Went To Wake You, But You Were Still Sleeping.
Dec 3, 2018 5:43:39 GMT -5
The Anarchist, Gerard Angelo, and 1 more like this
Post by Kyle Shane on Dec 3, 2018 5:43:39 GMT -5
The first thing I noticed when I woke up was that I was seeing two different things at once.
It wasn't a bright, colorful conflagration, an explosion, falling down a hole that brought me here. I simply woke up here, marvelling at how my perceptions in the moment seemed to be like back in the heathen days of school when computers were just an elective; where the teachers taught off rickety overhead projectors with clear slides and wiped smeared marker off with Windex. It was like in middle school physics where a teacher would superimpose two different slides over each other to show the difference of a wave function. Two slides of a bedroom were superimposed over each other, and as I looked, I saw both of them, and only one.
In a momentary panic, I thought back. I covered my face in my hands, trying to will the room to converge into one slide. I had a flash of insight that this might the result of drinking myself blind stupid. And so, I reached for the bedside table. In one slide my fingers brushed a fifth of Jose Cuervo. In another, they didn't.
The bottle was still reasonably full. Puzzled, I sat up, the room swaying and diverging. It was, as I saw, two different rooms.
I stood. I looked at my hands and feet. I was one person. So whatever divergence, it was just one person experiencing it in radically both ways. In my confusion, I stumbled in the dark. And my hands went towards a wall light. I tried to think of the last thing I remembered. I remembered a heated conversation with Patrick. As all of our philosophical debates were, as he tried to get me to see his way as right. I remember it becoming a shouting match, before his snake oil voice had smoothed out. And I arguing semantics about causality. Time's arrow, when let fly, moved in a straight line. He said that was bullshit. I said he was a bitter piece of shit.
He said that I overlooked all the gifts that got me to where I am today. I laughed off his hypothetical "gifts". I had said that everything that had ever happened to me was an outcome of inevitability encoded into our DNA, a genetic predisposition towards being a piece of shit. Patrick surprised me with a hopeful take, born of a wistful, aching need to be free of his deteriorated body and be a part of something, a family. It was a simple question which he said that he asked himself every time he felt the darkness rising in gullet; a question of how he could have appealed to his better angels.
"If you could go back and meet yourself when you were a kid, and just have a conversation with yourself, wouldn't you try to steer yourself to a better path? Or would you just sit back and think that it's hopeless."
I had to confess at the time, I never thought I would hear those words come out of my hacktivist, sociopathic brother's mouth, but it gave me pause, because it was a fair question. A germ of an idea, that didn't quite leave my mind, even as Patrick railed on about how good I'd had it compared to him all of his life and what he'd change if he could.
So that was the last thing I remembered before eventually going to sleep. That I could remember a philosophical proposal, still had half a bottle and wasn't puking was ruling out that theory.
(All of this analyzation in less time than it takes to tell, I had stepped to the wall and flicked on a switch in this time.)
As the light came on, I looked around, and the curiously double, superimposed overhead projector effect receded. It no longer looked like one dark room was a slide placed over another. Now, I just saw that I had woken up in bed next to myself. That did not recede my alarm, in fact, I almost yelled an obscenity before "Me" sat up. I had had experience talking to myself and seeing myself in dreams. I was always idealized, projected as a narcissistic aspect, a theoretical superego.
Nah, the Kyle in that bed was as far from that as possible. The Kyle that woke up, blinking at me, was stubble-less except for a few poking hairs, his hair not standing up but flat against his scalp in greasy waves, and pimples adorned his face. I sank against the wall, muttering "Oh, no." He just stared at me, eyes dawning in wonder as he saw what is fundamentally himself. And college freshman Kyle Shane uttered a low, unkempt "wow."
I looked around me, frantic. There had to be a door to hop into, hoping that it would serve as a conduit like fucking Narnia. I could not be here, meeting young Kyle Shane. I could not interact with this boy. This boy, who was already getting out of bed. His scrawny, bird-chested body was stripped down to the Spidey boxers. He approached me without fear or consequence, gaping with a stoner's complete cow-eyed interest. And even as I cringed, thinking of butterflies and overwriting timelines and even the old sci-fi cliches from the 60's about atomic inversion. He extended his hand up to me, his eyes looking up to me. His hand extended towards my face, brushing my jawbone he recognized as his own, and...
Boop.
He fucking booped my nose.
I almost responded with a punch to the face. My shoulder tensed, my hand itched and my lip flexed... But I couldn't. He recoiled back after he did what he did, seeing my flare of anger in my eyes and the instincts that he'd learned in his trailer park home carried him. I felt pity for the kid right then. Eighteen.
As brave as it was for him to leave home and get away from Eric not all that long ago... he was still a boy. A boy who was just getting out into the world and away from the abuse, and learning to live with the triggers. Eighteen. It was something I knew with a tiny little breaking feeling in my left ventricle that would lead to him growing coping mechanisms, many I still use, like tumors in his heart. In that moment, that one moment of contact and then understanding that bridged between us, I saw where this kid had come from, and where he was going to go over the next decade. He was eighteen...
"Are you -"
"I don't know how this is -"
"This is like something I read in -"
"That physics book by Arthur Stanley? Yeah, that was a lot of -"
"Nah, I was gonna say Heinlein."
There was a beat, and he looked a little chagrinned, and I finally let him see a big smile, and I ruffled his greasy, nappy poor kid's haircut. "You little nerd... hey, Kyle... I'm Kyle." I laughed, easily, and he laughed too, finally coming to a good common place.
"This is so cool," he gushed. He went back to the bed, and now I saw why in the slide with the two rooms why I had been so confused. The bedstand that had travelled with me all the way from the dorm days was here, on the same side of the bed, but instead of piled high with empties of whiskey and pain pills for the pops in my knee and back, there was a little smoke setup with a Gandalf ceramic holder, a baggie of resin, some papers, and my old bong carved out of whalebone I bought at a curio shop in the common. He packed the bowl with the greedy enthusiasm of a young stoner. As he lit the nug in the bowl, he blew out, and he offered me a hit. I just watched him.
And I realized, my moment had come. I may never have known how I woke up here in this moment, but I realized the how I got here would never matter. I was afforded this one chance, like Patrick was talking about, to talk to myself as I was then. How could I not take this chance to talk to the kid? To tell him even a little bit of who he is and where he's going to go? Screw a space time continuum, right? If you could tell your younger self even a few things he can do to improve his quality of life... wouldn't you?
Except that right now, in the face of it, I couldn't think of anything I wanted to tell Kyle. I couldn't think of a way to let him know about the decade that followed after he signed up as a trainee at the International Elite Wrestling School. A full decade of Kyle Shane. A decade of disappointment tinged with stubbornness, professional achievement tempered with personal restlessness, triumph married to pain. How... the fuck... do you tell someone about that?
Or do you? Can you at all? Can you just take your younger self with an arm around their shoulder like a Dutch uncle and say listen, kid, I know you have the biggest dreams and despite the shit your young life put you through you still have a huge heart filled with hope for what you are going to be, but you see me as I am now and I'm not going to be quite what you expected and I didn't turn out fully balanced and perfect like I should have been. And I'm really sorry, but I tried... and life doesn't always work out.
Seems like a really bleak vision of the future to present to the kid, all in all.
But he's bustling with enthusiasm. "You're so fit, you have to be working out like so fucking much! - " (Uh, actually.......)
"Wait till Hiro sees you! Hiro is so big into this stuff, he could work out an equation about this in - Ohhh nevermind. Tell me that me and Hiro are still kicking ass and taking names, right?" (Um... well, kid...)
"And the IEW, do they sign us to long term deals? Are we still in the IEW? How many times did we win the Tag Titles?" (The thing with that is...)
"Please... tell me... No, don't tell me, I'm too nervous... tell me, do I ever make it as a singles guy? The trainer at the IEWS said that he thinks Hiro is gonna be the breakout star... he says I'm probably never gonna progress past a tag guy..."
