10/90 Split: Chapter 1
Apr 10, 2018 0:13:43 GMT -5
Kyle Shane, Dominator / Mortimer, and 1 more like this
Post by Stace Matthews on Apr 10, 2018 0:13:43 GMT -5
In 1987, while one promotion out of New York was banking on a deal with Disney for global exposure, professional wrestling in the United States was split right down the Mississippi. To the east, Ern Turner promoted his high-impact and entertaining Supreme Championship Wrestling out of Cincinnati and, west of the mighty river, from the Alamodome, my grandfather Holden J. Matthews promoted “big time” traditional Lonestar Wrestling Federation.
None of this meant piss in a bucket on my driest day to me, all I knew was my dad was Pappy’s booker and he wasn't home much. I thought he lived at the airport when I was little; that's what I told someone anyway, while grocery shopping with Mom and my little sister. It would affect our family and my dad's work far more than I understood at the time.
I mention this whole divide down the middle and, not sure if you caught it or not, but I also mentioned The Snot. I did so on purpose because...
On her The Snot's seventh birthday, much like I did on mine, she got to move to the second floor. She got the east wing; where all of my Lego universe was set up.
This is when he first told me or maybe the only time I remember it really sinking in, “Son, life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you react to it.”
Of course he meant for that to be a good little nugget passed on from father to son to instill values and no, not how I took it at all. It didn't even cross my mind. I was immediately plotting and scheming, developing and devising, reactions to make her miserable and not want to live on the second floor.
Thanks Dad.
It's been a year since The Snot moved up here. It's been all I can do to put her through the worst Hell possible and she just fucking taunts me.
I started chewing Big League at about seven one night. I had a gigantic wad of gum going by nine when I heard her tell Mom goodnight. I waited until she fell asleep, snuck in and stuck the wad of gum on her pillow.
The next morning, I know I am going to have Mom all over me when I sneak downstairs, but she took the blame for it. She told Mom she fell asleep with the gum in her mouth. Later that afternoon, I snuck out onto my patio for a smoke and from inside her room I hear, “MOM!! I think I smell fire! COME QUICK!!”
One scorching summer day, my two friends and I stuck dog shit in the vent in her bedroom and turned her heat up. She helped Mom catch the three of us drinking in the pool house.
This went on, one disgusting prank after one grounded for life sentence, until the holidays that next year.
I remember because she had just had her birthday and he was too weak to go home. Mom set him up in the guest house; he was here for Christmas and rang in 1990 with us, but not long into January, Pappy was gone.
My dad wasn't home for any of it.
It was too important to entertain a bunch of people he didn't know.
It always was.
It made her unhappy.
She couldn't help but watch. Every Tuesday night, live on the local broadcast channel, all of the work my dad put into writing, casting, directing, creating this brutal soap opera acted out in the squared circle live in front of hundreds of people.
His character in this show, aimed at young males, is a philandering scoundrel that flaunts around with scantily clad women. Again, on live television, for all of her family, friends, neighbors and townspeople; pretty much, for everyone in the county and five surrounding to see.
It made them argue.
She would wait up for him and he would get home very late on show nights. She would ask him if he felt he was acting appropriately. She wanted him to know that she did not think what he was doing was appropriate.
She tried to explain to him that while he was out having the the time of his life, she was home with two kids and one of them was so disrespectful that she thought she may lose her sanity.
He reminded her repeatedly about how well she lived and how nice her and their children lived off of this ‘living the life’ she accused him of. He swore none of it was real. Genuine.
I don’t know why he didn't understand her problem with him, but I understood what she had said about me. I didn’t want Mom to feel disrespected.
We hid on the floor under a blanket tent in my room, The Snot hid behind me. The walls may as well have been made of sheets of notebook paper. As the shouts got louder, her whole body trembled and she buried her head as deeply as she could into my spine. And, she cried.
One night, she was just done and she threatened him. She hit him with a shot so hard I felt it. I felt it so deeply. All of the sudden, with a few words shouted in anger, I had no idea who I was. However, with her, I knew for certain I would be safe.
“Stop acting like that,” she told him with authority, “stop it.”
“Or what, Krys,” he provoked.
“Or I will leave,” she answered with sincere seriousness. “I will take them with me.”
“You can't,” he continued to taunt her, “you can take her, but he’s mine.”
You know, I heard him say it and what boy wouldn't have been proud in the moment. I thought, for a very brief flash, I was his boy.
“I will,” she was calm, “she will go with me, you got that right. It won't matter that he's not mine, JR” she stopped my heart from beating for a minute, several, “I am taking him and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
“You wouldn't take that little asshole,” he thought out loud.
“If you were home more,” she defended me, “you would know better.”
