Boredom isn’t something you’ve grazed the surface of until you’re sober at 3am watching Santa porn in a Denny’s Bathroom. My iPhone was three models behind. My screen spiderwebbed with cracks.
More obvious forms of depravity used to serve as fun diversionary activities that broke boredom spells. But alas, excessive alcohol intake, recreational drug use, and illicit sexual behavior haven’t been at my disposal in years. And besides. At this point, I’d rather cut my throat with a depressing but honest one liner than engage in played out filth any day. Any idiot who knows a pimp can pay for a hooker. It takes a real revolutionary to spray genetic material in a bathroom stall with the door open and not clean it up.
I used to think I was creative. Turns out my squalid way of life was about as unimaginative as it gets.
Regardless, I still have very fond memories of those days. But all deplorable things must come to an end and I started to change. I don’t remember what made me realize I needed help. It probably wasn’t one specific event so much as a gaudy track record of poor behavior and losing people. Friends and family no longer wanted to speak to me. The independent wrestling scene wouldn’t even book me for gigs due to unreliability and frequent drunken outbursts. I think it finally struck a chord with me right around the time I realized Chad Evans was the only soul from my past life who would answer my sobbing drunken phone calls. Tragic.
I had been seeing Hannah for several months by the time I decided to sober up. What started as a loosely strung together series of hook-ups had blossomed into friendship, or at least something like it. I barely left my house during that time. Barely ate. She would bring groceries to the house and cook for me. I pitied her and was grateful for her in equal measure. She didn’t know what she was getting into. I made sure to warn her. I have always had this compulsive need to be saved from myself by a beautiful woman who would fix me, and then when I’ve had it I always torpedo the relationship. Matt Hodges, the damsel in distress and self saboteur extraordinaire. And so it was. I told her I thought I was falling in love with her.
I went through AA. Then counseling. Even though she was just a girl I was seeing at the time, Hannah, now my wife, saw me through the entire thing. She saw me battle my demons, my injuries, watched me wake up every day unable to roll out of bed after years of hitting the canvas, watching me take baths in layers of ice cubes to unfreeze my knee. If I’m being honest the debauchery deficit in my life can be attributed to loyalty to her. I owe her everything.
Today’s world is so different. Nobody really gives a damn about the plight of the reformed degenerate. We stop destroying our lives, we become less interesting and for what? For some homemade Father’s Day card, a zero turn lawnmower, and consistent but vanilla sex. I’ve become the standard issue white suburbanite family man who answers ‘how is your day’ with a glib ‘living the dream’. My wife is looking into private schools for the boys while she stays at home and cooks and cleans. I am routinely expected to marvel over macaroni art like it’s the fucking Sistine Chapel.
It’s a very cozy tomb I’ve built for myself. Beautiful wife. Boys that have my sad blue eyes and dark hair. It seems ungrateful to not be in love with this life, and for the most part I suppose there wasn’t anything wrong with it. It seemed a graceful transition to the untrained eye, but I’ve settled into this life less like silt settling in a riverbed and more like a freshly cut turd in a toilet. I love my wife. I love my boys. But within me there will always be an itch that I will have to find a way to mitigate. That makes me feel like a huge asshole. If Charlotte the Spider were still alive to today, she’d write in her web “Some Douche”.
It’s 3 am. I’ve been “shitting” for nearly ten minutes, thinking about how much I dislike my life and watching tasteless porn at full blast on my phone. My group is probably wondering what’s taking me so long. I’m the DD. Fresh hell. I swear to god if this kind of behavior gives me carpal tunnel I won’t pay for the surgery. I’ll just live forever with a useless crippled hand. Or I’ll have to find a new activity. I’m already running out of ideas.
“Santa, I’ve been a good girl this year. Honest,” said the well developed woman on his lap, hair meticulously pulled back in pigtails. I thought this was weird, but god was it ever awkwardly hot. She batted her eyelashes with her hands folded at her lap, playfully turning her head away.
“Is that so? Well, Allie, let me check my nice list,” Santa Claus said, unfurling a lengthy flowing scroll. His eyes perused the list as he stroked her thigh with his gloved hand. Searching for the right name. “Hmmmm. I don’t see your name on this list.”
“Please, look harder, Santa,” she said sweetly yet seductively. “I know I have to be on that list somewhere…” She leaned towards his ear and let out a school girl giggle.
“I happen to know,” began Santa, sternly, “that your name is not on this particular list.”
“No?” She sounded concerned, campily raising her hand to her mouth in scripted befuddlement. The Academy wants to reward bullshit art films, meanwhile the actual art gets ignored. “Oh no…”
“I’m afraid I won’t be coming to your house this year,” said Cringle, disappointed.
“Oh, Santa, isn’t there something you can do? I promise I’ll be good,” came the reply. She put her hand on his shoulder and inched closer to his face. Fuck yes. Now we’re getting to the good shit. I was never interested in the money shot. The art is all in the build up.
