C. Mortgomery Byrnes
MONDAY. 4:12 PM.
Goldie floats upside down in her (or is it a him? Do fish have sexes?) fishbowl. Goldie’s eyes are deader than a daytime stripper’s who works in a generously-referred-to-as “Gentlemen’s Club” off the interstate during the lunchtime buffet (and not any of the classier joints located in Las Vegas or Atlantic City).
Whilst there is a single resident of the North Dakota home of the man they call Mortimer Kjedelig, there is no place more empty. The bucket in the middle of the living room is two-thirds full of water from the leaky roof (and ceiling). There is a slight discoloration on the seventies shag carpeting from what may or may not be from spilled coffee. Several crushed cans of RC cola and an empty bottle of Jameson are strewn about the floor. There is a television tray out with a partially eaten TV dinner – Salisbury Steak, corn, and the dessert, some apple gloop that looks more like it was sneezed out than cooked up. There is a single fly circling the plastic tray like a vulture over a near dead-from-dehydration man in Death Valley.
The only sound comes from the bathroom which is just slightly larger than one found on a 747 from New York to Paris. Mortimer Kjedelig, wearing a black sleeveless t-shirt (the type that would be pretentiously referred to as a “wife beater”) and track pants in teal and black. A wears a small pendant around his neck, Saint Jude.
Mortimer, maskless, stares at his face. The scars from his battle at “Great American Nightmare” are barely noticeable, but still there. They will always be there, unless he gets plastic surgery, but who has the money for that? Socialites, real housewives, and insecure actors, actresses, and sex workers.
Not Mortimer Kjedelig.
The swelling from the infection has gone down significantly. It is hard to believe that a week ago his cheeks were puffed out causing him to look like a chipmunk with a mouth full of nuts. Mortimer slowly opens his mouth and moves his jaw to the left and right. He’s almost at one hundred percent, but not quite. :::::
MORTIMER KJEDELIG: MAAAAAH. MAAAAY. MEEEEEE. MO. MOO.
:::After his unfortunate skirmish with the law, Mortimer (then Rowan Scatino and later Ro Fontaine – such a hack stage name) took an acting class headed by the great and obscure Martin B. Wellington, star or stage and….stage. Mortimer doubted his credentials, citing that he shared the stage with the likes of Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and Terry Kiser (whose claim to fame was portraying a corpse in “Weekend at Bernie’s”). Professor Wellington (as he liked to be called) would often begin with mouth exercises – Mah, may, me, mo, moo. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, doe – before articulation exercises (mainly dealing with tongue twisters), and that is the image he has right now.:::::
MORTIMER KJEDELIG: MAH – MAY – ME – MO – MOO!
:::His tone becomes more spiteful. Memories of returning home after serving his nine months how things had changed. Previous relationships had dissolved. His mother, her condition deteriorating, expressed her disappointment in various ways. Linda Lambey had cut ties with him when he went away and by the time he got out, was in a three month relationship with a fucking D, which nearly broke him.
Mortimer was lost, he wanted something, he needed something. Cousin Mikey said he always had room for family on his crew but he didn’t want that, not then, at least. He did some theater in his first semester at community college, a bit part in “Six Degrees of Separation”. He still remembers the exhilaration of being on stage and how electric the applause was at the curtain call.
A few months after he got out, he found this acting course. At first it was great, learning different exercises and methods, but on the fourth week, he was given a monologue to prepare from Tom Stoppard’s play “Arcadia” for a character named Valentine. Initially, when he got the assignment he figured he would be talking about Donkey Kong or Q*Bert or something. Boy, was he way off on that assessment. The monologue was about algorithms, physics, mathematics….basically, the shit that bored him in high school….predictions and it raining on his Auntie’s garden party….no one he knew fucking talked that like. The thought causes him to grit his teeth, his mouth barely moving, if he had a dummy in his hand, he could be perceived as a world class ventriloquist.:::::
MORTIMER KJEDELIG: Mah…may…me….mo…moo.
:::When he completed (or, more aptly got through) the monologue, he stood on stage. The stage lights nearly blinding him, he felt the sweat trickling down from his brow as he waited, in silence, for what felt like an hour but couldn’t have been more than two minutes (which, to Mortimer, would be a minute and thirty seconds too long). Then, bellowing from the darkness, the voice of Martin B. Wellington, who sounds like Sir John Gielgud doing a Mel Brooks impression, projected towards the stage….
