Chandigarh, India -
Country Inn & Suites
Like every other set up that Carter has had the pleasure of enjoying since the India Summer 2022 Tour had first commenced, the young 22 year old was not disappointed in where he had been set up for the duration of his stay. The unusually named hotel here in Chandigarh resembled a first class hotel (not that he was particularly familiar with such five star establishments) to his mind’s eye, rather than a ‘country inn’ or the like from its name. His room wasn’t as large as one might ex[ect, but it was more than comfortable enough in its simplistic decor and the chestnut wood paneling and white accented walls.
Carter sat at the polished desk that was set up against the front wall of his room, the open window less than a foot to his right, allowing for a warm breeze to drift in, offering him a dose of fresh air while not being outside in the overly blazing sun. He could have closed the window and cranked up the A/C as he was certain most everybody was doing who had checked in, but he was able to hold off just enough to indulge himself in the fresh air, a scent of jasmine tickling the senses.
Lazarus asked, "So, how's your lip?" Yes, Carter had his laptop opened on the desk and he was talking to his boyfriend Lazarus who was by now back from his photo shoot in Bangkok and home in Las Vegas.
As if by instinct, Carter reached up in touch the fingertip to the tip of the scab where his lip had been busted open less than 2 weeks ago.
HBCarter answered almost absently, "Fine." And just like that, his tone of voice went from warm and inviting to tense and somber.
"Hey." Lazarus spoke up, pulling Carter away from his private new musings and focus them instead on where they should be, namely Lazarus himself. He said, "I already apologized for that once, right?"
"Mm." Carter found himself admitting, yielding to the point his boyfriend was making with a nod of the head. He then however, opened his eyes and stared at Lazarus hard, saying, " But did I accept?"
"Come on, don't be like that." Lazarus stressed in a relatively calm voice, his tones soothing to the frazzled nerves that Carter himself was feeling. Lazarus said, "I mean, we both know why what happened, happened."
And now we come to a lovely little thing called a flashback. Useful tools indeed when you have more time now to tell a bit of a tale then what you might have had in the past. We are back toward the beginning of August, the fifth of the month to be more precise, when SCW first appeared in Bangalore, India. Lazarus had just surprised his boyfriend by showing up at his hotel room door, Carter having had no indication at all that Lazarus was going to be present and he was absolutely thrilled at the prospect!
“So, who are you working with this time?” Lazarus asked, using the choice of words ‘working with’ as opposed to ‘wrestling’. It was simply his way. Unlike the majority of the significant others of the Superstars and Bombshells, Lazarus did not like wrestling. In fact, he abhorred it altogether, considering it a barbaric way to earn a living. The young male model took a seat on the small loveseat in the room while Carter fetched a water from the suite’s mini fridge,
“Miles Kasey.” Carter answered without a second thought, passing over the bottled water to Lazarus’s waiting hand before taking his seat beside him. They would now assuredly be meeting the girls for a drink later in one of Bangalore’s many ‘watering holes’.
Lazarus huffed in annoyance, his eyes rolling so hard that you could have sworn you heard them.
“What is it?” Carter asked, to which Lazarus pulled the bottle from his lips before he could fully take a drink and looked at his boyfriend in startled wonder.
“You’re serious?” Lazarus asked. “You don’t know?” To which Carter could only shrug his shoulders and shake his head in the negative, having no sense of what could be wrong with the idea of his wrestling Miles in just a few days' time.
“Wow!” Lazarus stood up from the sofa, but Carter remained right where he was, staring up at him while Lazarus paced briefly before turning around to face him, looking down on him as he said, “I don’t believe you. Even face to face, you’re playing innocent. Acting as if you aren’t cheating on me!”
“Cheating-” Carter started to repeat, but his words were cut off as Lazarus stressed, “Especially with that Miles guy! It would be like a day without orange juice if you weren’t trying to get in his pants!”
“Wait, what?” Carter exclaimed. “Trying to get - Laz! Where in hell is all of this coming from!?”
“Oh come on, Carter!” Lazarus’s voice raised, surprising Carter as his boyfriend had never raised his voice to him. Not once! “All anybody has to do is bring up your Twitter feed and they can see for themselves! You’re all over the guy every chance you get! Hell! You’re all over any reasonably attractive guy on Twitter every chance you get!”
“I don’t mean anything by it!” Carter claimed, but Lazarus scoffed openly and audibly.
“Really?”
“Really!” Carter stressed. “Laz, I never wanted you to get upset! I’m just a big flirt. I don’t mean anything by it!”