“Well,” he began, “if you want me to come down your chimney, you’re going to have to let me…come down something else.” Fucking St. Nick. I always knew he was a pervert. That’s why mommy was always kissing Santa Claus. She was trying to fuck. My hand worked at a thousand repetitions a minute. Getting close to a White Christmas.
A momentary release was the best offering that life could afford me right now. In some respects I thought this was a real triumph of the human spirit. Something to hang my hat on. I had cheated on virtually every partner I’d ever been with except Hannah. Please God, allow me these precious few moments of weakness to keep myself honest.
“Or maybe I really do belong on the naughty list,” she said, reaching down Santa’s silky red pants, her hand slowly bobbing up and down, his bearded face contorting into one of pleasure.
Somehow I didn’t think Mrs. Claus would approve of such transactions. And that’s when it started to hit me. What would Hannah think of me watching porn at full volume in public? What kind of example am I setting for sons if you were caught and arrested for indecent exposure? Is this kind of desperation what I want for them?
Guilt. A recent pest. I had no idea where it was coming from but as hard as I grit my teeth and push through towards sweet oblivion, I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what kind of man I was through the appearances of decency.
Matthew Jr. and Ian had potential. They could be so much better than I ever was. But for that to happen, I had to be a better man, give them something worth aspiring to. Sons always looked to their fathers as a model for what a man ought to be.
The best example of that fact that came to mind was the correlation between my father and I. He was an emotionally closed off, selfish piece of work. And look what I was for all those years.
Come on, Matt. You can do it, I coached myself. Focus. We can deal with your daddy issues later. For now, just be Matt Hodges. Just watch the pretty lady blow Santa. She lowered herself to her knees. “I’d really like to see the…North Pole.”
I heard the door open followed by the shuffling of drunk feet. I felt the familiar sense of urgency to finish. Then the shuffling stopped at the urinal.
“Matt? Are you in there?” Fucking Lord. This guy. He probably hadn’t even completed his stream. “Yes,” I sighed. I tried to focus on the task at hand.
“Matt, it’s me,” said the slurred voice. “It’s Carl.” I heard his zipper pull up and saw his crisp white New Balances standing uncomfortably close to the stall.
Carl was some upper management type at an accounting firm. He was also incredibly intolerant of alcohol and had about four Bacardi and sevens at the bar we had just left. He was knackered. I occasionally went bowling with him and a few of the men that Hannah’s friends married on Friday nights. I didn’t hate Carl like I did the rest of them. I didn’t like him either. He was mostly a very benign and quiet presence, when he wasn’t bothering me trying to get off to cheesy Christmas innuendos.
“Yes, I know,” I said with a grunt, my hand hard at work.
“Can I talk to you about something?”
“Carl, we’re in the men’s room. There are unwritten rules here. You don’t talk to a man in a stall. Ever. Not even when there’s a glory hole.”
“It’s extremely important,” he continued on. “I really have to get something out there and I don’t know who else I’m supposed to talk to.”
“Your parents? A counselor? Your friends, maybe?” I said with an obvious air of annoyance.
“You ARE my friend,” he replied.
I am? I never really did the whole friends thing. “Uh-huh,” I closed my eyes and tried to drown out his presence. Come on, come on. He seemed to be ignoring what I thought were fairly obvious audio clues that I was having a private moment.
“Matt, please,” his drunken urgency caused him to fumble his tone. It broke into a raspy slur. “It’s about my marriage. Please.”
Ah yes. Carl’s marriage. A union that didn’t make sense on any plane of reality. Maria was a stunning Latina woman that looked like she could be in an Enrique Iglesias music video. He was a flabby ineffectual looking white guy with combed over brown hair that teamed with a half bottle of hair gel. The math was fuzzy on this pairing. And yet,she did everything for Carl. Everything was about Carl. Carl, Carl, Carl. Carl this, Carl that. She was incapable of having a conversation she couldn’t associate with being Carl’s wife. It was bizarre. I shook my head.
“Whatever it is about your marriage can certainly wait until I’m done,” I said. I still wasn’t turning the volume down on my phone, I hoped that Santa’s jolly moans would serve a helpful hint. He remained steadfast standing on the side of the stall.
“Have you ever…not wanted to have sex with Hannah?” He nervously asked.
“No,” I lied. “Now damnit, Carl.”
“I haven’t wanted her in ages,” he continued, ignoring me.
Now, that actually piqued my interest. My hand involuntarily stopped in its tracks. She was a wet dream on legs. “What?”
“I’m not physically attracted to her anymore,” said Carl. “It sounds terrible to admit that, but it’s true. And you know, you’re a good guy, I can trust you not to tell anybody.”
Yeah, that’s me. The good guy. I hit the pause button since he wasn’t paying attention, anyway. Mid Shelf vodka had apparently done away with his tact. Even still, my eyes remained fixed on the scene. Santa’s pants around his ankles, his young charge getting her stocking stuffed from behind. “Everything is going to be fine, Carl.” I wasn’t sure if I believed that or not.
