A Constant Living (Dangerous Dan story)
Jan 23, 2022 20:25:11 GMT -5
Marcus Welsh and Dylan Thomas like this
Post by Dangerous Dan on Jan 23, 2022 20:25:11 GMT -5
“Nothing is cooler and more attractive than a big comeback, and that’ll be me.”–Steven Adler
NEWTON’S THIRD LAW OF MOTION: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. But this can, of course, result in stillness. A book on a shelf, a menu resting on a table. Downward weight, upward push. Like neither action nor reaction is happening at all.
When I told Will, my boyfriend, about this, he said that underneath the façade of stillness was movement. It was still happening, still mattered. I told him I believed him even though I didn’t. If the outside and the inside don’t match and we can only see the outside, then it doesn’t matter. How could it?
I am sitting at a table in a quiet restaurant, alone. Here is the menu, still on the table, though Will would have you believe there is a whole undercurrent of movement at play. And beyond the menu are shiny eggplants in a blue bowl—part of the vaguely rustic décor—on a little sideboard. They remind me of car grease and my hands clutching plums, grapes, and beets from the Saturday market Chris and I went to as kids. Slick, wet, purple.
Will went to visit his father in Scotland because his grandfather had died. He did not say when he would be back. There was a time when I thought it would be fun to have a boyfriend who loved me. It is not fun after a while because it is like everything else—it becomes a constant. Like when you eat toast for breakfast every day but then your mother says there is no more bread. You start eating oatmeal, and in the beginning, it is strange, but only because it is different. And then, after some time, it isn’t strange or different. It is just breakfast.
I do not know what Will means when he asks me to marry him. Every time he asks, I tell him I don’t know what he means, and he laughs and says, Maybe next time. He will never leave, so I will never say yes. He has fallen in love with me. I am not the sort of person he should have fallen in love with, but I am also not the sort of person that will tell him to leave. I care for Will, but I’m not in love with him. How can I be after my three-year engagement with my ex?
It was sometime during the pandemic when Will and I first had sex. It was in the back of his car, the rain unforgiving and unrepentant against the body of the Chrysler. It was something that started happening, and I did not care either way if it happened or not, so it simply did. There is no more to it than that—the rain was unrelenting and heavy, the heater loud and on full blast. Afterwards, I fell asleep and woke up in bed next to him, his sheets so soft, white, and warm.
It is funny and strange how much the human race cares about recording things for the sake of posterity, when, if the world ends, all our records will end with it. Even our children, too, will perish. The thought of that does not make me sad. It only feels inevitable.
The waiter is angry that I do not finish the salad. He says nothing, but I can tell. “Are you ready for some dessert?” He asks me. “I will see the menu, please.” I respond, knowing I do not want dessert, but I will order it anyway because I should try and eat more. I haven’t been eating much lately, and somewhere in the recesses of my brain, lodged in a crevice, is concern for myself. I sigh. It is so very tiring to eat alone.
Homeostasis is the control and regulation of an internal environment. It creates stagnancy—a little bit like Newton’s balanced forces—and I am exceptionally good at that. I look at myself, behind a bus that is driving away or curled up in bed or just at my hand, on its own, pouring water, and I feel nothing, the inside of me utterly untouched. There is nothing when I bump into a table, look at Will, or remember my father’s contorted face when he got angry. The only thing I feel or care about is Elias, my 12-year-old son, who is currently with my mother and brother.
If you’re not moving forward, you’re just staying still. Whoever said that was correct.
I pick at the skin around my thumbnail, and it peels off easily like PVA glue. My thumb starts to bleed, and I watch it. It is like rain, just a thing that is happening, sometimes against the body of the car. It has absolutely nothing to do with me, not really.
The dessert menu has three options, and I order all of them: chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, and sesame cookies. I eat none of them but look at them on the table for a long time, and they acquiesce, as everything does, to my need to see them as unreal, as transient things from another world.
