Everyone Wants To Rule The World

I don’t know if you’ve ever had to watch what you are sure is the love of your life on the arm of another but I have to say I don’t recommend it. You want to do what society teaches us is morally right, sure, but there is that part of you that aches to be selfish. You crave this person, not just in physicality but just to hear their voice and all the silly thoughts that cross their mind as they move through their day. When things are hard you want to be the one to hold their hand and tell them it will all be okay. If it’s been a good day, well, you’d like to be the one to make it better before you drift entwined off to sleep and the start of a new adventure. For people with all the luck this is all accomplished quite easily as if it were magic aligning your worlds up to perfect synchronization. But then there are people like me who seem to never have luck on their side.

I’m aware that my impulsivity is part of what makes my life so difficult. I rush into things because I think it’s what I want at the time only to discover later on it’s not what I wanted at all and the thing that I do want is now just out of reach. I can see it, I can hear it, but I cannot touch it. I’m not allowed. 

Vincent Black was one of these decisions where I was drowning in the gray space between right and wrong. As you can see, wrong won. I’m not going to sugar coat it – it was bad. For a long time. We started as friends and grew to lovers until the day that he showed up on the arm of another woman. That should have been the end of it, after all, what’s right is right. But it wasn’t.

A decade lost with me in the wind and him playing the happy family man and then one ordinary day like any other day that had come before it we walked back into each other's lives. And God, believe me, we tried to be good. We really did. We made the small talk; we straddled that platonic line in the sand ignoring the simmering emotion just under the surface. Any accidental moments of vulnerability were quickly brushed off with a joke or a smile. That’s how people like us get in trouble, isn’t it? The vulnerability. The closer you get the more it leaks through the cracks and you tell yourself that it’s an accident – that you hadn’t really meant to let that little bit of the truth seep through. But you know deep down somewhere that you wanted to say it. Wanted them to hear it. Because you simply couldn’t keep it inside where it’s tearing you apart anymore. 

I didn’t hear him approach but I felt him like there was some great magnet drawing us into one another. His hands were cold where they rested around my neck as he kneeled down behind me in the dying crabgrass. I didn’t ask how he knew where to find me, I didn't need to. We were two parts of one whole, independent limbs moving on their own but always controlled by some greater force. My fingers traced the worn lettering in the stone set into the grass before us as Vincent pulled my body closer into his, resting his forehead on my shoulder. 

« Vhodka Black » 
Hello.

It’s not what I want to say; What I want to say is promise me we’ll never lose each other again. The tension begins to ease out of his body as he relaxes into me which in turns helps some of the regret ease out of my own body. I plunge my hands into the bag resting on the grass beside me, extending a small wrapped package towards my husband who looks at me questioningly, likely wondering how I was able to get a block of Veelveeta into this shape. 

« Vhodka Black » 
It’s not cheese. Open it. 

He obliges, tattooed fingers nimbly unwrapping the weathered journal from the gift wrap before looking up at me again with that same expression. 

« Vhodka Black » 
It’s my journal; From the time that I was gone.

He raises an eyebrow that I reach out to smooth back down with my thumb. What do you give the man who has everything? The ability to see himself as you do. The fact that Vincent was struggling with his place in the world was not lost on me and while I couldn’t make the world see what I saw, I could lend him my eyes at least for a little while. 

« Vhodka Black » 
‘Snot all good. I was pissed at you some days. 

Vincent’s lips quirk up into a whisper of a smile only seconds before he leans in and kisses me the way that I knew that he wished he would have for the last decade. 

« Vincent Black »
It’s perfect. 

The walk back from the cemetery was quiet with me in my thoughts about things that I couldn’t change now anymore than I could have changed them then and Vincent giving me the quiet he knew I needed at that moment. Bent Fork is alive in all the best ways on nights like tonight when everyone is here and the problems of the outside world melt away just for a little bit. My mother’s voice barking orders at my (drunk) Aunt Loretta from our trailer door is like a tattoo of home burned into my memory. The smell of all manner of critter both traditional and backwoods, drifts on the cool night air from the smoker reminding me of the times I fell asleep on my Father’s lap and had to be carried to bed. 

