Bridging the Gap Between Real and Fake

[Sebastian Grey]

Last week was invigorating to say the least. I didn't think my euphoria could be replicated so quickly after Final Frontier, but man, was I wrong. The entire experience, from walking into the arena with a bag filled with ring attire, putting on said ring attire, to my pre match segment, all the way to the point I shoved the sweat soaked attire back into that bag, it was freaking sweet. Evangelista brought out the professional in me that I wasn't entirely sure was still there. I was afraid I'd lost it all during my time away and that I was going to have to work my body and my experience from the ground up all over again. 

But my knee held up, and her talent and passion for this profession we leave it all in the ring for, BROUGHT it all out with gusto! My first match and victory in PDW ended with me winning, sure, but I also hurt a guy unintentionally because I was careless and nervous. This time around, I found myself long before I had to put her down for the three count, and she will be fighting another day, and maybe someday soon it will be another match with me, if I'm lucky. 

But it wasn't just Evangelista that got me through it. My girlfriend, Yun, was ringside, as well as some of my brothers from PDW and some younger guys from the farm leagues I never got a chance to compete with on the bigger stage. People were there to support me that weren't just the average fan, and that meant the freaking world to me. 

And it will stay with me each week, but now that that my greeting match is over, I'll have to get even more serious. Now people have current tape to work with when going against me. The matches only get tougher from here, and I need to prepare for it. By no means am I saying I'm at peak physical shape, because I'm not, but I am at a pretty high base line right now and I'm happy for it. It gives me something to go by while I'm training. Something to build upon. 

I promised I'd give my all when I came here, and so I did, and so I shall. 

My Serenity is not a Mirage. 

:: Temple University – Philadelphia, PA - March 2011 :: 

The Psi Sigma Phi frat house was bumping on a frigid Saturday night, but an unending flow of beer and liquor warmed the insides of the dozens of young college minds that packed the inside of the ancient home. Even though snow still covered the frozen earth from the week prior, numerous hammered individuals gathered in groups throughout the front and back lawns, their heavy breathing sending plumes of steam in the air, their laughter and slurred words catching on the wind with the muffled rhymes of Kanye that escaped the house. One particular group was louder than the others, and they had begun to drawing attention.



High above the snow filled in-ground pool, Sebastian Grey had is arm around his best friend and leader of the PSP, Mark Valenta, and they were both hammered out of their minds. Neither wore shirts, despite the temperature that had plummeted below zero when the sun went down, and their bodies were painted with their chapter's Greek symbols. Grey hissed as Mark gave him a manly slap on the back, adding to the red marks that spread across the twenty year old's bare upper body.



“Ladies and Gentlemen!” Mark exclaimed, pulling a hiccuping Grey so his face was nearly in his armpit hair as he addressed his constituents gathered on the balcony as well as the ones below. “Tonight...TONIGHT...we have witnessed some of the most ballsy drinking feats ever undertaken within these fabled halls!”



Sebastian held up a hand before Mark could continue. Bemused, Mark looked down, following Sebastian's hands as they dug into the pocket of his jeans. Struggling, Sebastian cursed a few times before a full beer can popped up into the air from his tight pocket. He fumbled with it in mid air before snatching it in both hands like a caveman and snapping it open, getting on a knee before Mark and the group as he leaned his head back and crushed the can in his hand, shotgunning the liquid so fast that you couldn't tell if he drank more than steamed off his hot skin.



“Fuck yeah, mother fuckers!” Grey hollered, spitting beer mist up into the night air and flexing like a professional wrestler as he went forehead to forehead with Mark, who hollered back in drunken acceptance. “We ain't done yet!”



Mark smirked, bear-hugging Grey again with one arm as he regained the group's attention. “And my fiend of a friend here is absolutely right! We haven't even tapped the third keg yet, but before we do...we have to congratulate Mr. Grey here for his due diligence! Wouldn't you all agree!?”



A smattering of hoots and hollers made both men smile as they used each other for support. As they did, two large dudes in football Owl jackets emerged from the house, carrying black metal pokers in each hand, the tips red and steaming. The crowd made way for the two, careful not to get branded by the rods as they approached the edge of the balcony where Grey and Valenta stood. Mark's face lit up as he took two of the pokers from one of the linemen, and turned his back to the group, holding them out at his sides.



Through the fog of his own delirium, Grey's joy faltered as his eyes fell upon the four branding rods. He shook his hand, slurring as he approached Mark, “What the hell is this...not part of the deal...burned? Naw, man...not worth it...”



Mark's smile remained, but only Grey could see the change in his eyes as he nodded to the big man who now had free hands. “It seems like our new recruit needs a little more liquid courage after all!”