“I can’t fuck her, Matt. I don’t want to. I just don’t. When I lay down to bed at night with her, I can’t bring myself to get hard. I feel horrible. She wants it all the time and I couldn’t possibly have less interest. I find her completely unappealing.” Incredible. It was like listening to an elementary school band criticize the New York philharmonic.
“Can’t win ‘em all the time. Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches,” I said without emoting. I had no idea what to do in these situations other than offer generic commiserations. This had become such awkward new territory for me that I was mostly repeating things I’d heard from my high school football coach.
“I always thought I’d actually live some life,” he prattled on ignoring my bad advice, “before I got married, and don’t get me wrong, Maria is…fine, in many ways. She’s a good wife. There’s…nothing so wrong with her.”
Nothing so wrong with her. She was a god damned smoke show and this idiot thought there was…nothing so wrong with her? He should be married to a modest five. Not a ten.
“I guess what it boils down to is I’m bitter. I never got to go anywhere, do anything. I always envisioned myself sampling different women in the dating world to find out what I liked, but I ended up marrying my college girlfriend. You know? And I really only dated her in the first place because my friends thought she was hot,” Carl laughed. “Kinda fucked up.”
“But she IS hot,” I offered, trying to offer some encouragement. “Extremely so. And the sampling women, maybe that’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” I lied again.
“Maybe, I don’t know,” he offered. “All I know is I have to take a Cialis just to throw her some halfhearted sex. Makes me wonder why I’m even with her in the first place. And the kids, GOD. They’re terrible.”
“I’m sure that’s a common feeling,” I said, my shit now completely soft. He wasn’t wrong. His kids sucked. I hated when Hannah volunteered to babysit them. They were stupid. I took Matthew Jr.’s Nerf Guns and repeatedly went for the large head of his idiot son. It was a hard target to miss.
“Really? I don’t know, man.”
“Things can’t always be perfect,” I said flatly.
“Perfect? No. But if I’m this unhappy…”
“If you’re this unhappy, what? You’ll get a divorce. Good for you. Have fun paying child support and alimony to your ex wife while she gets gut out by other dudes.” I shuttered. It made me realize the consequences I faced should I ever terminate my own marriage.
“Yeah… yeah. I guess that’s true.”
He fell silent after that. I felt somewhat bad. Curse what this new life has done to me. “I do understand the feeling of being stuck in a rut, for the record. But look at what you’ve got. You have a family, money, and a beautiful wife. Why can’t that just be enough to get you through these days of doubt.” The best I could do.
And then it dawned on me. What I feel towards my family, the bitter resentment, is more or less normal. This guy is about as average as a man can possibly be and even he feels this. It doesn’t mean I love Hannah and my sons any less, or even that I’m a terrible person. Wives and children are supposed to make us feel dead inside. That’s what they’re there for. So what if you don’t want to fuck your wife? Who really does? And so what if you don’t want to be a father? Does anybody? I never did. This strange man who looks like the kind of person who only listens to The Carpenters and I have more in common than I thought.
“Yeah, he said, “that’s a good point.”
“Look, Carl, all I know is we’ve mostly unshitty lives. Most people would kill for what we’ve got. So what if you don’t want to fuck your wife. That’ll pass when you get horny enough. And even if it doesn’t, close your eyes really tight and just pretend she’s whatever it is you’re into. We’re in our late 30’s. We’re well out of our sexual prime anyway,” I said with a wince, realizing the truth behind that last statement. It hit me like a tracer bullet. “We’re not always going to want to fuck our wives. They’re annoying and we see them all the time. Sometimes we just need to fuck them because, well, it’s our job. And at the end of the day, even if that’s not enough, in sixty years we’ll likely be dead and none of this will have ever mattered anyway.” Optimism. I smiled.
“Yeah,” he said. “Um, thanks I guess.” I wasn’t sure if any of what I said made him feel any better, but I certainly felt better. This improved state of emotional wellness made me feel like my own issues were universal and that it was okay to hate the lives we build for ourselves. I pulled up my pants and started to buckle my belt. My balls remained full. But now my heart was, also.
“Carl,” I said.
“Yeah?”
He had shared with me so hell, maybe I should share with him. Tell him something personal, Matt. Show him that you’re a human being with feelings, too. Make a real friend.
“Sometimes I masturbate in public bathrooms,” I said as I walked out of the stall. He stood there. I could smell the liquor emanating from his person. He cocked an eyebrow. “Pretty frequently, actually. Every night we’ve gone out to eat after bowling.”
He didn’t say anything at first. Then, he turned away from me, making his leave as I approached the sink.
“That’s really fucking weird,” he said plainly.
—-
The boy was eight. He was a handsome kid with floppy black hair. When he found something funny, he laughed straight from his belly, and when he did, his mother couldn’t help but laugh too. But he was also a problem child. Just last week he had thrown a rock through the Immerman’s living room window for no reason in particular. A little hellion. That little move had cost the boy’s father several hundred dollars and earned him a tremendous whooping.
