Reflections (or The Man in the Glass)

"Who am I?" -Derek Zoolander

Daylight refused to acknowledge the blackout curtains. Awakening in a strange land, I knew it was daytime, but not what day.

The Father had been absent since before ReVival 49.

What started out as a nagging headache after Harvey Walker had Barry Bonds-ed me had grown to an ever-present, raging thunderstorm, and I a desert: dried up and barren. The pain surged like dry lightning and my mind felt as fragile as the glass a storm in said desert would produce.

The mercy of sleep only came when Little Sister doled out pain meds. She had graciously accepted the responsibility of moderating my intake since I was a recovering drug addict and all. Only a nip for when the pain was too great to bear, a small tap into the reserves. This was, coincidentally, almost perfectly in line with when I began asking too many questions. And that was pretty fucking often.

Pushing through the pain, I stood up, trying my best not to wake Little Sister who lay sleeping next to me. Despite sharing a bed, I had yet to get so much as a fucking kiss from her. C'est la vie. I learned that in France. Means what the fuck are you gonna do or something like that.

I hoped Hessian was feeling half that bad as I turned on the faucet. Straight to the tap like the dog that I was, I gulped until the water sloshed uncomfortably in my belly. Leaning my head up, I wiped my mouth with my forearm and looked at the mirror. An aging and complete fucking mess looked back at me through the shadows of the bathroom.

You know, the mirror and I haven't always been friends.

This ain't some metaphorical bullshit or a commentary on if I think I'm fucking pretty. Quite literally, there have been measurable peaks and valleys.

"You're awake." Little Sister stated the obvious, turning on the overhead light. I hadn't even heard her get up.

"If you could fucking call it that." I winced at the waves of thunder echoing in my temples from the light bearing down on me.

There weren't a lot of mirrors in my house as a kid. Interior decorating wasn't a big fucking to do at the Flowery Branch Trailer Park anyways, but you know, Ma tried her best. Maybe Ma wanted to remember her face like the only picture I remember her hanging up - her and Pop on the back of his 52 Panhead right after they left the courthouse in her Goodwill dress. Back when they thought that bike was fast enough to outrun all the drinking and whoring and fighting.

Or it was that she didn't want to see that permanent black eye shadow she wore when he got real bad.

After that trailer, and before understanding why Daddy was alright without any mirrors around, I didn't meet a-one that I didn't like. Long dirty blonde hair, violent beard, and more muscle than a fucking Barrett-Jackson auction. I had the world by the goddamn balls and I knew it. I was the conductor of a train powered on pure cocaine tearing through the wrestling industry like no shit they'd ever seen. Hell, I had a goddamn toy. You ever had a fucking toy made after you?

"Somebody's a bit cranky, huh?" She whipped at me as she rolled out of bed.

Who wouldn't stop and admire that handsome fucking devil? Teflon, man. Ben Jones, my counsel, killed every charge and fine that came my way. Fucker had a whole wing of his house named after me.

Back then mirrors were my best friend, whether I was flexing in them or chopping up lines.

My phone lit up back in the room, but I was too deep in thought to even hear it.

"You got a text." Little Sister called out dutifully.

It's funny, you know. I was just like them. My parents, that is, thinking they could outrun the consequences of their actions. Do everything that feels good and works fast, burn every goddamn bridge behind you. Living like a rockstar sounds a whole lot better in song than it feels in application. Burning rubber and staying one trick ahead of the devil, right up until I wasn't.

Little chicken, you were wrong. The sky wasn't falling, the bottom dropped out.

I ran my fingers across the sharpened edges of the mirror, still not looking at myself. Sharp curves.

"Read it to me," I called out to Little Sister's reflection in the mirror. Her body was nothing but sharp and dangerous curves.

Y'all might not know this, but In prison, you don't get a mirror. When you're a responsibility of the state or government, depending on how bad you fucked up, they don't want you getting fresh and deciding to play Zorro with yourself before you've served your time. So in prison, you get a piece of reflected metal bolted to that block. It doesn't get much use, though. Why? Cause the dumb son of a bitch who landed you in that hell hole was always looking at you. The one who decided to correct some hillbilly dipshit running his mouth at a bar in exchange for the keys to the kingdom.