The party-goers went along with it, to drunk or too stupid to see that Sebastian wasn't game with what was surely about to happen. Someone handed the big guy a party cup filled with god knows what, and the guy used his sheer mass to pull Sebastian into his grasp and shove the cup into his face. Grey fought for a moment, but his own addiction also screamed at him for letting any of it go to waist. After the first few swigs of the mixed drink, he reached up and took the cup from the body guard's hand and finished it on his own, the burning in his stomach letting him know that he had just downed a hell of a lot of whiskey.



“Still being a little bitch, Sebby?” Mark asked, twirling the rods in his hand, stray embers flying into the air from the ends as he smirked in their glow.



Grey stared at him, pissed that Valenta had put him in that position in front of all their peers without simply explaining his intentions before any of it had happened. Clenching his jaw and wiping some of the spilled alcohol from his full beard, Sebastian shook his head, flexing every muscle in his body and jumping up and down, getting the blood flowing as he stared at the four menacing brands before him.



“Thatta boy,” Mark said quietly, winking at him as he looked back at the onlookers, who were growing in size as the party moved outdoors. “This guy here is MY man...and just because he didn't join this charter as a freshman, doesn't mean her can't get into the fold another way! To make up for the four years he was not a pledge, he must take the four marks of our brotherhood and wear them until his dying day! Do you accept this penance, brother!?”



Grey closed his eyes, cracking his neck, his vision swimming when his eyes opened. Falling back into the balcony, he grunted his acceptance. With a speed that his size beguiled, the guy who had force fed him the whiskey got behind him and held his arms behind his back. Grey struggled instinctively.



“Hey man, this is for your own protection, this is going to hurt like a bitch the more your struggle...” he warned him.



Grey began to grind his teeth together as Mark stepped within arm's distance. He smiled at Sebastian and Grey looked up at him, everything spinning.



“Brothers now...” he said, driving the two pokers into his right pectoral.



Sebastian did not scream, but he growled like a son of a bitch, biting his lip so hard that it bled. One eye clenched tight, his vision growing red despite the blur as the Mark pulled the pokers away, strands of burnt flesh coming away from his chest. Spit flew from between his lips as he watched Mark drop the used brands and take the next set from the other big man. He paused, looking over his handiwork before leaning forward.



“Brothers forever...”



And everything had gone black before the pokers seared his flesh once more.

:: Poughkeepsie, NY – Present :: 

My eyes snapped open, but I could not see. Lying flat on my back, I felt the perfect room temperature cooling off my sweat glistened upper body as I kicked the sheets off me into a bundle at the foot of the bed. My right arm crossed my chest, my fingers absent-mindedly tracing the grooves of the burn scar that ran across most of my upper pectoral. The skin was soft to the touch, the only part of my chest not covered in the finely groomed hair. Cocking my head to the side, I blinked away the grogginess, peeking over the edge of the pillow to see that the sky outside my riverfront hotel hadn't even begun to lighten.



Like clockwork, I spun out of bed and fell forward, catching my fall with relaxed wrists and quickly banging out thirty push-ups to get the blood flowing after hours of being at a stand-still. Just to push myself, I followed with as many one armed pushes I could get before it became a struggle. Already in my sweats, I pushed myself up and over to the dresser, where my Nike Eagles KO hoodie was draped from the night before. I slipped into it, not caring to even put a shirt on as I found last night's socks and slipped them on as well. In less than five minutes, I had found myself fully dressed for a brisk morning run and I had just begun to place my ear buds in when a soft knocking filled the room. I cocked my head, not sure where it came from, but then it came again, and not from the front door.



Smiling to myself, I moved to the door that separated my room from the next and unlatched it, opening it to find Yun on the other side, looking up at me with fresh eyes, as if she had woken up hours earlier.



“And here I thought 5:45 was early,” I said, peeking into her room, half expecting to see Joe Shamrock staring at me in his normal disapproving manner.



“Your grunting could have woken a sleeping giant,” Yun replied, taking my hand in her own as she pulled me into her room.



My body tensed as I crossed the threshold, and I chuckled, realizing that Joe had installed such a no-nonsense ideal into my relationship with Yun that I felt like a teenager going on a date again, fearing that if the dad found out I was alone with his daughter, I was as good as dead. It was absurd that I could let him make me feel that way, because we were both adults, but still, his ever looming presence sometimes made me feel as if our choice to take things uber-slow wasn't based solely off our own beliefs.



Yun looked at me with an eyebrow raised and I looked around her room, which was brightly lit by every lamp available and an empty bowl of cereal sat at the table. “Good thing the tiny giant was already awake...” I said, moving towards the table.



“I've never fully gotten used to these time zones,” Yun said, sitting at the edge of her bed so that her feet barely touched the ground as she worked to pull on sneakers of her own.



Lifting the bowl and lowering my face to it, I scowled and dropped it back onto the table. “Raisin Bran? And I let you kiss me?”