He was also frequently getting into little scraps with the other boys in the neighborhood. His dad had signed him up for pee wee wrestling to “get some of that aggression out” but all it really had done was offer the boy new and exciting ways to bring pain to his enemies.
A child therapist refuted a concerned mother’s fears that her child was some kind of psychopath. The therapist effectively told his parents that they weren’t signs of early onset psychiatric disorders and rather were simply cries for attention after several sessions with the boy. The therapist also offered that occasional words of praise might do the boy some good, especially if they’d come from his father.
But they never came. The other kids of the neighborhood would always play catch in the yard with their dads, and the boy’s dad was so disinterested when he was home that he’d hired a man to come play catch with him instead. A father for hire. Replacement dad, the boy called him.
He didn’t know much about his father. He knew that he had to work and worked a lot, and that was about it. What he couldn’t have grasped at that young age was that his father was a litigator, one of the best in the state. He was a named partner at his firm, and that meant long hours, lots of business trips, and lots of missed wrestling matches.
The very activity his father had signed him up for he would never see him perform. The shame of it was, the boy excelled in the sport. His coach had confided in his mother that he was a natural, albeit a bit overly aggressive.
“Merrill, spend some time with your son,” she demanded.
He walked into the house every night, later than expected, poured himself a glass of scotch from his decanter, and lit up a cigar.
“I’m tired,” he said. He never missed a beat. He walked by the boy and rubbed his black mop. “You behaving for your mother?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good boy,” he would say as he walked off, leaving the boy in a cloud of Cuban smoke. “Clean up. It’s almost bedtime.”
He frequently overheard his mother pleading with him and her pleas became more desperate over time. At one point he’d been outside their bedroom while his father suggested they send him away to boarding school. His mother argues vehemently and was able to pull him off that train of thought. Hearing that did damage to the boy, as it simply reaffirmed what he always had thought. That he was an inconvenience.
He was an unwanted child, and his father wanted to deploy him to a filing cabinet for the rest of upper class America’s undesirable children.
Now on Saturdays it was customary for the boy to be shipped off to play with Nick Peters, another boy who lived in the cul de sac. He walked across the way to his house and they’d spend the day pretending that the sticks they were holding were guns and they were embroiled in a fire fight in which both kids adamantly denied being shot.
On this particular Saturday, his mother had received an urgent request via phone call to come collect her son.
After his mother had a lengthy talk with Mrs. Peters, she furiously dragged him into the house by his arm. He begged her to let him go. He’d really gone and done it now. His mother was very slow to anger, so when she was visibly upset with her only son, even the slightest hint of frustration terrified him. His mother couldn’t believe it. One minute her son was having a playdate with the Peters boy and the next the other boy was badly hurt. Evidently he’d taken the boy down in the front yard and started punching him. He was on his way to the hospital now for stitches.
Said Mrs. Peters, “Completely unprovoked.”
She had dragged him hurriedly to the living room and threw him into the seat of the couch. The boy had tears streaming down his face. His right knuckles hurt. He laid flat across the cushions, laying prone so that his fitful sobs would soak into the fabric.
“What could possibly possess you to behave that way?! Are you insane?!” She screamed, now with fresh tears in her own eyes. Her tears were real. The boy was exaggerating a bit in the hopes that his sorrow would earn him leniency.
“Do you have any idea what your father is going to have to pay here?” The boy continued to sob. “Hospital trips are expensive. He’s going to be furious, Matthew. Just absolutely furious.”
The boy continued to cry but was running out of energy. He took some deep breaths and his pathetic wails died down to pathetic sniffles. He sat up.
“I, I,” he sniffed. “I…”
“You what?” She said, composing herself. She leaned down and grasped the boy’s cheeks and looked deep into his eyes. He averted his gaze to the floor.
“I…I got angry with him,“ he finally explained.
“What could’ve possibly made you angry enough to beat him?” She pleaded. “You know that’s not okay. He’s really hurt, Matthew…”
The boy was mostly collected at this point. His mother looked him straight in the face. He wiped his snot away with a wipe of his wrist. “He was talking about his fishing trip with his daddy and it made me angry,” said the boy.
“Why did that make you angry?”
The boy thought about this. “My dad never plays with me because he hates me and wants me to die.”
The mother felt an uncomfortable chill from her head to her toes that split her heart into two in its travels. She looked sunk. It was at this moment the boy knew he had just escaped the consequences of his actions. His mother began to cry discreetly again as she walked away from him, leaving him to look down at his tear stain.
The boy smiled.
————-
Being entrusted with the care and well-being of her two young sons was as big a part of Hannah Hodges’ life as drawing air. Matthew Jr. and Ian were well behaved children who ate healthy meals, took regular naps, and had regular bedtimes. They played hard and got into trouble and were punished accordingly as children should be, and the naughty things the children did that were typically so amusing that they ended up shared in her Facebook moms group after the issue at hand was dealt with. She loved the life she’d been given. As a stay-at-home mother, her entire life revolved around her darling boys and her husband.
