Post by strat on Aug 29, 2022 22:07:05 GMT -5
Prelude
May 23rd 2022
Prior to EXP 25
“ How soon? ” Demi had asked, as I leaned over her.
“ Immediately. ” Came the response, tersely. He seemed more than a little vexed when we had gone through the list of new arrivals in Level Up following the closing of FIGHT! NYC.
A collective of his faithful all congregating in one place was one thing, but he couldn’t put his finger on why she was following them. He couldn’t place a reason, a motive.
But I knew. She was dangling a maggot on a hook, hoping she’d catch a fish.
But little did she know, this shark was hungry and she’d end up losing not only her rod, but half her arm too. If she was lucky.
The pixelated person on the other end of the Zoom call was quick on his feet though, and not wanting to let on that it’d taken him by surprise, changed the topic.
“ I think it would be a good idea to engage your guy Flanagan again, see what he knows about the champions in that place. You never know when good information will prove priceless. ”
He was right. I nod in affirmation, but Demi is pressing her hand deep into my wrist.
“ And about the Guano problem, make sure there’s an opportunity. ”
Before the smile had finished forming on his lips, Demi had pressed the laptop closed.
The Human Condition
—
“Because the actor always moves among and in relation to other acting beings, he is never merely a "doer" but always and at the same time a sufferer. To do and to suffer are like opposite sides of the same coin, and the story that an act starts is composed of its consequent deeds and sufferings. These consequences are boundless, because action, though it may proceed from nowhere, so to speak, acts into a medium where every reaction becomes a chain reaction and where every process is the cause of new processes”
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
—
You could say that anger is sadness in fight-mode.
You could say that anger is the plight of a man that is incapable of controlling the variables around him.
Anger is the fuel that feeds conflict where simple discourse would normally correct the course.
Anger is the result of a flawed person. A person that has succumbed to the overwhelming nature of the circumstances that have been presented to them. It happens to almost everybody, from time to time. It is quite natural. But after a fit of anger, there are often times a period of regret. A period of wondering whether you could have handled things differently or taken a more patient approach before reacting.
Anger comes from the type of person that is not secure in themselves, that doesn’t believe in the lies they tell themselves in the mirror as they rush through a feeble attempt to brush their teeth and put on their face for the day to come.
It comes from the type of person who is always looking over their shoulder with a persecution complex, wondering when or where the next barrage is coming from. Instead of dealing with a situation as it comes, they are constantly bracing for the impact. Forever in a state of fight or flight and primed and ready to explode at a moment’s notice.
Often they are damaged people, they have been burned one too many times before. It is rational, understandable, justifiable. Sometimes all it takes is a little touchpaper. A small, somewhat insignificant spark that can set them on a path that they may never be able to walk back, burning every bridge and road in their wake.
It can stem from the simplest or the most unexpected of places, but often times the most effective place is the one closest to the heart. A significant other, a parent, a child. A sister.
Dishonesty is a big driver. There is not much in this world that tends to wreak havoc on your mood and therefore anger more than dishonesty and injustice. Planting seeds of doubt, having people who you believed trusted you beyond all else questioning you is surefire.
Jealousy can tear apart your psyche and make you question everything about yourself. You’re not a jealous person, so why do you feel this way? You want to withdraw, reassess, regroup. Everything you ever knew to be true, or thought to be true, is now up for the taking.
This is part of the Human Condition.
The endless cycle of suffering, death and rebirth on the path to liberation.
It takes a long time of self-discovery, meditation and the right people to guide you before you can take the leap of faith and submit completely to trust. To eschew all of the outside voices, and to allow yourself to be entirely vulnerable in all of your glory and sin. The good and the bad.
At one time I thought my emotional scars were as a net that promised to drown me in briny depths. No more.
To be emotionally open, to choose not to withdraw and shut yourself off from the people you love, is bravery. It is the coward’s way to stifle and squash those feelings down, to proceed with the stiff upper lip and act as though all is well until one day it boils over and you can contain it no longer. It explodes. That is when catastrophe happens.
Now I stand on the rock and those scars become bright sparks in the sunlight, golden fireworks giving light back into the dawn. Lowering your shield is brave, and necessary. And scary. We cannot step out of our own cage until we are willing to unlock the door.
You have to trust the one you love, otherwise do you even have anything at all?
The root of all relationships is trust, break that and you lose everything that grew from it.
Love is trust and trust is love.
Love isn't a throwaway emotion, something to invoke on a whim. It isn't transitory like lust or something to regret like anger. When love is allowed to permeate every action, influence every thought, guide every deed, it leads to an inner peace not attainable any other way. It is the light in every dark night, shining brightly into each recess of the mind.