"You're booked against Sage Pontiff at ReVival." She sounded excited. She enjoyed that side of me. The guy that crucified Don Winters and left some boy lying face down in the mud outside a bar in Omaha. I wondered if it's me or him she was attracted to.

Huh. Sage Pontiff. That meant about as much to me as the cost of gas in Dubai: not fucking much. I knew he was young. Risk taker type. Looked like he smelled of a bag of assholes cooking in the sun a few days at some hippie festival.

It wasn't that I never looked in the mirror. Obviously. How could you live your life not looking in a mirror? You have to brush your teeth and shave and all that shit, you know, to be a human. The drugs and the whores and the booze. If you had ever felt inhuman, you would understand this move. You look at the mirror, but you never make eye contact with the man in the mirror.

"Who the fuck is Sage Pontiff?" I asked her, but really I was gearing up to ask the other questions. Who the fuck am I? And what the fuck did Lem mean? Where's the Father?

"How's your head?" She was like a goddamn bloodhound. That familiar rattling sound of the pills shaking around in the bottle immediately followed her question.

The beaches of Normandy. Carnage and blood and pain.

"It's not that bad." I lied. I was getting really fucking tired of lying.

"Here," she said while pulling out a twenty milligram morphine, "get ahead of it. You should cut another promo on him. That was so hot when you did for Hessian."

I didn't fucking want to. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to cry. I wanted to know why the fuck Lem called me the Father.

Being the keen empath she was, Little Sister sensed my apprehension and leaned in danger close. North and south, I couldn't keep form the magnetic draw, turning to her and closing my eyes thinking we were about to finally kiss. Instead of the soft, sexy kiss I was expecting, she bit my fucking lip.

"OW, goddamnit" I called out as she released my lip and smiled at me. This woman may well be the goddamned devil.

"If you're a good boy I have a little present for you after."

With a wink and a growl Little Sister once again had me under her thumb.

Little tingles ran up and down my neck and scalp as I watched the meticulous care Little Sister paid to set up the camera and lighting for my little promo. Weren't much people in my life did for me. Sure, people booked my hotels and managed my money and shit, but that was really for them. You can feel it when someone is doing something selflessly for you. It always gave me the shivers.

"Ok, I think we're all ready," She rested her hands on her hips and admired her own work.

Little Sister counted me in: three, two, one with her perfectly manicured little fingers.

I'd picked up smoking again at some point. Sitting there, looking at the red light, I felt a pang of anxiety and drew real hard on the cigarette with a sniffle.

"Sage Pontiff. You are... I'm going to... aw, fuck. I've got nothing." I snuffed out the cigarette in the ashtray with a loud, frustrated sigh.

"Honestly, buddy, I don't know if you're the problem or I am. These last few weeks, hell, months, have been... weird. I don't feel quite like 'The Legend' Rob Williams anymore. What the fuck does that even mean? Jesus, I should have something for you. I'm sorry that I don't. You definitely deserve that much. What with your MC Hammer pants and your Kent State haircut, you deserve fire and brimstone. I ought to fucking lay into you about what a pansy you are. Make fun of our stupid masochistic (motions jerking off) Hari Krishna shit. But it just ain't there."

A tiny plume of smoke rose from the simmering ashtray. I ran my hands through my hair, pushing it back, but my head stayed down. This was embarrassing. Working solely off of instinct, I stared directly at the camera, like all the years of handlers had told me, look through the camera to your audience.

In the reflection of the tiny glass lens, all I could see was myself.

Who was that man?

This was the man God had picked to protect that little kid?

If Anna Daniels didn't see a monster in that man and God tapped him to be her warrior, maybe there was something I had been missing. Eye to eye, I weighed and measured that man in the lens.

This kid, this Sage Pontiff, he was fucking twenty-five.

