Mascara Contra Mascara: A Tale of Two Masks

By James Swift

As a teenager, D.J. dreamed of one day becoming a professional wrestler and following in the footsteps of his masked childhood hero. After experiencing the bittersweet realities of growing up, however, he finds himself living a very different life as a thirty-year-old claims adjuster, stuck in a deadening routine.

When he dons an unorthodox wardrobe and begins wearing it everywhere, he becomes an unlikely celebrity and soon finds himself making a difficult decision: will he allow the newfound fame to go to his head, or will he fight to maintain the values he has held dear since days of his youth?

MASCARA CONTRA MASCARA is a raucous, rollicking, social satire, every bit as side-splitting as it is thought-provoking. James Swift s tale of cultural fiction is an offbeat comedy thats sure to tickle the funny bones of the assimilated and the isolated alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450250436

James Swift

James Swift is a writer currently living in the metro Atlanta area. He has won numerous awards from the Georgia College Press Associati on and Southern Regional Press Institute, and has written for several websites. His first book, How I Survived Three Years at a Two-Year Community College, was published in 2009.

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Contents

BOOK I

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

BOOK II

011

012

013

014

015

016

017

018

019

020

…It is quite essential that that liberation should occur and it may be presumed that it has been to some extent achieved by everyone who has reached a normal state. Indeed, the whole progress of society rests upon the opposition between successive generations. On the other hand, there is a class of neurotics whose condition is recognizably determined by their having failed in this task…

- - Sigmund Freud, 1909

From Otto Rank’s The Myth of the Birth of the Hero

"…Dreams, unfulfilled

Graduate unskilled

It beats pickin’ cotton

And waiting to be forgotten…"

- - The Replacements, 1984

Bastards of Young

BOOK I

missing image file

Summerland, in my past…

001

I dab a light splotch of blood from my forehead as Bill runs toward me like a rampaging, beer-bellied rhinoceros. He charges at me in slow-motion, as I view the 200 pound plus fourteen year old through a curtain of crimson-smattered, bleach blonde bangs. My hair waves in side to side movement, like window drapes fluttering in an early summer updraft, as a warm, musky breeze floats across the tool shed. He’s only seconds away from making impact, but I view his movement in microseconds, as if watching a movie frame-by-frame. I run my tongue over my bottom lip, and temporarily gaze at the dirt-coated floorboards to my side. I slowly streak a fingertip over the dust-soaked wooden inlay, and stare at the deep, gray stain it leaves upon my flesh.

It’s amazing, really, just how much you can think about in such a short period of time.

I continue to scan the area to my right; there is a small accumulation of plasma pooled upon the ruffles of a bright, blue rain tarp. Under the black light of the ceiling, my freshly spilled blood radiates a bizarre, eerie purple color; in the periphery of my vision, I spot the silvery gleam of a recently discarded razor blade, its once-shimmering edge dulled by thick, blackened smudges.

I look up at the ceiling once more; I gaze past the dangling light bulbs, and past the rafters, which are cushioned by a number of ropes, extension cords, and old mattresses, and I focus my stare upon the orange and brown balsa wood that serves as the topmost plasterwork of the outbuilding. Through a light tear in the roofing, I see a firefly quickly flash a mustard-hued explosion, before returning to the vacant, deep-blue ocean of the early afternoon sky.

For a brief moment, I note the stirring of crickets in the background, and a quaint sensation of complacency washes over me. As Bill’s kneecap hurdles toward me like a flying dumbbell, my face is frozen in a state of oblivious contentment.

"Gwarghh!"

Bill slams his patella into the metallic siding of an enormous icebox while shouting a downright primitive battle cry. His kneecap barely grazes my right ear, as his leg connects with the mammoth refrigerator, resulting in a loud, reverberating thud.

Owww!, my gargantuan cousin cries as he seeps his fingers into the slits of the icebox’s open grating. With a haphazard swing of his wrist, I hear the sound of my video recorder toppling over, thus instigating an impromptu finale for the day’s filming.

Did it shut off? I shout.

Bill continues to silently inspect the camcorder.

Did it shut off? I state once more, this time in a more astringent tone.

No, I don‘t think he retorts, as he cautiously scratches the side of his head while fiddling with the numerous buttons on my camcorder.

All right, let’s see just how much we managed to record, I state, as I quickly jump up from my seated positioning.

No, it’s cool, man, really. I know how this thing works, I remember all the buttons to press. . . Bill assures me.

"Dude, it’s still my camera, remember?" I assertively remind my younger cousin.

No, really, trust me, I’ve got it! I know how to work this thing, really, now stop messing around with it! he shouts with considerable agitation in his voice.

No, for God’s sake, just let me look at it!

"Dude, I got this thing!"

Our hands initialize a brief, miniature wrestling bout. As he slides his thumb across a number of buttons, I attempt to yank his hand from the camcorder by clasping my hand around his wrist. He ripostes to my fumbling about by locking his freed hand around mine, as we simply tug back and forth on one another until Bill breaks free and picks up the device.

Now look, I told you, I know how this works! See, all I wanted to do was hit this button here and stop the recording. See!

Sure enough, Bill flicks the button, but instead of hitting the bright, red knob that controls the recording functions of the unit, he hits the black switch underneath it.

Oh, you big, dumb shit! I shout. "That wasn’t the stop-record button, that was the erase-all button!"

Bill’s face twists into a perplexed emotion that lie somewhere between befuddlement and guilt. I simply walk towards him and unlatch the camera from his grip, motioning to him as I begin to exit the shed.