I pat his shoulder. I could bring up the fact that I've won World titles in three companies now... but in this moment, it feels cheap and not earned. "You'll get there. You aren't just a tag guy. You just have to find your voice and get out from Hiro's shadow."
He looks blue, setting the bowl aside and looking down. "Easy to say that... Hiro does all the promos, he conceptualizes it, sets up the camera, he comes up with the best jokes..."
"Kyle. Listen. You are going to be fine." I say. And I realize something, something trying to raise an eleven year old also didn't prepare me for and which fucks with me now. I'm not good at connecting, making someone feel better or inspiring someone. I don't know a big, flowery It Gets Better speech to give the kid. "Just stay in school while you do the wrestling thing, will you?"
I want to test if my words can make a lasting impact. And I know with what's coming ahead of Kyle. He's two years out from meeting Array, and changing the course of both of their lives. And honestly, kind of fucking up Array's. It tugs on my heart, and I realize that even if this makes my timeline fade away like a Back to the Future sequel I have to give Kyle this so he can do better, and so I can do right by Array. If I can. "Stay in school. And listen, don't go to any frat parties."
"Frat parties?! Bro... they would never invite us to one of those! Uh, they should, because the Game Boyz, are like -" with a so nerdy, so desperate to seem cool rake of his hand through his hairline and a roll of his eyes, " - local celebrites and all. We were on TV you know. We were put in a fatal fourway, and there was this giant, six foot ten guy in a cat mask?"
I interrupt his boyish bubble. "Yeah. Parties. Like with Brad Anderson? You know him. He's a bad guy, Kyle... he does... awful stuff."
He twitches, and he looks sad. "I know. Brad's a piece of sh- poop. Sorry. I try not to cuss."
Okay, I actually have to laugh my ass off at that on the inside. "Brad and guys like him. They are bad news. You don't need to get caught up in that. And honestly, smoking some weed is fine, but cut back on it, right? You don't need to start going overboard, and bringing in all these other drugs."
"Hey, selling the drugs is what got me and Hiro in the dorm, man... it pays for all this stuff..."
"Kyle. Who the fuck are you talking tooooooOOO WHAT." A voice comes from the doorframe. And a very, very confused young Asian boy stands there.
"Uh, Hiro... I've got some explaining to do..."
It is a whirlwind of an hour, as the cocky, aggressive leader of the team takes point interviewing me, and now I'm finally back where it all started. Just sitting on the couch in the Game Boyz dorm room. Incense sticks are, quite futilely lit to try and mask the smell of skunk weed in the air, and the X-Box is on as Hiro and Me blast their way through Halo. Hiro's arm reaches over me to pass, Me the bowl, and he exhales a cloud of smoke. Despite their intense focus on the game, they continue throwing words around the air at a rapid fire pace that leaves me dizzy.
"So tell me more about this Gerard Angelo guy you're facing?"
"Hiro, I don't know if he should, though, because what if us knowing how the future turns out leads to a butterfly effect where our knowledge of those events causes things we need to happen not to happen?"
"Or what happens if our knowing the future leads us to writing the script for a sequel to a terrible Ashton Kutcher movie?"
"You know, they made three of those," I put my two cents in, amused by the banter.
"NO."
"WHAT."
"Somehow that's even worse than knowing that ten years into the future people will still come to wrestling promotions and pretend to be A-list celebrities."
"That is rather bleak, I'm so sorry, dude. Every single person that puffs themselves up with a Hollywood gimmick is lucky if they can get cast as an extra in Snakes on a Plane. To think that people still try that makes no sense to me, because IMBD is a thing."
"Yeah like it's really easy to search for someone's work history and see if they're such a shitty D lister that the Asylum doesn't even give them a call."
"Sounds like maybe Gerard Angelo would be getting a call if they made a fourth Butterfly Effect sequel, complete in that shitty direct to DVD packaging so they can chuck it to the bottom of one of those five dollar bins at Walmart."
"Dude, those bins aren't so bad, I found a compilation of an entire season of Totally Spies in there..."
"Kyle, you are my brotha but I simply have to rip on you for acknowledging your fandom of the Totally Spies vehicle. C'mon, gimme your head, that's a chop."
"It's witty and subversive and the art style is cute, kinda retro anime and stuff..."
Whether it's the smoke or just the lightspeed back and forth, my head is pounding, and I wonder how anybody could have stood this for long. I sigh. Leave it to me to spoil my own fun. "Guys, I hate to break up the flow, but you asked me about an opponent and he's someone I should really be focusing on. Even now."
"Oh, yeah, yeah, because he won that Rumble thing," younger me's eyes turn, deferring to me as if I'm dad. He quiets down, obedient. I want to break him of that.
"A Rumble with, like, ten people in it isn't much of a Rumble, chief," Hiro scoffs, arrogant as ever.
"True, but Angelo has been getting close for a while. He came in earlier this year and it took some time to get his groove, but he did it. He even stalemated the North American champion, and took Grimm to his limit. I know the Game Boyz way was to laugh off opposition, but you gotta take some of these things seriously. This isn't a guy you can just run off with a stream of pop culture references. When you guys had to face someone like Gerard like... fuck, who would have been analogous in IEW, Trevor Adams? If you had to prepare for someone like that, how would you go about it?"
Kyle is quiet, thoughtful, and looks like he's taking my advice and ruminating on it. Hiro cuts his eyes and takes the bong, holding the lighter to it with an expression of disdain. "Prepare? For someone like that? Why the fuck should I? I can make a CAW of Trevor Adams and all of his moveset in WWE Smackdown Bring Tha Pain, or your Mister Gerard Angelo. I can learn all of his moves and plan an attack. Or I can photoshop his magazine images and put his face on an owl! Who can prepare for that?"
"Ye- Yeah!" Kyle pipes up, glancing over at Hiro, emboldened then, "Yeah. Preparing for someone like that sounds like it would be too much work."
"The Game Boyz aren't about working hard," Hiro explains around a puff of smoke. "Work and me never gotten along."
I am baffled by my own acquiescence to this, that I was ever this nonchalant.
"Besides," says Hiro, crunching Doritos right from the bag, "If that's how you prepare... if you spend all your time thinking about an opponent, and let him into your head, then he ends up beating you. Even if he doesn't, the fact that you live with wrestling and treat it like a boring day job, one of those things like in the cartoon where the Sheepdog and Wile E Coyote just go clock in and clock out and go about their day, then it loses what makes it special. You'd make beating these guys into your only thing you get out of going to work, and that would make you hate it. No. Our way, fun way. The Game Boyz are here to innovate, dominate, and bring bleeding edge pop culture and abstract crazy to your screens. We won our first match this week, not just as a tag team or together, but our first match on screen period doing it just like this. So fuck off with that prepare for Trevor Adams shit. Fuck off with that prepare for Gerard Angelo shit. Show me Gerard Angelo, I could beat his ass. I bet watching his promos like watching glue dry anyway, huh?"
"Ha, yeah," Kyle says, laughing along with Hiro. "Yeah, I'd rather be shot out of a cannon into a pile of Ultimate Warrior action figures than sit there and watch the tapes of some guy with two first names."
"That sounds awesome, actually. But then, who would ever watch a Kyle Shane promo then?" Hiro zings. "Ohhh hoooo, and I fragged you too. I shot your man and I burned you. Kyle you are now officially my BITCH."
Kyle throws his controller with the air of someone annoyed by the cheating ripoff game.
"In your status as my BITCH Kyle you got to go get me more Doritos." He holds the empty bag out as he continues his run.
Kyle looks like he suffered a sting, but he takes the bag. I look across the couch at Kyle, as the boy gets up and starts going to the kitchenette. And I get up with him, taking his elbow in a vice grip and leading him in.
"Kyle... what are you doing?"
