Post by Kyle Shane on Mar 9, 2019 3:03:58 GMT -5
As I craned my ear towards the gym, I stepped forward in the line. It was the beginning notes of a song by... Fallout Boy. Yes, that was it. I listened to it for a second, until it came to the bridge taken from Suzanne Vega, and then the song became immistakable, ear wearing and undeniable.
So intent was I on getting those first chords that I almost bumped into her. Her clipboard shedded almost all of it's fruit at once, papers sliding out haphazardly, and she bundled what she could in her arms with a very Boston curse. I apologized for my absentness, and I bent to help her pick the papers up, and as I did both of our eyes locked. She smiled, the lines forming on her face making me cringe in the hallway lights.
"As I live and breathe!" came the age old reunion refrain, and she comes in for a hug that catches me around the windpipe; a spur of the moment, uninvited personal bubble breach that people think of as an acceptable bypass for boundaries, because who cares about those? When you see someone you went to high school with, such rituals are expected, you need to hug to fill the awkward emptiness of running into a stranger with a vague face. And she breaks it, after holding it for too long, and she's looking at me, smiling, seemingly forgetting her need to gather again her clipboard full of the list. And her smile and raised eyebrows prod me, asking me if I remember her name; (I do not.)
I snap my fingers, smiling in kind and giving her the gist that it's all coming back. "Heyyyy, Krissy!"
"It's Christy!", she says in good humor, but her eyes wince a little. And she is scribbling on her now disheveled and out of order name list, before retracting from one of the sheets a "Hi My Name Is _____" sticker and plomping it right on my chest with the force of a hydraulic. "Oooh, mister, I was so happy to see you had RSVP'ed for this! The Planning Commitee was going to go all out on our reunion, but especially when we found out the star of our graduating class was gonna be there!" She titters girlishly and she's pinching my cheeks like a Dutch aunt, still smiling manically. Truthfully, I don't know why I came. The PS 141 class of 2009, scattered themselves to the winds like, well, like Christy's paperwork, had picked just before the spring to pitch it's ten year high school reunion. I craned my head around Christy's posting, the sentry on the door, set up with a folding table, a stack of "Hi My Name Is ____" stickerbooks, and a newsboys duffle worth of unfortunately printed, canary yellow newsletters. As I peeked into the reunion hall, I saw not a Valhalla of the past life come for revelry, but a sparse, awkward wasteland. A clumped grouping of standalones and wretched, patched in cliques. None of them dancing to the music or caught in the magic of the overhead swirling party ball that cast the room in various colored circles. I turn back to Christy, open my mouth, shut it, and then give her the most embarassed, pained grimace disguised as a smile. "Can you excuse me for a sec Christy, I, uhhh, think I left my wallet for the bar in the car. Just - one sec - "
She clinches onto my shoulders, steering me to the auditorium, and I want to resist, to scream "No, no, no" like a prisoner being taken to the gallows in a B-movie, but God damn Christy has some kind of yoga mom, wine-frenzy, Live Laugh Love strength as she directs me into the doorway. "Go, go, mingle, the bar is free! Until after midnight, then you'll have to pay, right? Ha ha ha... that was... actually in the newsletter, if anyone had read the ones we mailed out..." as she turns from me, she is muttering bitterly to herself in an uptight voice. So I stand, frozen, as if by the deadlights. And I look back at Christy, but she is greeting the next people who came up to her trolls bridge crossing and greeting them with that manic, tightly wound smile. I rub my shoulders, wince, and turn back.
Well, the bar is free, for now...
I decide if I've been herded in here I need to be properly liquidated (if not smashed) and I go over to the bar. The bartender informs me there's no vodka, but I give the paltry menu they put out and at least get an approximation of a real beer. As the bartender hands me the perspiring glass, someone to my right calls over, "Getting toasted before the dance, uh? Good deal, pally. Me too. But you won't get it off the light beers the Planning Commitee put on the menu..." I turn to my addresser, trying to place that voice. Fallout Boy has given it's way to a rap song with Lil Wayne, from about the year of our high school class. That voice, at least; that voice bridged a few faded neural connections, and I reached out for the wisp of decade old memory and grabbed it eagerly, with a smile. "Teddy?"
Teddy Gallagher is two seats down at the bar, and we exchange sidelong glances and smiles. He's thin, pale, high widows peak and the scraggly, low-rent look even in a suit of purebred Southie Irish trash. His Boston accent is thicker than mine, and his troublemakers smirk is magical on his thin face. "Ahhh Shane, the nerd boy comes from downtown for the night, whats the matta you decided to live with us poor folk?" We perform a hand slap/clasp hug.
From his pocket, Teddy extrudes a flask. He gives one discreet look at the bartender, who isn't being paid enough to care, and at the door, before handing me the flask. The palm-sized metal is embossed with a knot symbol and a Gaelic phrase because of course it is, but I take a slug of whiskey from it and immediately gag. Teddy laughs, and he takes a pull from it, and we laugh together for the next few minutes.