Well, what are we going to do? Bill inquires. I mean, we spent all morning working on that, and I finally managed to hit that one move I’ve been working on, and now, all of that planning ends up going nowhere?

I stop at the doorway, and place an open palm upon the grimy woodwork of the outbuilding’s threshold. Cradling my camcorder underneath my armpit like a football helmet, I turn towards my cousin and address his concerns.

"Well, yeah, we put a lot of hard work into this morning, there’s no doubt about that. The thing is, all of this is just practice, and that’s it. We still have a lot of learning to do, and a lot of dues to pay before we make it to the top. We have to do more research, and more training, and work harder."

Uh, D.J., Bill states while staring at me with a confounded glare. You think you might want to do something about that big ass cut on your head before you go back inside?

Momentarily halting, I reach up and massage my hairline, feeling a thick accumulation of dried blood upon my scalp. Rubbing my index finger over the scabbed over wound, I finally press the glowing, crimson knob on the camcorder and reply, "Yeah, remind me to wash that thing before my mom sees it."

I stand in front of the bathroom mirror, flustered as I try my damnedest to mask the enormous, encrusted wound on my forehead. I squeeze out a glob of peach-tinted acne cream and spread it over the bloodied spot; instead of obfuscating the tell-tale bruise, the treatment simply made it more luminous, as what appears to be a sun dried tomato pokes out from the side of my skull.

I take a catty-corner glance at the bathroom sink and spot a container of adhesive. "You know, maybe it’s not that obvious," I mentally assess. While beginning to tighten the loosened cap to the tube of glue, the heavy trampling of Bill’s soles begins to rattle the hinges of the bathroom doorway.

Hey man, old Dell made breakfast for us and. . .Jesus, what did you do to that thing?

Upon seeing my image, Bill almost spills the small mountain of food from his flimsy paper plate. Damn, there ain’t no way you’re going to be able to hide that thing from your mama, he states while jamming a spoonful of heavily salted eggs into his mouth. After a few seconds of chewing, he concludes, " You might want to think about putting on a hat or something until it clears up."

Looking at the tube of adhesive with newly intrigued eyes, I close the door to my bathroom and seat myself next to Bill on my bedding. He scoops up a tennis ball sized biscuit and devours half of the buttered delicacy in one monstrous bite; with his maw a raging mixture of dough and margarine, he begins to speak through loud chomps.

So, do you think you did it wrong? he announces through noisy gnashes.

Continuing to rub my finger over the bumpy, hardened shell of blood on my forehead, I reply "Dude, think about it; I cut myself on purpose with a razor blade. Do you really think there’s a wrong way to do that?"

I don’t know, man, Bill replies. You could always hit a vein, or something like that. Maybe you ought to do some more research on cutting, like find a website on it or something.

As I watch Bill cram a fork smattered with equal parts fried bologna and roasted ham down his throat, I can’t help but scoff at his attempt to dispel advice.

"Bill, think about what you’re saying here; do you really think that someone out there would have taken the time, and the thought, and the effort to make a website solely about the proper way to slice open your forehead for a god damned wrestling match?"

Swallowing a final scoop of gravy, Bill retorts with Well, someone had to teach the professionals how to do it, right?

It was an oddly profound and poetic thing for him to say; very rarely did Bill hit me with statements that were so logistically sound, and his utterance certainly gave me something to ponder. "Well, I guess this means that there is a right way to bleed, I mentally note. Now, hell if I know where to find out how."

I make my way out of my bedroom, and shuffle down the hallway to the den. As I cross over the half-completed wooden paneling of the walkway, a tubby Chihuahua speeds across the living room and slides into my sneakers gut first as it makes a quick, 45 degree pivot into the hall.

Damn it, D.J., you better not have hit that damned dog!, my disembodied mother states as the whimpering canine slowly lifts its podgy stomach from the floor. As it sluggishly begins to scamper out the kitchen door, I gaze at its spotted brown and white coat and note that Pepe somewhat resembles a shrunken cow.

In the living room, Bill is enjoying a second breakfast platter as he takes sips from a neon green bottle of soda in between bites of bacon and sausage.

Rubbing the side of my face, I ask him how he’s able to drink that stuff in tandem with such fatty foods.

Well, how is that you’re able to eat the same stuff that I eat, but you wash it down with that chalky ass coffee?

My mother, perpetually wrapped in old blankets, addresses me from her favorite recliner. Where in the hell did you get that cap, boy?

Oh, this? I sheepishly declare while pointing at the fiery red baseball cap fit snug to my cranium. I bought this thing back in January. This is my hockey team, remember? The finals are coming up, and I have to do my job as a loyal fan and show support for them!

Bill rolls his eyes while patting his engorged belly. Those losers got eliminated from the playoffs two months ago!

He shoots me a smug smirk, as I return a glare at him that non-verbally reads "you son of a bitch…"

You boys like that breakfast I cooked for you? booms a voice from beyond the copper screening of the front doorway.

Hey, lemme get that door for you, Uncle Dell, shouts Bill, as he jogs towards the entranceway of our home. You see, I’m willing to help, unlike that little boy of yours…

Bill looks back at me, with a mischievous grin stretched across his face. I simply look down at the faint blue carpet at my feet, and mutter "He’s only my step-dad," underneath my breath.

So, whatcha’ got in the bucket, Dell? asks Bill.