In the years that I have spent searching for answers, trust is the one that has served me most effectively. When you give yourself entirely to somebody else, there is nothing that anybody can say or do that makes you question them or yourself. There is no ‘gotcha’ moment, no moment where it feels like the floor was taken from beneath your feet.
There is no jealousy or anger, or a descent of emotion so overwhelming that your instinctual brain overrides your rational one and you do something you will regret…
Breath Control
•─────⋅☾ ✧ ☽⋅─────•
It's been fine so far, but after a while
I want more than a soft style
I want some slashes
To go with those long eyelashes
•─────⋅☾ ✧ ☽⋅─────•
He smiles at me, in that way he always does. Broad, unbridled, almost childlike. His long, slender tattooed fingers trace carefully across the ornately decorated ebony nurizaya sheath which stands proudly on the mahogany mantel that frames our fireplace.
His body is perpendicular to the mantel, giving me a perfect profile of his toned and tattooed torso. His left hand hangs by his side, prone, and he returns his focus to the prized artefact which is carefully lifted from its mounting bracket.
A little crackle punctuates the silence as fire licks up against fresh and unblemished wood, followed by several more crackles. Part of the wood pile had given way, had succumbed to its inevitable demise, had lost all of its structural integrity and crumbled to dust. A once-grand subject that has in its lifetime swayed among the clouds and reached into heaven itself had been reduced to a pitiful pile of ash. Replaced immediately and without hesitation by another of its dead arboreal siblings, hungrily consumed by the insatiable and indiscriminate flames.
“ Step out of the cage, darling. ” I gaze up at him as he stands over me now. A figure of dominance. My eyes track his as he scans my naked body slowly and deliberately, as if sizing me up.
His thumb brushes over the embossed dragon standing rampant with its wings outstretched on the hilt of the blade. If I didn’t know him better, I would perhaps say that he is hesitating. But he isn’t. He is savoring. The rush of what is to come, the anticipation, suspense. It is so quiet that I’m certain he can hear the heart throbbing in my chest, the tempo of which has dramatically shifted from its steady metronome to a crescending vibrato, and I want him to.
I want him to feel the same intoxication that washes over me. One solitary touch, the feel of his breath on my nape, it’s all it takes. I’m under his spell. His scent alone sends me into a heady trance, one that doesn’t end until we are still once more.
His hands are cold, as he presses his fingertips into my shoulder. His little finger rests almost on my carotid and I know he can feel my pulse racing. I follow his movements as he steadies his focus on me. He says more with his eyes than he ever could with his lips, he is more to me than he could ever know but less than he will become. Of that I’m sure. Emotions swim in those green eyes like a heavenly elixir. He is not afraid to show everything of his desire, his fear, trepidation and joy. He has given himself to me in ways that I could never have expected, and I to him the same. Our souls co-mingled and moving in lockstep.
Subtly, I can hear the sheath of the blade being withdrawn. It is not within my range of vision but I can imagine in my mind the pointed tip, the distinct groove that wove along the body of the priceless Japanese dagger that a monk had presented to him in a monastery near to Tokyo.
First, I feel his breath as he edges closer to me. Then I feel his body as he presses against me. Finally, the cold tamahagane steel briefly brushes up against my thigh before being withdrawn.
Efficiency would be contrary to what he’s looking for. This is as much about the anticipation as it is the act itself. I feel the blade press into the small of my back, the flat of it crossing my spine above my waist. I arch upwards instinctively, but he forces me down firmly and cocks his head to the side.
As my body heat transfers to the dagger and its touch becomes less pronounced, he withdraws it. The cold breeze from the evening air kisses against my naked flesh, exposed again as he disconnects and stands over me.
“ Close your eyes. ” He asks, rhetorically.
They say when one sense shuts down, your others ramp up in sensitivity as some attempt at compensating for what is lost. Typically, you hear about blind people with supernatural hearing or deaf people having an uncanny ability to see things that others can’t. But what you don’t often hear about is that this sensation occurs not only in people with a permanent impairment.
The blade runs across my collarbone, and sends a shiver rattling through me. The skin is so thin and sensitive and it ends almost as soon as it starts. It is difficult to tell whether it was the sharp or the dull side of the blade, and whether the feeling is the skin being broken, or the anticipation playing tricks on me.