"What," he says unsure and his eyes wary. I used force on him and he doesn't like it. But right now I'm a bit annoyed. "I was just -"
Seeing it now the way it was, in the benefit of ten years of hindsight, the rose colored glasses of the Game Boyz era slips a bit and I see this boy as he is. He's out of his element in this new school and new surroundings, far away from Izzy Rodriguez and the comforts of their little fiefdom of the trailer park, and so, so far from what he knew about the world. He clings tightly to anyone who holds out a branch. But this kid... I storm and tower over him, shaking with disappointment. Nervous, his upper lips sweat and he waits for the explosion to happen. And try as I might not to let the control rods fail, I can't help but feel a little heated.
Seeing the way things had been, and where I was, and how I should have been. I do wish I had had an older me now to yell at me for something like this, at this stage in my life. It's what I would have needed, I tell myself. "Kid, you suck up to Hiro too much and defer all your power to him. That has to go. Hiro may talk big, but he is a kid, the same as you. No, not the same as you because at least Hiro comes from money, he does not have the same values as you."
"Hiro's my friend," Kyle protests a little bit, and I cut him off, yanking the Doritos bag out of his hand and making him flinch.
"He's your friend but he's treating you like a house bitch. He's your friend but he talks over you, doesn't credit your ideas, or give you as much streaming time. This is the Hiro show."
"Well..." Kyle mumbles at his socks, ashamed to look at me, "We have been thinking about, like, putting out an ad in the school paper, getting a third roommate, maybe... someone who can do the dishes..."
Even with the benefit of historically knowing that Chad Jacoby will enter the dorm and add a third, sweaty, schlubby dynamic to the equation and give them both somebody to rip off of, that doesn't tamp down my fury at seeing me like this as I was younger and less confident. "Have some fucking pride. You are Kyle fucking Shane. Look at you, kid. You are already a standout athlete in the training school, fuck what that trainer says. More gym time and you will develop. But you know what you have that Hiro doesn't, what every cocky piece of shit asshole that waltzes into a company and says they're going to change things doesn't?"
I jab my finger right in his heart, hitting it like a stake. It pushes him back a little, my thick finger in his bony chest. "You have a hunger not to go back to what you were that defines you. It always will. You are Kyle Shane and you NEVER go back. You are Kyle Shane and you push yourself, in training school, in MIT, everywhere and it does not matter who says you can't do something, you push yourself to get there because you are NEVER going back to what you had before. Aren't you? Aren't you Kyle Shane?"
His meek "I am" is repeated twice, but I push him. And I can't help it. I know from the flush on his face and the set in his jaw spreading that he's equating this to what he suffered from Eric on any drunk Friday night. I know he hears me. I know he thinks I'm an asshole.
"KYLE, DORITOOOOS," puts in the heckling words of the Game Boy from the living room couch.
"You don't get it," he says bitterly. "I am the way I am, I was beat down over and over again. And seeing you now, seeing what I become. So you tell me you are a World Champion in some fucking place I never heard of, you done all of this. But I look at you now and I don't see anything positive, nothing I really wanted to see. In fact, seeing you and having you being here and meeting Hiro just really shoves in my face that I will always have someone in my face telling me I'm not good enough. That I'm worthless. And I - I look at you and I just see someone who's empty. Like dad was, after mom died."
"Shut your mouth."
"I mean it!" He blows up. "You're dad! You become fucking dad! All of his anger! How am I supposed to fucking take that, looking at you and seeing what I am, what I become and seeing that all of this hard work you talk about pays off?! You know, HE used to give me that work ethic shit too, and - "
"AND SO WHAT? Dad was RIGHT, you little asshole. Dad was a prick but when you get down to it, it's him that taught me about shit you're trying to deny in your little baby bird testing his wings ways at college. It's dad's work ethic that pushes me to be the best I am at what I do every time I go out there, it's dad's telling me that I would never be anything and I couldn't make money with this interest, or that gaming hobby that made me make a career out of it. Dad may have gotten under my skin, but everything I do is in spite of or yes, BECAUSE I learned it from him. Dad was right about me."
"Uh... guys? I hear yelling, and not Fux, Respawn LOL yelling..."
"So what the fuck does that say about my future if we end up following his example?! Huh you old piece of shit? That means what I've thought about every single night since hitching a ride out of that trailer park is right... it's fucking inevitable! I KNOW I have his anger in me, and it doesn't matter WHAT I do, because I am... am genetically disposed! To being a piece of shit. There is an outcome of inevitability, that I will always turn out this way, like you are, miserable, angry - and ALONE!"
Him coming to the same conclusion I had argued with Patrick hurt. It hurt because it implanted the idea in my mind that maybe time's arrow did tear through everything in it's path. Maybe it hurt because this is where the idea came from and he wouldn't have thought of it if I didn't remind him of it's possibility in an impossible contradictory quandary. Maybe if I hadn't tried to talk to my younger self at all, hadn't tried and failed to nudge him onto a path to becoming a more confident person and away from the vices that held him back... he wouldn't have ever seen the path to take him to them.
"Why don't you just fuck off out of here, you weird old hipster prick..." he mumbled, bitterly, and he began getting a fresh bag of Doritos. He turned back towards the living room, and Hiro.
I wasn't having that. I wasn't, at the very least, going to make him lower his self esteem more tonight by serving Hiro. Right way or wrong way, in the moment I didn't give a damn. I snatched the bag out of his hand with the force enough to send it into the wall, splitting open and showering the area with shattering nebulae of orange triangles.
He catches me off guard, not much force behind it because he hadn't built muscle mass (and this was in the era when everyone leaned so heavily into the then already dated stereotype that nerds were weak noodle arms with glasses and pocket protectors)... but his fist came around and bunted me in the jaw.
Hiro sat, his jaw agape as he saw us in the doorway of the kitchenette. And using my more toned frame, I bulled the younger kid across the kitchen, smashing him into the wall and pinning him there.
He struggled and bucked like a demon, spitting curses. He screamed, "Let me go you psycho!" I was too incensed by the punch to immediately place why he was so freaked out, but then as I let him down, I muttered, "oh... right..."
"Wow, uh, I - wow... Guys, I'm... sorry, but I gotta... go" Hiro sputters, his cocky facade faltering in the face of real conflict. It figured that someone not raised in a trauma house where these kinds of fights would not know how to deal with it. Hiro fled, leaving us alone, and my younger half breathed heavily, red-faced from the floor.
"Fucking figures... you like hitting kids, huh? You like hitting kids? Huh? Eric?" He spits, and now, for the first time, the vein in which his venom is tapped, and Kyle Shane glowers at me balefully. There are a million words I wish I could say in this moment, apologies, mea culpas, warnings... even advice on how to best use this anger he feels and give it an outlet, get this angry when he's talking about an opponent and sit down on camera and film the paragraphs... But...
"I wish you would go the fuck home," he says, miserable and angry and still a hurt kid.
"I wish that too," I admit quietly, but without knowing what brought me here, I'm dimly aware that I don't know how to leave. If I could have, this would be the best time, now, before I can do any more damage to this boy.
The two of us sit on the lineoleum floor. He curls his arms around his knees and puts his head between them, his body shivering, as he just breathes.
I put my hand on his shoulder. He doesn't knock it off. Progress.
Things calmed down as the evening went on. Kyle and I swept up Dorito fragments in silence. I reflected on going to the physics department, asking a professor's help in resetting the timeline - God, what was that professor Hiro and I had in freshman year - Anyway... I thought of ways I could get back to my proper place. Or I thought of just leaving, and hitchhiking away from MIT and getting as far away from the kid as I could. Either way, I know I needed to get away from this dorm. He and I coexisted, two dots on the same line, far apart. In every sense of the word. And try as I might, there was no way I could bridge the distances between those lines.
I was just an intruder. I was like a home invader, who had broken into their little world, upset Kyle Shane's carefully balanced at the time worldview and had shattered his perception of safety. I made him feel scared. And he made me miss the simplicity of what he had, something that I could never feel again. I was wrong to take that from him. I was wrong to push who I was on him. Maybe I created myself in my meddling. Maybe if I had never tried this, I wouldn't be here. Maybe we were always here, at this point, and I set my own life on the ruined track it went down by interfering tonight.