“Class, what you just witnessed was Rowan dropping his trousers and jerking off all over the grave of Sir Laurence Olivier. Abysmal. Rowan, from what I saw from you today, the only script you will be memorizing will be the day’s specials at whatever two star restaurant you will eventually work.”
Mortimer Kjedelig can feel his gut wrenching and twisting, the stomach acids begin bubbling and percolating as he remembers those words. Those vile, awful words. He begins to shake as he feels the rage building inside of him, he struggles as he gets the words out.:::::
MORTIMER KJEDELIG: M-M-Mah…….May…..M-Me…..M-M-Mo….Mooooooo!!!!
::::Martin B. Wellington continued to talk but all he heard was the incoherent horns of Charlie Brown’s teacher. He felt naked as his acting teacher verbally eviscerated him on the stage, in front of his peers in the audience. He did what came naturally, he jumped off the stage, up the aisle, and out the door. His next phone call was to his Cousin Mikey. When he told Mikey what had happened, Mikey did what came naturally to him. Mikey, Uncle Frank’s twenty-eight year old (at the time) son, laughed and belittled him before offering him a job to help Johnny “Warlock” (a name derived from Johnny Parisi’s monthly Dungeons and Dragons campaign) collect a rather sizeable gambling debt from a school teacher.
The sound of her arm breaking still haunts Mortimer. Her begging him and Johnny before he clocked her in the face with a right hand, those big pleading, watering gray eyes….her screams when arm made that sickening “crack” sound wake him up at night. With the men he’s roughed up in the past, he seldom thinks of them, but when it comes to the handful of women, it always felt wrong and telling himself that they were no different any other degenerate fuck that owes money did very little in comforting him.
And it is all Martin B. Wellington’s fault. If he wasn’t a sadistic fuck and said what he said, maybe Mortimer wouldn’t have called Cousin Mikey that day and he wouldn’t have taken the job. Maybe he could get more than five hours of sleep a night.
Mortimer’s eyes begin welling up and he looks at himself in the mirror and the volcanic rage that has been building erupts..:::
MORTIMER KJEDELIG: MAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!
::::Another dream shattered. Another person in his life to point out how much of a fucking screw up he is or how disappointed they are in him.:::::
MORTIMER KJEDELIG: MAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!
::::His breathing becomes more erratic, a tear rolls down his cheek. Martin B. Wellington, another in a long list of names who have called him a failure. He regrets not having his Uncle Frank send someone to rough up that pretentious prick or, at the very least, done it himself.:::::
MORTIMER KJEDELIG: MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
::::There was a part of him that was excited when it was suggested that he go into the world of professional wrestling. “You can kick ass and get paid for it, bro”. It sounded great when he heard it. Then he got beat by a fucking moron with a dancing bear.::::::
MORTIMER KJEDELIG: MOOOOOOOOOOOOE!!!!!!!
::::And then the next thing Mortimer knows, he is winless in four matches. At “Great American Nightmare”, however, he had victory within his grasp only to be robbed of it by that Tony Gamble prick. Using barbed wires around his fucking mouth?! He disrespected Mortimer. He embarrassed Mortimer. He ensured that Mortimer could not and would not win. Tony Gamble made Mortimer’s doubters correct…..In the world of professional wrestling, Mortimer Kjedelig is a fucking failure.:::::
MORTIMER KJEDELIG: MOOOOOOOOOOO—–
::::Sickened by his reflection he headbutts his reflection in the mirror. The mirror cracks and a small gash on his forehead opens and a stream of blood begins down to the bridge of his nose. For a brief moment he staggers backwards, the only thing keeping him upright is the extra cozy bathroom where there is no room to fall. Mortimer puts his mask on and looks at the cracked reflection in the mirror.:::::
MORTIMER KJEDELIG: I AIN’T A FUCKIN’ LOSER!!!!!!
::::He looks down at the sink and finds a single droplet of his blood against the white ceramic. Maybe it is the sight of his own blood or maybe it is a delayed effect of smashing his head into the mirror but the room around begins spinning as if he were riding the Cyclone on Coney Island. His legs become gelatinous limbs and, as much as fights it, he crumples down on the floor where, a couple of hours later, as he is snoring on the tiled vinyl floor, a daddy long legs will crawl into his nostril and, feeling a slight tickle, he will his nose and smoosh it where it stands.::::
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Boxer Gloves or whoever the fuck you are, I caught your little speech on Revival the other night. Really movin’ stuff.
It almost got me right here.
