A Peroration on Skateboarding (cont...)

[Allen and Ollie and Raccoon]

Back.

Way way back.

My brother got me my first skateboard.

First time I step on it I fall and immediately break my wrist.

My brother is the first to sign my cast.

And when I’m out he encourages me to give the skateboard another try.

One month later? I do my first kickflip.

He’s proud.

Many years later.

He’s got the armbar locked in on me he’s finished off dozens of matches with.

He’s twisting the wrist he knows is my weak one after I broke it all those years ago.

And he’s saying ‘Tap you fucking leech.’

Leech.

It’s hard not to feel like one. Johnny Maverick and Ollie Maverick. Tag Team Champions everywhere they went. Johnny racking up singles wins over and over and over but always bringing his little brother along. Back when I let people see my face I was just the little brother. The Racoon Guy. I was the ‘fun’ kind of crazy you could market so long as I was attached to the actual good wrestler.

There are people I considered friends who referred to me as ‘Johnny’s little brother’ instead of my actual name for years. So when he retired Dad and took his name I kept Maverick. This name was mine now. I’ve done so much to distance myself from him.

And I know one day he’s going to show up and ruin it. Johnathan Daemon. Fully adopting dad’s teachings that this industry needs an antagonist. That iron sharpens iron. Everything we were fighting against.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned now it’s that you have to mine the good out of all of the bad. Johnathan is a piece of shit. Johnny was my big brother. He existed. He was real. Johnathan doesn’t get to take my big brother away from me.

So I find myself at Trash Land after hours. It’s the theme park I own.

It’s complicated.

I’ve got the skateboard covered in faded and scratched ‘Bad Religion’, ‘Dead Kennedys’, and ‘Misfits’ stickers.

For a moment in my head I step right on this thing and immediately break my wrist again. Honestly, it would be pretty funny, considering.

And then he was immediately good at skateboarding again, right?

That’s not interesting. Let’s go back to something interesting.

See, my dad beat the living shit out of me.

Before you hop on the sympathy train, he did it because I asked him to.

Let’s go way way back again. To the shitty gym owned by my adoptive father. Daniel Daemon. Wrestling legend. 7 Feet tall.

Blood coagulating on my split lip. A shiner already starting to form on my eye.

Johnny had graduated and every bully in my school district was salivating at the thought of him no longer being there to protect me.

“Oliver… bud are you alright?” my immense terrifying father asked, he waved off the students he had been slamming around the old boxing ring. I climbed into the ring with him and just started crying. My seven foot tall adoptive father immediately pulled me into a big hug.

It’s the last time I ever remember him hugging me.

“I want to fight.”

Take it back you idiot. This is where all the bad stuff starts. You absolute simpleton. You buffoon.

Sorry, was just trying to warn young me there for a second. Truth be told, I had never shown interest in this aspect of my family's life before. The notion had never even crossed anyone's minds, even when he was training Johnny and Jimmy.

I know my father loved me, even if I wasn’t his own blood.

But he also refused to do anything by halves. Dude hated fractions, yo.

“Oliver… hey bud let’s get you cleaned up and maybe go grab-”

“No. No no no I want you to teach me. Like you did them.” I said, wiping my nose.

Dad sighed. He releases the hug and takes a step back to have a look at me. I had the physique of someone whose after-school activities included ‘Chess Club’ and ‘Speech and Debate’ and who had very firm opinions on the series finale of Buffy. I also skated on occasion, but I was pretty gangly.

Then without a word he scooped me up without any sort of strain or resistance and slammed me on my back. My wind immediately left me and I briefly feared it would never return.

It hurt so bad. I’ve had so many light tubes broken on my body, I’ve been thrown off of balconies… but in my mind nothing has ever hurt as bad as it did the day my dad scoop slammed me in that old ass boxing ring.

He turned away, seemingly ashamed of his actions…but he was hoping that was all it would take to get this silly idea out of my head.

“Okay Bud… come on. It’s okay that this isn’t for everybody. Let’s go grab a pizza from that pla-” Dad said, turning back with his hand extended.

The look of shock on his face when I was already standing again is a look I’ll never forget.

But the way he looked at me from then on in general was different.

Because he wasn’t looking at his son anymore.

He was looking at a PROJECT.

And I don’t know if I have anyone but myself to blame for that.

It was Johnny who taught me to get back up again every time the world slammed me down. It was dad who slammed me down even harder.

I suppose you can’t really argue with results.

It’s become my addiction. Getting up from things that others can’t. I don’t really do recreational drugs. Haven’t had an alcoholic beverage in years. Been basically asexual since they started me on antipsychotics but that’s probably a side effect of the pills. Speaking of tricks I haven’t done in a while I wonder if I can still fully undress a woman with my teeth? That move was always popular.

