Sage Pontiff
There’s a place that, if you’d look at it at a glance, would seem like the perfect place for a being such as Sage Pontiff.
And honestly, if you’d asked him half a year ago where he’d feel most at home, he’d tell you right here.
Althea Valley–named after the Dead song, not a specific geographical region–attracts the type of folks that are Sage’s bread and butter, bottom bitch, P1 base. It happens twice a year, a biannual Halloween, city-state, music event, arts fair, yoga festival, and excuse to do heroic amounts of drugs in the warm embrace of nature. If you could draw a Venn diagram of attendants to this event and the fans of Sage’s more esoteric “beat the shit out of all comers” messianic existence pre-PRIME, it’d be about a circle. Here you can get a pretty killer vegan pupusa, a tie dyed kaftan, and some crystals.
In short, like a hundred other places we’ve seen Sage Pontiff.
And that, well…that actually might be the problem.
Despite his frankly undeserved combination of magnetic charm, large size, and movie-star looks, remaining incognito is a bit of a chore for a man like him. But he didn’t announce this on his IG, didn’t bring along any hangers-on to buy him food or keep him company at night, and he’s settled on an outfit as nondescript as possible, simple sweats and a gaiter mask under a keffiyeh. He doesn’t look like Sage, and he doesn’t feel much like him either. The only real clue is his languid gait and his heterochromatic eyes, and even then, he’s not really talking to anyone.
And this is a strange place for him to arrive at.
He feels adrift, in many ways.
It’s not the success in the ring, it’s that the success is coming so infrequently. Honestly, to Sage, the opportunities for that success are feeling too few and far between. And that’s his fault too, he knows. In a business filled with shitheels, psychopaths, sycophants, the privileged elite, and snake-blooded hucksters…he is notoriously difficult, from a business perspective. He’s personally agreeable, sure–but he also knows that the amount of legal wrangling that the office has had to engage in dealing with the wake of his travels probably has the front office second guessing themselves.
And his deal is up for renewal soon. And he’s taken to this life, for ill or good.
There’s a big part of him that hates himself for that. In his darker moments, he calls himself a fraud–what holy man is really that concerned about a fucking job? But he also knows that he’s a rare soul who’s built for this existence of the traveling gladiator. There are small slivers of the population that seem to come from the kiln ready to occupy fringes, and he’s one of them.
But there is heartache as he walks along these dusty paths and verdant hills. There is a melancholy that has taken him, because while he fits here, it no longer gives him the same thrill. Maybe he’s just feeling off because he isn’t being adored, but isn’t that a problem, too?
That’s why he’s here. Not at Althea Valley itself, but at the parking area, amidst a collection of vans, Subarus, motorcycles, and a few repurposed school buses. Debating something he hasn’t debated in some time: Should he just fuck off? Or stay here and try to recapture some magic that may have been an illusion to begin with?
Fed up with his indecision, he does what most of us do in these moments: he checks his phone.
And there’s ample distraction to be had, let’s be clear. Offers of free drugs, some even not from bored pigs trying to entrap him. Offers of evenings of pleasure with beauties from all across the spectrums of sexuality and gender. He…well, Sage doesn’t mind those, so much. But nothing is inspiring him.
Until he sees it.
An invitation from a user listed to be @StabMeInThePit.
To go to, of all things, a hardcore show.
If Sage could consider one place as diametrically opposed to Althea Valley, it would be that. But of course he isn’t sure–how could he be? He’s heard the stories. Fast music, full of rage. Paroxysms of feeling and passion. A guy showing up like he does, with his look? They’d eat him alive. And that thought causes him to jerk to attention. His eyes go wide.
They’d eat me alive.
They’d eat me alive.
He closes his phone and pulls his keys from his pocket.
When the path taken becomes too familiar, one must veer into the woods. It is through being uncomfortable that we learn the most about ourselves. Namaste.
—
What you know about this scene is that you know nothing about it.
In this, Sage is the same as anyone on the outside looking at him–an anthropological exercise, really.
But this sea, this scrum of humanity, ages from highschool to 401k, crammed into a small space, all bouncing up and down, elbows and knees and shoulders crashing into one another. The sweat, the noise, the pure humanity of it all, everything stripped to raw nerves and sweat. There’s pain but the pain only serves to highlight existence, only serves to remind you that you’re alive. Your court the pain and the rage because it’s not anger, it’s passion. Does that sound familiar to you? It really should.
And that’s how he feels at home.
One would be forgiven for assuming that this rage, this destructive sound, the band up front all barks and guitar chug and blast beats, stands in total opposition to his ethos.
But consider the form. Here there are vegans that aspire to ecological terrorsim. Everyone here hates cops and they aren’t afraid to scrap with them, either. This is the rejection of what modern capitalism has to offer, just in different clothes. This is a tribal, chosen family circumstance–while these communities differ between black and tie dye, what does that difference in aesthetics mean when the goal is the same? Sage may preach ascension, but ascension requires rejection first and foremost. And rejection, this crowd has in spades.
While Sage doesn’t know the name of this band–fourth on a six band bill–or even have much of an opinion of them, there’s one thing he knows.
He feels alive.
Aching, exhausted, clear-headed, alive.
You can see him there, right in the pit, this lanky, blonde, tie-dye wearing pinball careening between bodies like Ricochet Rabbit. He’s sporting scratches on his arms, he’s soaked through, and his teeth are bloody–the latter noticeable because the man just can’t stop grinning. The band enters into a breakdown section, and the activity sending the Bodhisattva careening halts. Full stop. All the people are facing the stage. The air is wet and hot end electric all at once as the lead singer leads the crowd in a call and response.