I’m to my heart, in case you’re wonderin’.
But you know what I didn’t hear from you?
Anything about failure.
Yeah, you met your true love and she fuckin’ got cancer and died. Tragic.
But oh! OH!
You have a new love. It’s wrestlin’!
Gimme a fuckin’ break!
“The Bullshitter from the North” is more like it.
Look, pal, I ain’t got anything against you.
Well, I do.
See, you sell this bill of goods like it’s some kinda fairy tale. Did you know that the rom-com is the modern day fairy tale?
Is that your life? You met the “one” in some kinda “meet-cute” way? Lemme guess, you were about to hail a cab and the “one” ran into your arm and knocked a tooth out. Or maybe you started talking to her and became a blitherin’ idiot like any fuckin’ Hugh Grant movie, Lord knows I’ve seen’em all. Or were you at a party and your eyes met and then you were drawn to one another and there was Celine Dion or fuckin’ Spandau Ballet playin’ in the background.
If you think I sound bitter it’s because I fuckin’ am!
You think I don’t know what the PRIME upper management is thinkin’ when they put you in match with me? They’re sayin’ “Look at this frickin’ guy, big MMA guy, loved his wife who had cancer, now widowed, loves wrestling, the fans are gonna wanna blow’em after gettin’ a load of him…..”
That sounded better in my head….
Anyways, they, they bein’ PRIME management, Lindsay Troy and whoever else writes the checks are sayin’ “Yeah, this is the type of guy the fans love. Let’s get’em started off right. Let’s give’em an easy ‘W’! Who fuckin’ sucks on the roster? Who is the biggest waste of fuckin’ space we got? Well, it’s the winless fuckhead Mortimer Kuh-Jedi-Leg!’”
Fuck them and fuck you!
You think you’re better than me because you were in love?
I was in love. Now with my ex-wife. That was more about the sex than anything else. No, there was a girl I worked with, must have been twenty-three years ago. We connected. We were like chicken and parmigiana. She was datin’ another guy when we first met, some prick named Donny.
Or Ronny.
Lonnie?
Doesn’t fuckin’ matter. Point is she was there for me when my mother was gettin’ sick, I was there for her when that cocksuckin’ Ronny/Lonnie/Donny asshole cheated on her with her best friend who was battlin’ an eatin’ disorder, you know the one fashion models have, anemia.
They break up, we go out, a coffee here, a movie there, usually with some mutual friends. More co-workers really. Feelin’s developed. None of them pervy ones either like what her tits look like naked. It was the way she made me laugh, the way she laughed, the way I felt when she hugged me. It was the thought of what her hand would feel like in mine as we walked in the mall.
I wanna believe she felt the same in some way….
….because then, she asked me out. SHE asked ME. I was nervous as shit when she did. I can admit I nearly pissed myself. I even remember the movie she wanted to see. “She’s All That”. Unfortunately, circumstances developed of a legal nature that prohibited yours truly from bein’ able to attend the aforementioned date, as I was detained by certain law enforcement officials for doin’ some alleged illegal malfeasance which does not need to be verbalized at this time.
Never felt about a woman like I did her.
When I got out, she had a new number, couldn’t get in touch with her, so I got myself a trenchcoat, pulled the boombox outta the closet, went to her house, played that “Kiss Me” song by Six Cents None the Richer. Turns out her family had apparently moved moved two months previous and the current residents turned on their sprinklers and called the cops.
I later found out that she was fuckin’ some DJ Fuckwad in the city.
The point is, why the fuck do people like you get whatever they fuck want and people like me have to scrape and claw and get told or shown repetitiously at how much of a fuckin’ screw up we are?
No! I am so fuckin’ sick and tired of bein’ treated like a fuckin’ loser.
The saddest thing, though. When it came to makin’ certain collections, I was pretty good with that. Especially with those degenerate twats that decided to duck me. I was pretty good with that. Probably my pent up anger and frustration but that is neither here nor anywhere.
Point is, Boxin’ Gloves, I feelin’ very pissed off right now and I don’t care if you are former MMA, CIA, FBI, NRA, NAACP, LGBTQ, OSHA, NATO or whatever. You step in that ring with me, I will beat you like you owe people money.
This match between me an’ you? It ain’t just a match. It’s a message job to PRIME and Tony Fuckin’ Gamble Douchebag Prick. I ain’t just gonna just beat you, I’m gonna fuck you up so bad, I am personally happy that your wife ain’t around to see it.