She rolled her eyes, standing back up and grabbing her own hoody as she walked up to me. “Because it's such a struggle for you, eh?”



When she came up to me, I felt all my worries fall away, and I began to melt into her like I did so often. The thoughts that plagued my mind since leaving for Poughkeepsie kept me from lifting her up in my arms and begging her to just lay with me for the day. Instead, I gave her a quick, meaningful kiss before stepping back towards her door, shoving my earbuds into the pocket of my hood.



“No, but this run should be. I want to check out that awesome looking bridge that goes over the river,” I jerked my head backwards, towards the back of the hotel, where a walking trail lead to the historic Poughkeepsie Bridge which stretched over the Hudson and looked over the old city. “I reckon you are coming with?”



Yun grinned as she pulled her hood over her slender frame, her multi-color hair poking out from the hood in a hot mess. She grabbed her hotel room key and slipped it in her pocket, walking past me and opening the door to her room.



“Girl like me has to stay stage ready somehow, right?” she quipped with a cute little smirk.



I took her lead and exited the room, smiling to myself as we made our way through the sleeping hotel. We both knew that she was in the best shape of her life, despite not currently competing in the squared circle. Between her stints in Korea and every other promotion she could squeeze into her schedule, her self defense training with Joe as well as her sparring sessions with me kept her every bit of my equivalent if not my physical specimen adversary. This much was made even more apparent to me as the frigid air outside had caused my breathing to become heavier than it should be when we made our way towards the lit up bridge in the distance.



Sneakers slapping off cold concrete, we let our bodies warm up even though both our faces stung in the cold beneath our hoods. A few times, we playfully bumped into each other, and when I had first started breathing heavily, she had sped ahead, turning around and running backwards, cockily looking down at the FitBit on her wrist as if she was checking a watch. By the time we had reached the foot of the bridge, we had both worked up a sweat, and I was able to lower my hood and run my hand through my wet hair without feeling overly cold.



“This thing is freaking big,” I said, looking across it, always amazed by how much smaller things seem to be when you picture them in your mind.



“That's what she said...” Yun replied before giving an awkward chuckle.



“HA!” I replied, pretending to bend over and get some air. “At this rate, you'll never get the opportunity to say that!”



Knowing she hated when I went there, I bolted up the stairs that ran under the old railroad bridge. I heard her yell after me, probably calling me a jerk or something close to that as she chased me. The stairs were slick and I slowed down to simply walking them two at a time, but I kept smiling. I knew she felt somewhat bad anytime we joked sexually, because when the reality of our own non-existant sex life hit home, she would feel as if her own ideals were standing in the way of my happiness. I made small jokes and brushed them off not to goad her, but to let her know that I was had bought a ticket for the entire ride, not just the ending.



By the time we had both reached the top of the bridge, which had been restored in 2009 to be a pedestrian walkway across the Hudson, she had forgotten about the joke and was now moving out over the river, looking out into the distance with wide eyes. I followed her, also basking in the amazing view as the sun was beginning to rise over New York. The snow that remained from scattered storms glistened in the far off mountains, and steam rose from the stacks of the city, but what was truly breath-taking was the icy river so far down below. The breaking dawn didn't reach the water yet, so only the lights from the town and the bridge itself twinkled off the frozen water, and it literally took our breath away.



“Are you okay?” Yun asked.



I blinked, looking at her as we leaned against the wall, my hand on my right peck. Her eyes were on my hand and I suddenly felt self-conscious about it. Pulling it away, I put my hands in the pocket of my hood and nodded.



“Yeah, I'm fine. Why do you ask?” I tried to deflect.



She gave me the all too familiar “busted” look she always gave me when I was hiding something before putting her own small hand against my chest. “You've been touching your chest a lot. Are you in pain or something? I didn't really notice it until we were packing to come out here for the week.”



Attentive girlfriends. They were the best, but only when you wanted them to be. Sighing, I leaned forward, inhaling frozen air into my nose, feeling it up in my forehead as I looked out into the gathering light.



“Old memories were just brought up is all...” I replied, remembering the night I had let Mark brand me, forever scarring my flesh with an eternal reminder of my young stupidity. “Seems to happen every time my name comes back out in the public.”



“Bad memories, it seems...” she acknowledged with a comforting hand between my shoulder blades.



“Not completely,” I sighed. “Just complicated. I don't know if you noticed that hour I had stepped out into the hall on Monday when you and Joe were playing Smash...but an old friend called out of the blue. Hadn't heard from him in a few years. We didn't really leave things in the same happy manner we started with...”



I closed my eyes, forcing away the images of bloodied knuckles and tiny puncture wounds.



