Post by Regan Voorhees on Mar 13, 2022 13:38:04 GMT -5
After one’s partner achieves a major victory, potentially their majorest victory, professional and personal decorum dictates some sort of celebratory gesture on the part of their closest companion. In the case of Jill Park, that burden fell to me following her defeat of Carter Shaw. It was one of those historic, career-defining victories that could propel someone onward to ever-higher states of greatness, their first footfall at the very top of Mount Olympus, where they now stand ready to do battle with the gods. I, of course, achieved that months ago and multiple times over the Turmoil Tournament, with impressive defeats over Lissie Hope, Corey Black and Teo Blaze – before finally meeting metaphorical and literal Downfall(Ha ha, his name is the thing, how humorous).
With the conquering of a hated rival, Jill Park officially became the dominant half of Affluenza. As a competitive person, that perturbed me. Not in any sort of bitter or petulant way, of course. Shared success was the goal, but one of us winning big is almost as good as both of winning big. And so, as a celebration of OUR achievement, I provided a sumptuous vegan charcuterie board, prepped for a post-victory celebration in our dressing room of the Smoothie King Center(imagine trying to do anything with dignity in a building called the Smoothie King Center). Action staff was tragically unhelpful regarding a decent wine selection, so I settled for bottled water. Jill would probably want to rehydrate anyway.
I met Jill’s arrival with a golf-clap, but accentuated the gesture with kind words. “Bravo, Jill. Top-notch work. The Frankle Lock continues its reign of terror and you… Just beat Carter Shaw. I’d be wiping away tears right now if I were capable of crying.”
Jill seemed less receptive to my praise than I would’ve liked, but then again she was a battered, bloody mess who just spent the better part of the evening trapped in a cage and tasked with nearly beating someone she hated to death until she would be allowed back out. And people wonder why I chose this career path.
The doorframe seemed to be the only thing keeping Jill vertical, as she leaned on it for support. Given the amount of blood(enough to tint her hair from blond to pink yet still keep trickling), I realized that when one finds oneself bleeding profusely, priorities shift and not-dying takes precedent over snacks. Like a good partner, I handed her a solution. “Towel?”
Jill took it, a satisfied smile playing on her lips, and wiped the blood from her face. She pulled her hair aside to show a set of fresh staples over her previously gushing head wound, and so I could take solace in the fact that she wasn’t going to bleed out in front of me. Having a corpse to dispose of can put quite the damper on one’s charcuterie.
But there was something in that smile of hers. A challenge, an accusation. Rival vanquished, Regan. Clearly, I’m the Afflu and you’re the Enza, Regan. What are you gonna do, Regan? Your turn, Regan.
Perhaps I read a bit too much into it. Interpersonal skills, being a team player - these are not my greatest strengths. Maybe it was nothing. A simple smile, pride over her accomplishment. Who could blame her? Perfectly understandable. Not the sort of thing that should bother me.
And yet.
Having never slept on a couch, I attempted to crowbar my way into the mind of my opponent by indulging in a midafternoon siesta on a mahogany and circa velvet fainting couch I called dibs on within minutes of my great-aunt Tabitha’s fatal heart attack. It was uncomfortable enough for sitting - though stylistically viable enough to keep a place in my sitting room - but reaching an actual state of unconscious slumber seemed beyond my capabilities. At best, I dozed. My research attempt thoroughly failed, I updated my notes.
“That’s bothersome,” I said to myself, taking a greedy gulp of the socialist daiquiri one of my faceless assistants left. Tempting as it was look at Johnny Bacchus as my twisted reflection, the heads to my (curly)tails on the ever-flipping coin of existence, to do so would be reductive. Wrestling’s one-percent was the working class, a Bizarro World economy. Ten seconds on Twitter proved that most wrestlers are the product of non-wrestling money, and they floated somewhere between millionaires and billionaires, with money to burn and no actual reason to participate in such a dangerous business full of monsters, murderers and madmen. Difficult to understand, when the world was full of less deadly, more lucrative options. Really, it became little more than rich people punching each other. That made my side of the coin so much more crowded.