“So if Miles Kasey or that weird looking Jack Russow guy decided they wanted to fuck your brains out, you’d turn them down?”
“Yes.” Carter said almost immediately. This entire confrontation caught him completely off guard. Lazarus had never spoken a word against the way he interacted with his male peers in the business, and to be confronted so openly and hostile had thrown him completely off guard. “If it’s been bothering you so much, why didn’t you ever say anything before now??”
“I shouldn’t have to!” Lazarus shouted. “I should have to tell my boyfriend to stop flirting with other men!? What color is the sky in the world in that dim head of yours, Carter!?”
Carter shot to his feet at the moment Lazarus took a dig at his intelligence, and he started to raise his voice himself as he started, “Stop being so goddamn anal, Laz-!” But the rest of his words were knocked right out of him, as Lazarus swung his hand around - the one still holding the bottle of chilled water, cracking Carter right in the mouth!
The impact knocked Carter’s head back and to the side, and silence fell on the hotel suite all at once! Carter’s eyes were wide in shock, as he held a hand to his mouth and when he pulled away, he looked at his fingers and they were stained red with the crimson dripping from his bottom lip. He looked at Lazarus, his voice barely a whisper.
“You hit me…” And Lazarus seemed almost as shocked as Carter felt himself…
“So, did you tell anybody about what happened?” Lazarus asked from his end of the facetime chat, noting that Lazarus used the phrase ‘what happened’ as opposed to ‘what really happened as that would force a note of guilt on Lazarus’s part.
“That you hit me?” Carter reiterated. “That you busted my lip open?” He simply shook his head no and said in a soft voice, “No. Everybody thinks it happened in my match that night.” He scoffed, almost - almost smiling at the absurd nature of belief. “Most of them thought Miles did it. Hell! Miles thinks that Miles did it.”
“Well,” Lazarus shrugged, completely indifferent in voice as well as in his composure. “It’s probably for the best.”
Carter raised his brow and questioned, “It’s for the best that everyone is blaming Miles for busting my lip open and causing me to get a stitch in my mouth?” His face remained impassive but his eyes darted from left to right and he lifted his shoulders, asking, “How?”
“Well he’s not exactly what you’d call a close friend.” Lazarus was able to reason as if the effort was nothing, like the words had been rehearsed or even worse - the ‘without guilt’ reasoning simply came naturally. Lazarus said, “I am sorry Carter. It won’t happen again - I promise. But Miles isn’t in our social circle so telling everyone it wasn’t him won’t really hurt anybody.”
Won’t hurt anybody save for Miles, Carter thought privately to himself. Miles felt horrid about that busted lip having ‘ruined’ his pretty face, and had been blaming himself since. Lazarus then started talking again, or perhaps he never stopped? Carter had a difficult time differentiating between the two possibilities.
He said, “I do have a surprise for you, though.”
Carter finally looked up, a twinkle in his eyes as he remained hopeful in spirit. “Oh yeah?”
“I had my agent clear my schedule for two weeks.” Lazarus said. “I’ll be coming to New Delhi for that two week period.”
Carter lifted his eyes to meet those of his boyfriends and Lazarus offered him a loving smile, to which Carter’s face lit up with a hopeful smile. “Really?”
“Happy?” Asked Lazarus.
“Ecstatic!” Carter answered.
In his suite at the Country Inn & Suites, it is now nighttime and before Carter could even think about going to sleep in pursuit of the Sandman, he sat in the small, leather cushioned chair at the window and looked out from the fifth story floor and across the night sky. The lights of the city cast their illumination high up into the night sky, but the stars remained vigilant as ever.
“Wow! When the lineup for this card first went up, all anybody could talk about was the big tag team match between Ben Jordan and Chris Page against Goth and ‘Godly’ Ken Davison - and understandably so! It’s a big match with four of the best in the business, including Page who is a legend in this sport! I was backstage when I first heard about it, and that's all I was focused on admittedly until Ari caused me to scroll further down the text, and saw what they had in store for yours truly and all I could say was…”
He silently mouthed ‘Wow!”.
“Suddenly the tag team match didn’t seem like the highlight of the show or the biggest match in existence, for me at least! Because as great as all four of those men are, I saw I was up against a man that has GOT to be a candidate for a future Hall of Fame induction here in SCW. “The Bulldog” himself! Bill Barnhart! You can’t be involved in this business and NOT know who this guy is! I was following his career as far back as his days in the old Asylum Wrestling Alliance where he did it all! World Championships! Tag team titles! And yes, an AWA Hall of Fame award!”