The Hodges family lived in a British colonial style house with a spacious backyard that was a twenty minute drive from the beach. “Dream house”. Her eyes lit up in the spacious, open concept of the downstairs. No sooner did she say those two little words, five months pregnant with MJ all those years ago, did her husband-to-be Matthew employ the Merrill Hodges Trust Fund to secure the home for their blossoming family. A man who once passively referred to her as his slam piece was now her life partner. She’d watched him struggle to become a better man and succeed at every turn, and in her heart knew her presence would be rewarded. The currency her time investment afforded her was love, yes, but also something just as important or even more so. Security.
She thought about how she’d come to be here as she watched her children together on the living room floor.
For a majority of her twenties she’d been passed around by men who her friends would say ‘didn’t understand her value’. She never quite grasped what they meant by that. That she was pretty? It was generic praise of her character. She hated being told she was ‘amazing’. Meaningless compliments held no water with her, though she always took it in stride.
She didn’t need to be told she was worth it. In her mind, she knew she was worth it.
Hannah was an absolutely stunning girl from a small town where she was the only clear choice for homecoming queen. She was naturally endowed with the kind of figure that provoked a biological imperative. She had green eyes that went well with ringlets of black hair and fair skin. On top of being beautiful, she met society’s standards of what qualified as a nice person. She was always overbearingly polite, albeit artificially, and had never really ventured upon serious insult to another person. She was always very careful to smile at customer service workers and used please and thank you compulsively. She always tipped above twenty percent.
Her one bad habit, in her own mind, was her tendency to sift in and out of relationships with boring, forty-something men with six figure incomes for the sake of marrying into money.
Investment bankers, physicians, engineers. For somebody who valued financial security, men with prestigious jobs and high income should have been high on her list of potential suitors – and they were, make no mistake. But the urgent rutting of sex with these men made her feel like a bitch hyena in heat, like it was their last chance to make an impression they didn’t know how to make.
She had imagined herself being impregnated by a dentist she was seeing who had requested that she lay as still as possible and stare at the ceiling, unblinking. “Like you’re dead,” he explained. It was the only way he could get off. To imagine her dead. In between his spastic pumps, she conjured up images of what a life would look like with this man. Roleplaying as a corpse was easy enough, and potentially a small price to pay, but she didn’t really get any enjoyment from it. She wondered what having a son with him would be like. He would be smart. Strange. More than likely a sociopath. Status as a trophy wife didn’t seem worth having to bear fucked up children.
She needed both ballast and pleasure in her life was her decision. At the behest of her friends, she decided to open up an online dating profile. “Let the men come to you, from a distance,” her sister Lindsay said. Within mere hours, her inbox was full of men eager to capture her attention. And yet, still, they seemed so awkward. A steady stream of standard one or two word greetings and men who looked like they had neither money or personal hygiene skills. Hannah was insulted.
Are all the fish in the sea moray fucking eels? What is wrong with these men? Are they drugged? Do they really think they could ever get my attention? She scoffed.
And then, one message caught her eye.
It read:
You look like the kind of woman that longs to be simultaneously defiled and loved. Please respond post haste, because if you don’t, God will murder a koala bear.
Also, I’m famous.
It was a touch out of place yet it made her smile. She glossed over his profile. He was strikingly handsome with cold eyes. He didn’t smile in any of his pictures. A photo of him with a professional wrestling belt around his waist, standing next to a fit, smaller man said “Chad. The Glory Days” caught her attention. He must be good, she thought, although she hadn’t the faintest interest in professional wrestling. She struck up a dialogue. It wasn’t long after that, he offered to fly her to Miami.
He sent a driver for her from the airport to his home. The cardboard sign he held up for her said “SLAM PIECE”, a reference to what Matt said he was going to her. When she got there, she found it to be a beautiful home. Good, she thought. A sign of money. He greeted her at the door on crutches. She smiled and hugged him nervously. He stunk of bourbon and mint gum.
Even though alcohol and post-op prescribed narcotics were coursing through his veins, she’d never been fucked like that. His eyes seemed disinterested and lifeless prior to intercourse, but as soon as he was inside, they lit up the way a great white’s would once it tasted blood. He was passionate and veracious. She hadn’t had an orgasm in months and it was self-induced.
That was their entire first encounter. Episodic sex with Dawson’s Creek reruns playing in the background. For a woman who’d been having sex she didn’t really enjoy, this was a blessing.
When they weren’t having sex, Matt was somewhat distant. He was funny and sarcastic, but didn’t really care to talk about much of substance. She would catch him frequently staring off into the distance. He winced in pain frequently, iced his knee compulsively, and took his meds. He was four weeks post-op, had torn his ACL for the third time, and said “I’ll probably never be able to wrestle again”. There was significant structural damage to his knee. At 31, he’d have to step away from his only real marketable skill. It seemed to gnaw at him every second he wasn’t getting the temporary release of sex. He was clearly damaged goods. She wondered if it was a wise choice to continue this arrangement after their first encounter.
But his car was a brand new 2014 Beamer and the house was freshly furnished with designer furniture. She was encouraged he had done quite well for himself financially even though she didn’t inquire. So she stuck around.
