Memoirs of a melancholy millennial entry 2:



Summer time 2010:

So I sped off literally in my wagon, and figuratively into a new chapter of my life; leaving Vanessa's bonkers ass on the sidewalk of Wilkinson Boulevard, my trunk full of her crappy shit that she kept piled in my bedroom as a constant reminder of how much I despised our relationship. I pulled from out of the shirt pocket of my mechanic's button down, you know, the ones that have a name patch sewn on with the letters of your name stitched with a scripty font, my pack of Camel non-filters. Soft pack. I flipped a cig up from out of the pack and grabbed onto it with my mouth, left hand tightening around the steering wheel as I reached down and held in my car lighter until it got hot enough for me to light up.

I look up at the road, almost intentionally squinting as a way to look hard while pulling up to the stop light and pulling the car lighter up to the cig in my mouth and puffing until it was lit. Not sure why I insisted on smoking non-filters in a soft pack. For some reason I always longed for some bygone era that I never really knew and only saw in movies and read about in books. I always felt like people back in the fifties and sixties had to of been better people than the millennials like myself and those I grew up with. I was always doing everything I could to embody and emulate the characteristics of a generation that I perceived as standing on a morally higher ground.

Sitting there at the light, windows rolled down on this sticky June afternoon I started getting angry, pulling down my rear-view mirror and touching the gashes given to me by Vanessa on my face. As I touched on the cuts, I think about the things I touched on before; about Vanessa and mine's relationship, how it all started.

From what I described earlier, you know, the story of me fucking her only after having just met her an hour prior; a much maturer, more mentally advanced R.L. would have obviously known that hooking up with her would be a mistake- but I was just barely nineteen at the time. Not to mention had been through some prior heartbreak that was all intertwined with the trouble I got into that I was hiding out from at Kenny's. Well, anyway, after that night of fucking her a few times until she went back from whence she came, we started talking regularly on Myspace.

Wow, Myspace... it's hard to even remember a time of that thing existing.

Eventually, after a week or so of hooking up and fucking, Vanessa and I decided to make things official. Which meant moving Vanessa's profile to the number one spot on my buddy list and changing my relationship status to "taken". Now, for whatever reason I'm having a hard time recollecting just how long that brief period of my life was- I was drinking, popping xanaxe and smoking pot a lot during the time, but don't let that misguide you into thinking I was depressed or something, because though I always had an underlying deep depression of sorts, these were some of the better times of my life.

Vanessa and I were staying at Kenny's, and I was even able to convince a couple of my old, less troublesome friends to rent a room out from Kenny's mostly vacant, over-sized house. Matt and Erin, boy friend and girlfriend with whom I used to play video games with and had known throughout most of school. Good people. Well I was still working as a part time janitor at the big state office tower downtown, and though I really liked this life of living as an "outlaw" it was kind of getting exhausting.

I guess somehow through the grapevine, the CTown swine had figured out where I'd been hanging. The police would come knocking on Kenny's door, asking if I was around, wanting to talk to me or figure out my whereabouts. I was feeling bad because I was having that poor man lie his ass off for me- it was only going to be a matter of time before they got a warrant and kicked his door in while I was sleeping. So I remember it being early September 2007. Football season was rearing up and my favorite college team, The Kentucky Wildcats had just knocked off Arkansas and was ranked seventh in nation. I had just crushed my fifth or sixth can of Natural Ice sitting next to Vanessa on Kenny's couch who was passing me a bowl of weed.

"I'm going to turn myself in..."

I told her, I guess half way expecting her to plead for me to rethink my position, maybe even bring up an ideal that I had romanticized before of us being two young lovers hitting the open road and leaving this shit hole state behind, maybe drifting from town to town, finding work for a few months then hitting the next state over. We'd spend our lives living like folks did in the free love era of the sixties. Being totally unbound by the unjust laws of servile men, and instead just living on one another's love and the music in our hearts.

"Okay..."

She said. What? That was it? "OKAY"?

Vanessa was a pretty shallow chick as I had come to learn, but even this struck me as hyper-insensitivity.

"Okay... well, will you wait for me if I do? You know the types of charges I'm facing."

I figured at that point there's no sense in explaining to her why I was feeling morally obligated to turn myself into police custody, she obviously wasn't begging me not to.

"Yeah, duh."

She said with a nervous laugh,

"I'll write you every day."

