Tuesday - Los Angeles

Having caught the red eye flight from Seattle to L.A., “Loverboy” Vinnie Lane and his newly discovered son, Bobby, managed to run the rat maze of LAX, rent a car, and get onto the daunting 405 expressway with little to no issue.

Not one to work well within the confines of a budget, especially if there is anyone nearby worth impressing, Loverboy opted to rent the drop top Corvette listed in the catalog – hot pink, of course.

Unfortunately for the pair of blonds, they run into the inevitable Los Angeles traffic jam while trying to weave north through Inglewood.

Before them, as the engine purrs like a satisfied cat, a sea of glimmering cars, motionless, susurrates in the early morning glare of the California sun.

Just another day in L.A.

“Well, THIS is bullshit.”

“Watch your mouth, kid. This is just life over here. Driving in Los Angeles is like trying to be a red blood cell navigating through the artherosclerotic aorta of Barney Green after a week-long Cheesecake Factory binge.”

“Whoa, you know Barney Green?”

“What? Yeah, of course, everyone in the XWF knows Barney. That dude’s fuckin’ weird. I thought you didn’t watch wrestling?”

“Well… mom doesn’t and she doesn’t want me to either. But she doesn’t pay a lot of attention. I love Warfare.”

“You shouldn’t be watching that show, kid. One time Peter Gilmour literally died from being force fed a table load of shit.”

“Yeah! That was awesome! Guppy Parsh is so cool!”

“Guppy is pretty cool. I fought him once, you know.”

Loverboy smirks and looks into the rearview mirror, adjusting his pink bandanna. There is a ripple in the seemingly endless horizon of vehicles ahead of them, and so Loverboy eases on the brake pedal long enough to drift the Corvette forward two or three feet.

“Yeah, he kicked your ass.”

“Language.”

“What? He did! I saw it myself. I was rooting hard for him.”

“Oh gee, thanks kid. Not like I’m sitting right here and being a human being with feelings or anything.”

“Not like I knew who you were before. I mean, don’t worry, I like you too. I thought it was really cool when you beat Griffin MacAlister. That cage match was sweet!”

“It was pretty sweet, wasn’t it? See, just stick to watching Madness! I do a lot of cool things there!”

“And when you beat Gilmour and Morbid Angel at the same time! That was awesome! If I didn’t watch Warfare I wouldn’t have gotten to see that!”

“I guess that’s true. But you probably see all sorts of stuff a kid shouldn’t see. Like the aforementioned shit buffet, or Morbid Angel’s “evil as fuck” matches, or Frodo.”

“Frodo is my favorite wrestler!”

“Jesus…”

If there were any momentum to Loverboy’s vehicle, he would have certainly inadvertently braked and screeched the tires against the hot blacktop. Instead, he simply pulled his incredulous gaze from the sand dune-speed traffic and stared at the nine year old sitting next to him.

“Why in the name of Eddie Van Halen would Frodo be your favorite wrestler? Seriously. Why?”

“He’s so cool! All of his jokes are so funny! It’s like they were specifically targeting my age demographic, you know?”

“Actually, I agree with that.”

“And he’s always slapping people with his dick. That’s hilarious!”

“He does do that a lot. So you mean to tell me, this past few weeks, when I beat Frodo twice, you were…”

“Rooting against you? Totally.”

“And you were hoping for me to get Frodo’s dick on my face?”

“Yeah, definitely. I was pissed when you won!”

“Yeah, so was he.”

“Don’t worry… dad… I’m rooting for you at Turning Point. I would have anyway in this match lineup, but now that you’re my dad I definitely am. I mean, my dad could be the XWF Champion!”

“WILL be the XWF Universal Champion, kiddo. Trust me. Turning Point is definitely the right name for this show when it comes to me and my career. This is going to be the moment that the XWF and the world have to stand up and take notice, because “Loverboy” Vinnie Lane is about to permanently step into the Universal Title picture.”

“Who do you think is going to win the main event though?”

“The main event is going to be my match for the contendership, dude, trust me. No one puts on a better show than the Loverboy, you can take that to the bank. Besides, it doesn’t matter if the champion is Steve Davids, who only has the belt because of a cheap cash in anyway, or John Samuels, who’s been ducking me for months. Neither one of them will be able to take me down.”

“Yeah, well, I hope you do win. It’d be super cool to have a new dad who’s a champ. The other kids at school will flip.”