Hiro returns, and the Game Boyz reunite on the couch. I watch, not taking part in the couch or the now subdued passing back and forth of a blunt. I'm not a part of this. Not anymore. They're co-op on some COD now, and the only sound is occassionally them speaking into their headset and coordinating with other members of their team. Kyle's face is drawn, pale, and haunted. Hiro looks across the couch at his friend, worriedly, and he passes him a dutch once or twice. Kyle takes it with distracted fingers, and takes a long, slow burn.
I watch, haunting the kitchen, the ghost of Christmas future. A shamed, sad specter.
It turns past 2 am, and Hiro, feigning his more boisterous self, puts Kyle in a headlock and they wrestle a little bit. "Gotta teach chu how to get out of this tomorrow at practice, feeb!" Kyle protests. And they bid goodnight to each other.
And Kyle sits on the couch, alone. For the longest time, not moving. I stand there, wanting to go to him. I start to say "About tonight," but he just shakes his head.
"M' a lil' tired," he mutters. He flips off the TV and goes back to his room. Then he looks over his shoulder. "The couch isn't much for sleeping on, not at our - our height..."
"Yeah," I say softly, "bunches up the muscles of your neck."
"It's just that you have to sleep with your head at such a weird angle," he comes back with, and there's so much we aren't saying in the moment.
"I can sleep on the couch, it's fine."
"If you wanna take the other half of the bed, it's fine, too, I don't... roll around much. It won't be weird." He says, tracing the molding of the doorframe. He may not want to be completely left alone.
"Nah, I can do the couch," I say, not meeting his eyes. He nods, then simply mutters "night Kyle..." And goes back to his room. Leaving me there, sitting in the same spot he had been.
Again, two dots on the same line, infinitely apart.
I sit in darkness. I close my eyes. I think of Kyle and Hiro, who started this journey together on a couch with their kid dreams, and now, very apropos, the lights have turned off and I sit in the darkness, alone. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to think of ways I got here, all the ways, a million and fifty of them at least that brought me here, to this moment. And how, ultimately, when given a chance like Patrick talked about, I may have inadvertantly, if not caused the ruin I became, at least laid it out there for me to see how it took shape. And I still, never really worked out what I would have wanted to say to a younger me, if put in this very position.
Sitting there in gloom, reflecting on all of these things, tapping my finger on my knee. It is then that I look around the gloom, and realize with a curious sense of... sliding that I am returning to the sensation that brought me here. Another layer, another transparent sheet slides over everything, overlapping the Game Boyz dorm with the outline of a room that isn't the same, but is cloaked in the same darkness, like someone slide another slide onto the overhead projector. Both, at the same time. Dorm room, and not dorm room.
I search around me in the dark, not knowing how long I've got. Letting out a "Fuck, fuck!" as my hands play over drug paraphernalia and game controllers on the messy coffee table, before snatching up a note pad with gamer tags written on it.
I rip out pages and take the pen, and I let it flow freely from my hand, what I wished I could have said before. It doesn't take long. I know me. And really, what I would have wanted to hear isn't that complicated. I just need to know Kyle will get it. So I put it right there, in the spot where he made his seat on this couch, the notepad tucked neatly under an X-Box controller and one bong made out of carved ivory whale bone. And then, the doubling intensifies. I am again looking at two different possibilities.
Time stretches out for long, long moments, and then, I reach again for the wall switch and snap it on. My living room, my own living room in my current apartment in downtown Kingston is illuminated, and the second slide is removed from over top of the overlay. All is one again. And I'm back at home.
I walk back to my bedroom, wondering how much of that I can take with a grain of salt. I do some weird shit in things I film sometimes, but if I wrote all of that off as a dream people would most likely be annoyed. And this was different, this was all me. Wasn't it? Was this something I did?
Having asked myself the question, I came to the realization that an encounter like that came with a cherished memento. Something that I came back to, and looked at sometimes in the intervening decade when things started to look their darkest. I knew that, because when I first read those words and clasped them to my birdy, scrawny eighteen year old's chest, it had given me a rush of emotions I wasn't ready to identify, but treasured all the same.
I pulled open a drawer on the nightstand table, and withdrew an old, battered, bent up notepad, upon which gamer tags had once been scrawled, and flipped to a dog eared, partially ripped out page, and read my own writing.
"Kyle -
I understand your apprehension, and your fear. I know you don't like seeing what you become. It's on you not to be that way. You may end up walking down the same road. But keep going.
It gets dark. It will get darker. Keep going anyway.
People are going to say you're losing your edge and your promos aren't as good as they used to be. Keep going anyway.
A stupid piece of shit named Justin Stormm Michaels, among a few other people, are going to keep saying that you're a rookie and that you're not in the league of all the years they spent in a federation. They keep saying that even when you're an eight time World Champion and have been wrestling for ten years. They're idiots who can't be bothered reading a fucking Wikipedia page or doing the slightest bit of research on their opponents. Keep going anyway.
You're going to get disrespected. You're going to get used. You're going to get invited into about five stables. Every one of those stables are going to suck.
You're going to be told that you made a bad World Champion compared to people who were big names in the fed, that you don't hold a candle to the legacy of people that wrestled in 2011.
You're going to have smart ass, too cool for school people like Gerard Angelo breathing down your neck every second of every day. Saying that they and only they can bring the fed to glory, because they're A-list superstars. And despite every single bit of evidence against that, despite the fact that they have absolutely no credibility and have only one meaningful match win to their name they will swear to the high heavens that they're ratings gold and every single second they breathe and smile on camera brings in 50,000 viewers. They're going to ignore the fact that they didn't win titles or accolades like you did on your first try, and have only skated by with a series of double count outs and cheap wins where their tag team partner pinned someone else's tag team partner. They're going to point to their one moment in the sun as proof of them doing something you did not, and use that as evidence that they're on par with you. They are going to goad you, and mock you, and poke fun at how you even film promos and ignore the content. They are going to use anything they can to build themselves up as a new hero to the fed and try to tear you down from a pedestal you could have worked days, months, or even a year to build.
Keep. Going. Anyway.
Because you have a lot of reasons for doing it. Recognition, satisfaction... because it satisfies the hunger in you to win... because you have so many people you wanna prove wrong. And even more people who you want to look down with a smile.
Because when things get rough, and you feel alone, it'll remind you that you aren't. She's always watching. And mom is always proud.
Take care, kid.
- Older Kyle"
He traced the pen lines on this old paragraph. He smiled. And, as a thought, he flipped a page over. Younger him had had a similar idea. It may not have bridged the ocean between their two points, but it was, as the note on the other side was, a message in a bottle tossed and waited for. A message he read back now, for the dozenth time, as a reminder in kind his younger self had given him.
"Kyle -
I can try, man.
And you, take care of yourself. And your girl, when I meet her... I'll take care of her for you. I promise.
Don't worry about Hiro, he's already forgotten about all the drama last night. He was so high he thought I was doing a one man play. And it's strange... feels almost like a dream. But it's a dream I'll remember for a long time.
And a dream I'll end up thanking you for, when the time comes.
So, I guess I'll see you later, huh?
PS. Try and tell a joke now and then, will ya? Jeez you're so grim.
"
He laughed.
He stood up. His eye went to the promo room, and as he walked over there and touched the light switch, there was a second's hesitation as he thought he could flip the light and wake up back in the old dorm room, facing the TV screen with the couch and the coffee table packed with bongs ready for play. But no, it was just his stool, and his recording mic. He crossed over to it, turning on and setting to work.
"Gerard Angelo? I've got news for mister Gerard Angelo. Just because he won a Rumble with ten people in it doesn't qualify him for special status. In fact... I would rather fight the cat girl from Darkstalkers than be forced to sit there and listen to one more second of his self-aggrandizing bullshit... Here's a skinny, pencil dick - you are stepping into the ring with the God of Game."
