly snarfed down. I looked oddly happy in the footage.
“Activist.”
A collection of shots followed: me hitting Spayde Martinez with the Abattoir, the following pin, and me clutching the Action Wrestling Cruiserweight Champion. It was my first title win. This time, I looked more satisfied than happy. As if every swaggering statement I had ever made was proven in that single moment.
“Athlete.”
A particularly epic-looking image of me in black-and-white played next. The only color in the image was the orange flames dancing in my eyes. Obviously edited so that it appeared I was watching something burn. Probably the patriarchy, for the sake of heavyhanded symbolism.
“Dead-Eyed Sociopath.”
Perhaps we should cut that from the final edit. The last shot showed me at an autograph signing. I forced a smile as I squeezed a suitably adorable tween in for a side hug. Her enthusiasm seemed genuine and though I remembered feeling annoyed in the moment, my feelings now were a bit… warmer. An odd sense of satisfaction at the idea of playing the role model that I never had. Now I felt like much less of a dead-eyed sociopath.
“Feminist Icon.”
The voiceover lingered, then the title card faded in.
“Regan Voorhees: Not Your Villain.”
“Times New Roman, though, someone is getting demoted over that,” I said through a mouthful of groatmeal. Not the best of table manners, but I was alone for the moment. And then the screen faded in on my parents, seated together on a chesterfield loveseat in an especially vomitous shade of green. The dimensions of the seat meant they had to sit closer together than either would’ve liked, but they tried to angle themselves away from each other as best they could. A decanter of bourbon sat in front of them. Mom had already helped herself to a glass, and Dad was following her example.
Mom was the first to chime in, as usual. “Regan has always been… headstrong.”
Dad poured his drink as he spoke, pacing himself with the practiced movement of a chatty drunk. “Yep, ever since she was a kiddo. Pulled one of her cousin’s teeth out with a pair of pliers over a paintball game.” He gulped his drink instead of sipping.
“Jesus Christ,” said Mom. “Don’t bring that up in the video. And for fuck’s sake, pace yourself.”
“I am,” Dad said. “I’m pacing myself to be drunk by noon. But anyway, I always tried to encourage Regan, whether it was sports, art, school…”
“Drinking,” Mom interrupted, putting away some alcohol herself.
To his credit, Dad ignored her. He was always better at drinking socially than Mom was. “Which brings me to my point, some advice for all the dads out there.” He pointed at the screen for emphasis. “Support your daughters.”
“Just like our daughter, you’re a feminist icon,” Mom added.
Dad managed to stop himself from chugging the contents of his drink. But the argument, fueled by years of loveless marriage, continued. “Fuck you, dear.”
My fingernails practically dug through the remote as I shut the screen off. That clip would obviously fail to be included in the docuseries. Perhaps it would live on as a blooper. I had always heard about children who disappointed their parents. Not that I could relate. But I was always endlessly disappointed by my parents.
The groatmeal made my stomach churn, so I chugged my smoothie and then focused on my breathing, along with harnessing the endless rage that welled up inside me. The same rage that made me quote Nietzsche at pageant judges. The rage that pushed me to pummel people for a living and force my moral and dietary beliefs upon them by any means necessary. The rage that I feared would never, ever go away until it ate me alive. An appropriate enough ending for the meat heiress. Perhaps making myself… ugh, relatable… was more difficult than I imagined.
Instead, I decided on a more… natural approach. In the middle of my yoga, I turned the camera of my phone on.
“Hi,” I said, holding the lotus-position perfectly, except for the one hand that recorded me. “I’m Regan. I’m not what you would call… likable. Chalk that up to my brain chemistry, my upbringing, a divine creator’s insidious sense of humor. Whatever makes sense to you.”
I cracked my neck to one side, the sound echoing like I was just dropped from a gallows and stopped by a length of rope. “I was an odd child.”
The camera cut to an hour later, when I sat in my kitchen. The temperature of my yoga room left me a sweaty mess, but I decided to expose my vulnerability. To be more human than the ice queen I’m so accustomed to being. Atticus sat beside me on a stool, happily munching uncooked spinach from a porcelain bowl.
“You may notice, I’m less immaculate than usual,” I said, to the phone. My actual smile was lips-only, hiding my teeth. I saved the showing of teeth for displays of dead-eyed aggression, like any good predator defending their a kill from the competition.
“And you’re in my home,” I continued, giving a wave at the especially sterile room where my meals were prepared, the gleaming stainless steel surrounding me and my closest living companion. Atticus kept munching on his spinach, giving me the occasional look of support.
“Showing you a-day-in-the-life of Regan Voorhees is mortifying to the point that I want to vomit all over this counter. Fortunately, it’s quite easy to clean. After a morning of hot yoga, I like to feed my pig. You might construe this as me being ‘just like you.’ You have pets, I have pets. Look at me, being relatable.”
The video fast-forwarded to me in front of three separate monitors, reviewing designs for Voorhees Farms merchandise. My own face was traditionally marketable to a number of female demographics, but Atticus was the true power behind my merchandising empire. The precious porcine was destined to end the practice of human meat-eating with a little help from his loving mommy.
I cycled through a number of prototypical posters. ‘P0rk Is The Future’ and ‘Friend of Atticus’ variations abound. But there was still one that made my heart soar with just a little bit of personal pride. ‘I Believe In Regan Voorhees.’ If I were a crier, I might tear up at the sight of it. The idea of a girl with no other idols devoting all her faith to me. The sort of hero worship I myself was never able to partake in. I was an odd child. A lonely child, who never found any sort of connection with other people. Even my parents, flawed as there were, loved me dearly and it pained them to see my struggles. Unless they were blacked out, of course. But animals never judged little Regan and all her weird, off-putting, nihilistic tendencies. They would let her feed them treats and pat their heads, and she would feel a little less alone in a bleak and uncaring world.
“I have to wonder, do you believe in Regan Voorhees?” I asked, whoever might be watching this. The sort of question would make for an excellent snippet in a documentary trailer, but the question was one I actually wanted the answer to. Atticus certainly did, but I’m his primary source of comfort, companionship and food. A small contingent of wrestling fans liked me. But did they believe in me? As a person, as a competitor, as someone who genuinely wanted to change the world. Did my parents?
I liked to think they at least did, when they had just the right percentage of alcohol swirling through their bloodstreams. That much was comforting. But in spite of the sadism, the nihilism, all those delightfully awful -isms that made me want to hurt people professionally… That need for connection lingered. To my great disappointment, I Regan Voorhees, remained as human as anyone else. It was as tragic as it was comedic.
Atticus hopped into my lap, sensing my mental anguish. I scratched his ears in solidarity, to remind him that he would never be alone so long as I was still breathing. I thought about all the other little girls like me, who weren’t so fortunate to have a slew of animal friends to comfort them, on those darkest of days when they utterly gave up on the human race. I wanted nothing more than for them to believe in me. How fucking silly.
I did not look back at the camera. “I suppose on a good day, I do believe in Regan Voorhees.” I said the words to myself, to the viewer, to anyone who needed to hear it. If they even existed. I sincerely wished that they did.
Because if they did, then I offered some semblance of hope in the shit-stained hellscape that we keep waking up in. I made their entire world better.
What the fuck have you done today?