And so that was that. In the back of my mind I didn't really care anymore. Either Vanessa was going to be true to me, or she wasn't. The next Monday, before leaving out to work, I dialed up the Cincinnati police department. Now I don't know how normal people would have reacted, but hearing the dispatcher scramble around, stammering their words when I told them who I was- it was pretty cool. I felt like some sorta' old school gangster. The police couldn't find me, I had to tell them where I was going to be; I don't care what you say, in this day and age, that's pretty bad ass.

There's a roaring horn behind me as I'm guessing some substantial time had elapsed while I sat at the light pondering the genesis of mine and Vanessa's ending.

"Okay! Okay!"

I say in a tone that the car behind me could never hear while waving my arm out of the window, in some weird way trying to signal that I was sorry. I reach down and turn up the volume knob on my radio, a familiure sounding song started to seep through my Subaru's outdated stock speakers. I didn't know the song specifically, who sang it, the name of the song, nor could I really make out the lyrics too well. But it was that type of angry sounding, edgy rock music that I loved to just blare while driving around. The type of song I thought that if other people heard me listening to they'd think:

"Man that guy is different. He must be a bad ass."

So with the anger of Vanessa's bullshit fresh on my mind I cranked the volume up louder while racing away from the stop light, puffing on my non-filtered cigarette in my buzzing Subaru with the leaky exhaust looking as fucking hard as possible. I wanted to be different from the average fuck sticks of my generation who thought being "hard" was about listening to some shitty gangster rap and holding a gun. And furthermore I wanted everyone to know it too... so I set my course for 4th and Murray Street, the blackest part of the ghetto I knew.

-to be continued-

Promo:

"Hey Mezian, nice shot...

I don't recall really saying anything too sideways about you, yet you want to threaten to break my arm? Listen, I may be a rookie, but I think I made it perfectly clear not to underestimate me brother. Just because I've never "wrestled" per say, you think that means I've never fought? If you're really that naive then you probably don't have any business being in a wrestling ring to begin with.

So listen up you skunk pellet for a wig wearing pseudo scary man poser, you very well may break my arm, but you better believe if that's your intention, I'll be doing my damnedest to break your face in the process. You're little petty tactics of trying to intimidate people with your done to death dark gimmick doesn't frighten me in the slightest.

This is the XWF, and I've been watching long enough to know that on any given night, ANYONE in his business can pull off an upset, and that's exactly what I plan to do tomorrow night. People like Scully and Peter Gilmour rose up from being laughing stocks and proved everyone wrong by being added to the very short, very prestigious list of Universal Champions. That's where I see myself being, how bout you? Do you really think you have what it takes to bust your butt night in and night out? Because I know I do, and if that means busting your ugly head wide open in the process then so be it.

This match, with you and Bearded War Pig... oh and that other guy who is somehow more irrelevant than I am, this is only the beginning of my climb. War Pig comes back after an obscure hiatus to his "TRUE CALLING" and is awarded a Universal Title shot, see, so like I said, ANYONE can get so lucky here.

I don't have any true calling other than the call to be something great for once in my life, and this, the XWF, this is where I plan to get it done. Maybe there's something in me that I can't really see, maybe it's something natural in my bones pulling me here to pull up my pants and literally fight for everything important in my life- because why else would a former Universal Champion like Steve Davids take one look at my out of shape ass and think that I just might have what it takes to join forces with him?

Maybe there's more to R.L. Edgar than meets the eye compadre. Maybe I'm going to surprise myself and the entire world once that bell rings and we start getting to the real nitty-gritty. I don't fear you, Mezian, I don't fear Bearded War Pig either. Last time I saw him he got flattened by Peter Gilmour within like seconds of the Elimination Chamber match- yeah, I have the XWF Network. Loogy? I damn sure don't fear him, there was a tweet from him on the front page crying about something or another. I don't like cry babies.

All in all, I like my chances tomorrow. I'm going to fight my ass off, and win lose or draw, you better believe you're going to have give it all you've got to put me out, because R.L. Edgar wont be backing down. Mezian, I'm interested to see if you can back your threats up in the ring, I've seen you wrestle, and you're pretty good... but it's not like you're GREAT or anything. But I guess tomorrow we're going to find out first hand just how I measure up here in the XWF. Let's hope for your sake that I still need a little work, huh?"