Well, I went out earlier this morning, while you two faggots were out in the shed, and picked me a whole row of green beans. The six foot tall, almost sixty year old man flips his graying streaks from his eyes and dumps the translucent bucket of string beans onto a bristly rug below. I guess you boys can call me one mean mother-shucker, can’t you?

Bill pushes out a forced chuckle as he sardonically slaps his knees. Yeah, I’d say that’s about right! he mercifully concludes.

Once again pressing barely-audible words from my lips, I state that’s the corniest bullshit I’ve ever heard…

You’re blocking the damned TV! my mother yells. Gently taking a sidestep, I push myself against the wall while she nods her head in approval and lights up another cigarette. I’m guessing that she’s up to three packs a day now.

Bill and Dell continue to shoot the breeze while I try to fade into the drab eggshell hue of the living room wall.

Old Dell, that’s a mighty fine belt buckle you’ve got there. . . Bill announces as he points his finger at the bronzed caricature of a Native American stationed underneath my stepfather’s bellybutton.

Well, I believe I picked this one up at the country fair, back in late ‘eighty-nine, if memory serves correct. Dell scratches the outline of the chieftain with a fat, yellowed thumbnail. "Now just between you and me, I kind of had me some reservations about picking it up. . ."

"Oh, that is the shittiest thing I have ever heard!" I curtly shout towards my stepfather’s vicinity.

Both Bill and Dell squint at me from afar with obvious distaste at my utterance. My cousin eventually bids farewell to my stepfather, as Dell plops himself down on the carpet and begins squeezing and crunching the viridian pods between his thick, calloused knuckles. As Bill and I begin to walk back to my bedroom, my mother makes a quick slicing motion with her hand; after we quickly jog pass the television set, she shines a brief smile before cranking the volume of the device to near earsplitting levels.

Even after closing my bedroom door, the roar of the archaic black and white television program my mother was viewing was deafening. Bill switched on the miniscule television in my room to drown out the drone emanating from the living room, as I dropped to my hands and knees and began scouring underneath my bedding.

After taking a gargantuan swig of citrus soda, Bill slams his soft drink on the headboard of my bed and begins to uncoil the wiring of a video game controller. Whatchu looking for down there? he implores.

I skin my hand as I brush past a cinder block, and I cut my palm on the mangled remnants of an old soda can. Running my fingertips over the mysterious terrain, I attempt to tactilely locate a wire bound notebook.

Ugh, just trying to find a notebook I hid down here…

"What? Is it your spanking-off book?" my cousin tersely deduces.

No, you dipshit, it’s a book I’ve been working on for awhile. I’ve been watching a lot of matches, and I’ve seen a couple of clips online. I think there’s a new style we can try out, something that’s unique, and could get us noticed. . .

Bill takes another monstrous swig of caffeinated sugar-water from his neon green bottle and points a thick, condemning finger at my television screen.

Dude, seriously, I can’t even make out what these things are supposed to be. I mean, really! My new machine is SOO much better than this old piece of shit you got here. Look, they don’t even have a ladder match mode on this thing!

I continue to sweep the area underneath my bed, feeling the acidic burn upon my muscles as I stretch my arm as far into the cavernous abyss as I could muster. With a final push, my fingertips finally graze against the metal coils of the long-sought notebook.

You know, Bill, if you would have gotten your big fat monkey ass up, I could have gotten to the book without having to hyperextend my elbow, I voice as I retrieve the spiral bound from its subterranean holding.

Eh, fuck you, Bill unsympathetically retorts as he uncaps his bottle of emerald-hued cola and squeezes the contents of the plastic container down his throat. Motherfucker! I can’t believe how tough they made this guy in the game! I mean, dude, in real life, he’s just a glorified jobber, and here he is kicking the shit out of me. . .and I’m playing as the god damned WORLD CHAMPION! Man, this game SUCKS!

I continue to comb for the notebook, as a small collection of debris wraps around my wrists like tree roots around the whirring tip of a drill bit.

Bill, if you hate the game so much, why is it that you’ve logged on about twenty hours playing it? I state as the bright blue notebook shines underneath my bedroom light bulb.

I push a number of old candy wrappers and raggedy magazine pages back into the void underneath my box spring, and hold the azure book in front of me. As the yellowed wattage dyes my pad a dark purple, I literally bask in its refractive glory as if a general gazing at the blueprints that would one day allot him and his troops victory.

You see, that’s just bull shit, man! There’s no way a fucking cruiserweight could pick up a dude that size and hit him with a modified Brain Buster off the top rope! Bill loudly exclaims. Feverishly pushing buttons, he shouts a string of curse words as his virtual grappler is bested by one of the shittiest wrestlers in the promotion.

Like that shit would ever happen, you know? A guy that’s never even won the cruiserweight fucking title, beating the mother fucking world champion. That’s just…that’s just…

Bill begins to wrap the cording of the system around the game controller and takes a relatively light sip from his beloved bottle of citrus soda before concluding, …bullshit, man. Just out and out bullshit, man.

While my cousin continues to ramble, I lay the notebook on the ruffled topography of my bulky brown comforter and begin flipping through my notes and observations. I blaze by a smattering of black and blue ink, as I desperately attempt to locate a passage scrawled in a telltale red tint.

All right, Bill, here’s what I’ve been working on for a few weeks. You remember a couple of days ago, when my phone line was tied up for about a day and a half?

Bill shakes his head, his noggin indelibly filled with curiosity as I read from the spiral bound with the exuberance and certitude of an obsessed despot.