We reminisce. (- "Remember that time in 9th grade when John Dorian pulled the rug off Mister Mahaffey's head?" "HA! Yes! He ran with it all the way down to the Spanish hallway...")
We mourn. ( - "Really sucked when Katie O'Rourk got in that car crackup back on 87, huh?" "Katie O'Rourk did have some big titties..." "Yeah but, what about that girl from the grade b'low us you used to run with, Shane? From Roxbury? Isa - something? Isabelle?" "Izzy. Yeah. She was... it sucks she's not with us.")
We debate. ( - "No, way, dude, I'm telling you, Miss Inge WAS a stripper in her spare time." "I'm telling you, that was an urban legend, would a stripper for real be driving to school in a Honda Accord? Use your head, man..." "Yah but she wore those thongs to work all'a time...")
We shoot the shit. And when I realize we've left the bar and gone on a little circuit of the assembly floor, I see some people are watching us. Cliques of people I once knew. Girls that appear gaunt and drawn, boys wearing suits that hang off them like their brothers clothes. I look sideways at Teddy, drawing his attention. "Teddy, why is everyone looking at us?"
"You know why, pal. Because it's you," Teddy says, not meeting my eyes, and he wants to keep walking. "You know what this is." I look over at a gaggle of people. Meghan O'Reilly, who sat in front of me in fifth period English, her cornsilk hair looking stringy and died out, her arms thin as stalks, as she has one hand propped up in the crook of her elbow holding a burning cigarette. Two boys stand with her, from our grade, one a kid named Matt I used to know because he always called me Kyle Shame, the other I think was name Taylor or Tommy. Timothy? They all look gaunt, their eyes sunken; I see specters of drug use pall heavily over them, and they just look at me dourly. Meghan smokes her cigarette, it's cherry burning as she looks at me. Teddy, uncomfortably wants to keep walking a circle around the auditorium. Still nobody is dancing. Shit, it looks like nobody is having fun at all. They're just standing in their little clumps or alone. I grab Teddy's shoulder, angrily. "No, talk to me. What is this? Why are they looking at me like that?"
"What, Meghan? Are you still mad because I peeked in the girls shower in ninth grade, what?! I was a kid! I - " Teddy snarls at me, suddenly and forcefully shoving me into the retracted bank of stadium seats. "That ain't it, pally. They're looking at you because you left. We all are."
"Teddy..." I start to say, but he turns away, and the bitter, vengeful hurt sinks into his voice that has almost a decade's layers of not going away. "Nah, pally. You been gone for so long, and now reunion time comes along and you show up just this once to show every one of us what we've been missing in our lives, how we've all wasted it. You're too good for us, now that it? Mista High and mighty. Mista been World Champion. People look at you and no matter what you do, people know that you're comparing yourself to them. You left here and went on to your good life, and we stayed behind. And this is our reward. And now you show up at the reunion and we have to have it rubbed in our faces. Well fuck that, pally. And fuck you."
This is why reunions are a bad idea, I concluded to myself, but I bristle at his tone, and I shove him back. Am I supposed to apologize for that? For being who I am? Fuck no. I turn to Meghan's group, to Tony Silas, James Wright, Rod Hathcock from the football team. I turn and see Arnold Toney, my lab partner from AP Biology. They're looking at me with the same mixture of that dull hatred baking at low level heat in their stares, and the dim envy of small timers that never made it out. "What do you all want from me?!" I shout, and I can see Christy at the door peeking her head in. The DJ is stopping the music. "Huh?" I refuse to defend myself anymore. I refuse to keep going on the defensive for my shit when I've done everything I can to become a person I am proud of. Yeah, Kyle Shane has been a piece of shit, a rogue, a drug peddling ne'er do well, and yeah me and guys like Teddy probably had a lot of stories. But at the end of the day when I saw that my life in this area was getting too toxic, I left my life here behind. And I'm not sorry to the people I left behind who stare at me now as sunken eyed, bitter shells.
"Kyle, let's - take a walk with me," says a familiar voice, grabbing me by the wrist. And before I can even place her voice, and figure out why I'm going along with her, she's taking me. The tangles of cliques part in twos and threes, sourly eyeing me and the person holding my hand, but letting me pass. The DJ, sensing a moment was passing, kicked up the music, and I groaned a little bit... as I heard the opening notes of the Fallout Boy song start up again.
Reunions. Always a bad idea, I thought to myself, with a sigh.
Some Turn To Dust or To Gold
Reunion time is upon us. The WGWF lives, once again, for one night only. And I signed on the dotted line with aplomb when the prospect of one last show happened. But since I'm not sure how much of Raziel we're getting when it's all said and done, and since the last WGWF Reunion Show is being used to promote of all things, a War Games main event to crown who is the best of all time, I'm going to use a lot of my time here to ask the question, should it have happened?