There was an excitement in the air as the women worked moving trailer to trailer with covered dishes and various accouterments (that’s French, you can tell by the U) that were assembled in some precise manner I could never decipher on a line of folding tables. The men who were kind of like the human equivalent of assorted casseroles when you thought about it were assembled on lawn chairs and cinder blocks underneath the rusted heaters that Vincent had told me he procured from the backyard of a hoarder who had bought them in a storage auction and was now having to sell them to pay for surgery on a very seriously ingrown toenail that he personally attributed to a nasty accident in the Golden Corral buffet line. 

My childhood home was the nicest trailer park in town which isn’t saying much when you consider that the only other trailer park in town housed meth labs and food stamp scams instead of the families and aging seniors that the Ponderosa Trailer Estates housed. For all its faults, it was home and tonight it felt more like home than it ever had before in my life. 

Perhaps part of that contributed not to the trailer park itself but to the people who had braved the thickest of the Tennessee backwoods to be here. Sitting on a futon frame sans mattress were my children; JJ Starfire and Noelle Rivers sat side by side while my most precious boy Asher Jules had taken to sprawling out across his counterparts, his head perched on Noelle’s thigh and his legs thrown over JJ’s lap. The three were bent over a cell phone video no doubt watching ear wax removal videos or a livestream of that aforementioned hoarder’s ingrown nail being cut open. You know, kid stuff. My actual child Ripley Austin was across the clearing with her half siblings Ciara, Rose and Callan and their pseudo-maybe-future little sister Marie watching Taxidermy Ted’s Roadkill Puppet Show with equal parts horror (Ciara, Marie) equal parts fascination (Rose, Ripley, Callan). Their mothers Alexis Austin and Candice Wolf were nearby sipping wine coolers and trading scrapbooking tips or whatever good mothers do when their children are occupied. Idk, I’m not a good mom to anyone but Dickie Watson. 

Vincent squeezes what I generously refer to as my left ass cheek before he moves away to join my father Buck who has a place of honor right before the Dale Earnhardt Jr. commemorative trash can that has been filled to bursting with cans of Natty Light. My father extends a can to Vincent as he sits down in the lawn chair beside him, never missing a beat in his conversation with Vincent’s twin brother and FIGHT! NYC owner Xavier Black who sits across from him on a decommissioned semi truck tire looking enthralled at my father. Beside him, his very pregnant wife Le’Andra Fury-Black balances several plates of food on the arms of a Laz-ee Boy recliner that had been drug out of a trailer specifically for her. If the women of Bent Fork were the law as far as the menfolk were concerned then a pregnant one might as well have been God in their eyes. 

« Buck Bickett » 
Now, son, you’re not understanding what I’m sayin’.

« Xavier Black » 
You can’t fry things with air, Buck. It’s literally just a cleverly marketed convection oven.

« Vhodka Black » 
You’re a cleverly marketed convection oven. 

Xavier winks in my direction before focusing his gaze on my father while I perch myself on Vincent’s lap. I love Xavier. When Vincent went public with our affair Xavier was the one person who supported us from the jump. It didn’t matter to him that what we had done was wrong, only that we were happy. She hadn’t been happy about it, nor was she supportive. But I don’t want to talk about her yet. I was studiously trying to ignore her absence tonight, as I found myself doing most nights now. 

« Buck Bickett » 
An oven can’t get things crispy like an air fryer can. It’s not scientifically possible, you ask anyone here.

« Xavier Black » 
It’s crispy because it’s dehydrated! It’s basically just blow drying your food until it’s hot. 

Their argument dulls into the background noise as my eyes travel the length of the courtyard at the assembled friends and family that had made the journey here on my behalf. It made me think of Delia Black and I wondered to myself if perhaps she was out there somewhere tonight among her people thinking about me. 

My first match in PWE against Tara Ayla had been both everything and nothing like I had expected. Call it a fact-finding mission if you will, Tara had been in the final four for the Excellence Championship and I wanted to see what she was made of. When you come into this business you think it’s all about wins and losses but if you hang around long enough you realize that if you can set your own ego aside sometimes you can learn more about a person by losing than you can by winning. Everyone else in PWE might be playing chess but your girl is playing checkers, BET.