Over the next few months, they did the same thing. He’d fly her out. She’d stay a few days, then she’d fly home. Her friends loved that she was seeing somebody who used to be on television. They’d all asked when they got to meet him.
Hannah and Matt never left the house when they were together and had in fact declined to take her out to dinner multiple times, instead opting to have food delivered. “To avoid being around people,” he would say. He was intensely secretive, never wanted to talk about his childhood, never cared to share stories from his days in the ring. His phone was always on, but he was never on it and it never made any noise. He was a one man departure from the technology instant. Hands glued to her, not his phone.
The more time she spent with him, the more she felt entitled to drop subtle hints about the future or official labels. Matt was uniquely gifted at the art of avoidance, especially in regards to topics he didn’t really care to speak about. He was also drinking more than Hannah thought was reasonable. But that didn’t matter. There was something about him that was different than the other men she’d been with, and so she told him one night as she lay in the crook of his arm before she fell asleep something that she probably ought not to have.
“I love you,” she said, closing her eyes with a smile.
Matt hesitated in psychic pain. She opened up a single eye and saw him grimace. “Okay,” he finally uttered.
He doesn’t need to say it, Hannah thought. She felt dignified in that she’d taken the first step and thought things would obviously evolve over time.
But the arrangement got to a point where they’d been seeing each other for eight months and he hadn’t really made any efforts to alter the nature of their relationship to something more serious. It was a shock to a woman whose phone had rung off the hook since she had hit puberty. Offensive. She questioned herself. He must not want me. Am I not pretty enough? Am I not worth it? The carousel of self doubt was taking her on a ride she didn’t have the stomach for.
All those wonderful probing doubts came to a head when he stopped regularly answering her texts and outright ignored her phone calls.
He seemed to have lost interest in her. He either didn’t answer at all or answered only with one or two words, a huge trigger for Hannah. That son of a bitch, all of her friends said. They acted personally aggrieved on her behalf.
“You’re better off without him.”
“Go get you a real man.”
But she’d done the grunt work on this. It felt like a waste of her time. To this point, she’d found everything she wanted in a man. Matt was handsome, had money and assets, and had a mystique that she’d never been a victim of before. There was something deep under his skin that she wasn’t able to peel back. It drew her in.
His absence in her life confounded her. It initially had made her sad. Now it was a sensation that kept her up at night. Rejection. An outright assault on a beautiful girl. She stared compulsively at photos she’d taken of him while he was sleeping. He was serene and peaceful. It made her angry.
We need to talk. Please.
His immediate lack of response was inexcusable. He’d probably seen it and chosen not to open it.
You son of a bitch, what’s the matter with you? At least be a man and tell me you don’t want to see me anymore. Fucking prick.
Shortly after she sent that message, did she see those words nobody wants to see.
Read receipt.
For days on end, she was angry in this exact manner. Why didn’t he understand she was the love of his life? He couldn’t do better. He didn’t deserve better.
You know what? It’s fine. You’re just a washed up drunk anyways. Fuck yourself.
Red wine gave her a certain amount of courage, but it also made her extremely emotional. She sobbed streams of bleeding mascara into her pillow covers after she sent that message, the prevailing thought being now he surely wouldn’t ever contact her again.
In between the palpitations and the panic, she needed to find herself again. This wasn’t typical of Hannah. She had let this man who she barely knew unravel her. The canned compliments of her friends were corny, yet they rang true as victory bells. “I do deserve better than this,” she said as she stared at the ceiling. “I do.”
She tried to distract herself with her work as a nurse. She picked up as many shifts as possible. She filled her nights off with drunken outings to bars she didn’t want to be at. It felt like there was a consistently deep pit in her stomach. Her friends tried to set her up with men that didn’t interest her. She tried to be polite, but they couldn’t ever get anywhere. They weren’t men she wanted to be with. She wanted Matt.
He had been a ghost for three weeks, and was now completely ignoring all of her messages. She wondered if she’d done something wrong, or at this point if he hadn’t changed his phone number completely just to rid himself of her. She was totally defeated, but the initial sting of rejection had worn off. She knew she’d be okay. On a rainy Saturday morning, she sent him a message she knew he wouldn’t respond to.
Goodbye, Matt, I’m sorry for what I said to you. It was wrong. I hope you find what you’re looking for.
That night, she and her group of friends hit their favorite bar. She had the seeds of closure planted and was finally in a place where she was ready to let them grow. For the first time in a month, she wasn’t thinking about Matt Hodges. She was able to have drinks and just dance without worry. It wasn’t an entirely empty sensation to be approached by other men on that night. She welcomed all the attention she could get. It was like an emotional tampon. Served to stop the bleeding, then she’d move onto the next.
She was engaged in a conversation with some post-grad at 1:32 a.m. when a text came through.
It was Matt.
I need to see you.
Hannah was at first confused. Then filled with excitement. She excused herself from the conversation and hurriedly showed her friends. Her friends, for their part, warned her to stay away. He’d already hurt her enough. But Hannah wouldn’t be dissuaded. “What if it’s serious?”