It was a shock to everyone, including me, who was actually banking on a longer and more fruitful run, one I was committing to put time into in 2018, only for us to go on another hiatus after the shifting of management once again. I don't say this with any judgement. I know people move on in their lives, and being the head of a company is a headache. One last ride for the WGWF, and after so much talk and hype that began with the new year, we've come down to the wire... and it feels like every reunion I've ever been to. Like the get togethers of all the old college friends every year or so down at the bar so you can all get drunk and watch someone who is now a married father of three get really drunk and talk about how obsessed he is with the waitress' ass. Let's not forget the XWF Classic Reunion of 2017, confusing branding as it was since the XWF was still actually going at the time. And how, so many of the people who eagerly signed up for that, cheesing their face in the dish and talking about how good it will be to get things back in gear, when the time came to show up and contribute to the effort, they went ghost. Yes everyone of them from your Gambinos and Boondock Saints down to the C-list players from Impact.
And really, isn't that an indictment on the nature of a reunion in and of itself? What is the audience of a reunion for? So a bunch of old heads can sit around and cut navel-gazing promos about what it used to be like back when the roster was full? How great everything used to be, what their best days looked like? And then you look at that, and ask what did that pointless Member-Berry Escapism ever give back to the WGWF when it was alive? I know I give Chris Page a lot of shit for always scraping the bottom of the barrel for main event talent and promising someone a World Title push if they come back, so they can cut one of those promos that shits on the efforts of the entire current roster and going on about how great the company was when T-Money and Star were in the main event. But it's true. Not one person that's ever contacted for a reunion and wants to cosplay like they're not rocking a dad bod and thinning hair now has ever contributed. None of these people invited, signing up or raising their hands, smiling, ever did anything for the WGWF. They didn't stick around. They didn't work backstage, help shows get produced or put out on time. Save for the few that did make those month or two's worth of comebacks (and daddy, there's a list of that...) and talked that shit about how great it used to be, none of them ever gave back to the WGWF, they just wanted to criticize how it isn't the same anymore. So if I wanted to ask, should a Reunion Show happen, should it cater to these people, then... no. No, it shouldn't, and we shouldn't be doing it.
Because nostalgia only boosts your morale, only gives you the fleeting high of half a knuckle's bump for as long as you old nostalgia addicts have built up a tolerance. Nostalgia is too en vogue these days because the current everyday realities are so fucking bleak, depressing and grating that more and more people NEED these highs. And the world has responded to cater to them. Ads that masquerade as articles plague every other social media feed, telling us "Only 90's Kids Will Remember This!" People share memories, relive old pictures, obsess over old stories and posts from five years ago, because they don't want to look at where they are now and feel sad. When I look at these old posts, these old memories, these promises that only 2012 WGWF Will Remember this, it makes me fucking angry. Because where is the progress? I don't want to be like that. I don't want to remember WGWF as the sad, bitter, angry at the world mid-thirties grump that never amounted to shit. What I wanted, always and forever was to push things forward. That was the God damn mission statement of Kyle Shane. I always wanted to provide cutting edge. I always wanted to keep going forward, to push the WGWF into what it could be, rather than look at what it was. But I couldn't stem the relentless tide of nostalgia, and I couldn't wake you all up from this Island of the Lotus Eaters dream world you all preferred to live in, sink into, regress back every turn. The siren call of nostalgia, what the WGWF used to be. What choked and killed the WGWF, in my opinion. So maybe yeah, maybe that ongoing frustration pushed me out the door a few times. Because at the very bottom of it, I do not believe in nostalgia.
Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. It is the only way you can ever move on with your life, it is the only way you can ever grow; if you're not uselessly shackling yourself down to the past.
You people, it seems, cannot understand that. But I hope you will.
So if this is a Reunion Show I want it not to be a sad, bittersweet, almost funeral dirge for the good old days and watch as a bunch of pot-bellied also rans sit around and talk about how awesome they once were. I want the ones that show up to be bright eyed, willing to talk about their dreams, their goals, and what they want to do, where they want to go from here. If this reaches even a few people and it irks them, provokes them into giving a fiery response to shut my mouth then I've started my God damn job, because the MO of Kyle Shane has always been "provoke them until they feel like giving enough of a strong response to give me a challenge." I want you mugs to fight. Fight against the shackles of irrelevance, rust, your own indolent, indulgent failures. Fucking show up to fight like you actually have some pride in who you are. Don't be like the 80 percent who probably forgot there was a WGWF Reunion on March 17th and are going to Honkey Lighthouse show, if at all. Fucking try. Make a show worth remembering, and then after it's over, you'll have an On This Day to look back on that you can really take pride in. You can have a meme to post about how Only Really Invested and Present People can remember this. Or don't. Either way, I know what I want out of this.