“I WILL win, dude.”

Loverboy reaches into the back seat of the car and retrieves a bottle of sunscreen from his bag. Popping open the flip cap, he squirts a dollop of the cream into his palm and starts rubbing it into the flesh of his exposed shoulders and making them shimmer like the hoods of the endless cars before them.

“Who is going to stop me from coming out victorious at Turning Point? Who has done more to earn that number one contendership spot? Nobody. It’s me, the main event, the megastar, versus three other who shouldn’t even be there. They got lucky, or they think they did, but their luck is going to run out at Turning Point.”

“I dunno, man, you should worry a little bit, don’t you think? A couple of those guys have gotten the drop on you before. Justin Sane, Iris Oppenheimer. They aren’t exactly wimps.”

“Wimps? No. They wouldn’t be at this level if they were wimps. But what they aren’t is main event caliber, top tier megastars like yours truly. Did Iris pin me at the Christmas gauntlet? Yeah, sure. But I got hit in the head with a fuckin’ manhole cover first, and I had already had a full match with Frodo right before it and pinned like three others in the gauntlet too. Hell, I just got done carrying Ghost Tank’s big ass over to those thumbtacks, you know? I was done. You could have beaten me at that point.”

“She’s so nice though! Nobody ever trashes her, she’s just some sweet, pretty girl!”

“What, you got a crush on her? Son, let me tell you the most valuable thing you will ever learn about pussy. It ain’t worth it. You see when she was talking to herself, all possessed or whatever? That’s, like, 90% of women. They’re nuts. Yeah, she’s pretty. She’s got that quirky, manic pixie dream girl thing going for her that’s all the rage these days, you know? Like a blond Zooey Deschanel. She’s probably got a lot of vinyl records and she probably eats, I dunno, sprouts and shit.

She’s all polite and demure, right? Like a good little 19 year old should be. But she’s deluded. Not just by the demon she thinks is inhabiting her head like that cool Denzel Washington movie from the 90s,”

“Fallen.”

“Right, Fallen. Not just like that, dude, but she just seems to act like she thinks the XWF or pro wrestling in general is like a game of Mortal Kombat but with only Friendships at the end. Like she can win a match and then hand me a present or some shit, you know? Trust me, dude, it isn’t like that. I’ve been champion with four different partners in the last six months or so since joining the big leagues – and I tried to be friends with all of them. You wanna know how that turned out?”

“Well, Morbid Angel didn’t seem too friendly, neither did Gilmour. I don’t know much about Lucena and Ryback, though.”

“They left. They just, like, hauled ass right after we won the titles. I mean, Lucena stuck around long enough to give Pest his first win here, in a match I REALLY hope you didn’t watch.”

“The Sasha Grey fistfuck!”

“Don’t say things like that, Bobby. But yeah, the fistfuck match. He took off pretty soon after that though, never did a damn thing to help me defend the Trios. See, Iris thinks just because there’s a tag or trios division that it means people get along. Sure, the Kings are buddies, but were Jack and Pest? Even Kendall Sawyer and Meta, or Azrael? Were any of them really friends? No, dude, not really. LH Harrison is a friend, at least I thought so, but did that stop him from trying to kick my ass last Monday? No. Wrestling has no room for friendship, man. It’s all win or go home.”

“You’re just pissed because of the Christmas match.”

“Of course I’m pissed about the Christmas match! She hit my head against a car!”

“Yeah, that probably hurt.”

“It did. She wouldn’t have stood a chance against me if I was 100% though, and I will be at Turning Point. I don’t know if Iris has ever been abused by three dudes at the same time before, but that’s what’s going to happen. She might be into it, honestly, a lot of times those sweet, quiet chicks are the ones that end up begging for you to put it in their assholes. Never underestimate the freakiness of a bitch in a sundress, kid.”

“Uh… okay? I’m like nine?”

“Oh, right. Shit. Well anyway, Iris isn’t a threat to me. She’s going down easy, and not like… ah…”

Loverboy looks at Bobby again, who is sitting with his arms folded across his chest and grimacing. Loverboy stutters for a moment and then tosses the sunscreen to Bobby.

“Here, put this on. You’ll burn to a crisp in the California sun, man. I know you think you’re used to it, being from Florida, but I thought that too, dude. Florida’s humid, you can tell when it’s too hot. Cali it always feels fine. My first day here I walked up and down Venice Beach taking pics with local girls, and then I had to wear long sleeves and a hat for a week because I lobstered up my skin! It sucked!”