He smiled warmly, despite his quippy intro. And somewhere back, far along that line, an eighteen year old kid was smiling too, even knowing what was to come.
It wasn't a bright, colorful conflagration, an explosion, falling down a hole that brought me here. I simply woke up here, marvelling at how my perceptions in the moment seemed to be like back in the heathen days of school when computers were just an elective; where the teachers taught off rickety overhead projectors with clear slides and wiped smeared marker off with Windex. It was like in middle school physics where a teacher would superimpose two different slides over each other to show the difference of a wave function. Two slides of a bedroom were superimposed over each other, and as I looked, I saw both of them, and only one.
In a momentary panic, I thought back. I covered my face in my hands, trying to will the room to converge into one slide. I had a flash of insight that this might the result of drinking myself blind stupid. And so, I reached for the bedside table. In one slide my fingers brushed a fifth of Jose Cuervo. In another, they didn't.
The bottle was still reasonably full. Puzzled, I sat up, the room swaying and diverging. It was, as I saw, two different rooms.
I stood. I looked at my hands and feet. I was one person. So whatever divergence, it was just one person experiencing it in radically both ways. In my confusion, I stumbled in the dark. And my hands went towards a wall light. I tried to think of the last thing I remembered. I remembered a heated conversation with Patrick. As all of our philosophical debates were, as he tried to get me to see his way as right. I remember it becoming a shouting match, before his snake oil voice had smoothed out. And I arguing semantics about causality. Time's arrow, when let fly, moved in a straight line. He said that was bullshit. I said he was a bitter piece of shit.
He said that I overlooked all the gifts that got me to where I am today. I laughed off his hypothetical "gifts". I had said that everything that had ever happened to me was an outcome of inevitability encoded into our DNA, a genetic predisposition towards being a piece of shit. Patrick surprised me with a hopeful take, born of a wistful, aching need to be free of his deteriorated body and be a part of something, a family. It was a simple question which he said that he asked himself every time he felt the darkness rising in gullet; a question of how he could have appealed to his better angels.
"If you could go back and meet yourself when you were a kid, and just have a conversation with yourself, wouldn't you try to steer yourself to a better path? Or would you just sit back and think that it's hopeless."
I had to confess at the time, I never thought I would hear those words come out of my hacktivist, sociopathic brother's mouth, but it gave me pause, because it was a fair question. A germ of an idea, that didn't quite leave my mind, even as Patrick railed on about how good I'd had it compared to him all of his life and what he'd change if he could.
So that was the last thing I remembered before eventually going to sleep. That I could remember a philosophical proposal, still had half a bottle and wasn't puking was ruling out that theory.
(All of this analyzation in less time than it takes to tell, I had stepped to the wall and flicked on a switch in this time.)
As the light came on, I looked around, and the curiously double, superimposed overhead projector effect receded. It no longer looked like one dark room was a slide placed over another. Now, I just saw that I had woken up in bed next to myself. That did not recede my alarm, in fact, I almost yelled an obscenity before "Me" sat up. I had had experience talking to myself and seeing myself in dreams. I was always idealized, projected as a narcissistic aspect, a theoretical superego.
Nah, the Kyle in that bed was as far from that as possible. The Kyle that woke up, blinking at me, was stubble-less except for a few poking hairs, his hair not standing up but flat against his scalp in greasy waves, and pimples adorned his face. I sank against the wall, muttering "Oh, no." He just stared at me, eyes dawning in wonder as he saw what is fundamentally himself. And college freshman Kyle Shane uttered a low, unkempt "wow."
I looked around me, frantic. There had to be a door to hop into, hoping that it would serve as a conduit like fucking Narnia. I could not be here, meeting young Kyle Shane. I could not interact with this boy. This boy, who was already getting out of bed. His scrawny, bird-chested body was stripped down to the Spidey boxers. He approached me without fear or consequence, gaping with a stoner's complete cow-eyed interest. And even as I cringed, thinking of butterflies and overwriting timelines and even the old sci-fi cliches from the 60's about atomic inversion. He extended his hand up to me, his eyes looking up to me. His hand extended towards my face, brushing my jawbone he recognized as his own, and...
Boop.
He fucking booped my nose.
I almost responded with a punch to the face. My shoulder tensed, my hand itched and my lip flexed... But I couldn't. He recoiled back after he did what he did, seeing my flare of anger in my eyes and the instincts that he'd learned in his trailer park home carried him. I felt pity for the kid right then. Eighteen.
As brave as it was for him to leave home and get away from Eric not all that long ago... he was still a boy. A boy who was just getting out into the world and away from the abuse, and learning to live with the triggers. Eighteen. It was something I knew with a tiny little breaking feeling in my left ventricle that would lead to him growing coping mechanisms, many I still use, like tumors in his heart. In that moment, that one moment of contact and then understanding that bridged between us, I saw where this kid had come from, and where he was going to go over the next decade. He was eighteen...
"Are you -"
"I don't know how this is -"
"This is like something I read in -"
"That physics book by Arthur Stanley? Yeah, that was a lot of -"
"Nah, I was gonna say Heinlein."
There was a beat, and he looked a little chagrinned, and I finally let him see a big smile, and I ruffled his greasy, nappy poor kid's haircut. "You little nerd... hey, Kyle... I'm Kyle." I laughed, easily, and he laughed too, finally coming to a good common place.
"This is so cool," he gushed. He went back to the bed, and now I saw why in the slide with the two rooms why I had been so confused. The bedstand that had travelled with me all the way from the dorm days was here, on the same side of the bed, but instead of piled high with empties of whiskey and pain pills for the pops in my knee and back, there was a little smoke setup with a Gandalf ceramic holder, a baggie of resin, some papers, and my old bong carved out of whalebone I bought at a curio shop in the common. He packed the bowl with the greedy enthusiasm of a young stoner. As he lit the nug in the bowl, he blew out, and he offered me a hit. I just watched him.
And I realized, my moment had come. I may never have known how I woke up here in this moment, but I realized the how I got here would never matter. I was afforded this one chance, like Patrick was talking about, to talk to myself as I was then. How could I not take this chance to talk to the kid? To tell him even a little bit of who he is and where he's going to go? Screw a space time continuum, right? If you could tell your younger self even a few things he can do to improve his quality of life... wouldn't you?
Except that right now, in the face of it, I couldn't think of anything I wanted to tell Kyle. I couldn't think of a way to let him know about the decade that followed after he signed up as a trainee at the International Elite Wrestling School. A full decade of Kyle Shane. A decade of disappointment tinged with stubbornness, professional achievement tempered with personal restlessness, triumph married to pain. How... the fuck... do you tell someone about that?
Or do you? Can you at all? Can you just take your younger self with an arm around their shoulder like a Dutch uncle and say listen, kid, I know you have the biggest dreams and despite the shit your young life put you through you still have a huge heart filled with hope for what you are going to be, but you see me as I am now and I'm not going to be quite what you expected and I didn't turn out fully balanced and perfect like I should have been. And I'm really sorry, but I tried... and life doesn't always work out.
Seems like a really bleak vision of the future to present to the kid, all in all.
But he's bustling with enthusiasm. "You're so fit, you have to be working out like so fucking much! - " (Uh, actually.......)
"Wait till Hiro sees you! Hiro is so big into this stuff, he could work out an equation about this in - Ohhh nevermind. Tell me that me and Hiro are still kicking ass and taking names, right?" (Um... well, kid...)
"And the IEW, do they sign us to long term deals? Are we still in the IEW? How many times did we win the Tag Titles?" (The thing with that is...)
"Please... tell me... No, don't tell me, I'm too nervous... tell me, do I ever make it as a singles guy? The trainer at the IEWS said that he thinks Hiro is gonna be the breakout star... he says I'm probably never gonna progress past a tag guy..."
I pat his shoulder. I could bring up the fact that I've won World titles in three companies now... but in this moment, it feels cheap and not earned. "You'll get there. You aren't just a tag guy. You just have to find your voice and get out from Hiro's shadow."