Are you happy? Will likes to ask me. I never know what to say, so I always ask him instead of answering. He says yes every time, even when I know he isn’t and the fact that he can’t admit to being just as tired as I am makes me sad for him.
A muscle in my calf twitches, and my knee hits the table. I look down. The knee does not look like mine. The forks look at me, but I don’t stop looking at the desserts. They are shiny and make me want to vomit.
I wonder if ants can smell humans. I have this thought suddenly, and it seizes me. I must know immediately. I close my eyes and imagine myself as an ant and think: Yes, I can definitely smell humans. They smell like wet soil, sugar, and also rust.
I am not here anymore; I haven’t been for a long time. I know this. Will likes to think he can make me better—thinks he can comb out my limbs as if they are tangled marionette strings. Perhaps it is that feeling that he likes, rather than me. That would make more sense.
Sanity is a construction that drives us all insane as we try so hard, so blindly, to achieve it. It is sort of funny, the concept of sanity and the commitment with which we pursue it.
I first saw Will at a New Year’s Eve party shortly before the pandemic. He was smoking a cigarette, and the dimmed light seeped into his dimples, filling them completely. I walked towards him slowly and wished I could eat the smoke plumes, wished they would curl around my tongue. He is a good man; it is a shame about me. Something inside of me is changing, but I can’t quite figure it out. Maybe the pandemic and the thought of stepping back into that ring is getting the best of me.
I ask for the bill. The waiter takes the untouched desserts away silently. I tell him the ice cream was sublime, smile at him with my teeth. I am joking, I realize and hope he appreciates it. He nods and brings me the bill.
There is a lot of phlegm in the back of my throat, nestled into soft pink flesh like a gelatinous fish, the mucus in my esophagus peaks and troughs like a sea. I wonder blithely if I will be sick. I have lived this life for so long, have breathed the air for so long, and it is unchanging, leaves me unmoved and unhurt. It is quite exhausting, this constant living.
Newton’s third law of motion is the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang in another form, I said to Will right before he left for the funeral. He disagreed and told me yin and yang relate to complementary forces rather than opposing ones. No, I replied. Complementary is a type of opposing. It means the forces go against each other in a good way.He said it was okay to disagree. Well, anyway, I said, I don’t think complementary opposition is any good. It forces balance, makes life too long, too easy… nothing spills over.
I wait. People walk by me, chattering inanely. In the Chrysler, in December, my neck cracked, and Will did not notice. The car soaked up the sound, and the heater and the rain ate anything that was left. It was like it didn’t happen.
My hair sways in the wind, and the night darkens. I know how this looks, and it is true. I am bereft and unknown, even to myself. At least I can admit it. At least there is that.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our camera comes into focus to reveal a white room filled with many decorations and posters hanging on the wall. A television hanging on the wall and several pieces of furniture spread out through the room. Seated on the blue colored couch is a recognizable figure wearing white shirt and gray sweatpants. His hair placed into a ponytail and his arms folded across his chest. Dangerous Dan leans up and takes a seat on the edge of the couch. He turns his attention towards the camera as it comes in to focus.
“They say that in desperate times comes desperate measures. Well, looks like those desperate times have finally reached out to Chris and me. Honestly, I was a bit shocked when I received the phone call to come back to OCW. It’s been three years since the Danger Boiz have had any contact with OCW. Three years of no updates, no texts, no nothing. So, when the call came in, I certainly wasn’t rushing to return to the company…
You see, I retired from professional wrestling a few years ago with the intent to focus on my life, sanity and my 12-year-old son. I made enough through my career that I was able to live my life in peace and not have to worry about lacing up those boots again. I returned in 2020 to a promotion that gave me my start, but that second go-around didn’t quite pan out during the pandemic. So, I retired to never attempt to wrestle again….