There was more to the argument, but there was a tuning fork humming in my head as it dropped and ripping at my heart as it stopped. I remember closing my eyes as they swelled. Somewhere in the darkness, lost, but not alone, a little voice chimed in, “You’re mine too.”
I stopped pranking The Snot, not completely, but no foul and vulgar fuckery.
None of this meant piss in a bucket on my driest day to me, all I knew was my dad was Pappy’s booker and he wasn't home much. I thought he lived at the airport when I was little; that's what I told someone anyway, while grocery shopping with Mom and my little sister. It would affect our family and my dad's work far more than I understood at the time.
I mention this whole divide down the middle and, not sure if you caught it or not, but I also mentioned The Snot. I did so on purpose because...
On her The Snot's seventh birthday, much like I did on mine, she got to move to the second floor. She got the east wing; where all of my Lego universe was set up.
This is when he first told me or maybe the only time I remember it really sinking in, “Son, life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you react to it.”
Of course he meant for that to be a good little nugget passed on from father to son to instill values and no, not how I took it at all. It didn't even cross my mind. I was immediately plotting and scheming, developing and devising, reactions to make her miserable and not want to live on the second floor.
It's been a year since The Snot moved up here. It's been all I can do to put her through the worst Hell possible and she just fucking taunts me.
I started chewing Big League at about seven one night. I had a gigantic wad of gum going by nine when I heard her tell Mom goodnight. I waited until she fell asleep, snuck in and stuck the wad of gum on her pillow.
The next morning, I know I am going to have Mom all over me when I sneak downstairs, but she took the blame for it. She told Mom she fell asleep with the gum in her mouth. Later that afternoon, I snuck out onto my patio for a smoke and from inside her room I hear, “MOM!! I think I smell fire! COME QUICK!!”
One scorching summer day, my two friends and I stuck dog shit in the vent in her bedroom and turned her heat up. She helped Mom catch the three of us drinking in the pool house.
This went on, one disgusting prank after one grounded for life sentence, until the holidays that next year.
I remember because she had just had her birthday and he was too weak to go home. Mom set him up in the guest house; he was here for Christmas and rang in 1990 with us, but not long into January, Pappy was gone.
My dad wasn't home for any of it.
It was too important to entertain a bunch of people he didn't know.
It always was.
It made her unhappy.
She couldn't help but watch. Every Tuesday night, live on the local broadcast channel, all of the work my dad put into writing, casting, directing, creating this brutal soap opera acted out in the squared circle live in front of hundreds of people.
His character in this show, aimed at young males, is a philandering scoundrel that flaunts around with scantily clad women. Again, on live television, for all of her family, friends, neighbors and townspeople; pretty much, for everyone in the county and five surrounding to see.
It made them argue.
She would wait up for him and he would get home very late on show nights. She would ask him if he felt he was acting appropriately. She wanted him to know that she did not think what he was doing was appropriate.
She tried to explain to him that while he was out having the the time of his life, she was home with two kids and one of them was so disrespectful that she thought she may lose her sanity.
He reminded her repeatedly about how well she lived and how nice her and their children lived off of this ‘living the life’ she accused him of. He swore none of it was real. Genuine.
I don’t know why he didn't understand her problem with him, but I understood what she had said about me. I didn’t want Mom to feel disrespected.
We hid on the floor under a blanket tent in my room, The Snot hid behind me. The walls may as well have been made of sheets of notebook paper. As the shouts got louder, her whole body trembled and she buried her head as deeply as she could into my spine. And, she cried.
One night, she was just done and she threatened him. She hit him with a shot so hard I felt it. I felt it so deeply. All of the sudden, with a few words shouted in anger, I had no idea who I was. However, with her, I knew for certain I would be safe.
“Stop acting like that,” she told him with authority, “stop it.”
“Or what, Krys,” he provoked.
“Or I will leave,” she answered with sincere seriousness. “I will take them with me.”
“You can't,” he continued to taunt her, “you can take her, but he’s mine.”
You know, I heard him say it and what boy wouldn't have been proud in the moment. I thought, for a very brief flash, I was his boy.
“I will,” she was calm, “she will go with me, you got that right. It won't matter that he's not mine, JR” she stopped my heart from beating for a minute, several, “I am taking him and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
“You wouldn't take that little asshole,” he thought out loud.
“If you were home more,” she defended me, “you would know better.”
There was more to the argument, but there was a tuning fork humming in my head as it dropped and ripping at my heart as it stopped. I remember closing my eyes as they swelled. Somewhere in the darkness, lost, but not alone, a little voice chimed in, “You’re mine too.”
I stopped pranking The Snot, not completely, but no foul and vulgar fuckery.