So many faces. So many names I've not seen in a decade or more.

Ex-girlfriends...former best buds...cousins... Group o' wrestlers talkin' over in the parkin' lot, a few promoters and bookers I'd befriended before my substance abuse cost me anything more than mid-card status and semi-annual contracts...

It's September 2nd, 2011 and the hour is just past 1 in the afternoon, my mother's funeral services having ended not five minutes prior. It's an ironically cloudless and warm sunny day for this of all occasions, a deep azure sky above the “Virginia Ward” Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints building in Lakewood, CA. I'd rather it were raining, this doesn't feel right. I can see the weather infecting everyone around me with positivity and I don't like it.

My big brother John is much better with the false front than I. He makes his rounds, all smiles and cordiality, while I stand in one spot receiving it from my own turnstile of sympathizers over the course of thirty minutes or so.

Nicole Faustino, “Bud Bundy” David’s cousin (and my frequent friend with benefits since high school), is the last to pay her respects with a hug. Mid-embrace I glance to a six-months-pregnant-with-Amethyst Holly, who’s more than familiar with Nicole, thankfully finding her busy conversing with her group of friends from Phelan who’d made the trip down in support of her supporting me.

“God, I'm so sorry Jimmy,” she speaks into my ear, “I loved your mom so much. My mom said she tried to get the day off but couldn't. She sends her best. Bitch.”

“That’s ok, Waffles,” I reply with my pet name for her...long story, “I'm glad you're here.”

“I have something for you…” She releases the embrace and takes a few steps towards the furthest reaches of the parking lot before turning to me with a smile and a faint “come on” tilt of the head.

I take a look around casually. Those not already departed or in the process of are still deep in-

“Jimmy?” My eyes snap to Holly.

“Yeah?”

“Do you mind if we make a Starbucks run?” She motions to her friends. “We can bring you something back if you want.”

“Yeah baby, no worries, go right ahead. I'm gonna be heading home soon anyway.”

Holly smiles, apparently not spying Nicole. “K, I'll see you there.”

We’d moved outta the last house I’d shared with my family and into an apartment complex in Long Beach not two weeks following my mother’s passing. Both of us have vehicles at this time so despite her bun-in-the-oven status I know she can take care of herself and her friends will keep an eye on her for me. I watch and wait until they've piled into her Dodge Aries and take their lea-

“You aren't going to lunch with the family?” My brother startles me from the side.

“What fuckin’ family?”

“James, you need to let it go. There wasn't anything anyone could do for mom.”

I let that one slide though I can't veil the sickened tone from my follow up.

“Are you really in an eating mood?”

“Dude, you need to eat. There's nothing wrong with spending time with everyone, having some good food-”

“I'm good bro.”

“Ok.” He rejoins his wife and sons, our uncle, aunts and grandma and they split off to their rides. I notice some jag-off in a suit I've never met before approach him. I think nothing of it.

I turn back to Nicole...she’s standing at the end corner of the church building, smiling, motioning to me with her right pointer. My feet get me there and we walk slowly towards her Chevy Blazer a good 100 yards away.

“Holly left?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

It strikes me as rude...the girl is having my kid,Nicole, ease up. I wish the two would just get along...or at least keep me outta their hatred for one another.

Nicole takes my hand. I look over my shoulder nervously. No one left is watching. One benefit to being so goddamn short, people tend not to notice when you slink away, even if you are a pseudo celebrity pro wrestler. I also feel the stirring in my Dickies pants. Nicole’s always had this effect on me. Hell, for more than a decade I wanted to marry her. She’s always been that “one girl”... I'm not quite sure what I've always been to her but it's kept me in her heart the whole time as well, through every boyfriend and two husbands to be exact. I'm the only man her son Skyler has seen aside from his own father, every week since his birth. I'm the guy she feels the need to explain to each of her significant others ahead of time that I'm a good friend and I'll be around often. Never the husband or boyfriend, always the escape since our first excursion to Knotts Berry Farm behind her first boyfriend’s back over the summer of ‘96. She’d even visited me on the job in several different promotions.

We take branched routes around her Blazer and hop in on either side.

There's been a heavy level of comfort between Nicole and I for many years at this point, we both just sit in silence for a few moments. We never really need to say much to communicate anyway with exceptions including rumors revolving ‘round mutual friends from high school, the occasional recommended new comedy or rarely carried out serious discussion.
In the silence, as always, I can't help my gaze from being drawn to her eyes. She smiles and playfully bites the left half of her bottom lip, as always. To me (and many others, though I'd known some with lofty standards who’d called her ugly) Nicole has always been incredibly sexy.