Yet, when Marcus reached out, I simply felt the need to step back into a ring again. I began to think of what should and could have been during my last run in OCW. I told Marcus that the only way Chris and I would THINK about coming back is if we were given an automatic shot at the tag team titles…
For years, the OCW tag titles have eluding the Danger Boiz grasp. We fought and clawed our way through OCW and won singles titles but couldn’t quite capture those tag titles. So, after some negotiation and price figuring, we were given that opportunity against the Draver Twins for those belts…
Hello boys, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dangerous Dan and I’m one-half of the Danger Boiz. I’m a GCWA Hall of Famer, multi time tag team champion, world champion, and singles champion. I’ve kicked assess and taken names everywhere I’ve went and now I’m back to do it again….
I’ve heard about you boys and how you have been compared to Chris and myself. What is it they have been saying? You two are the modern-day Danger Boiz? It’s very flattering that you boys are trying everything you can to be like us. But make no mistake about it boys…you will never be us. Granted, you boys managed to do the one thing we have never been able to do. You are the tag champions. But unfortunately, at Access Denied, that will change…
You boys are stepping inside OUR creation. We created the Danger Zone match and have never lost in our very own match. You may think that it’s a simple steel cage match with weapons, but it’s much harder than that. Think of how brutal a steel cage match is. Think about weapons surround every inch of that cage. Think about how difficult it is to climb a ladder and reach for a title. So, imagine how much more difficult that’s going to be in this combination match…
You think you boys have it in the bag? Guess again. Just because one of you might climb that ladder and grab those belts, it doesn’t mean that you won. It’s much more dangerous than that. Grabbing the titles is just the start of it. Escaping the cage with those titles through the door is much more ‘dangerous’ than that…
It’s a mind game in there in boys. Your titles are going to be out of your grasp. Our specialty is surrounding that ring. The Danger Boiz are walking into the Danger Zone as challengers for your titles, but rest assure Dravers, we’re walking out as the new OCW tag team champions…
At Access Denied, the hunters have become the hunted. You’re going to realize that your days as the “modern day” Danger Boiz are over. The REAL Danger Boiz are here, and your luck has finally run. There’s a new era beginning Dravers. I hope you’re ready for it. If you haven’t figured it out yet…the ENDD is Near…, can you feel it?”
Dan smirks, stands to his feet, and shoves the camera away. The scene fades to black.
NEWTON’S THIRD LAW OF MOTION: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. But this can, of course, result in stillness. A book on a shelf, a menu resting on a table. Downward weight, upward push. Like neither action nor reaction is happening at all.
When I told Will, my boyfriend, about this, he said that underneath the façade of stillness was movement. It was still happening, still mattered. I told him I believed him even though I didn’t. If the outside and the inside don’t match and we can only see the outside, then it doesn’t matter. How could it?
I am sitting at a table in a quiet restaurant, alone. Here is the menu, still on the table, though Will would have you believe there is a whole undercurrent of movement at play. And beyond the menu are shiny eggplants in a blue bowl—part of the vaguely rustic décor—on a little sideboard. They remind me of car grease and my hands clutching plums, grapes, and beets from the Saturday market Chris and I went to as kids. Slick, wet, purple.
Will went to visit his father in Scotland because his grandfather had died. He did not say when he would be back. There was a time when I thought it would be fun to have a boyfriend who loved me. It is not fun after a while because it is like everything else—it becomes a constant. Like when you eat toast for breakfast every day but then your mother says there is no more bread. You start eating oatmeal, and in the beginning, it is strange, but only because it is different. And then, after some time, it isn’t strange or different. It is just breakfast.
I do not know what Will means when he asks me to marry him. Every time he asks, I tell him I don’t know what he means, and he laughs and says, Maybe next time. He will never leave, so I will never say yes. He has fallen in love with me. I am not the sort of person he should have fallen in love with, but I am also not the sort of person that will tell him to leave. I care for Will, but I’m not in love with him. How can I be after my three-year engagement with my ex?