My attention drifted back to my mother who had magically appeared in front of Xavier, extending a paper plate with a gelatinous orange blob positioned on it like the “u” in “colour” when a foreigner spells it. I can feel Vincent chuckling silently to himself as he trains his eyes on his brother who is looking speculatively at the plate in front of his face. It was then that I knew Vincent had orchestrated this moment with my mother. He didn’t think Xavier would do it. I knew better, though. Xavier had gone nomad once, the casserole from hell was nothing. We all watched as the wheels turned in Xavier’s head as he desperately tried to make some sort of sense of the variety of shapes and colors, desperate to identify even one ingredient. Dorito casserole has that sort of effect on people. 

« Xavier Black » 
Is this a meat?

« Beulah May Bickett »
Charlene’s husband died some years back and now she lives all alone. Not a soul in the world to call family. Ain’t that just the saddest thing you ever heard? That poor woman’ll be crushed if hers is the only dish that don’t get ate. 

This is the standard opener for this dish, the same one my mother uses to soften up all new guests before she tries to trick them into eating the devils period pad. 

« Xavier Black » 
Did he happen to consume this before his death?

Beulah narrowed her eyes at Xavier, perching one delicate hand on her hip as she raised her chin a fraction of an inch and stared down at the man before her with the same heat one might find in the molten center of microwaved gas station burrito. 

« Beulah May Bickett »
Lord almighty. If it wasn’t bad enough with those three now I have you to contend with. Lord knows this is my penance for talking about Mrs. Crowley’s hair lip at book club.

« Vhodka Black » 
Mama, God can’t punish you for that. Everyone talks about Mrs. Crowley’s hair lip. Even the preacher talks about Mrs. Crowley’s hair lip. 

« Beulah May Bickett »
Buckle your britches! He’d never. Some things you just don’t say about your wife. 

« Xavier Black » 
There is a nipple in this casserole. 

« Vhodka Black » 
Get the fuck out!

My mother leaned down to peer at the offensive pie slice on the plate. Sure enough, right there under the fifth out of the seventh layer was what looked very much like a human nipple sticking out of the cream cheese. My mother sucked on her teeth, staring Xavier dead in the eye. Vincent rested his forehead against my back to hide the laughter he was quietly trying to suppress. He knew what she was going to say, he had survived this trial by hillbilly last year. 

« Beulah May Bickett »
That’s a sprinkle.

« Xavier Black » 
Bullshit!

« Beulah May Bickett »
No one will ever believe you. I’m an institution in this town. Revered even. Just eat around it.

« Xavier Black » 
I’ll pay you enough money to buy Charlene a family if it stops her from making this abomination.

« Le’Andra Fury-Black »
For the God's sake. 

Le’Andra wiggled her fingers in her husband's direction who obligingly handed her the plate which she forked into her mouth with the gusto of a woman who is hanging on by a very thin thread and has nothing left to lose. When she was finished she handed the plate back to my mother leaving behind nothing but one very cheap looking nipple with a smattering of tiny black hairs growing from the areola. Coincidentally, what I imagine one of Delia Black’s nipples look like. My mother looked down at the plate with no choice but to inspect the wayward nipple now that it was out in the open for the world to see. 

« Beulah May Bickett »
Christ on a cracker even though he’s in the cracker! That’s Uncle Knock Knock’s prosthetic nipple. It must have slipped off when he was fixin’ up a plate. 

« Vincent Black »
Excuse me? 

« Buck Bickett » 
Lost it in the war. Still don’t think it’s right he done stuck a plastic one on there. It ain’t natural for a man to have fake nipples. 

« Beulah May Bickett »
Frannie, is James Raven coming?

« Vhodka Black » 
I have it on good authority that James Raven comes every day.

« Beulah May Bickett »
Well, I ain’t never seen him if that’s so. And what about that nice young man Dickie? And his spouse?

« Vhodka Black » 
His what?

« Beulah May Bickett »
You know, that feller that don’t wear a shirt. With the New Jersey accent!

« Vhodka Black » 
Oh, you mean Aiden. 

« Buck Bickett » 
Betcha that fella ain’t got plastic nipples.

« Beulah May Bickett »
You told them they were invited on the tweeter like I told you, didn’t ya? Xavier Black you better have given those kids the holiday off, young man!

