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>Real Talk
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The scene opens with Jaycee sitting in a chair in the center of the room. The lighting is dim, but not low enough that the viewers can’t see the dire state of everything around him. Countless empty bottles line just about every single surface. The bed behind him looks to be standing on only three posts, and is so droopy on one side that there is no way that it was comfortable to sleep on. Jaycee was just as disheveled as everything around him. His beard had started to grow unevenly, likely from an attempt to trim it that he only got halfway through before losing interest. The Jet City shirt that he was wearing was so wrinkled that it looked like he had picked it off the top of a pile on the floor before throwing it on. For those that were hoping that he may have turned a corner after hearing what Ben Jordan had to say about him, it was a disappointing sight. After taking a deep breath, and letting it out slowly, Jaycee’s eyes opened and it looked directly into the lens of the camera propped up in front of him.
”It’s not like I don’t hear what you people are saying…”
There wasn’t any hint of the confidence that had made him one of the most impressive additions to Sin City last year. His voice breaks halfway through the sentence; a sure sign of the abuse he has put it through in the last months. He had gotten his wish to be brought back on television following his appearance at Summer XXXtreme, and because of that, his downward spiral had been streamed out for the whole world to see.
”It’s not like I don’t want to be the guy that you all want me to be.”
The statement would probably be a whole lot more believable if it sounded like even Jaycee thought it was the truth.
”Everyone makes it sound so easy, ya know? It sounds like it should be, right? I mean all I gotta do is show up to Jet City during the week and put the work in ahead of time. It is not like that shit is hard. They got like ten trainers there, and all of them have been successful in this business. There is always some class going on. There is always something new to learn that some old timer is down there trying to pass on to the next generation. I mean I am only ever one text away from being inside a state-of-the-art gym with some of the best to ever step into a ring. How many people can say that they have that at their fingertips? How much easier do I have it than people without the means to get their foot in the door?”
He gets lost in that thought for a second, and makes a mental note to add that to the list of things that he had fucked up lately. That is, assuming that he was able to retain that thought for more than just a few fleeting moments. Confusion sets in, and he looks around the room trying to remember what he was doing. Once his eyes find the camera again, he snaps out of it and continues.
”...and I gotta read up on my opponents, and get to know them a little bit inside the ring. That’s easy enough because the whole Sin City back catalog is online. I mean that is probably the easiest part of all of this. It’s really just about being a fan. All of you people watching have probably watched and rewatched all of the best SCW shows. You could tell me when J2H first stepped into the ring without having to look it up. You can remember the rise to prominence, just like I can.”
His eyes wander, and he seems to forget what his original point was. He opens and closes his mouth wordless a few times before what he was trying to say finally comes back to him.
”...then it’s just about putting those two things together. You do the work. You scout your opponent. Then you marry those two things. You bring them together. That gives you a gameplan once the bell rings. I know what I can do. I know what my opponent wants to do. All you gotta do is show up and follow the plan, ya know? Day-after-day, just show up and do what you learned. Show everyone how well practiced you are. Find something witty to say ahead of time that makes your opponent take their eyes off the prize. When you think about it, all of this shit should just kind of snap into place, right? On paper, it feels like real simple shit….”
He laughs, but simultaneously viewers can see that his eyes get incredibly glassy. He squeezes them closed and wipes at them with a hand while shaking his head.
”Life ain’t on paper though, ya know? Everyone likes to put on a brave face and act like this is the absolute only shit that matters and sometimes that ain’t it. Sometimes you try to show up on time, and the world conspires against you. Somedays you want to get up and do the work, and can’t drag yourself out of the house. Sometimes all of the other shit is just a little bit too loud, and you seek out something to turn down the noise. One becomes two. Two becomes ten. Ten becomes something else entirely.”
Jaycee appears to have gotten far off of his original point, but he was on too much of a roll to stop now. He had done everything he could to try and push through it in front of the cameras in the last few months, but now that he was letting the truth out, he couldn’t stop himself.