It was sometime during the pandemic when Will and I first had sex. It was in the back of his car, the rain unforgiving and unrepentant against the body of the Chrysler. It was something that started happening, and I did not care either way if it happened or not, so it simply did. There is no more to it than that—the rain was unrelenting and heavy, the heater loud and on full blast. Afterwards, I fell asleep and woke up in bed next to him, his sheets so soft, white, and warm.
It is funny and strange how much the human race cares about recording things for the sake of posterity, when, if the world ends, all our records will end with it. Even our children, too, will perish. The thought of that does not make me sad. It only feels inevitable.
The waiter is angry that I do not finish the salad. He says nothing, but I can tell. “Are you ready for some dessert?” He asks me. “I will see the menu, please.” I respond, knowing I do not want dessert, but I will order it anyway because I should try and eat more. I haven’t been eating much lately, and somewhere in the recesses of my brain, lodged in a crevice, is concern for myself. I sigh. It is so very tiring to eat alone.
Homeostasis is the control and regulation of an internal environment. It creates stagnancy—a little bit like Newton’s balanced forces—and I am exceptionally good at that. I look at myself, behind a bus that is driving away or curled up in bed or just at my hand, on its own, pouring water, and I feel nothing, the inside of me utterly untouched. There is nothing when I bump into a table, look at Will, or remember my father’s contorted face when he got angry. The only thing I feel or care about is Elias, my 12-year-old son, who is currently with my mother and brother.
If you’re not moving forward, you’re just staying still. Whoever said that was correct.
I pick at the skin around my thumbnail, and it peels off easily like PVA glue. My thumb starts to bleed, and I watch it. It is like rain, just a thing that is happening, sometimes against the body of the car. It has absolutely nothing to do with me, not really.
The dessert menu has three options, and I order all of them: chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, and sesame cookies. I eat none of them but look at them on the table for a long time, and they acquiesce, as everything does, to my need to see them as unreal, as transient things from another world.
Are you happy? Will likes to ask me. I never know what to say, so I always ask him instead of answering. He says yes every time, even when I know he isn’t and the fact that he can’t admit to being just as tired as I am makes me sad for him.
A muscle in my calf twitches, and my knee hits the table. I look down. The knee does not look like mine. The forks look at me, but I don’t stop looking at the desserts. They are shiny and make me want to vomit.
I wonder if ants can smell humans. I have this thought suddenly, and it seizes me. I must know immediately. I close my eyes and imagine myself as an ant and think: Yes, I can definitely smell humans. They smell like wet soil, sugar, and also rust.
I am not here anymore; I haven’t been for a long time. I know this. Will likes to think he can make me better—thinks he can comb out my limbs as if they are tangled marionette strings. Perhaps it is that feeling that he likes, rather than me. That would make more sense.
Sanity is a construction that drives us all insane as we try so hard, so blindly, to achieve it. It is sort of funny, the concept of sanity and the commitment with which we pursue it.
I first saw Will at a New Year’s Eve party shortly before the pandemic. He was smoking a cigarette, and the dimmed light seeped into his dimples, filling them completely. I walked towards him slowly and wished I could eat the smoke plumes, wished they would curl around my tongue. He is a good man; it is a shame about me. Something inside of me is changing, but I can’t quite figure it out. Maybe the pandemic and the thought of stepping back into that ring is getting the best of me.
I ask for the bill. The waiter takes the untouched desserts away silently. I tell him the ice cream was sublime, smile at him with my teeth. I am joking, I realize and hope he appreciates it. He nods and brings me the bill.
There is a lot of phlegm in the back of my throat, nestled into soft pink flesh like a gelatinous fish, the mucus in my esophagus peaks and troughs like a sea. I wonder blithely if I will be sick. I have lived this life for so long, have breathed the air for so long, and it is unchanging, leaves me unmoved and unhurt. It is quite exhausting, this constant living.
Newton’s third law of motion is the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang in another form, I said to Will right before he left for the funeral. He disagreed and told me yin and yang relate to complementary forces rather than opposing ones. No, I replied. Complementary is a type of opposing. It means the forces go against each other in a good way.He said it was okay to disagree. Well, anyway, I said, I don’t think complementary opposition is any good. It forces balance, makes life too long, too easy… nothing spills over.