"Twenty fucking five. Jesus Henry Christ, I've got socks older than you. This world is rough, kid, especially when you make your money the way we do. I'm sure it all seems rainbows and mescaline and love now, but what the fuck are you going do when you're sitting on this side of the camera? The same knees I used to choke the life from El Diablo in '03 wake me up in the middle of the night they hurt so bad. And for what? To be facing some twenty-five year old burnout in fucking Spain to get my paycheck. Know that you're just putting it all on the tab, kid, and one day that bill will come due. You might be saying "I know it does, I have to face nasty motherfuckers like you." You're right, you have a date with one nasty motherfucker at ReVival 50. But I'm just a goddamn interest payment, kiddo."

I lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply, letting the smoke live in my blackened lungs before easing it out of my nose. I thought about waking up in prison and waking up in wherever the fuck I had that morning.

"One day you're going to wake up, jarred out of bed from the pain of selling your body to appease this shit business for years, and the principal fucking balance will be due. You don't get to choose when that day is. Do yourself a favor, kid, and bow out now. Use the money you've made as collateral and buy an avocado farm or go back to school and get into finger painting. Both suit you."

I thought about the little boy God told me to protect and I thought about all of my pain, inside and out. Had I been trying to ease it or had I been creating it?

A smile had crept across the face of the man in the lens.

"If you do decide to come to Madrid, though, you will be paying your fucking interest. Consider me an agent of your debtors and know that I aim to exact every red cent that you owe through your blood and agony. You want violence and pain? I will oblige. And there ain't a Buddha, a Bodhisattva, or a Bot-fucking-swana out there going to save your ass. It's time to pay your dues, kiddo. You seem the whimsical type, believing in messages from the universe and all that happy horeshit. Take this as a message from the universe, you granola fuck. Sometimes messages come from a feather and sometimes by a fucking two-by-four. At ReVival, I will be the righteous two-by-four of the universe."

Smoke dissipated from the cigarette as I stuffed it in the ashtray before looking at the camera. Another dead soldier. I motioned with a chop across the throat to cut the camera.

As I came back down to earth, I realized the vibration in my pocket wasn't just my kinetic energy. A text message. Who the fuck ever texted me? Nobody, that's who. Nobody had my number since I destroyed my phone before Culture Shock.

I pulled it out and opened the Messages app. You know that feeling you get when a cop gets behind you on the highway?

Boss Lady

Rob, I had a talk with Anna Daniels and we're both concerned. Coordinated for you to see a doctor ASAP. That was a nasty shot you took at ReVival 48.

Medical? That's never good when you abuse your body for a living. Even worse when you're pushing forty-five. Oh yeah, my birthday was right around the corner. Not all of us have the secret Ruskie fountain of youth. How many more of these texts did I have in me?

...

Probably not many.

...

I hadn't had many one-on-one interactions with LT, but I was pretty fucking sure she wasn't one to be kept waiting.

...

Heard.

The little white office with the little white paper over the little white exam table as impersonal. Sterile.

The doctor shot me question after question. Did I have headaches? No sir. Was in any pain? Not at all. How did your body feel? Better every day.

These fuckers, they had ended a whole lot of my friends' careers. The Reggie Rivid's and "Superfly" Jimmy Steele's of my past got too comfortable with one of these fuckers just to get a pink slip. What did they know about what I had sacrificed? I bled on the stinking concrete floors of everything from bingo halls to billion-dollar arenas. I was a fucking somebody who had cared about my friends I fought beside and the likes of every rival I ever had in a way people who ain't ever been in a fistfight couldn't understand.

And some cocksucker like this, someday, would summarize all that in a few words that would turn off the stage lights for good.

CTE. Paranoid schizophrenia. Danger to others. I had seen it happen to all of them.

So I lied.

Fuck em.

I gave him my blood, just like I had given to so many others, and let him take his little scans of my brain. He poked and prodded and shined his little light in my eye.

"Great, Mr. Rob. We will get you and Mrs. Troy the results by next Friday."

I caught my reflection in his eyes. I ain't gonna lie, I was worried about how the fuck this would all turn out, but I was pretty sure I had worked him.