And so she went running back to him like a dog returning to it’s vomit.
The one thing Hannah ceded to them was that she had to be cautious. She knew he was playing a game and in order to get what she wanted, she had to play, too.
She flew out that morning and took a cab to his house. The door was unlocked. Matt sat, bloodshot eyes wide open on the couch. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a month. He’d called his closest friends and remaining family but nobody wanted to talk to him during a time when he desperately needed help the most.
He was in the throes of a nervous breakdown and had run out of alcohol to numb his pain. He was involuntarily shaking, said he felt the sensation of pins and needles and a severe headache. She called into work for the week citing a ‘family emergency’. She stayed with him, his head laid in her lap, as he finally peeled his layers back. He talked about his father, his fear of having children for the sole reason that he was afraid they’d be like him. He sobbed openly about a career lost before its time. When the worst of it was over and the last of a throbbing headache dissipated, a week later, he thanked her tearfully and brought her into his arms.
Something Matt Hodges had never given before. A genuine hug. She pulled her head back and looked into his eyes. Now, she thought, she couldn’t be denied. A Savior’s delight. She could see the gratefulness in his eyes. Smiling, she put her hands through his hair, and kissed him.
The rest, as they say, was history. You could make the argument that poking holes in condoms is playing dirty pool, but at the end of the day, what does it really matter? Isn’t ignoring a woman you’ve led on also a bit dodgy? It was completely irrelevant if Hannah “intentionally” became pregnant. The genetic blessing was still a spin of the chamber. And besides. It would serve two purposes. Matt would never be able to completely leave her now and she had achieved her goal of having a man who had money. Therefore, she was able to put away any guilt associated with her pregnancy and the unwitting victim who stumbled into a marriage he didn’t want.
She had won. Within a few months, they were married, and that’s how she found herself here.
Ah, the sweet release of achieving one’s goals.
It was 5 p.m. Matthew Jr. and Ian were playing with their toys. Matt was on the way home from the gym, where he was working tirelessly, preparing for his return. She was proud of her husband for his effort. He’d lost inches around his waist and found them in other areas of musculature. His legs were strong, his back felt good. His shoulders were uniquely sexy to her. The year of work he’d put in was unlike anything she’d seen before. She was new to this. She wondered if other wrestlers worked this tirelessly.
Dinner was in the crockpot. Thinking back to how she’d captured him in the idyllic prison of a Norman Rockwell painting, it couldn’t have been that bad. A trophy wife with two champion sons and dinner on the table the moment he got out of the shower. She smiled. He had security now, too.
The door opened. Matt came through the opening and into the foyer. A black hat covering his eyes. Hannah stood up and excitedly greeted him with a kiss.
“I thought I told you that grey sweatpants at the gym were a no fly zone,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck. His hands went to her waist.
“I have to make the other guys as uncomfortable as possible. Best way to get the equipment I need in a timely manner.”
“Mmmm,” she began, “maybe I don’t mind as much as I let on. Dinner will be ready soon.
The boys came to greet him at the door, toys in hand. “Daddy!” They called in near unison as they approached him with awkwardly placed hugs around his legs. Hannah let him go and let the boys have their greeting.
“Daddy! Can we play now?” Matthew Jr. asked excitedly
His father looked down at him and put his hand on his head.
“Not right now, buddy. I’m sore and tired.”
“Okay,” said the boy, disappointed.
“Did you behave for your mother?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good boy.” He rubbed his head and released himself from MJ’s hug, walked up the stairs and rounded the corner out of the boy’s sight.
——
Hello, baby.
Did you miss me?
I’ve been out of the picture for entirely too long now. It’s become completely clear that you’re not the same as you used to be. I’ve changed as well in some respects. I’m married now. I have a family. I’m sober. I’m inherently more focused. Not to be outdone, you’ve changed, and I don’t know if that’s for better or worse. I wish we could go back to the good old days, but time is cruel and unfortunately we can’t do that. And oh, the memories, the times we had together, I could fill a scrapbook with. Our special time in the sun. Now this is where we’re at. I’m older. You’re older. And yet in spite of our advancing years, we find ourselves back in the same exact place. It’s almost like it’s fate or something. Like our journeys are indelibly joined at the very threads that make up our fabric. This is how it breaks down. You need me. I need you. And then I realize, even if the cast of characters around us is different, we’re still stuck in this same cycle of toxic codependency.
It’s 2020. Ask me if the outcome this time around will be any different. Sure, we can pretend that everything’s going to be different than the last time, but in the end, can we really make each other those promises? It’s just like an abusive relationship to swear that everything’s going to be different this time. I don’t want to make a liar out of myself. I can do my best and I swear, this time, I will.
But then I see how you’ve tried to move on without me and it just makes me so…sad? Angry?
Disappointed. Yeah, that’s the word. I’m not mad, SCW, I’m disappointed.