I want, one last time, for every single one of you to remember my name.
I want you to remember why I shined on the stages that you walked away from, and why I accomplished things you never will.
Because if this is the "last" show, it's going to be my last show, for real. And before I drop this mic and walk off the stage, I want every single one of you to file into the auditorium, bring your attention to the stage, and listen to this.
I want every eye that turns back to the WGWF in March of 2019 to be looking at me when I drop this last testament, because if the WGWF ends, I want it's story to be wrapped up neatly in a bow and coincide with my bringing down the curtain on the WGWF's memory of Kyle Shane.
Mama, Fight My Teenage Dreams
I am ranting as we exit out the side door of the auditorium, and we're passing by a few classrooms in the Health and Family Living section of the school. "Can you believe the nerve of those fuckers, man? Ganging up on me, what, because I left school before graduation? I - " and then, realizing that a familiar hand was placed over mine, I removed it. "Wait..."
My eyes widened, and I shake my head. No. It's impossible. "You can't be here..."
When she smiles, it is the same smile that always struck me. It was a smile I remember well from when we grew up as next door neighbors (Well, next trailer over neighbors), two kids of varying family problems who pooled our mutual hatred of the world of suck together into some very on-brand adventures during the Myspace era. Even though she wasn't rocking a red-and black dyed emo fringe and raccoon eyeliner, I could never forget that smile. She had grown up. On some, other world, she and Kyle Shane had a son together. Regretfully, she was no longer alive. But she was here, smiling at me, holding my hand, as real as I and this whole building was. Izzy. Isabel Lourdes Rodriguez, my constant companion, the girl from Roxbury. The one who stayed.
She beckons, still smiling. "Walk with me."
So maybe some reunions aren't all bad, I reflect, as I do that.
It was almost like the years were slipping away now and we were becoming our younger selves. She in her skinny jeans and Chuck Taylors and tail tied on the back of her pants, I could almost see myself as I was then, seventeen and pimply and wearing trip pants and an AFI hoodie. But I shook myself out of it. "Izzy, no, you can't - This can't be. I don't want this to be real..."
She looks at me, and her younger face is almost overlaid by her adult form. She pouts, tilts her head a little at me, concerned, and asks, "Why? Don't you want to stay down here with me?"
"I want - more than anything, a world where that would have been possible, kid," and suddenly, all of the alcohol of the party has left my system and I'm just so tired, "But no, I can't want that. I can't have that. Because it would be a lie, and we both know it. Nostalgia is - Izzy, it's a trap. I can't go back to what we had in Roxbury. I can't bring you back. Wanting otherwise is -"
"Ha, yeah, heard that," she says, "What did abuela used to say, wish in one hand, spit in the other, mija. But I'm not asking for us to go back," she says, offering me her hand again, and this time it is fully her adult form standing across from me. "Just - walk with me for a little while? I wanted to get you out of that auditorium."
I warily look at her, then back at the auditorium. If I'm taking my choice of which past I'd prefer to live in, I'd ...
We stride side by side, my head clearing rapidly. I steal glances at the woman she had become, just before she lost her life. And I wonder, how? (Force Ghost, same deal as allowed Anakin to appear young? No. Manifestation of my psyche? No. Me going crackers?...) She seemed calm, at peace, and not hurting. And I expressed, again, how sorry I was. She just waved me off. "All in the past, my friend." And I took it at that. I reflected, I wish the world was as at ease at passing as Izzy, at letting things go. As we walked, we came to the gym and, outside, the trophy case. I stopped, looking at the gold statues and cups and plaques, glanced over the records.
"Sometimes, I feel like this is all my life has become," I say with honesty. "I'm the trophy case. I stand before it and defend my records from people that say they don't count, but I can't - I can't touch the records anymore, and the oldest records don't seem to matter. And that's why when I see this case I feel empty. Because is that all there is to a life? I used to think of myself as one big monument to continued human achievement. And that tracks." But, the unspoken, hung between us, and Izzy caught it, as our chemistry always allowed. "But it feels like that's not enough." I shake my head. "What would fill a case up better of a life then, red? Filling it with pictures of a life? A family?"
I can't answer that, not in this world. Maybe in another world, where Izzy and I had managed to raise a child together. But Izzy is just looking at me, not unkindly. "A life is a life, Kyle. You fill it with anything that makes sense to you. If you want to fill it with titles, as long as you did what you did with the intention of being the best there was, then nobody can fault you for that."
"But where's the reality to that?" I say, uncomfortably, chafing under the heavy talk of where I'm at in my station of life. "Where's the... being alive?"
She looks a little sorrowful, smiling but sad as she pats my cheek. "If that's not doing it for you anymore, then you owe it to yourself to figure out what does. Don't be like those pendejas by the bar. Find something that sparks you, makes you feel good about being alive." Her eyes avoid mine, just for the briefest, most painful millisecond, "Or someone." And I nod, thinking of just someone.