”....and the noise never gets any quieter, ya know? It just kind of becomes more intense. And then it’s not just the noise, it’s all the lights. It’s all the people. It’s all of the expectations of greatness, and zero excuse for anything perceived as failure. Everything, everywhere, all at once, and you just kind of drown in it no matter what you do. You can’t make it quiet enough to function anymore, so you just don’t function. Sure it might be peaceful at the time, but where does it get you? Where did it get me?”
He looks around the room, and it seems like he sees it for the mess that it is for the first time. For a moment, he actually seems embarrassed to have brought the world into it with him, but he shoves that feeling away with the others.
”You people think I want it to be like this? You think I don’t know how easy it sounds to get it all turned around? I do, and I know that it is on me to fix it. I know that people think that I just need to pick myself up, put one foot in front of the other, and get back on track. Everyone at Jet City has had my back no matter how many reasons I give them to cut me loose. Everyone at Sin City keeps throwing me high-profile opportunity after opportunity and hoping that I summon the strength to reach out and grab one of them. Even the guys in the locker room have tried to do what they can to make sure that I don’t become another wrestling horror story.”
He shrugs his shoulders, truly defeated.
”It always sounds so good. It sounds so fucking easy. I come away from those conversations feeling like I have a real grip on how to move forward with my life and my career, and then I end up back here anyways. It’s not always immediate. It’s not like I make every wrong decision when presented with a fork in the road. I can make the right choices nine times out of ten, but that tenth one always lands me back in the rut. I can string together a handful of good days, but it always collapses back into the reality of life. This shit isn’t paper. Not every problem just goes away because you’re aware of its existence.”
Frustrated with himself, he turns away from the camera. When he can’t shake the rage building up inside of himself, he kicks at the table behind him, which starts a chain reaction. All of the empty bottles on the table topple. Some shatter when they hit the floor, others fall into separate piles and domino through other piles. The symphony of shattered glass around him makes Jaycee raise both of his hands up to cover his ears. He lets out a scream that deafens the sounds around him for a second and then stands from the chair before flipping it into the wall and starting the same problem all over again. Even as the room falls apart around him, he turns his rage on the camera.
”I can’t just turn this shit off because the phone rings and my name is on the card. I can’t just pretend that my life outside of Sin City isn’t falling apart around me. I don’t ask for pity, because I know that all of this is my own doing. I don’t quit because I don’t know what would happen to me if I didn’t have to be at Climax Control on Sundays. I don’t want to give it up, because for as long as I can remember this has been the thing that I wanted most in the world. I wanted to be in the ring. I wanted to be in the spotlights. I wanted to be in front of a screaming audience. I wanted the lights. I wanted the noise. I wanted the surge of adrenaline that people talk about when you step through the curtain and it is time to fight. I got into this business to be that guy. I got trained by people who could mold me into that guy. And I just…”
He lets out a big breath, and his shoulders slump when he exhales.
”....I don’t know what happened. I don’t know where it went wrong. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t even know if it is something that can be fixed. Life doesn’t play out the way that things say that they should on paper. I can’t just magically be a different guy because I have an opponent to demean during the week, or a fight to survive on the weekend. If I could be that for all of you, I promise that I would be. If I could snap my fingers and make that happen, I would have done it weeks ago. But instead, every time I try to pick myself up, it seems like all I can do is take bigger steps backwards. I don’t blame anyone but myself. I won’t ever make excuses. I know that I am inching closer and closer to the day where Mark and Christian call me and tell me to stop showing up, and I know that I will have been my own undoing.”
He shrugs his shoulders again, but this time it seems like the thought has irritated him.
”Maybe that’s what I need, ya know? No matter how many matches I lose, or how many events I fail to show up at, I still have a job. I go out to the ring and choke on an almost weekly basis, but the checks keep clearing. I dread every single Climax Control like it is a nightmare, but at the end of the day, I am still able to live my dream. This place might be gross and falling apart, but I still have a roof over my head. I might not be able to take any steps forward, but I know exactly what I have been doing to hold myself back. What is that thing that people always say? Knowing the problem is half the battle or some shit? I guess I am halfway to figuring shit out.”