Everything within my rational mind tells me to open my eyes, to see what is coming. Fighting the instinctual urge just serves to ramp up the tension. Why do I need to open my eyes? Am I afraid of what is to come? A blade so sharp it could slice an atomic particle being pressed into your skin may be intimidating, if you do not fully and entirely trust the person wielding it.
I gasp as I feel him between my legs. It takes me by surprise as I feel his lips and then his teeth tugging at a small pinch of my inner thigh. My body shifts beneath him. His lips are electric, they must be, for wherever they touch my skin tingles in a frenzy of static. As his mouth moves over my skin my body has a transitory paralysis, my mind unable to process the pleasure so fast.
“ Stop, ” I gasp, “ No. Don’t stop. ”
I grip him by the back of his head, my fingers laced between the rolling black locks of his hair and clasped around his skull. And just as quick as it happened, he pulls away, leaving me separated from him, desperate for him.
Without needing to open my eyes, I can feel the grin growing across his mouth. He lets out the quietest telltale exhalation. I’m restless, squirming and waiting for the next salvo.
“ Relax. Don’t move. ” He says softly, but firmly, and I know that my safety relies on my compliance, and so I abide - difficult as it may be.
The cold steel returns, this time at the bottom of my ribcage. Bump by bump, the blade travels up towards my breasts, until he angles the blade and I can feel the point of it pressing into my skin, into my sternum bone.
“ Control your breath. ”
He’s moving closer to me again, if I had to guess, I would say he was mere millimeters from me. I can feel his breath, it's beginning to labor. It is the only sound in the room, the only sound in the world at that moment, until it is interrupted by the epidermis popping as the pressure on the blade forces it to pierce through my skin.
A solitary droplet of blood surfaces through the punctured skin, pooling around the tip of the dagger and blemishing it. I feel it as it emerges, and as it rolls down my diaphragm toward my stomach.
“ Blood is thicker than water. ” Stephen whispers into my ear.
I am strong, and opinionated. I can stand alone and I can fight for my beliefs. A long time ago, ties to our family were severed for one reason or another. Life is a trepidacious path, and sometimes you find your comfort in unexpected places. In Stephen Stratford, I found somebody who gave me the space to be true to myself. He loves me, and supports me, and nurtures all of the pieces of me that make me flourish. He is there when the sun gives way to the stars and when it returns to reignite the colours of the daytime. Together we are each other’s safe haven in any storm. There is an openness and a vulnerability that allows us to truly know and trust one another.
When he says ‘blood is thicker than water’, he doesn’t mean what you think he means.
The full quote is “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”. And to each other we will always be bonded eternally, and unbreakable, no matter the storm.
I feel my back arch in anticipation, knowing where this leads. My head rocks back against the pillow as he makes his move, the first moan escaping my lips.
•─────⋅☾ ✧ ☽⋅─────•
I sat astride his chest
It's just a thrill, he said
As he relaxed on the dark, dark bed
it's just breath control
•─────⋅☾ ✧ ☽⋅─────•
Commitment
—
“If you do not control the enemy, the enemy will control you.”
Miyamoto Musashi
—
A nondescript suburban house sat among a row of identical nondescript suburban houses, differentiated by their whimsical choices in mailboxes that decorate the top of their driveway and not a lot else. The house in focus, though, was differentiated by the fact that a man stood at its door. A man who quite clearly did not belong.
His long black hair was perfectly straight and came to his middle-back, he was talk and his height was exaggerated by his platform leather boots which punctuated his shiny PVC pants that fitted perfectly to his form. It was difficult to make out what he wore on his upper body due to the angle at which he was standing and his hair obscuring it.
The sound of the doorbell being rung echoes as the man’s pale white hand reaches up and presses the button. With a subtle creak, the door swings open and a middle-aged man with grey hair answers the door. Fighting his instinct to be visibly shocked, the gentleman tries to avoid eye contact with the man on his doorstep.
“ How can I help ya? ” He hung at the end of his sentence, unsure whether to append a pronoun such as ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’, and so in the end erred on the side of caution and went with neither.
“ We need to talk about Katie. She is your daughter, sir? ” came the response.
We cut to a high angle shot, as if from a distance, of Stephen Stratford straddling a dilapidated plastic foldaway chair. It has some evidence that at a time in its history it may’ve been white, though now it was mostly stained by the sand and dust that wafted aimlessly at the behest of the coastal breeze that swept through from time to time.
Not much else happened up here, and that was by design. Because Jimmy Flanagan was a quiet and private man. He looked like any homeless man you may come across in New Orleans, or rather, he wouldn’t look out of place. You wouldn’t know who he was or what he did unless you had reason to.