"Because ya know why they're jealous of you, Kyle, why they were looking like they was gonna spit fire," she remarks offhandedly, her long-dead fingers tracing the glass of the trophy case and looking at my reflection while she stands beside me. She can see just me standing there, in the space where she should have reflected we can only see through to the plaques bearing sports scores. "They mad because you got a life to look back on, and they don't."
For a second I take it just as what she said, as they wasted their lives kicking around Southie, in the typical way of those losers that come to reunions do. They never left their hometown, they married young, they had too many kids and hated their spouses, they drowned their sorrows at local pubs and strip clubs with booze and dollar bills. But then I took her meaning, and I double taked, shot a look from over my shoulder, wide eyed, back to Izzy. "No!"
She smirks, runs a tongue around behind her upper lip and rolls her eyes. "Mm-hm."
"Meghan O'Reilly?" "That bone thin ghoul? Child, she overdosed."
"Tony Silas?" "Didn't you see how red-faced he was? Heart attack."
"What about Teddy? He was - " "Kyle... he was obviously a drinker and he - Nevermind, it's "
"Arnold Toney?" "Babe - "
"James?"
With a little sigh, she finally lets me know that's not the point. A shiver is going down my spine. This entire reunion, everyone who came into the class auditorium, they are all the dead. Nobody is left alive. And I think about Izzy's words, and apply them to my own life and I feel a bit stupid. Of course Teddy would have fun with me, drinking and going around the auditorium talking about old times, because all wasted old ghosts have is nostalgia to make their past feel meaningful. But when it came down to it, I was not one of them, because I was able to leave this world behind. It made so much sense. But then, as I put all the pieces together, I gave a soft little, "Oh."
"You're part of them," I said. And Izzy gave a little rueful shrug.
"So what happens, when they go, you go?" I ask, as I notice this pretty girl, grown up from our days at Roxbury, is now ascending back up the set of steps leading towards the auditorium. She smiles. Her lips are painted cherry red, and her dress for the evening is a gorgeous midnight blue, casting her skin in alabaster. She extends her hand back to me.
"Come on, handsome, the bar closes at midnight," is all she says in response.
We step back into the doors of the auditorium to find a group transformed. The dead are dancing, now. Their faces, the skeletons of those longer dead, the alabaster skin of the departed, but now, at least, they're laughing and having fun. I can hear the castanet click of bones from the middle of a dance circle, and the light is casting radiance and white on all of them, in an unearthly glow. Isabel laughs, and invites me in to dance, and I just stare from the outside of the circle, rapt and smiling with wonder.
Midnight isn't close yet. There's still time for them to dance.
My Shadow Is Over You Cause I Am The Opposite Of Amnesia
So, when I asked before, should there be a Reunion show? In the first regard, as I said... no. I would have no interest in watching a bunch of once-weres and never-weres reminisce. But I kept my eye on it, my interest piqued, and the more I thought about the curtain call the more that part appealed to me. Not the Reunion, but the Last Testament. The last chance for me to say what I want to say and then be done. And make no mistake, I'm done here. You and me, WGWF, we've had a good run... but it is getting to that point in the reunions where that old buddy you've met up with just keeps blathering on. He keeps telling you these work stories, and he's a middle manager at a Paduca Lake Walmart, so he's got stories, but man, you're just trying to wait for a break in the conversation so you can slip out the "Hey, so I gotta run, but we should catch up..." But you never will catch up. Everyone knows that. It's getting to the point where Kyle Shane is running out of things to say about the WGWF, the well of promise has run out of the WGWF, where Kyle Shane doesn't want to be that old special attraction that just comes back for a feud in the background. I never, ever wanted to transition into Terry Borden, but it became either that or go for an eighth run with the World title and THAT became tedious. It became to the point where if I wanted a Wrestlewars match I either had to Tag with Silence or be a special referee in a World title match to set something up with MDK and THAT became tedious. Damned if I did, damned if I didn't. The more I tried, sometimes it felt like the more it was pushing back.
So maybe it is better for me to follow my own advice, rather than stick around and become one of the type of people I hate, the crotchety old shitbirds that crab about how there were better World Champions when it was Kyle Shane versus Tax and Lucas Felix. Maybe I can say what I want to say, and everyone will hear me in the spirit of this Reunion and I'll be finally understood.