He gives no indication that he actually believes that is the case though. If anything, he was trying to use sarcasm to distance himself from everything he had spewed to the audience. The brief explosion of anger had shaken some of the cobwebs out of his mind, and he started to remember what the camera was actually there for.
”...and I guess that Michael Harris is the only guy that hasn’t been paying attention to the last few months. This guy actually picked me to be J2H’s opponent in this Beat the Clock challenge. Seems awfully fucking counter-productive if you ask me. Seems to me like he is trying to hand J2H the victory in their little proxy battle. Instead of picking someone on a roll, or someone that the biggest dickhead in wrestling might actually be afraid of, he picked me. He picked a guy that everyone has beaten lately. Shouldn’t he want me to keep J2H busy? Shouldn’t he have picked someone that might have had a chance of pulling an upset? For someone that thinks so highly of themselves, he really seems to have fucked this one up.”
”I am sure the bosses had a good laugh about it. I mean, they have no problem booking me in a match that I am supposed to lose. It makes good business sense for them. I am going to be sharing the ring with one of the greatest competitors in company history, and they didn’t set the bar at winning or losing. They set the bar much lower than that. All I have to do is go out and last longer than the other guy. All I have to do is keep J2H busy long enough that he doesn’t get his prize at the end of the night. Mark and Christian get to call their shot. They get to tell everyone in the arena that I am being sent out to slaughter, and the only question is how fast it’ll happen. Nobody is expecting any surprises and nobody goes home disappointed.”
”I want to be able to tell you that they are wrong. I want to tell you that I am insulted by the way they have put together this match, but the truth is, this is more than I deserve. I still get the opportunity to pull myself together, and give the best shot that I can muster up against one of the best to do it. They are honestly doing me a favor by marketing this match as a loss before it has ever begun. It’s going to take a lot of the sting out of J2H telling me what a piece of shit that I am. Come to think about it, it might actually take a lot of sting out of J2H himself. As big of a cock as that guy is, he has too much to do with his time than spend it beating a dead horse, and everyone knows that he has a very different perspective than Ben Jordan.”
”...but I know what is waiting for me down in the ring, I promise. I know that when I make a mistake, J2H is going to make me pay for it. I know that he is going to try and prove a point at my expense. I know that he is going to do everything that he can to take the last little bit of my dream away from me if he doesn’t think that I am worth the money that is being spent on rostering me. See, love him or hate him, the guy feels about this business the same way that you people do. That is why someone that started off as a joke goes off and busts their ass until they make everyone in the world eat their words. He wanted to rise up and prove everyone was wrong about him, and eventually he did it. We all hated him every step of the way, and he mostly cheated in order to make it happen, but the guy is in the Hall of Fame. The guy has sent records.”
”...and he said that this match is going to get real ugly, really fast, if he doesn’t see that same thing in me. Last year I would have said that it was. Hell, even this year when I was gearing up for a return I really thought that this was going to be my year. I don’t really know where it got off track. If I could retrace my path and take a different one, I’d make sure to do things the right way. Unfortunately the path behind me is just as unclear as the one in front of me. I can’t figure my way back to normal any more than I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am firmly planted exactly in this one place, and it almost feels like I am too paralyzed by the thought of moving in either directions that I just stay here.”
”...and maybe that is all that I need to do. I just need to stay planted right here, and keep J2H here with me for as long as possible. I need to make sure that I slow things all the way down. I need to stay out of harm’s way, and dodge his best shots because he isn’t really competing against me. Nor should he be, because right now I am not what anyone would call his ‘competition’ in this business. J2H is coming down to the ring to compete against a clock.”
”All I have to do is make sure that his time runs out before mine does.”
”Real talk.”