A corrupt, unjust system benefitted me extensively. But I tried my darnedest not to rub anyone’s nose in the advantages I was born into and had no control over. I found it much more satisfying to rub their noses in my actual accomplishments, however many asterisks might sit beside them in the record books. “Who deserves what” was a neverending, unproductive conversation I never cared to participate in. Did I deserve success because I trained hard, even if I paid for said training with inherited wealth? Did Johnny Bacchus deserve it because he was naturally gifted, even if he stumbled ass-backward into a career?
Who cared? It was never about deserving, about earning your spot or paying your dues. The carnies just clung to that horseshit because they got butthurt after their secret handshake stopped being a secret. It was about winning. It was always about winning, even when the winner was a coach-surfing, unemployable twit who failed at everything that wasn’t wrestling. People couldn’t help but resent success under the best of circumstances. Especially the muscleheads with glass egos who had very specific ideas about what a wrestler should and should not be. Johnny and I, for all our dissimilarities, still didn’t belong in their clubhouse. That was one, perhaps the only thing, the two of us had in common.
Well, that and either of us would explode when exposed to direct sunlight. There was a simple way to sum up our differences, of that I was sure. Something relatable, time-tested, archetypical. Yet I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Instead, my fingers found the television remote on the table in front of me and stumbled for the power button. A movie was left playing, presumably by a soon-to-be-fired assistant. It wasn’t an especially good film, with Alan Rickman battling beyond the grave against Kevin Costner to elevate the adaptation of a centuries old tale beyond a cinematic snoozefest. But it did make my relationship to Johnny Bacchus all the more obvious. And left me with the distinct desire to cut his heart out with a spoon.
Finding a complete set of pink camo and an officer’s jacket to wear over it, all for the sake of a single promo, was more difficult than I expected. Still, my medals clanged across my chest like a Newton’s cradle of undeserved gold, with a pink beret as my crowning glory. A map of the Tacoma Dome was taped to the wall behind me, my route from entrance to backstage to the ring mapped out like a military operation. To denote the expectation of conflict, a tasteful explosion icon was stapled to the ring.
“Imagine beheading all the bourgeoise, realloacting power to better represent and serve the marginalized, creating a new and better system that’s impossible for the capitalist pigs to abuse. As a capitalist pig myself, my reaction to that is a big ol’ pbbbt.”
I blew a raspberry, adding a thumbs down for emphasis. Capitalism, for its many imperfections, has done quite a bit to benefit me, so yahoo for capitalism.
“I would love to accuse you of slacktivism, Johnny. Of playing the reluctant, but uncouth Deadpoolian hero, though with decidedly lower levels of so-rando, laughing-my-ass-off chimichanga humor. To call you out for insincere appeals to the fans, who I could even call sheep, but then you’re allowed to shear sheep. Shear a wrestling fan and suddenly the authorities are knocking on your door. How I loathe a double standard. Look at that, Bocky Biscuits. I’m also playing the nickname game. God, I wish I could hear the sound you make as I hacksaw through your esophagus.”
I grabbed a hacksaw from the stable, again for emphasis and wishful thinking, before throwing it off-camera to a stock crash sound effect.
“Much as I’d love to be dismissive, you put together your own Rebel Alliance and toppled the evil Empire of Philidor without so much as losing a hand. Action fans cheered, all the while trying to figure out if you were a communist or a socialist. How are the two philosophies similar? How are they different? Have a ten-thousand word essay on my desk by Monday, and don’t even think about using a chocolate-in-my-peanut butter, peanut butter-in-my-chocolate metaphor.”
Prior to recording, I jabbed some Pocky chocolate first into a jar of peanut butter. Seizing the non-chocolate end, I unsheathed the snack like Excalibur and took a bite.