He looks blue, setting the bowl aside and looking down. "Easy to say that... Hiro does all the promos, he conceptualizes it, sets up the camera, he comes up with the best jokes..."
"Kyle. Listen. You are going to be fine." I say. And I realize something, something trying to raise an eleven year old also didn't prepare me for and which fucks with me now. I'm not good at connecting, making someone feel better or inspiring someone. I don't know a big, flowery It Gets Better speech to give the kid. "Just stay in school while you do the wrestling thing, will you?"
I want to test if my words can make a lasting impact. And I know with what's coming ahead of Kyle. He's two years out from meeting Array, and changing the course of both of their lives. And honestly, kind of fucking up Array's. It tugs on my heart, and I realize that even if this makes my timeline fade away like a Back to the Future sequel I have to give Kyle this so he can do better, and so I can do right by Array. If I can. "Stay in school. And listen, don't go to any frat parties."
"Frat parties?! Bro... they would never invite us to one of those! Uh, they should, because the Game Boyz, are like -" with a so nerdy, so desperate to seem cool rake of his hand through his hairline and a roll of his eyes, " - local celebrites and all. We were on TV you know. We were put in a fatal fourway, and there was this giant, six foot ten guy in a cat mask?"
I interrupt his boyish bubble. "Yeah. Parties. Like with Brad Anderson? You know him. He's a bad guy, Kyle... he does... awful stuff."
He twitches, and he looks sad. "I know. Brad's a piece of sh- poop. Sorry. I try not to cuss."
Okay, I actually have to laugh my ass off at that on the inside. "Brad and guys like him. They are bad news. You don't need to get caught up in that. And honestly, smoking some weed is fine, but cut back on it, right? You don't need to start going overboard, and bringing in all these other drugs."
"Hey, selling the drugs is what got me and Hiro in the dorm, man... it pays for all this stuff..."
"Kyle. Who the fuck are you talking tooooooOOO WHAT." A voice comes from the doorframe. And a very, very confused young Asian boy stands there.
"Uh, Hiro... I've got some explaining to do..."
It is a whirlwind of an hour, as the cocky, aggressive leader of the team takes point interviewing me, and now I'm finally back where it all started. Just sitting on the couch in the Game Boyz dorm room. Incense sticks are, quite futilely lit to try and mask the smell of skunk weed in the air, and the X-Box is on as Hiro and Me blast their way through Halo. Hiro's arm reaches over me to pass, Me the bowl, and he exhales a cloud of smoke. Despite their intense focus on the game, they continue throwing words around the air at a rapid fire pace that leaves me dizzy.
"So tell me more about this Gerard Angelo guy you're facing?"
"Hiro, I don't know if he should, though, because what if us knowing how the future turns out leads to a butterfly effect where our knowledge of those events causes things we need to happen not to happen?"
"Or what happens if our knowing the future leads us to writing the script for a sequel to a terrible Ashton Kutcher movie?"
"You know, they made three of those," I put my two cents in, amused by the banter.
"NO."
"WHAT."
"Somehow that's even worse than knowing that ten years into the future people will still come to wrestling promotions and pretend to be A-list celebrities."
"That is rather bleak, I'm so sorry, dude. Every single person that puffs themselves up with a Hollywood gimmick is lucky if they can get cast as an extra in Snakes on a Plane. To think that people still try that makes no sense to me, because IMBD is a thing."
"Yeah like it's really easy to search for someone's work history and see if they're such a shitty D lister that the Asylum doesn't even give them a call."
"Sounds like maybe Gerard Angelo would be getting a call if they made a fourth Butterfly Effect sequel, complete in that shitty direct to DVD packaging so they can chuck it to the bottom of one of those five dollar bins at Walmart."
"Dude, those bins aren't so bad, I found a compilation of an entire season of Totally Spies in there..."
"Kyle, you are my brotha but I simply have to rip on you for acknowledging your fandom of the Totally Spies vehicle. C'mon, gimme your head, that's a chop."
"It's witty and subversive and the art style is cute, kinda retro anime and stuff..."
Whether it's the smoke or just the lightspeed back and forth, my head is pounding, and I wonder how anybody could have stood this for long. I sigh. Leave it to me to spoil my own fun. "Guys, I hate to break up the flow, but you asked me about an opponent and he's someone I should really be focusing on. Even now."
"Oh, yeah, yeah, because he won that Rumble thing," younger me's eyes turn, deferring to me as if I'm dad. He quiets down, obedient. I want to break him of that.
"A Rumble with, like, ten people in it isn't much of a Rumble, chief," Hiro scoffs, arrogant as ever.
"True, but Angelo has been getting close for a while. He came in earlier this year and it took some time to get his groove, but he did it. He even stalemated the North American champion, and took Grimm to his limit. I know the Game Boyz way was to laugh off opposition, but you gotta take some of these things seriously. This isn't a guy you can just run off with a stream of pop culture references. When you guys had to face someone like Gerard like... fuck, who would have been analogous in IEW, Trevor Adams? If you had to prepare for someone like that, how would you go about it?"
Kyle is quiet, thoughtful, and looks like he's taking my advice and ruminating on it. Hiro cuts his eyes and takes the bong, holding the lighter to it with an expression of disdain. "Prepare? For someone like that? Why the fuck should I? I can make a CAW of Trevor Adams and all of his moveset in WWE Smackdown Bring Tha Pain, or your Mister Gerard Angelo. I can learn all of his moves and plan an attack. Or I can photoshop his magazine images and put his face on an owl! Who can prepare for that?"
"Ye- Yeah!" Kyle pipes up, glancing over at Hiro, emboldened then, "Yeah. Preparing for someone like that sounds like it would be too much work."
"The Game Boyz aren't about working hard," Hiro explains around a puff of smoke. "Work and me never gotten along."
I am baffled by my own acquiescence to this, that I was ever this nonchalant.
"Besides," says Hiro, crunching Doritos right from the bag, "If that's how you prepare... if you spend all your time thinking about an opponent, and let him into your head, then he ends up beating you. Even if he doesn't, the fact that you live with wrestling and treat it like a boring day job, one of those things like in the cartoon where the Sheepdog and Wile E Coyote just go clock in and clock out and go about their day, then it loses what makes it special. You'd make beating these guys into your only thing you get out of going to work, and that would make you hate it. No. Our way, fun way. The Game Boyz are here to innovate, dominate, and bring bleeding edge pop culture and abstract crazy to your screens. We won our first match this week, not just as a tag team or together, but our first match on screen period doing it just like this. So fuck off with that prepare for Trevor Adams shit. Fuck off with that prepare for Gerard Angelo shit. Show me Gerard Angelo, I could beat his ass. I bet watching his promos like watching glue dry anyway, huh?"
"Ha, yeah," Kyle says, laughing along with Hiro. "Yeah, I'd rather be shot out of a cannon into a pile of Ultimate Warrior action figures than sit there and watch the tapes of some guy with two first names."
"That sounds awesome, actually. But then, who would ever watch a Kyle Shane promo then?" Hiro zings. "Ohhh hoooo, and I fragged you too. I shot your man and I burned you. Kyle you are now officially my BITCH."
Kyle throws his controller with the air of someone annoyed by the cheating ripoff game.
"In your status as my BITCH Kyle you got to go get me more Doritos." He holds the empty bag out as he continues his run.
Kyle looks like he suffered a sting, but he takes the bag. I look across the couch at Kyle, as the boy gets up and starts going to the kitchenette. And I get up with him, taking his elbow in a vice grip and leading him in.
"Kyle... what are you doing?"