I wait. People walk by me, chattering inanely. In the Chrysler, in December, my neck cracked, and Will did not notice. The car soaked up the sound, and the heater and the rain ate anything that was left. It was like it didn’t happen.
My hair sways in the wind, and the night darkens. I know how this looks, and it is true. I am bereft and unknown, even to myself. At least I can admit it. At least there is that.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our camera comes into focus to reveal a white room filled with many decorations and posters hanging on the wall. A television hanging on the wall and several pieces of furniture spread out through the room. Seated on the blue colored couch is a recognizable figure wearing white shirt and gray sweatpants. His hair placed into a ponytail and his arms folded across his chest. Dangerous Dan leans up and takes a seat on the edge of the couch. He turns his attention towards the camera as it comes in to focus.
“They say that in desperate times comes desperate measures. Well, looks like those desperate times have finally reached out to Chris and me. Honestly, I was a bit shocked when I received the phone call to come back to OCW. It’s been three years since the Danger Boiz have had any contact with OCW. Three years of no updates, no texts, no nothing. So, when the call came in, I certainly wasn’t rushing to return to the company…
You see, I retired from professional wrestling a few years ago with the intent to focus on my life, sanity and my 12-year-old son. I made enough through my career that I was able to live my life in peace and not have to worry about lacing up those boots again. I returned in 2020 to a promotion that gave me my start, but that second go-around didn’t quite pan out during the pandemic. So, I retired to never attempt to wrestle again….
Yet, when Marcus reached out, I simply felt the need to step back into a ring again. I began to think of what should and could have been during my last run in OCW. I told Marcus that the only way Chris and I would THINK about coming back is if we were given an automatic shot at the tag team titles…
For years, the OCW tag titles have eluding the Danger Boiz grasp. We fought and clawed our way through OCW and won singles titles but couldn’t quite capture those tag titles. So, after some negotiation and price figuring, we were given that opportunity against the Draver Twins for those belts…
Hello boys, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dangerous Dan and I’m one-half of the Danger Boiz. I’m a GCWA Hall of Famer, multi time tag team champion, world champion, and singles champion. I’ve kicked assess and taken names everywhere I’ve went and now I’m back to do it again….
I’ve heard about you boys and how you have been compared to Chris and myself. What is it they have been saying? You two are the modern-day Danger Boiz? It’s very flattering that you boys are trying everything you can to be like us. But make no mistake about it boys…you will never be us. Granted, you boys managed to do the one thing we have never been able to do. You are the tag champions. But unfortunately, at Access Denied, that will change…
You boys are stepping inside OUR creation. We created the Danger Zone match and have never lost in our very own match. You may think that it’s a simple steel cage match with weapons, but it’s much harder than that. Think of how brutal a steel cage match is. Think about weapons surround every inch of that cage. Think about how difficult it is to climb a ladder and reach for a title. So, imagine how much more difficult that’s going to be in this combination match…
You think you boys have it in the bag? Guess again. Just because one of you might climb that ladder and grab those belts, it doesn’t mean that you won. It’s much more dangerous than that. Grabbing the titles is just the start of it. Escaping the cage with those titles through the door is much more ‘dangerous’ than that…
It’s a mind game in there in boys. Your titles are going to be out of your grasp. Our specialty is surrounding that ring. The Danger Boiz are walking into the Danger Zone as challengers for your titles, but rest assure Dravers, we’re walking out as the new OCW tag team champions…
At Access Denied, the hunters have become the hunted. You’re going to realize that your days as the “modern day” Danger Boiz are over. The REAL Danger Boiz are here, and your luck has finally run. There’s a new era beginning Dravers. I hope you’re ready for it. If you haven’t figured it out yet…the ENDD is Near…, can you feel it?”
Dan smirks, stands to his feet, and shoves the camera away. The scene fades to black.