“Swear I don’t mean to sound derisive, Johnny. True conviction is a rare thing, to be admired. I have it, but as I am every bit the corrupt spawn of the machine you spent your life raging against, it’s so rare that I get any respect for it. Of course, on a good day I come across less like a thinking and feeling person and more like an alien’s best impression of a human being. But still I am, despite my best efforts, only human. A person as worthy of praise and admiration as anyone else who has managed to find success in an arena where they don’t belong. We all have our methods. You win friends and influence people. I hit Addy with a car. Chocolate and peanut butter.”
“But where do we go from here? Admittedly, 2022 seems to have my number thus far. Affluenza has done wonders for my interpersonal skills, as you can so obviously tell, but following Jill’s stellar victory over Carter Shaw this past week, she has cemented herself as our team’s better half. I have no interest in being second fiddle. Jill, unknowingly or not, has thrown down a gauntlet. My only choice is to answer back with your fucking head. But don’t mistake me, Bocky. This is as much pleasure as business.”
My lips twisted into a grin, but my teeth remained unbeared. Not my favorite expression, but one must get their point across. Mother always said my eyes never smile.
“Not that I’m so naive as to plan on shutting you up. The tragedy of Twitter is that no one will shut up, ever again, until we’re all smartphone clutching skeletons. Cut out your tongue, lop off your fingers and still you would taint my timeline with nose-typed tweets. And despite all my Regan-literally-butchers-Johnny talk, my vision board goal of mounting at least one human head on my wall, I hope you know that I’m looking forward to this. Even the great Regan Voorhees is beholden to basic-ass white girl cliche. I’m currently on the path to finding myself, or rather, finding the Regan that went through Lissie Hope, Corey Black and Teo Blaze. Wrestler of the Year Regan. I always liked her, but I do worry that Turmoil was my peak. A hot streak I will fail to replicate. The best Regan Voorhees ever was, before her potential was swallowed by the great, gaping maw of mediocrity. The fear makes me nauseous, but there’s a great bit of joy in me too, Johnny. You might see it in my eyes post-Abattoir, provided you’re lucid. Look at me, being a person.”
“But it’s so much easier for you to deny my humanity, reduce me to the cartoonishly sadistic villain of all your plucky heroic fantasies. Vanquish me then remind the kiddos to tune in next week and drink their almond milk. Use me to build steam heading into Havoc, so you can win the rumble, earn the title shot, secure your ticket to the Evolution main event. I’ll be keeping my steam, Johnny, but while we’re both in Tacoma I might as well help myself to yours. Perhaps crack your skull open and make creme brulee from your mushroom-addled brain. While I’m basic-bitching it, I might as well take a vision quest that finds me standing victorious at Havoc, your body at the bottom of the pile, crushed beneath the weight of an entire company that I’ve destroyed. Perhaps all along I’ve been the heroine whom Action Wrestling deserves. You were just their dork knight.”
A titter escaped my throat, hand flying to my mouth to block any further outbursts. My teeth slid into my bottom lip to lock up any further laughter at my own horrendous attempts at humor.
“I am the revolution, or Reegolution for the sake of branding. I am the true voice of the voiceless, the karmic cataclysm that you all have coming. Losses and setbacks have happened, the sort that might tragically derail the career of a lesser competitor. Yet still, I press on, my conviction intact. I am the slow, undeniable encroach of progress. A Darwinian nightmare in pastels, here to educate you on true evolution and drag you kicking and screaming toward a future that is Regan. You aren't going to enjoy this, but really, I think you'll come out of our match a better person. That is, of course, assuming you come out of it.”
My hands extended to my sides, palms up, so that I might better present myself as a figure both political and mythological.
“You’re no hero, no king, not even a rascal, Johnny. You’re just the first against the wall.”
