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Chapter 2
It's different from the way it used to be. Before I could describe it as pretending, acting, putting on a certain face and mindset, but it's getting to be more. I sit in the locker room pushing my black elbow pad up my arm. I battle with him tonight. I'm in Kane mode but more is going on. He's tries to push me out of the way so I'm not even involved in this. Luckily, I am a strong guy and I'm able to ward him off. The problem is, I shouldn't have to ward him off, he doesn't exist. He is no more than a created fictional gimmick. He would do good to remember his place. I inhale deeply, instead of smelling mildew, sweat, and Randy Orton's spray on deodorant which he so bountifully slathered on earlier, I start to smell things burning. There's no fire, the fire along with Kane is fictional. Why must I keep hammering this into my own stubborn skull?
"'Ey, you okay mate?" Paul Burchill looks down at me. I guess he see's something telling on my face. I mask my worries and joke.
"I was raised by Paul Bearer in a mental institution, why would you insinuate that I am anything other than normal?" I say not in Kane talk but just plainly, kidding with the guy. He laughs and mops his face with a towel. He drops the subject.
I walk out to the ring to my familiar music. I tilt my head down slightly to convey a sort of 'serial killer psycho' look, I pull my lips back into a grimace, my eyes glare out form under my heavy brow as I approach the ring. I climb in and look around at the fans before dropping my arms and signaling four simultaneous bursts of fire from each turnbuckle. Ah, fire, I love it and I hate it. Why did I just think that? I ask myself this question mentally while keeping Kane intact. When I am in the ring I have to morph into him. I have to move like him, deliberate, slow, heavy, hard, I have to look like him, I have to feel the emotions he feels when he looks into the eyes of an opponent, I must think the way he thinks about destruction, revenge, pain, suffering. My opponent tonight is a small man but unlike Kane he is quick as a flash and he can fly clear over my head if he wants too. It's Rey Mysterio whose mask I had stuffed in a burlap back until a few weeks ago when Adamle beseeched me to bear its contents. The story line had that he assumed it was Kane's mask and he gave a little speech about how Kane could live as a normal man if he chose to. Is he alive, or is he dead? The thought somehow causes a chill to race up and down my spine. I have to resist the urge to shudder and keep my composure as I glower at the unmasked Mysterio.
One man has the upper hand, now the other, the basics usually remain the same, the footwork just changes. Right now it's Mysterio who dominates, he's got me off my feet and I'm over the second rope looking dazed as I wait for him to do his 619. Here it comes, I fall back onto the matt and roll around and pant a bit. Some sweat runs into my eye with the baby blue contact in it and it stings. It stings like fire. Stop thinking about it! I remember I'm supposed to get up and catch him as he does a move from the turnbuckle. I nearly screw the thing up, but I manage to seize him in my arms as he flies and I slam him down to the matt. Now it's his turn to buck around and groan all injured like. I cover him but he gets his shoulder up. Eventually Kane's anger and frustration builds up and as we rehearsed before I go to the outside of the ring and get a chair. I push the chair under the bottom rope and slide back into the ring only to get a swift kick in the temple from Mysterio's boot. I get to my knee's a bit stunned and hold the chair in front of me. I shake my head viciously as though I am trying to clear stars away. He comes toward me again and I stand to my feet and bring the chair down smack into his head. In this endeavor I am successful because the chair puts a stop to his plans and floors him. I straddle his form, and I laugh manically in Kane's "I'm off my rocker and I love it" laugh. He holds his head and rolls around, I bring the chair down again and again. His arms are in the way so I don't literally bash his brains out but it still looks good. The ref signals madly to ring the bell and the cling-cling-cling signals that I—that Kane—is disqualified.
I give a few last chair shots and then stand to my feet and look out at the crowd, some boo and some cheer. I continue to laugh and rant around the ring a bit.
After the match I try to tuck Kane back away into the little pocket of my mind that is supposed to hold him. I grab things out of my locker and head to the showers. It feels good to let the cool water pour over my hot body and wash the slime and grime away. I cough a bit as I can smell that Orton has once again doused himself in fumes.
"Your crap, Randy Orton, is gonna give Santino Marella the caner of the lungs!" I hear Anthony Carelli, aka Santino Marella, say to Orton from the other part of the locker room. "I'm-a, how you say, going to blow this stand of the popsicles! I-a gotta go have the smoke with Joe the Camel! All of you can stay in here and inhale these-a deathly toxins!" He says in his put on battered English and I can hear some laughter. He portrays Santino as a joke but he's a real decent guy outside of the ring. I towel off and change into jeans and a Ron Paul Revolution shirt. Now, I am Glen. I feel much better. I head out into the other part of the room and Phil Brooks, John Cena, and Dave Batista head into the showers. They chat to one another all buddy-buddy.