The Devil would catch me one day, but it probably wouldn't be that day.

When I got back to the hostel, Little Sister was waiting for me. You could feel the sexual energy emanating off her. Felt like holding my hand over a stroked and bored small block three fifty. Heat and raw power.

"That was so hot, babe." Her southern drawl got me like a moth to a flame. "It was so hot that I think you earned your present. Take your shirt off and lay on the floor."

I've done ludicrous shit, but this was a stretch. Lay down on this floor, which has surely been the landing pad for a cultural melting pot of spooge? Come on now, get real.

"You want me to take off my shirt?"

"Mhm" She bit her lip.

"And lay down on the floor of this fucking hotel room?"

"I do." She smiled.

How could I say no?

The concrete floor was cold on my bare stomach. Believe me when I tell you that there ain't much shit I'd of rather done. But I would have followed that woman to the gates of hell to feel just a fleeting warmth from the sunshine of her love.

Behind me, she was rustling around with some shit. I assumed she was getting out some lotion, you know, a massage. Maybe she was going to get really freaky-deaky and put some handcuffs on me.

She began whistling the same tune God hummed to me. This time I pieced it together. Something in the Way.

"You ever heard of counter-stimulation?" She asked playfully.

This bitch stepped on me. Not like a Thai massage joint, either. She had put on stilettos, which were currently sunk into the bottom of my right trap.

"What the fu...," I tried to get out, but she leaned in, digging that even heel deeper in my skin.

"Nuh uh," She hissed.

"STOP!" My voice boomed, like yelling may relieve some of the pain.

"You're so disconnected from yourself, Robert. Of course you know what it is. It's all you do." Both heels were in play, digging into either of my lats. The pain raged through me. "It's the act of pain transfer. Simply put, creating new pain to distract yourself from old pain."

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?" My pain was at a fever pitch.

She snickered as she slid one of the heels down my spine, shifting her weight directly into my kidneys. Sounds escaped my lips that, from a lesser man, may have been called a whimper.

"You keep asking the wrong questions. You know who you are. You don't hate the pain, you're addicted to it. But you're weak." She laughed as she rocked back and forth, her weight alternatively going between my left kidney and right lat. Despite how fucking weird this was, I had to admire her balance.

It's amazing how elastic human skin can be.

"Stop being scared of what others might think if they knew you were such a freak. Burn down your idols of masculinity and stand before me naked and vulnerable, a good little boy who enjoys being under my heel. Surrender to me. You know you want to be my good little boy. Look at you, you could've thrown me off with ease, like a child batting away a gnat. But you won't, will you?"

She was right. Not just about tossing her hundred-twenty pound ass off me, but about it all. I may not have picked this weird ass shit as the conduit to get here, but she was fucking right. I was too scared of what others might think  even to consider something like this STILL. Despite all of the experiences over the last year: the Father, meeting God, being crucified, I still hadn't fully surrendered. Shackled in the bondage of fear and insecurity. Every time God tried to take my defects away I held on to some, like a selfish child. You can have those that hurt me in a way I don't like, but not these.

I still had not accepted that surrender was the way of strength.

My chest expanded with a deep breath and, as I exhaled it out slowly, my body began to relax into whatever the fuck this was.

"That's a good boy. Now the fun begins."

Only Nixon could go to China.

Over the next two hours, she put me through some changes, sort of like a Waring blender. I surrendered to her completely. Stripped free of my insecurities, I was hers, and she lovingly guided me through the threshold to a new freedom. All of the critics and marks could kiss my fucking ass. I experienced a vulnerability and intimacy that I had never known through the only language I'd ever understood: pain.

When she decided we were done she pulled me to my knees by my hair and gave me the type of kiss men fight wars over. I grabbed my pack of Camels and my Zippo. Hell, I'd had a lot of sex worse than whatever that was.

"Go wash up." She instructed.

I made my way to the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face and throwing another twenty milligrams back. As I raised my head, I finally looked into the eyes of the man in the glass.

The Father smiled back at me.

"Burn the ships." He whispered.

FIN