“Words were said, things that just don't go away with the booze and every other problem I tried to sweep under the rug. But when he called me, it was like that shit never happened. I won't let my addiction convince me that I was the only one in the wrong when we had our falling out, but I didn't do things how they should have been done, and my actions hurt Mark and people close to the two of us...but there he was, asking me how I was...following me...complimenting me on my new career...on everything. At first I just thought he was one of the countless other former acquaintances looking for a hand out...but..”



“But what, hun?” Yun asked when I had paused, and I turned away from the water, crossing my arms so I could rub the scar on my chest without being so noticable.



“He wasn't. I always thought he'd make it big somewhere when we went to school together, and he has. He started up his own business, and I looked him up after our chat. He seems one hundred and ten percent legit and he's leading a bunch of inner city programs to clean the streets in Philly and help out under-privileged kids...” I told her, looking down at my feet, the sun growing brighter.



“Well that doesn't sound bad at all, Seb. Why do you sound so conflicted?” she asked, hooking her arm around my bicep and leaning her head against it.



“He wants me to be his spokesman, which is great and all, and I'd love to network some of my own charities that fell off a little while I wasn't in the ring, but he knew me at my worst...I just can't help but shake the feeling that there is something not right here...and that alone kills me because I of all people shouldn't judge a book by its cover. If I don't believe that someone else can change, how the hell am I supposed to tell others that I did?”



I shook my head, hating my own doubt. Yun held my arm tighter though and I looked down at her, loving her comfort and the knowledge that I didn't have to hold this type of stuff in anymore. I had felt like there was no one in the world who could listen to my problems when my sister had been brutally taken from me last year, but my friends, and Yun especially, had broken that shell within months, and now, a year later, I was beginning to feel like I wasn't on my own again.



“One of the many reasons I find you so appealing, and why I adore you, is that since I've known you, you always give everyone the benefit of the doubt. You give everyone a chance to be your friend, and you don't fault them even if they choose to make you their enemy. I don't know your past with this guy, and I know you well enough now to not be offended when you open up to me. I know you skirt around actually events, but I don't need to know them, I just need to know how to help. You have a lot on your mind right now with your match when this sun coming up goes back down, so let me do my part and have Joe look into this guy for you, see if he can pull up anything that you may have missed in the last two years...can I do that for you, babe?”



I closed my eyes, feeling the sun on my face and her warmth against me, and I inhaled deeply before exhaling all the bad vibes outward. I patted her hand, letting her know that I accepted her offer, and that was all I needed to do as she had also done something else for me. She had gotten my mind back on the looming brawl I would be having with Mirage, and it wasn't something I could take lightly.



“Alright, I need to get a pump going,” I said, kissing her on the cheek before pulling my head back over my head and continuing our run across the bridge.



As we ran towards the sun-rise, I heard her snicker in the background before saying, “That's what she said...heh...boom...” to amuse no one but herself.



God, I loved her.

:: Grey Matters :: 

My second match couldn't be any further from the first. In my debut, I knew I was preparing for an opponent who loved this thing we do just as much as I do. Evangelista loves the sport, she loves the thrill like everyone else, but its not born of malice, or sick delusions. I can't begin to try and make sense of all the things I've seen on the tapes I got of Mirage last week, but what I can say is that if he thinks that he can get into my head, he wasted an entire week's preparation. 

I've seen your talent in the ring, Mirage, and it is something that garners respect, no doubt. The gold you wear around your waist is no joke. You took that Mid-Atlantic Legacy title and made it yours. I can't fault a man for doing that. You are an admirable foe, and I have no doubt that you can stop me in my tracks when that bell rings, but I severely hope that you are training at a physical level for this match, because should you come at me in a psychological attack, I assure you, it will be for naught... 

Because what can you show me beyond that mask that I haven't already seen in my own life? While you live behind that mask, I lived behind a mask of my own for seven years. I lived in my own inebriated hell and when I woke up and looked in the mirror each afternoon, the blank stare and black eyes may have been as porcelain as your owl looking visage. Any type of gruesome torture you can come up with to try and torture me with, I assure you, I have done to myself ten fold. Physically, mentally, emotionally, I've committed suicide more than I can count. 

You see, friend, since I gained my sobriety three years ago, I've come face to face with the mirage of my life addicted to the bottle every day, and I've squashed it. I've pummeled it to the ground and stood proud because I broke through it all. All the darkness...all the pain...all the threats...it's a ploy. A trick. It's stuff to make you believe you are weak. It's what you use to try and make your opponents fear you...to believe you hold the power over them because you don't feel emotion. 

Not feeling? Bud, that's the ultimate mirage. 

It's not possible. You will always feel something. So when this is all said and done, when I face you head on and look into your mask and tell you, “I'm not scared,” and I fight you to the best of my ability, whether you admit it in public or not, win or lose, I guarantee you will feel respect. 

And respect? That's no fallacy, brother, no mirage. 

That's just truth.