"Phil, don't drop the soap!" I call over my shoulder as I toss my towel into a bin.
"I'll get him anyway!" Cena calls back and the laughter of the three men drifts out from the spraying showers and into the emptying locker room. I head out and find someone catching up with me. I turn to find John Layfield.
"Hey Glen, me and Vince, Darren, and Jerry are heading out. We're going to go get some barbeque and beer. Why don't you come along?"
Hmm…a night out with JBL, McMahon, William Regal, and Jerry Lawler…barbeque and beer does sound pretty good. I shrug.
"Sure, I'd love to."
John and I head out to the parking garage where we both have our rental cars parked. We part ways only soon to be together again at a place called "The Q". It smells wonderful inside, all you have to do is take a wiff of the air and you can basically taste the barbeque. My mouth begins to water. We do have a pretty good time and I'm glad I came. This is a lot better than holing myself up in my hotel room, missing Jen, and thinking of him which was my original plan for the evening. Darren jokes that he'd rather have a fine cup of tea than a pitcher of American beer. Funny thing is, he's drank enough of it, despite his insistence that he despises it. Lawler wipes some barbeque from his lips and licks his fingers. A drop falls from his thumb and lands on the Brown's jersey his is wearing.
"This is good, but it still doesn't compare to JR's, now there's some barbeque!" He declares.
"Oklahoma barbeque." John puts in taking a big bite of his pulled pork sandwich. Half of the saucy meat falls out the behind of his bun as he chomps down.
"Mmm…" Vince mumbles thoroughly enjoying himself.
We joke and talk about anything and everything other than wrestling. It's kind of an unwritten rule that when we are not on the job we try to steer kind of clear of the topic. We do have lives outside of wrestling. Vince is the only one that tends to veer over into that territory. I think he forgets sometimes to have a few things in life that don't involve WWE.
"Oh, look over there…crumpet!" Darren leans back in his chair and eyes a busty blonde bending over the bar.
"You're married." I remind him.
"Glen, what's your point?" Vince asks in his usual gruff voice. He raises his eyebrows as though he sees absolutely no value in what I have just said.
"I'm not!" Jerry grins over at the blonde and waves a hand at her. She gives him a coy little smile and covers her jeweled lips in a giggle. "Ah, I love puppies!"
"Humans, vile creatures, they disgust me!" Darren says putting on his upper-crust William Regal voice.
"Darren…if she disgusts you then you need some serious help!" John leans over Jerry and winks at the babe.
"Hey!" Jerry scolds. "She's mine!"
"You've got a little…" I brush my finger at the corner of my mouth, indicating to Layfeild that he has some sauce on his face. He grabs a napkin and scrubs at it.
"Well, wish me luck boys." Jerry says smugly and rises from his chair and tugs up his pants. "Watch The King in action."
"She wont want you, she wants a real man…a Mc-Mahon!" Vince reasons proudly.
"I have a way with the ladies." Jerry reassures him.
He waltzes over to the young woman. We watch intently as he has a rather brief conversation with her before she blows him off. He slinks back to the table dejectedly and plops down into his chair. He grabs his mug and drains it and then grumbles that he needs another.
"Aw, I'm sorry buddy." Vince smirks.
"Lawler, don't you know most women don't want to go to bed with a guy who's three times her senior?" I tease him and John and Darren snort laughter. Vince makes his large nose vanish into his beer mug. Jerry glares at me good naturedly and throws a French fry in my general direction. It lands with a plop in my half-empty mug. "Now you've done it, you went and ruined my beer!" I slide my thumb across my throat and grimace evilly at him, an action I usually perform only when I'm—when Kane—is double teaming with The Undertaker. Jerry feigns fear and starts to whine and beg for me to spare his life. Darren shakes his head at us and John brays like a donkey and slaps his hand onto the table which makes his plate rattle. The bombshell saunters over to us and leans over the table so we can catch an eyeful of her colossal cleavage. I avert my glance and try to think of my wife, the lovely Jenna. The other four keep on gazing in an awestruck manner, like a bunch of deer caught in headlights. As much as we all hang around the diva's you think they'd get used to seeing boobs by now. Still, they act like school boys. I think that Jerry is about to leak slobber from his mouth and Vince is going to get a fly buzzing around in his if he doesn't close it.