This time I formed my hands into a pair of finger guns, pointing to the camera in an approximation of Johnny’s own crowd-pleasing entrance. The imaginary barrels locked onto the camera, and my imaginary bullets fired.
“Pew pew, bitch.”
With the conquering of a hated rival, Jill Park officially became the dominant half of Affluenza. As a competitive person, that perturbed me. Not in any sort of bitter or petulant way, of course. Shared success was the goal, but one of us winning big is almost as good as both of winning big. And so, as a celebration of OUR achievement, I provided a sumptuous vegan charcuterie board, prepped for a post-victory celebration in our dressing room of the Smoothie King Center(imagine trying to do anything with dignity in a building called the Smoothie King Center). Action staff was tragically unhelpful regarding a decent wine selection, so I settled for bottled water. Jill would probably want to rehydrate anyway.
I met Jill’s arrival with a golf-clap, but accentuated the gesture with kind words. “Bravo, Jill. Top-notch work. The Frankle Lock continues its reign of terror and you… Just beat Carter Shaw. I’d be wiping away tears right now if I were capable of crying.”
Jill seemed less receptive to my praise than I would’ve liked, but then again she was a battered, bloody mess who just spent the better part of the evening trapped in a cage and tasked with nearly beating someone she hated to death until she would be allowed back out. And people wonder why I chose this career path.
The doorframe seemed to be the only thing keeping Jill vertical, as she leaned on it for support. Given the amount of blood(enough to tint her hair from blond to pink yet still keep trickling), I realized that when one finds oneself bleeding profusely, priorities shift and not-dying takes precedent over snacks. Like a good partner, I handed her a solution. “Towel?”
Jill took it, a satisfied smile playing on her lips, and wiped the blood from her face. She pulled her hair aside to show a set of fresh staples over her previously gushing head wound, and so I could take solace in the fact that she wasn’t going to bleed out in front of me. Having a corpse to dispose of can put quite the damper on one’s charcuterie.
But there was something in that smile of hers. A challenge, an accusation. Rival vanquished, Regan. Clearly, I’m the Afflu and you’re the Enza, Regan. What are you gonna do, Regan? Your turn, Regan.
Perhaps I read a bit too much into it. Interpersonal skills, being a team player - these are not my greatest strengths. Maybe it was nothing. A simple smile, pride over her accomplishment. Who could blame her? Perfectly understandable. Not the sort of thing that should bother me.
And yet.
Revolution Baby
(Best paired with Bernadette Peters’ rendition of “Anything You Can Do” and a Socialist Daiquiri)
Having never slept on a couch, I attempted to crowbar my way into the mind of my opponent by indulging in a midafternoon siesta on a mahogany and circa velvet fainting couch I called dibs on within minutes of my great-aunt Tabitha’s fatal heart attack. It was uncomfortable enough for sitting - though stylistically viable enough to keep a place in my sitting room - but reaching an actual state of unconscious slumber seemed beyond my capabilities. At best, I dozed. My research attempt thoroughly failed, I updated my notes.
Sleeping on a Couch
Disadvantages
-Stiffness
-Lack of Space
-Sofa cushions inferior to traditional pillows
-Unhygienic
-Becoming Johnny Bacchus
Advantages
-None
“That’s bothersome,” I said to myself, taking a greedy gulp of the socialist daiquiri one of my faceless assistants left. Tempting as it was look at Johnny Bacchus as my twisted reflection, the heads to my (curly)tails on the ever-flipping coin of existence, to do so would be reductive. Wrestling’s one-percent was the working class, a Bizarro World economy. Ten seconds on Twitter proved that most wrestlers are the product of non-wrestling money, and they floated somewhere between millionaires and billionaires, with money to burn and no actual reason to participate in such a dangerous business full of monsters, murderers and madmen. Difficult to understand, when the world was full of less deadly, more lucrative options. Really, it became little more than rich people punching each other. That made my side of the coin so much more crowded.