"What," he says unsure and his eyes wary. I used force on him and he doesn't like it. But right now I'm a bit annoyed. "I was just -"
Seeing it now the way it was, in the benefit of ten years of hindsight, the rose colored glasses of the Game Boyz era slips a bit and I see this boy as he is. He's out of his element in this new school and new surroundings, far away from Izzy Rodriguez and the comforts of their little fiefdom of the trailer park, and so, so far from what he knew about the world. He clings tightly to anyone who holds out a branch. But this kid... I storm and tower over him, shaking with disappointment. Nervous, his upper lips sweat and he waits for the explosion to happen. And try as I might not to let the control rods fail, I can't help but feel a little heated.
Seeing the way things had been, and where I was, and how I should have been. I do wish I had had an older me now to yell at me for something like this, at this stage in my life. It's what I would have needed, I tell myself. "Kid, you suck up to Hiro too much and defer all your power to him. That has to go. Hiro may talk big, but he is a kid, the same as you. No, not the same as you because at least Hiro comes from money, he does not have the same values as you."
"Hiro's my friend," Kyle protests a little bit, and I cut him off, yanking the Doritos bag out of his hand and making him flinch.
"He's your friend but he's treating you like a house bitch. He's your friend but he talks over you, doesn't credit your ideas, or give you as much streaming time. This is the Hiro show."
"Well..." Kyle mumbles at his socks, ashamed to look at me, "We have been thinking about, like, putting out an ad in the school paper, getting a third roommate, maybe... someone who can do the dishes..."
Even with the benefit of historically knowing that Chad Jacoby will enter the dorm and add a third, sweaty, schlubby dynamic to the equation and give them both somebody to rip off of, that doesn't tamp down my fury at seeing me like this as I was younger and less confident. "Have some fucking pride. You are Kyle fucking Shane. Look at you, kid. You are already a standout athlete in the training school, fuck what that trainer says. More gym time and you will develop. But you know what you have that Hiro doesn't, what every cocky piece of shit asshole that waltzes into a company and says they're going to change things doesn't?"
I jab my finger right in his heart, hitting it like a stake. It pushes him back a little, my thick finger in his bony chest. "You have a hunger not to go back to what you were that defines you. It always will. You are Kyle Shane and you NEVER go back. You are Kyle Shane and you push yourself, in training school, in MIT, everywhere and it does not matter who says you can't do something, you push yourself to get there because you are NEVER going back to what you had before. Aren't you? Aren't you Kyle Shane?"
His meek "I am" is repeated twice, but I push him. And I can't help it. I know from the flush on his face and the set in his jaw spreading that he's equating this to what he suffered from Eric on any drunk Friday night. I know he hears me. I know he thinks I'm an asshole.
"KYLE, DORITOOOOS," puts in the heckling words of the Game Boy from the living room couch.
"You don't get it," he says bitterly. "I am the way I am, I was beat down over and over again. And seeing you now, seeing what I become. So you tell me you are a World Champion in some fucking place I never heard of, you done all of this. But I look at you now and I don't see anything positive, nothing I really wanted to see. In fact, seeing you and having you being here and meeting Hiro just really shoves in my face that I will always have someone in my face telling me I'm not good enough. That I'm worthless. And I - I look at you and I just see someone who's empty. Like dad was, after mom died."
"Shut your mouth."
"I mean it!" He blows up. "You're dad! You become fucking dad! All of his anger! How am I supposed to fucking take that, looking at you and seeing what I am, what I become and seeing that all of this hard work you talk about pays off?! You know, HE used to give me that work ethic shit too, and - "
"AND SO WHAT? Dad was RIGHT, you little asshole. Dad was a prick but when you get down to it, it's him that taught me about shit you're trying to deny in your little baby bird testing his wings ways at college. It's dad's work ethic that pushes me to be the best I am at what I do every time I go out there, it's dad's telling me that I would never be anything and I couldn't make money with this interest, or that gaming hobby that made me make a career out of it. Dad may have gotten under my skin, but everything I do is in spite of or yes, BECAUSE I learned it from him. Dad was right about me."
"Uh... guys? I hear yelling, and not Fux, Respawn LOL yelling..."
"So what the fuck does that say about my future if we end up following his example?! Huh you old piece of shit? That means what I've thought about every single night since hitching a ride out of that trailer park is right... it's fucking inevitable! I KNOW I have his anger in me, and it doesn't matter WHAT I do, because I am... am genetically disposed! To being a piece of shit. There is an outcome of inevitability, that I will always turn out this way, like you are, miserable, angry - and ALONE!"
Him coming to the same conclusion I had argued with Patrick hurt. It hurt because it implanted the idea in my mind that maybe time's arrow did tear through everything in it's path. Maybe it hurt because this is where the idea came from and he wouldn't have thought of it if I didn't remind him of it's possibility in an impossible contradictory quandary. Maybe if I hadn't tried to talk to my younger self at all, hadn't tried and failed to nudge him onto a path to becoming a more confident person and away from the vices that held him back... he wouldn't have ever seen the path to take him to them.
"Why don't you just fuck off out of here, you weird old hipster prick..." he mumbled, bitterly, and he began getting a fresh bag of Doritos. He turned back towards the living room, and Hiro.
I wasn't having that. I wasn't, at the very least, going to make him lower his self esteem more tonight by serving Hiro. Right way or wrong way, in the moment I didn't give a damn. I snatched the bag out of his hand with the force enough to send it into the wall, splitting open and showering the area with shattering nebulae of orange triangles.
He catches me off guard, not much force behind it because he hadn't built muscle mass (and this was in the era when everyone leaned so heavily into the then already dated stereotype that nerds were weak noodle arms with glasses and pocket protectors)... but his fist came around and bunted me in the jaw.
Hiro sat, his jaw agape as he saw us in the doorway of the kitchenette. And using my more toned frame, I bulled the younger kid across the kitchen, smashing him into the wall and pinning him there.
He struggled and bucked like a demon, spitting curses. He screamed, "Let me go you psycho!" I was too incensed by the punch to immediately place why he was so freaked out, but then as I let him down, I muttered, "oh... right..."
"Wow, uh, I - wow... Guys, I'm... sorry, but I gotta... go" Hiro sputters, his cocky facade faltering in the face of real conflict. It figured that someone not raised in a trauma house where these kinds of fights would not know how to deal with it. Hiro fled, leaving us alone, and my younger half breathed heavily, red-faced from the floor.
"Fucking figures... you like hitting kids, huh? You like hitting kids? Huh? Eric?" He spits, and now, for the first time, the vein in which his venom is tapped, and Kyle Shane glowers at me balefully. There are a million words I wish I could say in this moment, apologies, mea culpas, warnings... even advice on how to best use this anger he feels and give it an outlet, get this angry when he's talking about an opponent and sit down on camera and film the paragraphs... But...
"I wish you would go the fuck home," he says, miserable and angry and still a hurt kid.
"I wish that too," I admit quietly, but without knowing what brought me here, I'm dimly aware that I don't know how to leave. If I could have, this would be the best time, now, before I can do any more damage to this boy.
The two of us sit on the lineoleum floor. He curls his arms around his knees and puts his head between them, his body shivering, as he just breathes.
I put my hand on his shoulder. He doesn't knock it off. Progress.
Things calmed down as the evening went on. Kyle and I swept up Dorito fragments in silence. I reflected on going to the physics department, asking a professor's help in resetting the timeline - God, what was that professor Hiro and I had in freshman year - Anyway... I thought of ways I could get back to my proper place. Or I thought of just leaving, and hitchhiking away from MIT and getting as far away from the kid as I could. Either way, I know I needed to get away from this dorm. He and I coexisted, two dots on the same line, far apart. In every sense of the word. And try as I might, there was no way I could bridge the distances between those lines.
I was just an intruder. I was like a home invader, who had broken into their little world, upset Kyle Shane's carefully balanced at the time worldview and had shattered his perception of safety. I made him feel scared. And he made me miss the simplicity of what he had, something that I could never feel again. I was wrong to take that from him. I was wrong to push who I was on him. Maybe I created myself in my meddling. Maybe if I had never tried this, I wouldn't be here. Maybe we were always here, at this point, and I set my own life on the ruined track it went down by interfering tonight.