"Well, the thing was, I was downloading this one match from Japan. I’ve been hearing a lot about this style from some forums on the ‘net, and dude, this shit right here is going to be what gets us over."

I rise from my kneeling position and quickly dart towards a small bookcase littered with video cassette tapes.

"Ok, so what I did was, I taped the entire match off my computer with my video camera. I mean, it’s kind of hard to see what’s going on, and there’s still a lot of lag, but trust me, this is our fucking future, Bill."

Bill, typically an incredibly animated sort, sat uncharacteristically studious as I wedged the video tape into my VCR. After yanking the controller from the CD tower cattycorner to my movie collection, I plopped myself down beside him, and assured him that this was the virtual paradigm shift of our fledgling careers.

The presentation starts, and Bill immediately leaps forward, almost pressing the tip of his nose against the glowing cathode ray tube. Uh, D.J., I really can’t see shit, he announces as his eyes crisscross while attempting to decipher the jumble upon my TV screen.

OK, I admit, the quality isn’t really the best, but trust me, there’s enough here to get a gist of what I want us to work on, I attempt to assuage him.

The hell, man? I can’t see anything but a bunch of jumbled, choppy squares! What did that announcer guy just say, ‘Mitts and cookies, mitts and saws’ Toe sheik the candelabra’?

I lift myself from my bedding, and jovially slap Bill on the back of his chubby neck. Why do you have to be such a nationalistic prick, huh? Just because it’s not American, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth watching. I mean shit, who do you think makes all of those video games your nerd ass is always playing, huh?

Bill rubs the back of his head, and glares at me with a feigned aggressive stare. You do that again, faggot, and I’ll punch your fucking head off, he threatens. After a nearly minute-long lapse on the video recording, Bill pipes in again. "Dude, I am sorry, but I just can’t watch this. I’m sure it looked awesome in real-life, but this is basically like watching a scrambled pay-for-view movie. I mean, all I’m seeing is digitized rectangles, and all I’m hearing is a bunch of Japanese people screaming. No offense dude, but this is kind of…well, gay."

"Gay?" I initially shout. "Gay? This shit sold out the Tokyo Dome three fucking nights in a row! That’s like 70,000 people lining up to see this shit! You have to think ahead of the curve, Bill, you have to think about the future, and how the business is going to advance! You know how the Japanese are way ahead of us with computers and cars and shit, so it’s only a matter of time until this shit right here takes over America!"

Bill simply rolls his eyes and quickly stretches before plopping himself back down upon my bed. Well, all I know is, in America, we like shit that’s American. Plain and simple, man.

I shut off the VCR, and angrily stuff the rectangular cassette back into its cardboard sleeve. Well, Bill, at least I’m trying something new. I mean, how much longer can the industry keep on doing what it’s been doing? Things have to change, and if you don’t adapt, you freeze out. You know, all of that shit we learned in Physical Science, remember?

Bill wipes cola residue from his mouth using his flabby bicep and replies "Well, no, D.J., you’re in those advance classes, you smart little asshole. I don’t take that class until the eleventh fucking grade."

Well, that doesn’t matter, really. The fact of the matter is, we can’t keep on doing the same-old, same-old. I’m telling you, if we work on this, we’ll be headed to the top in no time. Promise, man. Still the ‘Cousins of Destruction’, you motherfucker?

"Yeah, we’re still the ‘Cousins of Destruction", Bill proclaims, as we delicately bump our knuckles together.

I once again raise from the bedding and begin scouring through a small pile of multi-colored notebooks.

So each of them mean something different? my cousin voices.

Yeah, I reply while feverishly flipping through several flimsy notepads. The blue ones are about wrestling, the red ones are about movies, and the green ones are just my observations about the world. You know, culture and all of that shit.

Bill lumbers towards the bookshelf, and awkwardly comes crashing towards the carpet as he tries to transition from a crouched position to a kneeling one.

You clumsy fuck! I shout as the mammoth teenager almost collapses through the particle-board. After Bill manages to finally correct his posture, he grips a purple tinted notebook with fingers still matted with breakfast grease.

So whatchu got in this one? he inquires.

I quickly yank the notebook from his oily fingers and slam it to the pale blue carpeting. That shit, I state, "is private."

Oh, so that’s the book you spank off to, Bill jokes before slapping me on my shoulder blades. I shine an angry smirk at him, and I continue to scour through spiral bounds.

Ah, this is the one! I vociferously declare upon pinpointing the desired item. "Bill, this is the latest plan I’ve been working on for our careers, I begin. All right, after high school, it’s pretty much obvious that we’ll have to go to a training school. Now, there’s one upstate that’s produced a lot of developmental talents. Hell, a few of them have even gone on to the big time. Now, I figure we can get entry level jobs working for the shipping company, since they’re headquartered there, too. It’s really simple planning, man, we work at night, train during the day, and before you know it, we’ll be fucking main eventers."

Bill bobs his head up and down, although I am certain that he’s only grasping a few of my statements.

So the important thing is, during high school, we get in shape, and we save up some money. It’s probably not a bad idea if we get in league with the school wrestling team, or play football, Anything that’s full contact, you know?

Bill lets out an enormous, condescending chuckle at my utterance. You? Playing football? You weigh about a buck thirty five, soaking wet with bricks in your pockets, man! The only thing you can play in football is the fucking goal post, buddy!

Well, he had me there. At well over 200 pounds, Bill certainly had the frame for a wrestler; erstwhile, my gangly ass was barely big enough to be a referee.