A corrupt, unjust system benefitted me extensively. But I tried my darnedest not to rub anyone’s nose in the advantages I was born into and had no control over. I found it much more satisfying to rub their noses in my actual accomplishments, however many asterisks might sit beside them in the record books. “Who deserves what” was a neverending, unproductive conversation I never cared to participate in. Did I deserve success because I trained hard, even if I paid for said training with inherited wealth? Did Johnny Bacchus deserve it because he was naturally gifted, even if he stumbled ass-backward into a career?
Who cared? It was never about deserving, about earning your spot or paying your dues. The carnies just clung to that horseshit because they got butthurt after their secret handshake stopped being a secret. It was about winning. It was always about winning, even when the winner was a coach-surfing, unemployable twit who failed at everything that wasn’t wrestling. People couldn’t help but resent success under the best of circumstances. Especially the muscleheads with glass egos who had very specific ideas about what a wrestler should and should not be. Johnny and I, for all our dissimilarities, still didn’t belong in their clubhouse. That was one, perhaps the only thing, the two of us had in common.
Well, that and either of us would explode when exposed to direct sunlight. There was a simple way to sum up our differences, of that I was sure. Something relatable, time-tested, archetypical. Yet I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Instead, my fingers found the television remote on the table in front of me and stumbled for the power button. A movie was left playing, presumably by a soon-to-be-fired assistant. It wasn’t an especially good film, with Alan Rickman battling beyond the grave against Kevin Costner to elevate the adaptation of a centuries old tale beyond a cinematic snoozefest. But it did make my relationship to Johnny Bacchus all the more obvious. And left me with the distinct desire to cut his heart out with a spoon.
(▼✪(oo)✪▼)
Finding a complete set of pink camo and an officer’s jacket to wear over it, all for the sake of a single promo, was more difficult than I expected. Still, my medals clanged across my chest like a Newton’s cradle of undeserved gold, with a pink beret as my crowning glory. A map of the Tacoma Dome was taped to the wall behind me, my route from entrance to backstage to the ring mapped out like a military operation. To denote the expectation of conflict, a tasteful explosion icon was stapled to the ring.
“Imagine beheading all the bourgeoise, realloacting power to better represent and serve the marginalized, creating a new and better system that’s impossible for the capitalist pigs to abuse. As a capitalist pig myself, my reaction to that is a big ol’ pbbbt.”
I blew a raspberry, adding a thumbs down for emphasis. Capitalism, for its many imperfections, has done quite a bit to benefit me, so yahoo for capitalism.
“I would love to accuse you of slacktivism, Johnny. Of playing the reluctant, but uncouth Deadpoolian hero, though with decidedly lower levels of so-rando, laughing-my-ass-off chimichanga humor. To call you out for insincere appeals to the fans, who I could even call sheep, but then you’re allowed to shear sheep. Shear a wrestling fan and suddenly the authorities are knocking on your door. How I loathe a double standard. Look at that, Bocky Biscuits. I’m also playing the nickname game. God, I wish I could hear the sound you make as I hacksaw through your esophagus.”
I grabbed a hacksaw from the stable, again for emphasis and wishful thinking, before throwing it off-camera to a stock crash sound effect.
“Much as I’d love to be dismissive, you put together your own Rebel Alliance and toppled the evil Empire of Philidor without so much as losing a hand. Action fans cheered, all the while trying to figure out if you were a communist or a socialist. How are the two philosophies similar? How are they different? Have a ten-thousand word essay on my desk by Monday, and don’t even think about using a chocolate-in-my-peanut butter, peanut butter-in-my-chocolate metaphor.”
Prior to recording, I jabbed some Pocky chocolate first into a jar of peanut butter. Seizing the non-chocolate end, I unsheathed the snack like Excalibur and took a bite.