She leans over reaching for the glove compartment, giving me a nice angle on the lower C cleavage down her low cut dress. I can't remember ever seeing her in a dress before. She produces a pipe and a sack, OG by the smell of it, something we see eye to eye on with weed.

We smoke a bowl, though I don't hold my hits like I do alone, I don't like getting too stony with chicks.

She turns on the battery and radio then switches to cassette on her JVC CD/cassette receiver. Ice Cube’s “You Know How We Do It”, slightly though noticeably deteriorated, beats forth from the speakers.

I'd fallen madly in love with this girl after we first fucked around in ‘96. First thing I'd done when I'd had free time at home was make her a mixtape, all rap, which unfortunately had presented few good choices in context with my feelings. About half the entire playlist were tracks with lyrics having nothing to do with love and were instead just cuts with top notch melodies/beats. Every time she reveals she still has it, it makes me smile.

She leans over again...this time to kiss. Nicole is one of the few chicks I've known who knows how. Kissing becomes more intense. She climbs over to sit on my lap. The dress makes sense now. I unlatch and unzip, lifting my ass and her with a giggle, to pull my pants and boxers halfway down my thighs. She pulls her dress up to her slim midriff, no panties, no hair, holding it in place with her left hand and positioning me with her right, dropping her dress on the slide-in with an exhale.

I never last that long with Nicole, probably around five-six minutes tops if I had to nail it down without stuttering pull-out extensions, unless we've been spending days at a time together fuckin’ like rabbits. She’s...just...too damn aggressive to resist holding back. Been a little pornstar since 15. Cowgirl in public with her so close, facial contortions of pleasure, perfect liquid riding and grinding of lower hips, her breathing...and for the first time not said by her in parting…”I love you Jimmy.”

I don't pull out and she doesn't do anything to allow it if she wants it. She only pushes harder. “I love you too Nicole.”

I feel like shit a minute later. It isn't usual that I connect with Nicole while I have a girlfriend, it’d only happened once before with my first girlfriend Heather during our second go in my senior year. Holly’s pregnant though. From my new perspective I wonder why this never seemed to bother Nicole even when her son entered the picture while still with his father. It also strikes me, far too late, this may be wildly inappropriate at my mother's-

BVVVVT

1:51 PM
Did the representative from Mutual speak to you? Mom had a life insurance policy. Paid out two ways as beneficiaries it’s $59,000 a piece.

“......Holy shit.”

TBC
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


“#8”




-Saturday April 15, New York, New York 10:14 PM EST-

-L’Amico-


”Sir...your order?”

The hurry and worry in the waiter’s tone snaps me from recollection.

”Shit, my bad.” The waiter flinches at my crass language. ”I'll start with the Tuscan salad, transition with the Saffron Stracci pasta and for the main course an order of the wood oven roasted chicken. Sans skin, please.”

”Excellent sir. And to drink?”

”Milk.”

He weirdly bows before I hand him the menu, sending him on his way. Busy tonight, I notice, even this late in the evening. Popular place. May take a short while even on the milk and salad. It occurs to me this is normally where I'd be thinking to myself, “It's time to promo” but for some reason...for several weeks now (and for the first time since August 2016) my inner-dialogue has been absent. Whether my recent punishing encounter will Dolly and Trax had jarred that little quirk loose or my building success has proven a mighty cure for what psychologically ails me...I take it as good news.

I ready my phone for promo and set it on the table before me.

……………………………………………………….

“Back where my XWF career began, The Big Apple. From debut Xtreme Rules bout versus then no-show and now MIA Benito Angelo of PATROL in Times Square to the New York, New York venue wherein I've never before had the pleasure and opportunity to compete...many would say the greatest professional wrestling stage of them all...Madison Square Garden. The setting for my 8th XWF Television Title defense and from the looks of my competition in comparison to my last match in the N-Y...I stand about as much chance walking out in failure as I did then, even IF the contest is what it is.

‘Retrieve the dangling belt’ Triple Threat. Fuck is that supposed to mean? We can't just label this a Ladder Match? By definition the Television strap will be hung from a clasp above the ring, through logic that hanging strap will be high enough to prevent snatching from simple mat level...so reason would dictate the use of an aid as the only option to purloin the prize. Or, perhaps, I'm facing something similar to TNA’s Ultimate X scenario. Whatever the case may be, this is my third triple threat in as many months and the second time in context with my TV Title that neither pinfall or submission shall decide the victor. It's gonna take the same strategy here that led me to my capturing of the 24/7 Briefcase. Luckily for me, it ain't Dolly and Trax I'll have to beat off with my boner it's returning XWF star nobody Roman Wulfrun and the righteously Random.