So that thought appealled to me, and when I asked that frame of mind if a Reunion was a good idea, it said, "perhaps, but against who?" Because if we're talking the story of the WGWF, I hate to break it to you, even the late run main event crop like MDK, Alyce Starchylde and John Cable... but the two names that are synonymous with WGWF, who have literally kept the fucking thing running, are Kyle Shane and Chris Page. As a secondary level, you'd get to Christian Connolly and MDK, who also kept it running, but it was Chris Page who time and again took the monkey on his back, even when he didn't have to, even when he did it through the Adam Barkers and Flash Rottens. So if you're telling the story of what kept the WGWF going, you have Chris Page, and then you have Kyle Shane, who anchored his main event when every single one of his supposed top guys and girls had gone on to greener pastures. And don't fucking say that didn't happen. 2013, 2014, they tried to make minted main event talent out of Joseph Page, RJ Palmer, Tomoko Hanahara and so forth, and yet each one of them lasted a month, just enough so they could smile and say they got their token time with the belt, and then they fucking no-showed. And they never darkened your door again, did they, Chris Page? Maybe one or two came back for a pay-day. But you kept putting Kyle Shane in there, and I kept rising to the top, overcoming adversity, overcoming every single slick of mud you tried to throw on my name. The story of WGWF is Chris Page continuing to fucking shit on his WGWF Champion, someone who SHOULD have been being talked up for how unstoppable he was, and yet every chance he could find Chris Page needed to book someone against Kyle Shane to tell me I'm not as good as I think I am.
So, again. If we're closing out the story of the WGWF, and the final chapter of this fed, I started out thinking, it needs to be the last match between Chris Page and Kyle Shane, because of course. And I'd gotten excited for that. Neither of us able to hold back anymore. No fucks given because it was the last time. Just me and you and you can finally tell me what you think and I can finally pretend that it's not absolute bullshit that you put yourself over me six times in a row and got yourself a World Title run as an authority figure pinning your champion. Only... Chris Page isn't available for the obvious match, the one people who actually got into WGWF programming would find interest in... Chris Page is in a tag match... with Heather Halliwell, who hasn't wrestled fucking once since I beat her back in May 2012, taking on... Bigg Rigg John Gambino, who no-showed last Wrestlewars, and his wife Wild Orchid Laura Gambino (which... has that chick ever even WRESTLED for WGWF, ever?) and that, THAT is how Chris Page wants to bow off the stage at the Reunion. Not closing a storyline loop or finally squashing an issue that needed to be addressed the first time it happened. A tag team with his homegirl and an easy win against two nobodies.
So, okay. If this Reunion couldn't finish that one, vital, persistent issue for me, and therefore couldn't provide closure, was it still worth it, did it need to happen for me? I asked again, and I replied myself, a bit more warily, "Maybe not, but... let's see what else we can do..." So I asked again. Maybe Tristan Slater is available. And Tristan Slater, is 98% the same as facing Chris Page, only I've had a much better record against Tristan; yet he still feels the same need to undermine me and tell me I'm not shit, even when he's in the same stable. I've had enough of that, and honestly, when I left in 2016 and came back, Tristan Slater had finally done the obvious, taken advantage of my absence and come up with a character that was just enough of a copy of the God of Game that he began to be seen with main event potential. It's only when Tristan Slater ascended, with Kyle Shane not around, that he began being taken seriously. So Tristan has me NOT being there to thank for him ever winning a World Title, and again, me facing him for the fifth time closes a storyline loop, allows me a chance to finally shut his mouth, and end a long-standing rivalry. Only... Tristan Slater... IS IN A TAG TEAM MATCH... with John Cable... against THE FUCKING RYAN BROTHERS. Unbelievable. Both Chris Page and his sock puppet that says the same things about Kyle Shane, in the same boat. Tristan is teaming up with Cable against two of the least worthy competitors, and going for a meaningless, gimme win instead of Tristan developing a sack of testicles and facing the one person he could never beat.
So, once again, getting a little bit worn down, I asked myself... Does this Reunion NEED to happen? What worth is it in there for me to compete in there, if I'm not finishing off a rivalry, if I'm not shutting someone I've had a longstanding issue with up for good, if I'm not capping off the story of my run in WGWF with something that means a lot to me? I hemmed and hawed and couldn't find a good enough answer, a good enough response to that, but I said, "Maybe, but let's just see what they have in mind." Not CCP, not Slater, not Cable... matches that I really wanted to see, like that one, final one off match against MDK so I could stand up to him and prove he's not quite on the level of legend here that I am. Off the table. Lucas Felix, Tax, Tomoko Hanahara, off the table in favor of these fucking terrible, shitty, worthless tag matches. And then, they announced it. My dance, for the last WGWF show.
Raziel.
One on one.
And I asked myself. Does this Reunion, now, need to happen?