"Yeah, well, the thing is, I plan on putting on some weight. All I got to do is workout, bulk up on chicken and eggs, and I’ll bump up a few weight classes. Besides, I’m supposed to be a cruiserweight, remember? That’s part of the gimmick, you’re the big, bruising power guy and I’m the fast, aerial hardcore guy. It’s all part of the look, man."

What the fuck ever, string bean, Bill callously declares.

I scratch a tuft of hair nestled underneath my baseball cap, and I place the tract back upon the shelving. "It’s all about planning, and making sure we have our ducks in a row, bro. I’ve been studying a lot of martial arts fights, and I think we need to start working in more realistic shit to our arsenal. I mean, fuck it, every backyarder in the country can drop a suplex, but how many of them can make the shit like, realistic, you know?"

The sound of incessant honking suddenly echoes throughout the landscape.

Well, I guess that means my dad is here, Bill lugubriously states. I crane my neck out my window, and sure enough, a big, anachronistic pick up truck is stationed upon the gravel outside my parents’ home.

Bill’s father madly mashes upon the horn of the automobile, and begins shouting. Come on Bill, get your ass in the truck! I got to get over to Clayton’s house before 7 to pick up my, uh, check!

"Yeah, check," I state through a vindictive grin. "Be sure to tell old Dope Smoke Darryl I said ‘hi’."

Fuck you, Bill spits like a cobra. He quickly picks up a black satchel of his belongings and clutches at my doorway threshold, a venomous smile forming across his lips as he affixes a black baseball cap to his skull. Sure, buddy, I’ll tell Randall you said ‘hey’, right after I say goodbye to your drunk-ass alcoholic parents, he announces before quickly spinning on his heels and twisting his way through the kitchen area like a pot-bellied tornado.

I gaze outside the rusted copper screening of my bedroom window, and I watch the white truck, emblazoned with the wording Abierto Construction in peeling, red stenciled lettering, speed away from the rocky driveway. In the distance, I hear a loud increase in the engine’s squealing, and after a few seconds, a thick, fat cloud of gray exhaust filters through the myriad apertures of my window. I let out a light cough, and I elect to close my window glass for the evening.

I stand in solitude for a brief moment. At first, I hear the chirping of crickets, and then, I suddenly intake the deafening boom of the television set stationed in the den of the house. I recall a few weeks earlier, my mother told me to turn down a blaring heavy metal song while I was practicing driving because it was "too distracting". I run my tongue over my upper gums, and I quizzically stare at the flaking ceiling. I ponder, there are very few things in my life that really make that much sense.

The days are getting longer; it really doesn’t get dark now until about 8:30, and it’s hot all night long. Typically, I wait until just before I go to bed to shower. Considering the fact that I wake up covered head to toe in my own sweat now, that really weakens my incentives to bathe.

"There just isn’t that much to do here," I think aloud. I seat myself back down upon my mattress, and I gaze about my bedroom. I take note of my little 12 inch television, and the taupe-hued video apparatuses tied to it. To the side, I count the number of video tapes lined up on the adjacent bookcase. I’m glad to see it still remains at 32. There’s my stereo on the dresser, a hideously painted bright green eyesore decorated by a number of bumper stickers. Next to it is my bright cherry bass guitar, which is plastered with a number of decals I stole from a magazine down at the pharmacy. There’s my CD tower, which is crowned by an alarm clock. Directly underneath it is my bulky, black compact disc player, which sports perpetually busted headphones. And underneath? Only 48 of the greatest British heavy metal albums produced in the 1980s; sure, it’s not exactly the most up-to-date music, but it works just well for me. Huh, maybe it’s all of those old thrash records that results in me going through headphones like a smack junkie goes through needles?

The final piece of furniture is unquestionably the most important in the room; on a quaint little bookcase rests a menagerie of notebooks, the veritable blueprints for what will be my eventual domination of the professional wrestling industry. I’ve thought about it for years, and I’ve thoroughly designed a decades long plan to ensure my destiny. Every little microscopic element of my rise to power has been orchestrated, and plotted, and planned; there is nary a minuscule element that I have yet to address in my schematics. Sometimes, I feel sorry for the people that just view my endless notebook scrawling and scribbling as insignificant, and pass it off as inconsequential introversion. Oh, how wrong I shall prove them. I have more faith in my plan than I do the theory of motherfucking gravity.

Of course, my inevitable greatness still doesn’t offset the boredom of my present. Maybe I can fire up the old video game system, and see if I can come up with some match ideas? Huh. You know, it really wouldn’t hurt to go back and watch some video footage, you know, to pick apart what I need to work on. No, not in the mood. I guess I could break out the skateboard, and try to work on a trick or two before sundown. But I won’t.

Instead, I simply gaze about aimlessly, refusing to interact with my environment. I do this often. In fact, I do it a whole lot more than I feel I should. Hell, I probably spend more time spacing out than I do jacking off. The really troubling thing is that I think I like that first one more than I do the second.

There’s just nothing to do, and there probably never will be. That’s the problem when you have a future as bright as mine; you have to sit through all of that boring-ass present. I suppose all I can do for now is just wait.

And goddamn, do I ever hate it.

I always get suspicious when I can no longer hear the television set in the den. I untwist my tan shoelaces, and march across the wooden planks of the hallway that connects the kitchen to the living room. Through the sheathing of my socks, I scratch my big toenail against the cottony hide of the sickly blue carpeting and scan the area for signs of life. Nobody’s here.