Xavier threw his hands up at my mother, warding off the verbal blow.

« Vhodka Black » 
Mama, it’s not just FIGHT. They have other obligations. 

« Beulah May Bickett »
Not sure what could be more important than family.

« Xavier Black » 
Speaking of other obligations, you two didn’t really get off on the right foot in PWE.

Vincent shrugged at his brother who quirked an eyebrow in his direction before his eyes flicked to mine. They were twins, he knew Vincent as well as he knew himself. If Vincent was struggling, Xavier knew without the other man having to verbalize it. Xavier tilted his head in my direction questioningly. 

« Vhodka Black » 
PLANS. 

The word was benign but told Xavier everything he needed to know. He touched a finger to the corner of his eye and pointed at me. 

« Vhodka Black » 
Not sure how I feel about Delia this week. 

« Xavier Black » 
What do you mean?

« Vhodka Black » 
It’s just weird having to fight someone that’s family. 

Everyone stared at me like I had just produced Uncle Knock Knock’s plastic nipple from behind an ear as a magic trick. Vincent patted my thigh, drawing my attention to him.

« Vincent Black »
Fran. We’re not related to Delia Black. 

« Vhodka Black » 
Are you sure? I thought she was kin on Corey’s side. 

« Vincent Black »
We are also not related to Corey Black. 

« Vhodka Black » 
I mean, we could be. How do you even know! Did you do an Ancestry DNA test? That’s how Candice found out she was a Black. 

« Vincent Black »
Different Black. Trust me. And also, no she’s not. 

« Vhodka Black » 
Well, shit. Let me go do the wrestler thing then. 

« Vincent Black »
The what?

« Vhodka Black » 
You know. I go stand over there and talk to myself about my opponent and how badly I’m going to beat them and everyone else just continues on as if it’s not happening and we never speak about it. Sometimes people make a guy with a camera record them but I’m not interested in Only Fans. 

Everyone looked at me with identical expressions but it didn’t matter, I was already off and moving to the perimeter of the trailer park where I could quietly rant to myself in relative privacy. I finally found a spot next to the playground which had been closed because the septic tank below it had ruptured and was spewing excrement up onto the play equipment. I guess some of the kids got sick after a while and they forced them to close it. It wasn’t the ambiance of a dark room or a puppet show, but it would do. 

« Vhodka Black » 
My mom has the analogy that she likes to use sometimes, she says “don’t pay so much attention to the whistling tea kettle that you overlook the pot boiling over behind it.” My mother is a bit of a philosopher. But she’s right, you know. You see, this Excellence Invitational has no shortage of whistling tea kettles; your Wraith’s, your Allen Cheney’s, your Nathaniel Dickhead’s all sitting around on their Twitters screaming about why they are the man that is going to be the one to unseat the force known as Damian Ayla. And then you have Damian Ayla himself, running across his comic book villain lair to grab his Android because he’s too pretentious to have an iPhone to remind them all he’s king shit lest someone forget for approximately thirty seconds. Oh, and don’t forget to spell his name right, because fragile masculinity must be handled with care. But in the end, does any of it really mean anything? 

When I first stepped foot into PWE I thought to myself, God, this is something different. But now I realize that PWE is like so many of its contemporaries and its predecessors. A company full of boorish boring men throwing their dicks around like it’s American Gladiator trying to knock everyone else off the proverbial foam log. Meanwhile, the real power is quietly boiling over on the burning just behind. People like Tara Ayla and her handsome lover La Antidepressant who could steamroll half of this roster if they so deemed it worth the time. I’m going to let you in on a secret, the women aren’t in power not because it’s beyond them but only because they choose not to be. They’re just as fast, just as strong, and much more calculating than their male counterparts but they’re shackled by affection as many women in this business are. I know what you’re thinking, I’m no better off than Tara Ayla is. You might think that but my marriage is rather untraditional. We don’t believe in gender roles, as Finn Whelen will tell you. Damian wants Tara subservient because he’s too goddamn weak to allow the real talent in that family to shine. And poor Tara, well, she loves him so she allows it.