His lips held on to a spent cigarette far longer than was necessary, and he cursed to himself as the hot ash dropped from the end of it and onto his knuckle. It wasn’t so much the heat that bothered him - his skin was practically leather - but the mess it made of the documents that he only made one copy of.
“ Now, here’s the juice. ” His voice is a lot more lively in person than it is over the telephone. A hint of an Irish accent lies somewhere in the recess of his speech pattern, and the energy level grows when he has something of note to share.
“ Back in the day, Goode managed to kinda go off the rails, lost his marbles a wee bit. ”
The shot fades out from the disused gas station and Jimmy Flanagan explaining his findings in more detail, and back to suburbia somewhere deep in the heart of Memphis. This time the man was much younger, but the person at the door was the same. His porcelain hand pushed his hair behind his ear, and from the over-the-shoulder camera shot you could see his large spacers in his ear lobes.
“ The man living with your son is a dangerous man. ” said the man with his back to the camera, his voice a different cadence to how it had been when he was speaking to the elder man in the other house.
“ What in God’s name are you talkin’ about, bro? ” This guy seemed more agitated by the imposition than anything, sizing up the person standing in front of him.
“ Oh, I was in the institution with him after he was committed. Guy’s a violent maniac. Totally bipolar! Eventually we had to be separated because he kept going on these rampages… ”
The voice trails off as the visual returns to the disused parking lot in New Orleans. Jimmy Flanagan is pacing back and forth as he recounts a tale. This time, he has a plastic cup filled with warm orange juice placed between his middle finger and thumb whilst also pinching a fresh cigarette between his index and middle finger on the same hand. He’s waving the juice around a little as he gesticulates, and then pauses momentarily to dip his free hand into his juice to try to fish out a flake of ash that had found its way in.
“ Anyway, so he was 51/50’d. Think it was just a quick hold, not much other documentation on it. But if I know you, I’m sure you’re going to find a way to leverage it. ”
Stephen smiles, stretching out his heavily tattooed right hand and offering to shake Jimmy’s. Jimmy raises his hands up, a reminder that he doesn’t do direct human contact unless he has paid for it.
We are looking at a third house, but the occupant of this one is more familiar than the last two. This is the significant other of Eli Goode, Katie. Her son hovers in her wake, a few feet beyond the boundary of the house, almost as though he would be his mother’s protector. As if somebody had told him that ‘he is the man of the house’ when Eli or his dad are out.
“ I hear what you are saying, I am just not sure if I have any reason to believe a word that comes out of your mouth. Why? Why do you care? ” She attempts to reason with the man.
At first he doesn’t respond, almost as though he’s waiting for her to run out of steam.
“ I have a neighbour over the road who is absolutely batshit crazy and nobody’s knocking for them to warn them. Who are who? What do you want with Eli? ” Her voice was cracking more frequently as she got more and more worked up over the situation.
His head tilted to the side, empathetically.
“ Oh, I am so sorry. I’m not here for his benefit. I’m here for yours. I was in a relationship with somebody who was mentally ill, for a long time. It completely destroyed me. So much so that I dedicated my life to working to improve mental health care in the state. ”
And so came the story, of how he was an innocent bystander, but had seen this violent reckless man manage to convince psychologists that he was perfectly okay and that they could lift his mental hold, and how he’d been water-coolering with his buddy who is a parole officer and had heard he was in a new relationship.
“ The truth is, I have seen first hand the cost of inaction. The bystander effect, where people do nothing because they hope that somebody else will put themselves on the line first. I have seen what happens when somebody with such a dark soul is able to latch onto somebody and suck the life right out of them. ”
And then the coup de grace.
“ And what with your son so young and impressionable.. ” He peers over Katie’s shoulder and makes eye contact with Will. “ Does he like wrestling? I saw that Eli went back to doing that. Could I show him some of these dolls? I bought them for my nephew. Anyway, yes, with a little guy like that around, I just don’t want to see another tragedy.. ”
As the scene fades out, Katie seems to look relieved. She opens her body language right up and as the camera fades more and more to black, we see Will under her arm excitedly looking at what the man at the door is showing him.
Then, from the darkness, Stephen Stratford’s voice echoes distantly.
“ Yeah, it's possible that by the time the bell rings, he will be in a cell. Either a padded one or a jail one. I know exactly what to do. ”
Blind Pilots
The thing with Eli Goode is that he struggles with his mentality and it is something that I am seeing in people in the industry more and more frequently.