Bobby takes the sunscreen and starts putting on his exposed skin, rubbing it into his face and forearms as the traffic eases slightly and Loverboy rolls the car slowly forward.

“You could just put the top up on this Barbie car, you know.”

“Be quiet, kid. Life is all about being noticed, making an impact. What, you think a huge international celebrity like me should drive a Prius? No way, dude. I’m a rock god, and a wrestling megastar. Sports cars, limos, private jets, yachts… every opportunity to be seen on something like that, I take it. It’s about image, man.”

“Sounds fake.”

“It’s not fake! It’s who I am on the inside! I’m flamboyant because my personality is electric, dude!”

“Also sounds like you won’t be having any trouble making those child support payments.”

“Uh… well, yeah, I guess. Especially after I become the champ. That’s the sweet life.”

“Well what about Justin Sane, though?”

“What about him?”

“He beat you before. He could beat you again. Or beat Iris.”

“Oh, he can definitely beat Iris. But me? Bobby, look, you’re young and pretty much ignorant, so I don’t expect you to understand all of this, but the only thing Justin Sane is beating next week is himself, after he gets home and starts spanking it to his signed “Loverboy” poster.”

“Ew.”

“Yeah. Sane’s a wannabe, and he’s a nevergonnabe.”

“But he did beat you!”

“No. He won against me, sure, I admit he won the match we had a few weeks back. But he didn’t beat me, dude. He just took advantage of a situation. Kudos to him for that, you know? But he couldn’t do it twice in a row if his life depended on it. Plus, he doesn’t have the hunger and the passion for this that I do. He’s too busy hanging out with Gator and the new guy, the dude that looks like he listens to the Cure 24/7.”

“CorVus. That guy is SO COOL.”

“He is? I have no idea. I’ve never heard him say a word. Not like his partners. Sane talks a lot. I mean a LOT. Sometimes watching one of his promos makes me feel like I’m watching a 17 part documentary on douchebags in the wild. Bobby, at school, do you play your guitar?”

“Yeah, all the time. There’s a girl named Suzy who really likes it.”

“Well, there’s gonna be a lot of Suzys, man, trust me. A guitar is like a key that unlocks treasure chests full of pussy. But do you ever get picked on or pushed around by other kids who trade baseball cards and cheat at dodge ball, but who can’t count to twenty without taking their shoes off?”

“Oh yeah, all the time. Nick.”

“Well Nick is a jock, man. And he’s basically a Justin Sane seedling. Eventually, he’ll grow into a full-fledged fucktard but he’ll get ahead because he spends 15 hours a day lifting weights and watching his balls shrink in the mirror.”

Loverboy picks up speed in the ‘Vette, cruising up through Culver City and heading towards Santa Monica. He arrives at the 10 and manages to merge on with little effort as the traffic parts like the Red Sea.

“Thank the Hollywood stars, kid, looks like we’ll get to Malibu before sundown after all. A little trip on the PCH and we’re in good shape, man.”

“Cool! Is Roxy there?”

“Yeah dude, Roxy’s there. You’re kind of a surprise, though, man. I kept you on the down low. It’ll be cool, though.”

“If you say so. She’s hot!”

“Damn right she’s hot!”

Loverboy raises his right hand from the steering wheel and holds it out for Bobby to slap with a crisp high five. They both laugh.

“She’s the best, dude. Someday, I hope you meet a girl just like her and she takes care of you the way Roxy takes care of me. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah… you mean sex!”

“Well, I meant love, man. Sex too, but mainly love. That shit’s important dude! You’ll fall in love eventually, trust me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah man.”

The pair fall silent then, riding west on I-10 through the late morning air and smelling the salt of the Pacific. Bobby plays around with his iphone for a while, plugging in his earbuds and turning up some old school Appetite for Destruction. Hearing the music spilling from the kid’s phone, Loverboy motions for him to plug it into the car’s stereo, which he does. Axl Rose screams about coming to California as father and son sing along.

“Dad?”

Bobby asks loudly, over the guitar solo.

“Yeah dude, what’s up?”

Loverboy replies in kind.

“Do you think Iris Oppenheimer would go out with me?”

Loverboy smiles and takes the exchange onto the Pacific Coast Highway, carving an arc between the mountains and the ocean as he welcomes his son to California.