“Swear I don’t mean to sound derisive, Johnny. True conviction is a rare thing, to be admired. I have it, but as I am every bit the corrupt spawn of the machine you spent your life raging against, it’s so rare that I get any respect for it. Of course, on a good day I come across less like a thinking and feeling person and more like an alien’s best impression of a human being. But still I am, despite my best efforts, only human. A person as worthy of praise and admiration as anyone else who has managed to find success in an arena where they don’t belong. We all have our methods. You win friends and influence people. I hit Addy with a car. Chocolate and peanut butter.”
“But where do we go from here? Admittedly, 2022 seems to have my number thus far. Affluenza has done wonders for my interpersonal skills, as you can so obviously tell, but following Jill’s stellar victory over Carter Shaw this past week, she has cemented herself as our team’s better half. I have no interest in being second fiddle. Jill, unknowingly or not, has thrown down a gauntlet. My only choice is to answer back with your fucking head. But don’t mistake me, Bocky. This is as much pleasure as business.”
My lips twisted into a grin, but my teeth remained unbeared. Not my favorite expression, but one must get their point across. Mother always said my eyes never smile.
“Not that I’m so naive as to plan on shutting you up. The tragedy of Twitter is that no one will shut up, ever again, until we’re all smartphone clutching skeletons. Cut out your tongue, lop off your fingers and still you would taint my timeline with nose-typed tweets. And despite all my Regan-literally-butchers-Johnny talk, my vision board goal of mounting at least one human head on my wall, I hope you know that I’m looking forward to this. Even the great Regan Voorhees is beholden to basic-ass white girl cliche. I’m currently on the path to finding myself, or rather, finding the Regan that went through Lissie Hope, Corey Black and Teo Blaze. Wrestler of the Year Regan. I always liked her, but I do worry that Turmoil was my peak. A hot streak I will fail to replicate. The best Regan Voorhees ever was, before her potential was swallowed by the great, gaping maw of mediocrity. The fear makes me nauseous, but there’s a great bit of joy in me too, Johnny. You might see it in my eyes post-Abattoir, provided you’re lucid. Look at me, being a person.”
“But it’s so much easier for you to deny my humanity, reduce me to the cartoonishly sadistic villain of all your plucky heroic fantasies. Vanquish me then remind the kiddos to tune in next week and drink their almond milk. Use me to build steam heading into Havoc, so you can win the rumble, earn the title shot, secure your ticket to the Evolution main event. I’ll be keeping my steam, Johnny, but while we’re both in Tacoma I might as well help myself to yours. Perhaps crack your skull open and make creme brulee from your mushroom-addled brain. While I’m basic-bitching it, I might as well take a vision quest that finds me standing victorious at Havoc, your body at the bottom of the pile, crushed beneath the weight of an entire company that I’ve destroyed. Perhaps all along I’ve been the heroine whom Action Wrestling deserves. You were just their dork knight.”
A titter escaped my throat, hand flying to my mouth to block any further outbursts. My teeth slid into my bottom lip to lock up any further laughter at my own horrendous attempts at humor.
“I am the revolution, or Reegolution for the sake of branding. I am the true voice of the voiceless, the karmic cataclysm that you all have coming. Losses and setbacks have happened, the sort that might tragically derail the career of a lesser competitor. Yet still, I press on, my conviction intact. I am the slow, undeniable encroach of progress. A Darwinian nightmare in pastels, here to educate you on true evolution and drag you kicking and screaming toward a future that is Regan. You aren't going to enjoy this, but really, I think you'll come out of our match a better person. That is, of course, assuming you come out of it.”
My hands extended to my sides, palms up, so that I might better present myself as a figure both political and mythological.
“You’re no hero, no king, not even a rascal, Johnny. You’re just the first against the wall.”
This time I formed my hands into a pair of finger guns, pointing to the camera in an approximation of Johnny’s own crowd-pleasing entrance. The imaginary barrels locked onto the camera, and my imaginary bullets fired.
“Pew pew, bitch.”