I look at my mother’s recliner, and note that the translucent orange ash tray to her side isn’t smoldering. The remote controller is placed atop the rarely-blackened large-screen projection TV; through the glass of the deck doorway, I view Pepe and his large brown pupils, anxiously desiring to re-enter the abode.

The scraggly rug situated at the feet of my stepfather’s chair is littered with peeled, viridian pods. To the side of his recliner, firmly nestled between his muddy, size 14 tennis shoes, is a big, cobalt pot filled with grey peas. The table between the two chairs is weighted by half empty glass bottles of light beer and crushed 16 ounce cans of the convenience store’s cheapest malt liquor. I stare at the grease-stained duvet draped over the burnt cloth of the den’s couch; after staring at the gargantuan overhead painting of a bear slapping salmon out of a stream for what seems like eons, I focus my eyes towards the white of my socks, and verify the assumption I direly wished to deny: beyond the balsawood doorway to the north of the room, my parents were furiously humping.

Yeah, it isn’t a pleasant thing to think about, but after awhile, you get used to it. As long as you stay far the hell away from the bedroom, you should be in pretty good standing, although puerile curiosity sometimes makes you want to be in earshot to capture some truly disturbing audio. One time, I remember hearing my mom and step dad screwing while "The Wizard of Oz" was playing in the background. After hearing shit like that, I’m certain that no one would be surprised if I went on the fast track to becoming a serial killer.

Shit, I wish we still had the illegal cable hookup that we had up until last summer; ah, all the free pay-for-view wrestling, unedited horror movies and quasi-decent soft core pornography I could ever possibly desire. After wallowing in such a cornucopia of smut, it’s kind of hard to go back to the stray slivers of girlie mags that periodically found their way into my mitts. By now, I’d already burned out on my copy of "Women Who Suck Fat Cock Vol. II", and desperately wished for my parents to pick up a copy of the original, which I can only assume to be a far better offering than its follow-up. After all, sequels are never as good as the originals, even if you’re talking about beating off fodder.

The radio plays some noisy, new wave metal song as I rummage through mounds of old hockey jerseys and holey concert tees in my closet. After fumbling through half a dozen or so plastic coat hangers and soiled bed sheets, I unearth the gunmetal-toned plastic case that houses my precious video recorder. The unit is basically the same size as a suitcase, and has to weigh damn near twenty pounds. I really don’t know why I feel compelled to hide so many of my belongings, but then again, considering the shady folks that populate the area, one can never be too cautious, either.

The VCR is basically my best friend whenever Bill isn’t around. When bored, I will simply film mockumentaries, and in prolonged bouts of ennui, I’ll edit my videos via my VCR. It’s a long, tedious process, but it’s not like I really have anything better to do.

My mom says she bought it from a guy that knows a guy at her job. That means she probably bought it from a fence, and that the Christmas gift that has given me so much joy is more than likely stolen goods. All in all, I could really care less; you know, that shit about ends justifying means and all of that.

There’s a lot of really neat shit you can do with a video camera, a lot of stuff I found out over the years just by tinkering around with it. If you fuck around with the contrast and tint options on the side of the camera, you can create this badass strobe light effect on the tape, and with just the right amount of sliding on the brightness scale, you can film in photonegative. Then, of course, there are all the shortcuts that you can work with the data input; pending you have enough time on your hands, you can spell out fuck in digital caps with everything you shoot.

The most awesome thing I noticed about the camera happened totally by accident. Since the camera feeds off regular-sized cassette tapes, you can wedge any video in the recorder and start filming. One afternoon, me and Bill put a rented movie in it by accident, and much to our surprise, realized that we could insert ourselves into any movie the video store had on the racks. Our first act was inserting one of Bill’s loud ass, womanly screams right before the end credits of "The Exorcist rolled. Later, we rented a copy of Lady and the Tramp" solely for the sake of putting a five minute long pecker shot into the middle of the movie. Of course, anybody that had the wits to follow the paper trail would’ve been able to pin all of the video mischief on us; then again, our hometown isn’t exactly filled with the most intellectual of occupants, a notion that exonerated us fully when wondering of the severity of our tomfoolery.

I thought about screening a copy of Bill and me’s latest non-wrestling production, which was a short film we shot in our grandparents’ driveway. The plot of the mini-movie was that I was a drug informant, and Bill was to execute me, gangland style, for being a stoolie. Looking back on it, it probably wasn’t the sagest idea to make our grandma the cameraperson, especially when Bill quipped the line eat lead, mudda-fucka! and emptied an entire C02 cartridge while squeezing the trigger of an unloaded paintball gun and cackling like a madman. The neighbors, obviously, were always highly suspicious of our outdoor appearances.

But no. Just no.

I can’t explain my lethargy at the moment, but I just don’t feel like it. Of course, I know that things, fundamentally, have some sort of meaning, and that I even value some of those things, but for whatever reason, I’d rather erase myself from existence altogether right now. No, I don’t want to kill myself, but I don’t really want to be aware of what’s going around me, either. You know, if only I had the ability to fall in and out of a comatose state. . .

These are the thoughts that only come to you while you’re taking a shower. You never notice just how grotesque the human body is until your scrubbing each and every nook and cranny of your body with a soapy rag. I look down at my feet, and note the redness of my flesh. Maybe it’s athlete’s foot, or maybe, the fucking acne has spread to my toes. Come to think of it, that big toe is starting to get pretty hairy; next time I decide to shave, it’s probably not a bad idea to take the clippers to the goatee growing on that sonofabitch.

