01| Foundation| Hurt.

I awoke spittin’ violence dug from the grave of my throat, my mouth dry as a three-day-old funeral wreath, sent with such good intention but now the dead are buried and there’s buyer’s remorse. You should have loved them before they stretched their legs to coffin length and I should have left the bar with the blonde with brunette betraying roots and the crooked bottom tooth, instead I stayed for one more drink and then six more.



“You get violent when you drink.” words I knew by heart. But I get violent when I think, read a book or straighten a cufflink, so why add sobriety to a list of things to do today. My liver ached like a nostalgic crush, crushed by the crushing way she said, “No thanks.” I gave up on her in seventh grade, but I owe it to my better demons to keep courting three-hundred dollar bottles of scotch until my liver leaves me, too.



I searched the coffee table beside me with a heavy hand, the sound of glass clinking, breaking and spilling their guts was enough to awaken the marching band in my head and bring a shudder to my cemetery breath. I found an almost empty bottle and retrieved the orange prescription bottle from the left pocket of my black slacks, wrinkled from another night on a couch that begged to be thrown away.



I wondered if my bed ever gets lonely for me. I wondered if anyone gets as lonely as me. I wandered but the journey had yet to get the best of me.



The little white pill went down easy, white-watered by the golden poison, a warm Summer rain to dampen an unvisited grave. I should have left the bar with the blonde with brunette betraying roots and the crooked bottom tooth, instead I spared her much more than this empty headache.



I rested the bottle on my stomach, watching it rise and fall with the roll of the stomach acid and steadied breath. Only a few days and nights away from a few minutes of measured violence. To beat a man, in every conceivable way and be paid to do so and even on the rare occasion, encouraged by the puppets surrounding the ring. No bruises run across my wrists from the metal restraints, no night or weekend surrounded by drunks and petty thieves. No judge or jury, but a sentence for me to be the executioner. To execute my will over another man, to twist bones and manipulate joints, to suplex and smash my elbow into unprepared jawbones, hoping not just to connect, but to unhinge and hurt.



To hurt you, Joe Bishop. The WFWF champion, though this won’t be for your championship. The powers that be wouldn’t want to see humiliation added to your coming pain.



The scotch was room temperature as I pressed the bottle again to my chapped lips. I drank this time for my enemies. Joe Bishop, the fans, but mostly for myself.



I’ve seen a dozen or so of your matches, Joe. How you like to fly around that ring. I bet you feel like a phoenix out there, risen from the ash of your mental instability and self doubt, soaring and crashing down on those that were too slow or inexperienced to move away. But you’re not a mythical bird, flames dripping from feathers ablaze, some otherworldly symbol of that old, beloved story we love to tell, how a man may fall and rise again, even better than before. You’re a dove, Joe. Not one of the pretty ones from the movies or the stories your Mother told you about angels and Heaven and the hereafter. No, a real dove, one that lands on the banister of your back deck, white with blots of browns and greys. You think to yourself, “That looks like a dove, but it can’t be. Doves are white and majestic and this one just sh*t on my new grill.”



I let the bottle linger near my lips before letting it rest on my stomach again.



You see, Joe, just because they call you a dove doesn’t make your shortcomings disappear. I see through your name and championship, right through, and I bare witness to the ugliness of the real you. All the while you fly around, flapping your filthy wings by day and folding them to pray by night. Praying that you won’t be found out. That God, if there is such a thing, will blind your fans and enemies the same. So that when they hear that you are a mighty phoenix, they will smile and nod and be afraid to challenge you and you can live to rise in your mediocrity another day.



But your prayers have landed on deaf ears. Your enemies eyes begin to clear, long before the fans, but they will soon follow. The day you have dreaded is near, Joe. Your greatest enemy has found you out. You can flap your wings and puff out your sunken chest where your heart should be, but I am death become you. I have arrived like the hunter’s arrow, quick and true, taking everything from you.



I am going to hurt you, Joe. Your eyes will blackened beneath my chiseled fists, your jaw will swell from the action in my elbow and your neck will bend and break from the impact of my Wrist-Clutch Exploder. You will fly a little, like little birdies do, and then you will question how you will be able to walk from the ring back to the locker room after I crank your legs and back like a malicious vice in my Sharpshooter. I will outwrestle you. I will outclass you. I will break your will. I will break your bones.



The powers that be will grant me a shot at your championship, the one remaining piece in the house of cards that you have built around yourself. You will stand, if you can manage it, grasping onto your title and whatever I have left.



And then, Joe...I’ll take that, too.