Carter shook his head.
“The man has so many years of experience in this sport, a veteran of the ring in every sense of the word! And who gets to step inside of the ring against this barrel-chested, bull of a man?”
Carter twirled a finger around in the air and poked his forefinger right in the center of his own sternum. He then nodded.
“Yup! Yours truly gets to face one of the most experienced wrestlers - male or female - in the entirety of SCW! When I contacted Gabriel about this match, all the guy who brought me into this sport was whistle. He called it a real ‘battle for the ages’ and no, he wasn’t taking a shot at Bulldog’s age or how he seems to be living under the narcissistic fantasy that he’s still in his early thirties. He was talking about the fact that here was a man that is built like a Sherman tank and has a wealth of knowledge and experience over the last fifteen plus (?) years in this business, against me. A man that debuted not even a full three years ago! Now three years in this sport isn’t anything to just scoff at, but that does not a ring savvy veteran make! And it means that I have to come up with an entirely new game plan going into this match because no matter what strategy or tricks I think I have up my sleeve, ‘the Bulldog’ has already seen them, dealt with them, and come up with ways to use them against me! How does one in my position even hope to counter that type of experience?”
He held his arms out.
“Change things up. Do the unexpected. I think it’s safe to say that Barnhart has watched everything that I’ve put out there and has a sound strategy for this Sunday. That’s what guys like him do. They strategize every single detail, no matter how small or seemingly unimportant. So it only stands to reason that I am going to fight fire with fire and do the same thing, right?”
He stared ahead at the camera, then shook his head.
“Wrong. Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not looking over or past ‘the Bulldog’ nor am I taking him lightly. Only a damn fool would do any of the above. I’ve watched every match I could of the guy’s. He’s built like a bulldozer. He’s strong. He’s a fierce brawler who took Fenris to the limits a few times. And with his experience, he can come up with a solid, technical game plan. He loves to roughhouse. He can out brawl and overpower most men, and… he can toss the fists out the window and wrestle a technical masterpiece if he sets his mind to it. But me…? I’ve watched him, studied him. It’s what the Stevens integrated in me and my training. I know where to strike and when. And as much as I told the truth and hyped the man, I also know my own strengths and what I can do that he cannot. I just need to use his own strategy against him, and whatever he thinks he knows about me, throw that out the window and kick things up a notch!”
He set his glass down on the windowsill and turned back to the camera, leaning in at the waist and resting his forearms on his bent knees.
“Now this next thing I’m about to say? It’s directly for the Bulldog. Directly for you… Bill. I guess by now you understand that I have all the respect in the world for you as a wrestler and what you’ve accomplished. I just don’t want you looking at me and thinking that you’re in for an easy night. That is a stigma that any wrestler in the LGBTQ community seems to face and personally speaking? Any time that I’ve faced that professional prejudice, it pissed me off. It is sheer disrespect to think one of us can’t fight or be a fantastic wrestler, just because of who we’re in bed with. Or, might you be taking one look at me and how I dress and carry myself and think this match is going to be easy sleazy? Well…”
He smiled with a little fiendish delight, shrugging.
“I admit that is intentional. People look at the colorful hair and makeup and booty shorts and think I can’t be half as good as I am. Then that bell rings and oo baby! Do they find out differently! Lesson learned, Bill. Just because I look soft on the outside, doesn’t mean that I do business softly inside of the ring. It’s a hard, cold fact that so many in SCU learned when I won the Combat championship. Nobody expected that out of me, but I proved to each and every one of those critics who were against me that I could fight! I could defend myself and hold my own against guys that were bigger and stronger. I can fight, Bulldog, because I have to be able to. Living the life I’ve lived or looking the way that I do didn't make for an easy, peaceful life in my Red State hometown.”
“Why am I telling you all of this? Why am I offering up a warning rather than let you make those same errors in judgment and walk away with a win, made all the simpler based on ignorance and prejudice?”
He shrugged, smiling.
“What can I say? I’m a sportsman. Plus, flamboyant looks aside, I want you to take me seriously. I want you to be at your absolute best because if you take it easy and psyche yourself out, that wouldn't make me look any better as the winner than if I were to lose this match. Oh and… newsflash?”
“This is only my second singles match, ‘Bulldog.”
Carter faced the camera, holding up two digits.
“I lost my first. I’m not about to lose a second one, back to back!”