Please don’t think that I’m here on some crusade for womankind. I’m not. The whole “woman looking to take down the boys club” thing is almost as played out as wrestling vikings. I didn’t come to PWE to throw a wrench into the status quo. I’m not here for Zoey Madigan Starr, Kayla Richards, La Antibiotic or even Tara Ayla herself. I came here for one thing and that was to prove something to myself. The fact of the matter is that I don’t have to stand on a mountain and scream at everyone about how great I am. Sure, I’m good, but there is always someone better. And that’s the hook, can you set aside your ego long enough to learn from people who might just be a little bit better than you are? People like Delia Black feel that they’re enough, that they don’t have anything left to learn. They go out week after week, brand after brand, and shout the same idiotic bullshit at the top of their lungs thinking that being loudest equals being best. But people like Delia never stop to listen and that is the exact problem in this business. 

Some of you may know that my brother-in-law owns FIGHT, so naturally I spend a lot of time there. Right now, there is this big storm brewing over the fact that this stable New Status Quo has come in and taken over the company through sheer dominance. My contemporaries, the people who I came up with in this business, they just flat out can’t handle it. Week after week, it’s every excuse in the book to cover up their own short comings. Then they look at me and they say “Vhodka, you’re in their pocket!”. Can you believe that? They think because I am not raging in the same inadequateness they rage in that obviously that means I’ve been bought. The concept that maybe, just maybe, these people have something to teach them if only they would shut their mouths and open their fucking eyes is foreign. And for that reason, they’ll continue to be stuck in a Sisyphus cycle. Rolling that same boulder up the hill only to have it come rolling right back down to where they started. 

The thing that kills people in this business is not their talent, it’s simply their unwillingness to learn. Delia Black reminds me very much of my compatriots in FIGHT, doomed to keep repeating the same situations over and over because she simply can’t pack her ego away long enough to allow herself to learn from the people around her. Losing to Tara Ayla was not a loss. Sure, on paper maybe. No doubt we’ll hear about for the next few weeks that Vhodka couldn’t even beat Tara Ayla, how does she ever hope to beat Damian? But what I know that these people do not know is that sometimes, you can learn much more by losing you can by winning. The dirty secret of this business is that truthfully, not all matches matter. Tara Ayla, as nice as she is, didn’t matter. What would it have gained me? A win on paper and bragging rights? For people to see me as a threat? Now, why on earth would I want that?

Delia Black matters though. It’s probably one of the few times in her career she has mattered, which I do feel slightly contrite about. Truth be told I would have rather faced one of the others first, Chris Page or the uppity Librarian guy. Oh and let's back up to Chris Page for a moment, shall we? Chris Page is an opportunist. Sure, he’d take the Excellence Championship if he could. But it’s not why he’s here, not really. Chris Page is quietly building a wrestling empire. So, while he’s here under the pretense of this tournament that isn’t what his eye is truly on. But that’s a conversation for later. 

Delia Black is not a threat, she’s an obstacle. It’s not that she’s not good, she’s fine in the ring. The issue comes down to hunger. Delia isn’t hungry for this; her eyes are focused elsewhere on her tag career and that’s fine. It’s no shame to throw your name in the hat and get yourself a little extra exposure when you can. But at the end of the day, when you have a field full of talented competitors it all comes down to who wants it the most and the two people who want it the most are Allen Chaney and Vhodka Black.

The smell had begun to make my eyes water by that point and to be honest, I always felt a little weird about the whole wrestler monologue thing. Like, it’s kind of corny right? You’re going along your day and then you have to stop and go on this fucking rant about your job then the shit just ends and you’re like, okay, guess I’ll go have some cheez-it’s now. Do you think the lady at the DMV is in the middle of taking someone’s drivers license picture and just is fucking like “Hold up, let me tell you about this bitch Bernice!” then goes into a full rant about how this lady cooked fish in the break room microwave last Tuesday? I don’t get it man. 

As I made my merry way back to the life emanating from the trailer park courtyard I was struck by the images of my friends and family in various states of holiday celebration. The Fetal Four sans Pixie (who ran away) looked to be terrorizing the actual children with what can only be described as sentient roadkill. Vincent and Xavier sat smiling at one another across a picnic table while Le’Andra had been joined by Candice, Alexis and Anicka Swan at the other end. It was nearly a perfect picture.

But she was missing.