“Every window deserves a brick!”
“Every window deserves a brick!”
“Every window deserves a brick!”
“Every window deserves a brick!”
“Every window deserves a brick!”
“Every window deserves a brick!”
By the time they hit the second call and response, Sage Pontiff has joined them. His eyes are bright, focused, free of dilation. His smile could blind nations.
And The Bodhisattva finally disappears. Because here, he’s not the Bodhisattva, he’s not a leader, he has no answers, he is not distinct. The mosh closes around him until he is absorbed by the crowd. Until he’s just one of them, indistinct, faceless. He is no longer a leader. He is a fist in the air. He is a bouncing skeleton. He is a hoarse voice joining others at a volume that can be heard over air raid guitars.
Every window deserves a brick.
—
“Hey, you got a light?”
The guy sounds muffled, frankly–Sage hasn’t had his eardrums assaulted like that in some time, and the relative silence of the air outside of the club has caused a bit of aural whiplash. Still, his eyes work and the individual asking makes the internationally recognized signal for a lighter with a wiggling thumb joint. Pontiff pops his cone joint in his mouth and reaches into his pocket, handing the guy a Bic.
Getting a look at the guy, he can’t be much older than Sage. He share’s the dreadlocked fighter’s height, but there the comparisons end. This guy is broad at the shoulders, limbs stocky, muscles on muscles with almost zero definition. He looks like a longshoreman or a construction worker, not a gym rat. He has a mustache that seems to defy being ironic or steampunk–it just is, as if his lips needed it to anchor his square jaw. While he looks stern, there’s a softness to his eyes, which are a pale green like sunlit moss. He sparks up his cigarette and leans against the wall next to the Bodhisattva, throwing his head back and breathing heavily. For a moment they are two men enjoying the silence, until he speaks up.
“Watch yourself with that weed. Not that I give a shit, but those straight edge kids over there will give you an earful.”
“Earfuls I can handle.”
“Gotta say though, they probably clocked you as overdue for a lecture soon as you walked in. Don’t get many guys with dreads and tie hitting up this club for Hardcore night. Brings you out here?”
“I desired a change of pace. Or a change of scenery, change of energy.”
This elicits a chuckle from his pitbull of a smoke buddy.
“Yeah, I bet you got that, too. Actually have fun?”
“Y’know man, I was ready for this just be another kinda ‘something to do’, right? But I loved it. I’m surprising myself by saying that, but there was just something about it. Maybe less the music, somehow, though I know that’s a vehicle.”
“But the energy, right?”
“Dude, the energy.”
“Nothing fuckin’ like it, brother. That’s the kinda unity that oligarchs should be fearing.”
He holds out a meaty paw.
“Cliff. Nice to meet ya.”
Pontiff grasps it warmly.
“Sage. Same, man.”
“‘Sage?’ Your parents hippies, LARPers, or both?”
This elicits a dry chuckle from Pontiff. For all his talk of expansion, he has been in an echo chamber of people who have names like Lavender and Moonglow–he hasnt talked to people with regular names in a while.
“Probably both.”
He reaches the end of his joint with a Method Man-tier, godly lung inhale. Snuffing it against the brick, he considers Cliff for a moment. Considers his bulk, his eyes, his smile as he chuckles at his name. Something about nice eyes, man. They always get him. He gets a little closer under the guise of making sure his joint is out before settling back in. Now they can feel one another’s heat.
Cliff doesn’t shy away.
“Know anywhere I can get some eats this late?”
“Hm. Ya cool with vegan?”
“Sure.”
“Yeah, I know a spot. Wanna get a Uber or something?”
Sage smiles his magazine quality grin.
“Nah, I can give you a ride.”
—
So who are you in this tale, you figure?
Like, if you think about it, I’m a guest star in your life, and you’re a guest star in mine, right? So are you supposed to be…a friend, an antagonist?
Maybe neither.
Maybe you’re just an extra.
Maybe you’ll redefine my existence.
But to me, man? I’m not here to harsh your whole thing, but to me, you’re a means to an end. You’re…faceless. But that’s not a dig on you–most people I see across from myself in the ring are becoming that way. See, this whole thing, it wasn’t ever about the people. I might have lied to myself more than once, but it’s not about the crowds. Not about you. Wasn’t about Ria or Coral.
I sure told them it was about them though, didn’t I?
But this is a process, man.
It’s a whittling.
I’ve had to peel away so much material just to get down to what this really is about. And you’re catching me at a transitional time, where I’m realizing that I’ve surrounded myself with comfort and coddling my brain and body. I’ve been coddling my spirit. It’s terrible for me.
Comfort isn’t good.
Comfort is a lie.
Painlessness isn’t good.
Painlessness is false security.
You need the discomfort, the pain, the conflict. It hones you. Peels away the carbon scale and works under the oily forgemarks until it exposes the glowing metal edge. I want to find that glowing edge within my spirit. I want you to want it too. I want us both to burn all our pretense to the ground, to nothing. Until we are spiritually nude and able to accept the truth of the universe and its energies.
But You don’t want that. Neither did the others, if we’re all being honest.
You are a variable I can’t control. In the singular, specific, and the in general.
I can only control the variable of Sage Pontiff.
That’s why I’m now content to accept that you may want to stay blind and ignorant. But no matter where you see yourself spiritually, you still want to fight. You still want to make me hurt. Not because you hate me, but because there is a compulsion in you to do it. My same compulsion. So that is why I’m extremely comfortable with using you.
Right here in the center of my head is my third eye.
It’s stuck behind dingy, tinted glass.
But I’m not stressing it.
Every window deserves a brick.
And my brick is in the shape of Wade Elliot.