I was miserable without you and yet you carry on seamlessly. Hmph. Maybe I’m disappointed and jealous. You’ve been busy making stars out of other people. Bright stars. More decorated stars than I ever was. Case in point, Syren has had the most world title reigns at this point. It makes me ill. That should’ve been us. I never should’ve lost it in the first place. I should be the Champion to this day, thirteen years and running. Instead, I had to walk away due to injury, and while I was on the back burner, you went and gave all your attention to other partners, while you really should’ve just closed down your doors and waited for me to be ready for you again. But what did you do instead? You gave me the consolation of a Hall of Fame induction. That is tantamount to ‘we can still be friends’.
I don’t want it. You can take that back. Matt Hodges wasn’t meant to collect dust in some building nobody really gives a shit about anyway. He was meant for the spotlight. And don’t you worry, baby, am I ever coming for it. First stop, Konrad Raab.
The cast of characters is different now. I’m out of touch with the current state of things but I do know this about my opponent for this week. He is very German. Very German, indeed.
Konrad Raab. A pretty big and scary looking guy, even if he does wear a mask. I’ve seen some of your work. Not bad. An SCW would-be climbing the wrestling ladder of success, trying to get to the top. I’ve been there before. It can be a real bitch working your way up. It’s a noble venture. I applaud you for being here. Means you have some talent if you’re coming to play in this giant sandbox. SCW doesn’t sign feckless talent. Good on you.
The Ice Man, they call him. Or he calls himself. Stop me if you’ve heard that one before in wrestling, television, or serial killer lore. A real innovator. I lost a one-off to another guy who called himself Ice Man years ago and it was humiliating to eat an ‘L’ to somebody with such little imagination. Or wait. Is it Black Ice? Rainbow Ice? I’m pretty sure that last one is an Alaskan lesbians only bar. I’ll still give you slightly more props for creativity. I think you and I can do better. Come on, let’s brainstorm together. We can market the shit out of you, and that’s important for merchandise sales, especially when you’re a talented wrestler.
What do you get when you cross a masked German with a need for winter themed monikers?
I think I’ve got it.
Yellow Snow.
Yes, that’s it! Think about it! We’ll get you a nice yellow mask and robe, the same shade as a ropey, dehydrated stings-when-you-pee piss. Now this I can guarantee you is something nobody has been done before and not only that, it’s damned entertaining! Everybody has met an Ice Man before, but never before has wrestling seen a pissy snow themed wrestler. Dare to be different! Be a revolution unto yourself and flip the script, for god’s sake. Think of how interesting you’ll be! Shirts will fly off the rack, making you wealthier by the day. And it’s not just t-shirts you’ll be moving, bucko, no sir. It’ll be action figures! You’ll be on programs and late night talk show TV spots. SCW will sell lemonade slushies with your insignia and likeness all over them! They’ll sell like hot cakes! The kids these days, they love piss!
Or wait. Maybe that’s sex and drugs.
Oh well. The point is, Yellow Snow, that you’re going to be a star. I’m almost certain of it.
Even after I’m done with you.
On top of marking Matt Hodges’ return to the ring, this match really sells as a yesteryear’s SCW Icon versus its new and simultaneously slightly older blood. A talented older wrestler with the company a year or two, hoping to accomplish things that I’ve already accomplished. Makes me happy and angry at the same time, coming home. Facing a wrestler who’s been taking up residence here and making a name for themselves. I never thought I’d be in a place where I was the grizzled veteran before. I guess I’m old now. Aw, shucks.
I’ve been to the top of the mountain before, Yellow Snow, and it’s a long and arduous journey, and I’m fixing to make the climb again. And the summit? She’s mine. Not yours. Are you sure you want to try your ascent next to me? Granted. This could be one of the most important victories of your SCW career. You could also completely cut me down in my tracks, leaving more room at the top and leaving me staring up at SCW’s elite, maybe realizing that I…just can’t do it anymore. Wouldn’t that be something. A real notch on your belt, a definite call for attention. I wonder, how many SCW Hall of Famers have you beaten before? My guess? Probably a non-existent list. Well, here’s your chance. Bring everything you’ve got. Bring your mask, your shitty gangster rap music, your generic nickname, all your strength. Let’s see how it stacks up.
I have to say. All this talk about fighting is making me kind of hard. It’s been too long. You’ve been finely tuned and in ring-shape, and make no mistake, so am I. I’m ready to go. But I’m also something that you’ll never be, and that, my lumox of a German blockheaded friend, is World Class.
Say it with me now. World. Class.
I’m not going to lie. I have you in my crosshairs as the litmus test for what the talent pool around here is like now. You are my proverbial lay of the land and I’m going to use our match to figure out just how serious my baby has become about moving on without me. Don’t you worry, you’ll be okay. Maybe a little bit banged up and a little bit sleepy, but okay nonetheless. I’m hoping for a fight that we can both be proud of, Yellow Snow. Show me what this new SCW is all about before I take that bitch by her hair and ravish her the way she’s been missing all along.
Enough of this. I’m thirsty. Somebody get me a lemonade slushee.
World Class 