And ya know what? Honestly, I can take it. In a certain way, it makes sense, even. But from another angle, it's horrible, because it fills me with that same form of loathing, of disgust as I look at Raziel. The cynical, bitter tinge of the hated nostalgia begins to fill me, contraventing and contradicting my own message here about how we shouldn't look back on the past and yearn for what we had then but look to the now. But I see Raziel and I just wish it was the Raziel who was my rival. No secret that in the summer of 2012 Raziel frustrated me time and time again, he beat me multiple times. I can't even deny it, or try to Caterpillar over it with the sands of time, Raziel was an irritating force to me, one that made me question if I even had it in me to succeed in the WGWF. Sure, by my third match in this company I was a champion. Sure, I had wins over Tomoko, RJ, and had apparently given a showing against Raven that had people saying to me the hated "Gosh it was just such a tough loss it can go either way" (Edit: fuck you people). But when I faced Raz, those "tough losses" were piling up and I had fucking Sebastian St. Paul sticking up for me, acting like it was wrong for Raziel to bully me and starting Fuck Raz parades. That was the Raziel I would find worth in beating. That would have been the mouth I would find great satisfaction in shutting with a broken jaw. That vintage Raziel, if Kyle Shane of now was facing him, I would be, almost happy about closing out my WGWF career with beating.
Except as soon as my fortunes started taking off, Raz started going downhill. I began passing him by, and he was standing still.
As I said I'm loath to look so far back, into the past, but Raz has only been around so fleetingly, here and there, coming for a few weeks paycheck, or being glimpsed around with Raven Hex that, fucking, honestly, I have very little else to frame of reference. Raziel has not been relevant, for a long, long time. And what makes it even worse is he put no work in on his comebacks, or even on the last Reunion show he signed up for, so I have little to expect about him making his return now. Nor, do I really care, because when all's said and done, what, exactly, can Raziel even say to me? He used to sneer at me, say I was never going to beat him, and never going to be a World Champion. I accomplished both of those before the year was out. He used to give me so much shit for being the middle of the pack in the Tag Turmoil relative to his sure-thing, lock on favorites to win in, the Heels on Wheels. And yet despite their advantage at the head of the pack and the last-place advntage in the Gauntlet, they still lost. I reiterate. Raziel lost the match, against the two losers he made fun of so hard for not being on his level.
And then, when Roderick X proved an inferior partner and the Heels on Wheels did claim the Tag titles, I moved on. I ended up beating him and his partner, AGAIN, this time with Zach Rizza, who's probably even more of a handicap. So, in all honesty, what exactly can Raziel say to debase me?
I've won just about every title Raz has won to the power of two, it was only because on my last tenure Andy Johnson was somehow too busy to put up the TV Title that I never completed my collection. I've main evented more shows than Raziel ever did. Do you know, when we had a title history created, I was amused to find that the two World titles Raz used to brag about cumulatively lasted less than one month. His second World title run he didn't even make it a fucking week, on his first defense. By the time I was beginning my rise, Raziel was firmly shut out of the World title picture. This man, who probably wants to claim how good the old days were for everyone. That's the price of what nostalgia gets you, the rose colored glasses filter out all the bullshit. He was never able to hang with anyone he considers great, himself. He went from being a gnat stepped on in the World title picture to stealing the TV title away from Mic Ferarri. No wonder now he held on to that so long, he used that to prop up his credibility by facing fucking nobodies, Trivial Pursuit answers like Panty and Stocking and Matilda Jolene. It was only due to the unneccessarily bloody hardcore matches you had with guys like Tax that people paid attention to you then, Raz. "Heel of Heels," I remember they called you, and didn't one of those matches end up with someone getting their throat slit?
Your pandering, tryhard, uber-gory attempts at Hot Topic relevance didn't keep you in the conversation, Raz. You never became what I ended up being. Honestly when you, me and RJ were all announced for the Hall of Fame at the same time I thought, well, I really didn't deserve to be in it in 2013 because I'm just at the start of my run, RJ maybe deserved it but he negated that goodwill by bailing on the company a month after he won the belt, but you, you stretched the very definition of what Hall of Fame worthy was. Mic Ferarri makes a more credible Hall of Famer than you. Axel the Shark makes a more credible Hall of Famer than you.
So what can you even say, Raz? You gonna say I'm boring and wordy too? That I sucked and the World Title was better off when you were holding it for that one, magical week? Are you going to gobble your Member-berries, drag up photos On This Day and smile about how badly you used to be beating me in that summer, how I never used to be able to beat you? In the final analysis, Raziel, I didn't need to beat you. I adapted to become better than you; because you became regressive, a parody, an over the top sideshow. I just continued to push myself and define the core of unbreakable strength and will that made me a main eventer. And I did shit you could never even conceive of. I put you out of Masters of the Mat, on my way to the finals, and that was the last time you were even trying. And I won another World Title on that same night. Can you say that? I've won a West Coast Rumble, a Masters of the Mat, and a Chamber match, Raz. Can you say that? In fact, the only two goals I have never accomplished are winning a Battle Lines War Games match and adding that one Television Title to my CV. In every other single way possible, I've eclipsed you. And I've got you completely outgunned.