"I heard that John Cena, Randy Orton, and Batista are over at the club across the street. I think I'll go check it—and them—out." She giggles and her glittering eyes dance around to Darren, then to John, then to Jerry, then to Vince and finally they land on me before she leaves. The four hound dogs turn in unison to watch her scantily clad behind bob and bounce out of sight.
"Cold water!" Jerry squeaks.
"How about warm beer with a side of potato?" I say as I pretend that I'm going to dump my defiled beer over his head.
"Now, now, now!" He warns and we all have a few more chuckles.
I head back to my hotel room with a tipsy Lawler stumbling around after me and Layfield walking along beside me. He's pats a hand to his chest and burps with indigestion. The three of us take the elevator up. We have the same hotel and by chance our rooms are all on the same level. John and I deposit Jerry at his room and he fumbles with his card trying to open the door.
"Damn it, damn thing just…damn it!" He slurs hopelessly. I take the card from him and turn it around and open his door. He looks at me a bit befuddled. "Thanks…"
John and I head down to our rooms which are across from one another.
"Aw, man, this stuff is wicked! I need some Tums or something." He says with a belch.
"I think I may have some in my suitcase." I open my door and he follows me in. I go to the bed where my suitcase is sitting and flip it open and rummage around a bit. "Think fast!" I toss him a pack of Rolaids. He peels back the wrapper and pops one of the tablets into his mouth.
"Thanks, Glen." He lays the Rolaids on my t.v. and turns to go.
"Hey wait a minute John…I wanted to talk to you if you have the time."
He shrugs and sits his large frame on the side of my bed. I shut my suitcase and move it over to the table and join him. I'm going to feel really silly for bringing this up. Maybe I should let it go.
"This tastes awful, it's like sucking on chalk."
"Yeah. They're pretty bad." I look down at my hands which are fidgeting nervously in my lap.
"So, you're still for Ron Paul huh?"
"Yeah, I am. I'm really not wanting to talk about politics though." I clear my throat a bit and hope he's not going to think I'm a weird-o. "Okay, do you ever find yourself being JBL outside of the ring?"
He pauses rolling the medicine around in his mouth. He shrugs his wide shoulders up and down.
"Eh, you mean like tonight when you pretending you were going to chokeslam Jerr?"
"No, I don't mean fooling around I mean," I stop to try to figure out how to say this. John gives a look that conveys a certain bit of concern. I guess it's not hard to tell I'm struggling with this. "Does your character sometimes asserts itself where it doesn't belong?"
"Oh." He pauses again. I don't like the way he's looking at me, and I don't like the silence that's building and hanging between us. This is going over like a lead baloon, to use worn expression.
"I'm not going into crazy fits or anything like that, don't get me wrong." I should have kept my mouth locked up. I should have bolted my lips together, now this is awkward and I can feel my nerves start to rattle.
"You're just saying that, uh, you find yourself…acting like Kane sometimes?"
"No! Just never mind!" For some reason I feel my temper become a short fuse. That is total opposite of me. Normally I am very slow to anger and my wife calls me her big teddy bear. I look down into my lap again and see my hands ball into tight fists. I can feel my brows bunch up in an irritated scowl.
"Glen, don't get upset. It's okay, I really don't think it's a big deal at all. I bet you've just been working too much lately and so…y'know you're "Kane" a lot and it kind of..carries over once in a while. I kind of know what you mean. Sometimes when I get in a really pissy mood and act like an asshole my wife says "Well, aren't we JBL today", yeah she does, I can hear her right now."
He's trying to comfort me or offer me some sort of assurance but it sounds fakey and it is not the same at all and it just makes my hackles raise more.
"JBL just get out of here, don't make up shit to me!" It burst out of me own it's own accord, a harsh, uncalled for bellow.
He looks stunned. For one I called him by his ring name and for two I just growled at him like a wolf ready to attack…and bite, and tear, and feel blood spray…what? I shake my head trying to come to myself. John has stood up and he's looking down at me kind of holding his hands in front of him warily.
"I'll catch you later Glen." He hurries a bit and bumps into the dresser jarring the t.v. from its place.
"John, hey, I'm sorry…I don't know what came over me, I'm just tired." I try to explain my actions away. I feel really horrible at what has just transpired. I look up at him hoping he will forgive me and push this scene from his mind. He puts his hands up again in a sign that says everything is okay.
"Naw, don't worry about it. Catch you later." He leaves me alone to myself. Or am I really alone? It gives me the heebie-jeebies to think of something that bizarre. My skin crawls and I will these bad vibes to flee. We live in the real world not in sci-fi land! I fall back onto my bed and close my eyes. Go Away! Did I say that, or did Kane?
Don't forget to review please and thanks…or I may chokeslam you bwa ha ha.