And yet, it always strikes me as somewhat surprising. As though I expect better from people, because it feels somewhat jarring to comprehend that athletes who have managed to make it to the top of this industry, or thereabouts (I’m looking at you, Paul Montuori), have done so with such a fragile mindset.
I don’t know if it speaks to their capability in the technical sense, or whether it speaks to good fortune or bad opposition. I guess in some cases it could be any combination of the three factors.
When I look at the juxtaposition of Chelsea Skye and Amber Payne, the one who wouldn’t give up despite being comically outclassed versus the one who collapsed mentally despite having so much promise, I know that the dog in Amber’s heart will take her far beyond any ceiling Chelsea can carve out for herself.
I think about Paul Montuori and the trajectory his career has taken since coming to Level Up, the nosedive, and it saddens me. He is the kind of person I want to push and drive to do better and be better because a high tide should raise all ships, and because whether I like it or not, he will be forever tied to me and my legacy. I don’t want to pity him, but it feels like that is what he wants people to do.
In his lifetime, Paul Montuori was brilliant. But at this moment, he is a ghost, passing through the walls aimlessly without purpose.
He can’t step up or step into the light from the shadow he’s been hiding in, but me? I did. I can. I have. I extinguished the light and made a sun of my own. The shadows I was obscured by are now black holes. Lost and aren’t coming back. Not now, not ever. A full eclipse. Species extinction.
When I think about Eli Goode, and what happened with Brody Adams, and how he has come to terms with it in the time since, it speaks to the brittle nature of his personality. You see glimpses of an animal bubbling beneath the surface, behind this veneer of being a generic and unremarkable nice guy that somehow manages to get through adversity. How he reacted when Mac Bane fought alongside The Game Changers at DOOM. Don’t think I didn’t notice, I see everything.
It’s a farce, a lie, a mask.
Every now and again, the mask slips a little and we see behind it the putrid little monster that’s buried despite his efforts to let everyone know what a wonderful and fitting champion he is. He seems stuck in this mindset that he must portray the spirit of the Courage Championship that he so proudly wears.
That he was fortunate to obtain, by the way.
He struggles with himself and his identity, he sees himself in one way but consistently finds it difficult to live up to his own expectations of what he should be.
He does everything in his power to restrict and regulate his emotions, because he knows that when he lets loose, it ends in catastrophe. Look at what became of Brody Adams… He paid the price because Eli couldn’t keep it together. Yet still, Eli was quick to move on. The soil wasn’t yet settled on the grave of his Multiplayer Championship reign and he was already conquering his next challenge.
How much of himself does he sacrifice to maintain his facade? Can he maintain his facade, keep himself in check, and deliver when it feels like everything is crashing down around him?
It doesn’t look like poor Katie is terribly pleased by some of the things she has heard about him recently, so I question whether he can separate himself from his feelings and fight strategically? Or is he going to come in with rage in his heart and swing for the bleachers?
You might wonder why somebody may have incited him into such a state. Well, you know what they say about anger.
It’s a fire that burns hot and dies fast. It comes with a hangover and plenty of regret because often you act impulsively and people can much more easily predict impulses. It is the calculated decisions that are far less trivial to plan for.
It isn’t necessarily about using underhanded tactics to win a match that I’d perhaps otherwise lose, more so it is about continuing to stack the deck in your favor as much as possible.
It wouldn’t make sense to do less than everything in preparation.
Whilst he is picking up the pieces, his focus has shifted away from the primary task at hand.
Such is the flaw in his mentality that it can be exploited.
The thing that these two men have in common is that they repeat the same mistakes. They look outward for excuses rather than reflect inwards and make change.
Self honesty is the key to learning how to become a better person, a better student of the universe and creator. Only when you can see yourself as you truly are can you begin to change your fate. All the mindfulness in the world won't help you unless you are willing to see your own flaws, so have the Courage to see them.
Name your demons, take accountability for yourself. Feeling sorry for yourself and blaming other people is not going to turn your fortune around, nor is it going to stop you repeating the same mistakes.
You have to understand that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes. You have to understand that you are not blameless in every aspect of conflict in your life. You close yourself off, you isolate yourself, you shut people out and hope that the problem goes away. And perhaps you can convince yourself of it for a time, but in the end it finds its way free. It worms itself out from under the buried corpses in the yard and all of a sudden you find out you’re powerless to resist.
And the whole time it’s been eating you alive. Little bit little, piece by piece.
You look at yourself in the mirror and question whether you even know yourself anymore, and then the penny drops. It isn’t Katie’s fault. It isn’t anybody’s fault but the blind pilot trying to land the hijacked plane of your pitiful existence.