So did this need to happen, as we stand now? Maybe not. It's certainly less of a challenge to me now that I don't hold you in such wide eyed, trepidatious, worried fear of your skills. It's certainly more like the balance of power has shifted very much in the opposite direction. Hell, it may not even need to happen because I don't think you're going to put the amount of work I have into this. I don't know. I don't care.
This thrown together match, with no heat or reason to exist, probably the seventh down the list of choices I'd want to see but that's okay, because the night isn't about me finishing by beating Raziel. This WGWF One Night Only Reunion honestly isn't about Kyle Shane versus Raziel at all.
One last time, with feeling, Fuck Raziel.
Not because he's sadistic. Not because he's dark, threatening, terrifying. Not because destroying Raz is a worthwhile way for me to drop my Black Album and step off the WGWF stage. Not even because of Raziel's involvement, at all.
Because at the very end of the night, the main event is the other part of this equation. And once I push myself to the limit and get past every single person who's qualified, in some weak ass tag match or not, I may get what I want. I may finally get to pin Chris Page, I may get closure with Christian Connolly, with Tomoko Hanahara, I don't know, it doesn't really matter to me, nor do I want to speculate on who's getting to the War Games match. And there is no reason. Absolutely none that I can't end that as the last one still standing. Who else is going to put in the time or work on this Reunion? Who else, really, is going to try? Everyone else seems to have moved on with their life, and don't attribute much importance to this. So should I even give it that much thought? I don't know, but I am.
All I know is the night doesn't end with me beating Raziel. The night ends with me being given my due recognition as the best thing to ever come from this company.
As it should be.
Remember Me For Centuries
I exited the dance well after midnight. I was still laughing, heartily. All our beefs were done by the end, and we had all gotten to dance. I loved it. And by the end, as they all began to exit, and I started seeing them turn back to the decaying forms that they were before the reunion, I thought you know, at the bottom of it all, I'm glad I came to this. It was... fun. Not something I ever wanna do again, ever. But fun.
And then, the spotlight fell on Izzy, like the belle of the ball. She smiled demurely, and with the lights coming down on her I could imagine she was an angel. I had come towards her, and taken both of her hands. She embraced me.
"She's waiting out on the field, handsome," Izzy had said in my ear, and I parted from her, tilting my head questioningly. Izzy nodded towards an outdoor exit.
"Am I gonna see you again?" Izzy had turned, and her blue tailored dress was gathered as she was preparing to turn towards one of the other doors the people were exiting from back to... wherever they go. Izzy looked over her shoulder, and the quirk of her smile was inscrutable, but it told me that it wasn't what I wanted to hear.
"Well... thanks for the good night," I say, and I stand there, silently. And then, the party lights go down, and the auditorium is filled with darkness. i stand, pensively, thinking about the night, hands in my suit pockets. I'm very, very weary.
I passed by Christy, or what I now believed was the passing shade of Christy. I tipped her a salute, expecting a soccer mom's Botox tightened face still, but a skeleton smiled at me as she turned, still in her pantsuit. I wasn't perturbed, but I did go out of my way not to get another one of her hugs. She squealed, "Oooh, it was so nice to have you here, we have to get together, do you still have Facebook?" A sweat bead dropped from my head and I blushed, smiling, apologizing and making my exit. "Let me know if you want to be added to the group chat!" she said. And I went out a door with a red Exit sign, one I remembered from all the pep rallies of a life a million lifetimes ago, when I wasn't Kyle Shane, the boy who left home at seventeen. When I wasn't even remotely close to Kyle Shane, the boy who signed up for the IEW's Wrestling School, or to Kyle Shane, the cocky young man who joined the XWF Reboot. When I was just a kid with a tough home life. I remembered those long ago days. Hundreds of years ago.
I exited onto the bombed out ruins of the fields.
If wars hadn't torn apart the scaffolding of the bleachers long ago, the once maintained football field still showed damage. It's surface was pitted, scarred, harboring huge craters. Had one a higher, aerial view of Boston, you would have seen very little else. Just ruins, decades, centuries, lifetimes old. As old as I feel.
And I am so tired.
But Izzy had told me she was out here. So I keep going. just a little further, I coach the aching, arthritis flamed joints that hold me together.
So much could be said about the world, and it's maybe been covered a million times over in Kyle Shane promos and elsewhere. But as my creaking limbs move to get me over this last bit of distance, the space of a ruined football field, I think of a young man, starting a journey so long ago, so full of spirit and life. A cocky laugh on his lips, a fuck you, n00bs taunt rising in his voice. Not knowing or caring about the trials to come. That would always and forever be the Kyle Shane left in memory.
But now, I just walk this little bit of distance, feeling him but no longer him, per se. And I see her, standing there, amid the ruins. She turns to me. Array smiles. We come together, we embrace, and we stand together in the empty ruins of a hall long since abandoned.
And that's where we'll leave Kyle Shane.
The End.