Random...I've been waiting a long time to get my hands on you. You came in quietly with Cadryn for his unnoticed and unimportant return back in January and you did so mocking me with that clear-as-day spoofing of my ‘waking up in random places unaware of how you got there’ horseshit. I said as much to your queer cowboy compatriot during the finals of Lethal Lottery but it bears repeatin’ to your inexplicably illusory Rorschach-esque visage; ain’t no tellin’ if you got the memo what with your absence from the XWF airwaves since March.

That's hilarious by the way; you spend two months gettin’ your ass handed to you left and right, you finally win one worth something, ‘earning' your way into this title shot via that apparent quitter Bobby Blackcoat and who I'm assuming to be, through your insulting him as ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’, massive jiggaboo joke in John Black Blaq...then you stop trying. You miss card after card. You snailtrail your snotty snatch into the shadows. It makes little sense to me seeing as you were so fulla confidence leading into that Triple Threat, correctly predicting that you would triumph and face me, ‘Jimmy Dean the Lumberjack Machine’ for the title. I guess once you found your arm being raised it started sinkin’ in that your next stop would be your last stop. You had the apt epiphany you’d be entering into execution with the same man who thrice owned the very fairy who owned you at Anarchy: your closet cumguzzlin’ cowpoke compadre Cadryn. It hit you...the fun and fuckin’ games are over...and Jim knows I was tryin’ to fuck with his head from day one...he'll be lookin’ to lambaste my ass and assassinate my numbnuts in the ring. Now you're playing the part o’ pussy ain’tcha? Punk motherfucker.

No dumbass wildly irrelevant and ill thought out abortions you call promos to push out now? I was so lookin’ forward to findin’ out what happened to pisspants and Gary Busey, Random, are you gonna rob me of your brand of mindlessly futile entertainment before I have to sully my hands on a curtainjerkin' jag-off like you Monday night? Spineless, selfish sack o’ shit. You got no balls, bitch, and should you happen to present any before Nipsey bangs the bell, better believe I'll be bustin’ an’ bladin’ your boysenberry sac back to eunuch status.

Roman Wulfrun...who the fuck are you? According to your own snippet vignette that preceded your victory, like Random, over two impossibly-less-than-you no-show shitheads, you claim to be ‘back' in the XWF...and yet, no one gave a shit. There weren't even any crickets to accompany your ‘triumphant return’ speech and if I wasn't such a studious and determined defending champion I never would've noticed myself. And again, like Random, you were so willing at the time to drop my name only to fall silent once it became fact you’d be sparring with the sultan of strap sluts, Jim Caedus. Unlike Random however, whom I'll assume may very well join in after this hits, it would seem you're fond of playing the deadline game and nothing else. You should've consulted with the likes of my Celtic cuz McBride or that fine-ass Izzy Ravenwolf in context...that kinda shit don't work on me, moron.

You think I've held this TV Title for too long do you? Go fuck yourself you kraut cocksucker, I don't give a shit what you think. When I see my perfect opportunity to cash in and capture the Universal Championship then I'll be finished with this belt and not before. Then the losers like you, Random, John Blaq and who the fuck EVER can fight over my leftovers like the rats you are in my wake. You honestly think you can topple me with the weak showing you've already ‘unleashed'? Don't you worry about Shade; as you may have noticed, he didn't even have the nerve to turn the fuckin’ camera on in defiance of my reign. You need to worry about yourself dickhead. You need to stress over whether or not you no-show and get your ass obliterated or pitifully and pathetically promo and get your ass obliterated. Either way I'll be polin’ that hole like a stick puppet and poppin’ one off before I wreck you and Random to the point I can safely regain my championship from it’s spot in the sky. You just don't seem to have the determination and drive, let alone the ENERGY to compete on my level, limpdick...and I’M the one who’s been non-stop on every card for consecutive months.

It's inevitable. Two men who can't cut it have bitten off more than they can chew. Fuck a mouthful. I'm Jim Caedus. Mr. 24/7. XWF Television Champion. Back to back to BACK XWF OTM recipient. The proudest man on the roster. The angriest man in the promotion. The worst motherfucker Random and Roman could ever contend with. Boys...you're fucked.”
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX