Post by Spencer Adams on Nov 6, 2022 4:03:15 GMT -5
Screaming, always with the screaming.
Erica: Spence?
Spencer: Yeah?
Who could forget the sound of breaking dishes?
Fuck you, bitch! Fuck you! Shut the fuck up!
Spencer: I like to try, yeah.
I never did like laying out my actual thoughts, especially not to her. Me and my sister, forever trauma bonded, but I was still the big brother. I still had a job to do. We all did actually. For me, it was picking and choosing what I let slip. For Erica, it was remaining passive. For mom, it was taking what came at her knowing she was something of a pillar, that her ability to bear a beating was what helped lift the two of us up in some sick, backwards way. That was what kept him in check and avoided him going down the path of a black Jack Torrance keen to give both kin and wife their medicine.
Erica: What do you think that looks like? I mean, when you go to that place.
Spencer: I think I’d have a family, like a big one. More family, I mean. One of my own. Oh, and money…just like…a TON of money. So much that I could get you and mom whatever you wanted.
Erica: What about….
Spencer: What?
Erica: Nevermind..
I knew what she meant. “What about him?” The thing I was reluctant to go in depth about would answer the question. What that future really looks like is the ability to choose, the power to choose who exists and who doesn’t. It wasn’t some days that I spent thinking about the absence of him or anyone like him from my bubble, it was every single day of my adolescence.
Spencer: What about you?
Erica: Hmm?
Before long, every word from our mouths was backed by a symphony of domestic dispute.
Oftentimes, her eyes would well up, but manage to hang delicately on her bottom eyelid with seemingly impossible cumulative weight.
Such a vicarious mind. I didn’t ask her why. I liked to think I hid my own extended answer well, but I could read hers clear as day. Erica did think about what success and getting out would look like for me, because well…she didn’t think that she deserved it herself.
“Radar, sonar, laser beams
Jets, tanks, submarines
Megathons, H-bombs, napalm, ga-”
It wasn’t too long ago that Kevin Garnett went on All The Smoke to talk about the ways that Tim Duncan would talk his shit on the court. The Big Fundamental was always seen as a man of composure, something that Garnett himself attests to. Duncan was an under the radar type of player despite a career full of nothing but success. Duncan didn’t talk his trash in sentences, but rather with a quiet word or two at a time. It was things like “Almost” or “Nice try”. When Duncan retired, he did so as an instant lock at the top of the hall of fame inductee list. What happened next? Tim Duncan taking up a part time job hovering above Regan Voorhees’ shoulder supplying her with the same words of discouragement, apparently.
“Almost”
A single word to define an entire career.
Let’s call it what it is, Regan. You’re a career prospect who is always that next match away from a breakout. Every match you go into is one that should be yours on paper. You ARE that level of cunning and dangerous on paper. It’s your defining quality as a competitor. Without natural talent or the pure ability that others have in the ring, you manage to cover the ground and shorten the gap purely with malicious wit and that’s not something that goes unnoticed on the scouting report. If nobody else takes notice, I take notice. I keep the fact that you work the ring and this profession as a whole in the forefront of both offensive and defensive strategy.
I see you, but the real difference maker here is that fact that you see me. You’ve experienced Spencer Adams for yourself twice now and you know that when I want something, I’m going to fucking get it. I wanted contendership last Summer, so I took it. I wanted to ascend the tag rankings with CJ and when we ran into you and Jill, we handled our business. Your position is a tough one to be in, because while you fulfill the role as the projected next up, I’m someone who can actually meet and surpass projections.
I also face and put down REAL monsters, people who don’t just posture about being able to systematically dismantle a target, but actually have the ability to do so. Giants and desert dwelling psychopaths have come after Spencer Adams and were put down one by one. I survive, outlast, and make it clear that I win the wars once the dust settles. I’ve built a hall of fame career off these moments while you still find yourself struggling to put down a proper foundation.
Turmoil though? Turmoil is the closest you’ve come to doing so in your post-cruiser era. You managed to put down people you were never supposed to and for that, a slow clap is deserved. Getting to the finals of this thing is fucking hard and winning it is arguably the single hardest run in this industry, but let’s not ignore the elephant in the room. Let’s not brush past the fact that while you scratched and clawed your way to a finals appearance against Downfall, I was cheated out of that moment and with that, you were spared a showdown against Spencer Adams.
The only reason that we’re not closing this show is that me closing the door on you early is a foregone conclusion. I don’t just want this, I am this. While you’ve spent 2022 doing fuck all and managing to snag entry into this tournament, I’ve outright dominated competition to the tune of sixteen wins and zero losses. King Shit cruised through to the tag belts, stormed through to the trios titles, and put down a plethora of world champions. Momentum isn’t everything, but it’s heavy as fuck and you can’t deny that the pressure on you right now from that momentum has absolutely taken the wind out of your sails. That feeling? That’s you sinking, drowning even.
Adilene: We should celebrate sometime soon.
Spencer: Feels premature.
Adilene: Oh, come on. Trios secured, wrestler of the year in sight. I know where the focus is right now, but it’s okay for you to acknowledge how far you’ve come, too.
Spencer: I’m somewhere in the middle to be fair, but I see my decompress time as something a little different is all. At work, I’ll celebrate work. When I’m here with you…with Faith…with Lakia, I just want to celebrate this, you know? I want to live in THIS moment, too. I’ve busted my ass for belts, but I feel like we both have worked hard for this as well. I don’t want to miss it.
Adilene: You won’t. This…
She smiles and turns over onto her side, pointing to her ring finger as we come face to face.
Not only are you still trying to find your own success, but you're stuck between spots with none of them seeming to fit you quite right. You’re both the best at nothing and the worst at nothing. While there are female competitors that couldn’t lace your boots, there are half a dozen that you can’t touch who keep the women’s championship just out of reach. Similarly, there are half a dozen competitors in most other lanes who keep you in the waiting room. The space on the AW ladder that you occupy is something like purgatory and you’re flat out stuck.
Why? Because you’re content being a simple thorn to the point that when it comes to slit a throat, you can’t be fucked with to actually pick up the blade. Your public image implies a killer, but when you actually try to apply a psychological edge in the matches where it matters most, you turn into a haunted house attraction. You’re spooky in the awkward and uncomfortable to be around sense, but striking true fear is not something in your toolbox. Similarly, neither is the Heimlich maneuver.
You’re somebody who is perfectly content with being a manageable disruption to the scene, happy to become the Spirit Halloween costume meme renamed “mild inconvenience”. I am not. You’re okay with having shown up and acted somewhat impish if that’s all that you accomplished. Regan Voorhees plays a part, but I’m the play itself. There’s wrestler of the year and then there’s wrestler of the lifetime and you’re looking at both. It’s why I’m able to stick out a palm and place it against your forehead and watch you swing like a grade schooler with a negative forty inch reach, because I’m not here to settle for anything. I’m not and never have been satisfied as a consolation contender, but you are.
Regan, you are my seventy-five and honestly, it might just be the greatest achievement of your somehow young yet already a giant slog of a career. You will serve as a milestone marker to the point that they’ll put me beating you on the Regan Voorhees top ten doc to boost streaming numbers. Last year, you got to the very end of this fucking thing and a year later, you’re going back to being Regan Voorhees, a woman longing for a fat mustache to twirl whose spotlight as a big bad was eclipsed by her friend, the MTV star. Only this time, it’s not just you doing that via choke, it’s Spencer Adams closing the curtain.
There will always be people who will criticize how often you’re booked to work a show, but for as much as I find myself working the other obligations on top of that, I’ve really come to appreciate the consecutive days off where washing up before bed feels less laborious. I’d even go as far as to call it meditative. With a quick splash of water to the face and a hand towel, I find myself glancing over to Adilene sleeping sound and freeze momentarily on the picture in front of me. It’s unreal and maybe that’s the point of this late night clean up alone..a proverbial pinch to ensure that it’s not me dreaming.
Pivoting back to the mirror, that’s where I freeze once more. The face staring back at me isn’t a reflection, but a sinister smile. While my hands remain on the right and left sides of the basin, the reflection raises their own with one fist in the shape of an imaginary pistol and the other opening up to imply a bullet’s exit point. In my moment of hypnosis, there’s a delay in my processing of what I’m seeing.
Kevin.
I feel pain in my chest and an empty sort of heat in my lungs. A scream manages to escape as I shoot a fist forward into the bathroom mirror and send shards downward like confetti. My head turns back toward the bedroom as the impact snaps me out of my trance and I come face to face with Adilene.