I sniff my pinkie, and wonder why in the hell my bellybutton smells like my asshole. You know, I always thought about asking my health teacher that, but every semester, I’d just puss out.

I squeeze a handful of dandruff shampoo in my open palm, and I focus on a lone cockroach scampering up and down the shower wall. I stare, totally transfixed on the insect, for what may be five, uninterrupted minutes. I swear, there seems to be a golden, humanoid face on its back, a sort of eerie replica of that fucking thing on the Martian landscape. I look down at my hand, and I temporarily gaze into the fluffy mound of white cream and totally forget what in the hell it’s supposed to be. For just a split second, the underside of my brain thought that I was holding a smattering of dessert topping in the bath. Well, that, or a big, fat pile of splooge.

You know, I really don’t like taking showers.

I’ve been having trouble finding sleep for about two years now. In winter, it’s too cold to sleep, and in summer, well, it’s just too damn hot. That being said, it just seems like summertime wasn’t meant for sleeping; each time I lie my head on my pillow, I just feel as if I am slighting the seasonal gods, somehow, like I’m spitting in the face of same grand offering I should be taking part of. It’s a good time to write, but I just sit on the couch and listen to my CD player. Even though I can’t hear the show, and even though I’m not actively watching the god damn thing, I still have to catch all of the late night talk programs. I don’t know, it’s just ritualistic, I suppose. Some people find comfort in the regularity of church, and I find it in early morning infomercials. It’s progression, man, or something like it.

I think too much for my own good. Maybe that’s why I have insomnia; it’s hard to relax when you are in a constant state of thought. While mindlessly gazing at the bedroom ceiling, I wonder; at what point does my chewing gum technically lose its’ flavoring? Fuck, it just goes from sugary to pulpy, and there seems to be no transition whatsoever. You’re just chomping on that bastard, and next thing you know, it’s like sucking on a shredded tennis ball. Of course, I remedied that; every time I chew gum, I make sure I have a glass of soda pop handy, just so I can prolong some semblance of flavor in my chewing. There’s a lot of neat shit you can do with a glass of cola and some bubblegum. I always do this thing where I allow a certain amount of pop to enter the perforation of my gum before I blow a bubble, so in a way, it’s kind of like making a saccharine water balloon with your oral muscles. And then, there’s that thing where you kind of wrap the gum around a shard of ice, and just crunch on it until it becomes harder to masticate than a walnut shell. . .

. . . I close my eyes, to no avail. I roll to my side, and I wonder, in between all of these thoughts, what I’m really thinking about.

I hate this damn comforter. I hate the foamy, egg-carton like thing that my mom insists I place underneath the bedspread. Most of the time, I have to yank the fucking sheets off the bed and throw that piss yellow abomination to the floor before I can even think about nodding off. And then, there’s the problem with the fucking sand in the bed. Don’t ask me how or why, but for some reason, the mattress itself seems to be peppered with granules of sand, or salt, or kitty litter, or something. No matter how many times I brush off the frustrating bastard, it just seems to get worse each and every night. And since it gets hot as a motherfucker, I can’t even think about sleeping with my shirt off; I tried doing that when my back was sunburned, and I might as well have been bathing in fucking battery acid.

Shit, I really need to get a shade for that light bulb. It just hangs there, jutting out of the ceiling like some sort of glimmering tumor. I think the original shade is underneath the bed. . .somewhere. I tried to back body drop Bill on my bed one afternoon, and sure enough, the gargantuan asshole ended up wiping out the thing with his boots. I always hated the light coverings we have here; they look like old, white hubcaps, these nasty ass plastic shades that show off every molecule of dirt and debris they collect. The one in the kitchen is particularly nasty; inside the bowl, there’s a collection of dead roaches, like a cemetery for beetles or something. Every time you flip on the light, only half of the light emanating from the bulb escapes; the rest of the room gets covered in the projected silhouette of a hundred dead bugs.

Well, at least the roach problem is slowly beginning to improve. When I first moved over here, going into the kitchen at night was like that one scene in "Creepshow", as seemingly every insect in the tri-county area had taken residence there. The fuckers had even wormed their way into the refrigerator; I’d pour a bowl of cereal, and I swear to god, it was like emptying an ant farm into my breakfast.

I turn to my other side, and force my eyelids shut once more. Still nothing.

I’m thinking about getting the lava lamp out of my bathroom. It helps me concentrate on things, for some inexplicable reason. Come to think of it, I’m not really sure why I have it in the bathroom. . .or maybe I do, and I’m repressing it’s true meaning. Yeah, I’m not a normal fifteen year old kid.

In fact, I think the bathroom is my favorite room in the house. It’s so cold, and uncomplicated, and it’s function is so refreshingly clear. When you go into the bathroom, you know exactly why you’re there. When I really think about it, that’s the only place in the world I can think of that makes me feel, well, at home. It’s so private, and comforting. I wish they made entire houses out of the same stuff they make bathrooms out of. I truly believe the world would be a better place for it.

I finally latch shut the purple notebook lying atop my headboard, the same purple notebook that I haven’t etched in about two weeks, and flip on my TV. There really isn’t much on television at. . .2:37. . .in the morning, but I think that’s the point. Maybe, the shit on TV will be so boring that I’ll fall into a quick slumber. But if that’s the case, why am I actively trying to find something on television worth watching so that I can do precisely that?

I mean, I could just put the TV on one of those boring ass preaching channels, or one of those local ones that are just scrolling blue screens all day long. But no, I HAVE to find something that is at least somewhat riveting, because. . .you know, I really have no clue.