Hiro returns, and the Game Boyz reunite on the couch. I watch, not taking part in the couch or the now subdued passing back and forth of a blunt. I'm not a part of this. Not anymore. They're co-op on some COD now, and the only sound is occassionally them speaking into their headset and coordinating with other members of their team. Kyle's face is drawn, pale, and haunted. Hiro looks across the couch at his friend, worriedly, and he passes him a dutch once or twice. Kyle takes it with distracted fingers, and takes a long, slow burn.
I watch, haunting the kitchen, the ghost of Christmas future. A shamed, sad specter.
It turns past 2 am, and Hiro, feigning his more boisterous self, puts Kyle in a headlock and they wrestle a little bit. "Gotta teach chu how to get out of this tomorrow at practice, feeb!" Kyle protests. And they bid goodnight to each other.
And Kyle sits on the couch, alone. For the longest time, not moving. I stand there, wanting to go to him. I start to say "About tonight," but he just shakes his head.
"M' a lil' tired," he mutters. He flips off the TV and goes back to his room. Then he looks over his shoulder. "The couch isn't much for sleeping on, not at our - our height..."
"Yeah," I say softly, "bunches up the muscles of your neck."
"It's just that you have to sleep with your head at such a weird angle," he comes back with, and there's so much we aren't saying in the moment.
"I can sleep on the couch, it's fine."
"If you wanna take the other half of the bed, it's fine, too, I don't... roll around much. It won't be weird." He says, tracing the molding of the doorframe. He may not want to be completely left alone.
"Nah, I can do the couch," I say, not meeting his eyes. He nods, then simply mutters "night Kyle..." And goes back to his room. Leaving me there, sitting in the same spot he had been.
Again, two dots on the same line, infinitely apart.
I sit in darkness. I close my eyes. I think of Kyle and Hiro, who started this journey together on a couch with their kid dreams, and now, very apropos, the lights have turned off and I sit in the darkness, alone. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to think of ways I got here, all the ways, a million and fifty of them at least that brought me here, to this moment. And how, ultimately, when given a chance like Patrick talked about, I may have inadvertantly, if not caused the ruin I became, at least laid it out there for me to see how it took shape. And I still, never really worked out what I would have wanted to say to a younger me, if put in this very position.
Sitting there in gloom, reflecting on all of these things, tapping my finger on my knee. It is then that I look around the gloom, and realize with a curious sense of... sliding that I am returning to the sensation that brought me here. Another layer, another transparent sheet slides over everything, overlapping the Game Boyz dorm with the outline of a room that isn't the same, but is cloaked in the same darkness, like someone slide another slide onto the overhead projector. Both, at the same time. Dorm room, and not dorm room.
I search around me in the dark, not knowing how long I've got. Letting out a "Fuck, fuck!" as my hands play over drug paraphernalia and game controllers on the messy coffee table, before snatching up a note pad with gamer tags written on it.
I rip out pages and take the pen, and I let it flow freely from my hand, what I wished I could have said before. It doesn't take long. I know me. And really, what I would have wanted to hear isn't that complicated. I just need to know Kyle will get it. So I put it right there, in the spot where he made his seat on this couch, the notepad tucked neatly under an X-Box controller and one bong made out of carved ivory whale bone. And then, the doubling intensifies. I am again looking at two different possibilities.
Time stretches out for long, long moments, and then, I reach again for the wall switch and snap it on. My living room, my own living room in my current apartment in downtown Kingston is illuminated, and the second slide is removed from over top of the overlay. All is one again. And I'm back at home.
I walk back to my bedroom, wondering how much of that I can take with a grain of salt. I do some weird shit in things I film sometimes, but if I wrote all of that off as a dream people would most likely be annoyed. And this was different, this was all me. Wasn't it? Was this something I did?
Having asked myself the question, I came to the realization that an encounter like that came with a cherished memento. Something that I came back to, and looked at sometimes in the intervening decade when things started to look their darkest. I knew that, because when I first read those words and clasped them to my birdy, scrawny eighteen year old's chest, it had given me a rush of emotions I wasn't ready to identify, but treasured all the same.
I pulled open a drawer on the nightstand table, and withdrew an old, battered, bent up notepad, upon which gamer tags had once been scrawled, and flipped to a dog eared, partially ripped out page, and read my own writing.
"Kyle -
I understand your apprehension, and your fear. I know you don't like seeing what you become. It's on you not to be that way. You may end up walking down the same road. But keep going.
It gets dark. It will get darker. Keep going anyway.
People are going to say you're losing your edge and your promos aren't as good as they used to be. Keep going anyway.
A stupid piece of shit named Justin Stormm Michaels, among a few other people, are going to keep saying that you're a rookie and that you're not in the league of all the years they spent in a federation. They keep saying that even when you're an eight time World Champion and have been wrestling for ten years. They're idiots who can't be bothered reading a fucking Wikipedia page or doing the slightest bit of research on their opponents. Keep going anyway.
You're going to get disrespected. You're going to get used. You're going to get invited into about five stables. Every one of those stables are going to suck.
You're going to be told that you made a bad World Champion compared to people who were big names in the fed, that you don't hold a candle to the legacy of people that wrestled in 2011.
You're going to have smart ass, too cool for school people like Gerard Angelo breathing down your neck every second of every day. Saying that they and only they can bring the fed to glory, because they're A-list superstars. And despite every single bit of evidence against that, despite the fact that they have absolutely no credibility and have only one meaningful match win to their name they will swear to the high heavens that they're ratings gold and every single second they breathe and smile on camera brings in 50,000 viewers. They're going to ignore the fact that they didn't win titles or accolades like you did on your first try, and have only skated by with a series of double count outs and cheap wins where their tag team partner pinned someone else's tag team partner. They're going to point to their one moment in the sun as proof of them doing something you did not, and use that as evidence that they're on par with you. They are going to goad you, and mock you, and poke fun at how you even film promos and ignore the content. They are going to use anything they can to build themselves up as a new hero to the fed and try to tear you down from a pedestal you could have worked days, months, or even a year to build.
Keep. Going. Anyway.
Because you have a lot of reasons for doing it. Recognition, satisfaction... because it satisfies the hunger in you to win... because you have so many people you wanna prove wrong. And even more people who you want to look down with a smile.
Because when things get rough, and you feel alone, it'll remind you that you aren't. She's always watching. And mom is always proud.
Take care, kid.
- Older Kyle"
He traced the pen lines on this old paragraph. He smiled. And, as a thought, he flipped a page over. Younger him had had a similar idea. It may not have bridged the ocean between their two points, but it was, as the note on the other side was, a message in a bottle tossed and waited for. A message he read back now, for the dozenth time, as a reminder in kind his younger self had given him.
"Kyle -
I can try, man.
And you, take care of yourself. And your girl, when I meet her... I'll take care of her for you. I promise.
Don't worry about Hiro, he's already forgotten about all the drama last night. He was so high he thought I was doing a one man play. And it's strange... feels almost like a dream. But it's a dream I'll remember for a long time.
And a dream I'll end up thanking you for, when the time comes.
So, I guess I'll see you later, huh?
PS. Try and tell a joke now and then, will ya? Jeez you're so grim.
"He laughed.
He stood up. His eye went to the promo room, and as he walked over there and touched the light switch, there was a second's hesitation as he thought he could flip the light and wake up back in the old dorm room, facing the TV screen with the couch and the coffee table packed with bongs ready for play. But no, it was just his stool, and his recording mic. He crossed over to it, turning on and setting to work.
"Gerard Angelo? I've got news for mister Gerard Angelo. Just because he won a Rumble with ten people in it doesn't qualify him for special status. In fact... I would rather fight the cat girl from Darkstalkers than be forced to sit there and listen to one more second of his self-aggrandizing bullshit... Here's a skinny, pencil dick - you are stepping into the ring with the God of Game."
He smiled warmly, despite his quippy intro. And somewhere back, far along that line, an eighteen year old kid was smiling too, even knowing what was to come.