I flip around channels for awhile, and I land on channel 67, the second to last channel on our cable plan. Much to my surprise, the network is showing an old ass wrestling bout from the late 80s, back when all of the wash-ups that are doing country fairs today still had hair. A lot of times, I’ll catch wrestling on TV when it’s really late at night, at really weird intervals. For example, there’s this one promotion from a county over that has a half-hour show that comes on at four in the morning on channel 9 on Wednesdays. It has to be the shittiest, most amateurish garbage I’ve ever seen.

And I haven’t missed a single episode in about a month.

It’s funny to watch such an anachronistic form of wrestling. It’s just two guys, in their underwear, with goofy haircuts, and everything they do is so weak-looking. There are no inverted swan dives off the top rope, and nobody has gone out into the crowd and bashed the other guy in the nose with a ladder. Yeah, it’s boring as all hell, but at the same time, it gives me a weird sense of reassurance. Maybe the industry will be around forever, evolving into different, more exciting forms until the end of all time. I like the duality in that; that time can continue to move forward, but remain affixed, in some incarnation.

I place my head upon my pillow, and for the first time that evening, I actually feel a light semblance of sleepiness. I yawn, and stretch my legs towards the very edge of my mattress. I lock my hands together, and nestle my fingers underneath my cheekbone. I push my body a centimeter or two upward, using the propulsion of my toes, and I notice a peculiar sensation around my scalp.

Man, I almost fell asleep with my cap on, I state aloud. I unlatch the plastic from the back of my hat, toss it on the carpet and plop the back of my skull upon my lone pillow yet again.

You can fall asleep with your blue jeans on. Hell, you can even fall asleep with your shoes on. But falling asleep with a hat on? That’s just asinine. . .

I look askance at my brown pillow casing, and spot a burgundy stain. I open my pupils wider, and inspect the purple splotch in greater detail.

Is that…blood?

I reach up, and massage my head. I run my fingers over my forehead, and I note a bumpy, encrusted spot on the left side of my skull.

Oh yeah, that thing from earlier in the day.

I rise from my near-slumber, and amble towards my bathroom. I flick on the light switch, and move a tuft of hair from the side of my face so that I may examine my self-inflicted wound from the afternoon.

It looks like a prune, I initially declare. I wonder how in the hell a light scratch ended up in something so massive?

I push my nose against the bathroom mirror, and poke at the violet pouch with two inquisitive fingers. It’s sort of like a grape-hued pimple, a fluid filled bump. . .only it’s a different color.

Shit, Bill is right. I’ve got to do my research next time.

I take my focus off the wound, and just stare at my reflection for awhile. After a minute or two, I get bored of that and decide to stare at the rusted staple that’s jutting out from the faux wooden lining that frames the mirror glass. Shit, that cheap asshole Dell couldn’t even spring the money for real paneling.

On second thought, fuck, is it ever hard to remove sticker residue from a reflective surface. When I first moved over here, the fucking thing was covered in tape and those lame-ass stickers that you used to be able to buy out of vending machines at the grocery store. I spent an entire afternoon trying to scrub off that grimy shit, and nothing seems to work. I doused the crust with every cleaning product I could find, and that only seemed to make the glue stronger.

Why is there so much grime around the drain? I just washed the thing last week, and in seven days, the fucker manages to collect twice as much scum as it was before I washed it! Shit, I once spray painted a fucking championship belt in the sink, and washing out the bowl after that was less frustrating.

There’s this weird paper ring around the faucet knobs. I have no idea what purpose it serves, but it bothers the shit out of me. Every time you turn on the faucet, the paper kind of jumps up, and you have to stuff it back down when you try to turn it off. It’s totally superfluous, and irrelevant, and it makes no sense. . .

…shit, I get distracted way too easily.

I clench the edge of my bathroom counter, and I think about how I am to remedy my current wound. My hand barrels over a number of cardboard toilet paper rolls, and I pick up the tube of extra strength adhesive.

Well, desperate times, desperate measures. . .

I bite my bottom lip, and finally release my death grip from the countertop. I dig my fingernail into the top of the bloodied spot, and try to unlatch the crust from my flesh. I tug on it for quite some time before I realize that I’ll have to use some considerable force to yank it off. I place another fingernail towards the bottom of the wound, and start lifting with both fingers. No matter how much pressure I apply, the son of a bitch just will not budge. Worst of all, every time I jack up my fingers, I feel a pool of liquid swirling underneath the scab, just waiting to explode as soon as I do rip the gory patch from my face.

Shit, this thing is putting up a fight!

Two fingers become three, and three become four. After a minute of feverish tugging, I just grasp the thing with both hands and start pulling on it as if it’s the stopper in a bathtub drain. No matter what I do, I just can’t get the right angle on it.

I remember back when I had a massive pimple on my cheek, one that popped up right before photo day at school. Before class, I squeezed the son of a bitch into oblivion with a set of pliers; yeah, it hurt like several kinds of hell at the time, but at least it got rid of that damn blemish. Of course, when I did have my photo taken, I had a massive black stain on the side of my face, but still, it’s an improvement from a mammoth pink wart.

Now, if only I could cut the little fucker out. . .

I look to my side, and note a pushpin stationed underneath a wad of paper towels. After gazing at the bright green object for a few seconds, my mind begins to spin into gear.

I’ve got it! All I have to do is kind of puncture the wound with the pin, and then I can just scrap off the crust, clean it up with some tissue, and glue the bastard