Nope. My only remaining addiction is the Chumba Wumba of it all. Getting knocked down but getting up again.

So no, the first time I stepped back on the skateboard today and tried to do a kickflip I wasn’t immediately awesome at it.

I fell.

And then I got back up.

Then I fell again.

Then I got back up.

And this kept happening until I did a kickflip in my 30’s.

F you, Johnathan. F you, Dad.

Also thanks, I guess.

---

OLLIE MAVERICK

A Peroration on Skateboarding, Improving One's Favored Reality, and Why Want Shiny Belt?

Suggested Listening: ‘Superman’ by Goldfinger

Oh hey, it’s Ollie. You can tell because blurry face. He does a kickflip. That’s pretty cool.

“Hello, friends old and new! Fellow vibrations in the mind of the one true God whose name is Love! I am Ollie Maverick and I am here to rise above my station. Like a raccoon who finds a mostly full and already open can of Chef Boyardee ravioli I am on top of the world and I am DRIPPING sauce.” Ollie says. He isn't actually covered in any kind of sauce. It’s slang. Boomer.

“So a lot of people are wondering if I’m really the kinda guy who cares about title belts. Why does Ollie want the Gladiator Championship? Maybe it’s because I have pants with real big belt loops that keep falling down. Maybe it’s because I think I have something stuck in my teeth and Championship belts are one of the few things I can stand to look at my own reflection in. Maybe it’s because I don’t know if this is… if this is real or not.” Ollie says, we hear a hitch in his throat at that last bit as if even talking about this causes him discomfort.

“I… was in a place for people with bad brains and I really really don’t…really didn’t like it there but sometimes I think I’m still there and it’s so REAL. The kind of place where you have to wear Crocs because you can hurt yourself with shoelaces. The place where everyone could just look at my face whenever they wanted and...I didn’t know if Rocky was okay and…” Ollie says, sounding like he’s on the verge of tears. He takes a few deep breaths.

“But now most of the time I am here and here…is Heaven. I can be exactly the person I actually am and people even….seem to like that most of the time. My best friend is here. There’s food here and I don’t even have to hide a boxcutter to keep people from stealing my dessert… so I want this heaven to remain perfect… if this is the real place then I want to do my best to make the real place the best place…” Ollie says, pausing briefly to look down at Rocky.

“Then winning this belt means the best place being better. It means the best place not being worse by which I mean myself not fighting TJ Alexander every week for the rest of my life. Oh I’m not going to let the real place turn into that. No, nay, never. I like Nate Harris but I’d do 20 minutes of Rodney Mullen freestyle tricks on his taint to stop that reality.” Ollie says, wondering if he still had any of those tricks in him.

“Nate Harris with his glorious mane of hair… referred to me as ten pounds of crazy in a 3 pound bucket and like…hurtful but accurate. I think we have more in common than you realize. I think both of us have to fight the stigma of being ‘The friend of a more successful guy’ in this company and well… the easiest way to do that is singles gold. Look at you. You made it. That also means you understand where I’m fighting from because you’ve fought from there. I hold no resentment toward Allen… but that belt you like so much would go a long way toward proving I exist. A tether to the real place. I want that so bad. I want to feel something that makes this place home. My name etched in metal. I…” Ollie says, he’s starting to get choked up again.

“I meant it when I said I liked you so I hope you understand what it’s going to mean to me to take something you love from you. Because I can love it better. The courts say I…can’t see my kids anymo-”

“I need this win so I don’t end up like Masao Akiyama, worshiping at the temple of Wasted Potential. I need this win so I don’t end up like Nick Danger, clinging to the relevance afforded to him by someone who isn’t even here anymore. That was probably mean. Sorry. Being a Reject maybe means that I’ll never truly be content but God damn it I have to try. I am learning to forgive myself for many things but I will never forgive myself for becoming complacent and complacency is what I see in Masao and Nick. I will never surrender to complacency. I will not relent.” Ollie says, bits of his brothers old catchphrase finding his tongue by accident.

“As someone who has made a name for himself in the past giving people mandible claws with a handful of broken glass and setting his kickpad on fire to kick people, I can work with a skateboard. Prolly figure out something really sick and insane to do with it. My name is Ollie Maverick and I’m about to ollie over the competitio- Wait hold on.” Ollie says, stepping on the tail of the board to pop it up into his hands and looking at it.

“Did I only end up with this as a weapon because my name is Ollie? Have I been armed with a lazy pun?” Ollie asks, looking at Rocky nearby. Ollie nods a few times.

“Ugh, hate that. Still gonna make it work. Because as I said….I am Ollie Maverick. I’ve decided I wa…I NEED the Gladiator Championship…you should be concerned.” Ollie says. The image becomes glitchy and corrupted as static overtakes it and we cut to SMPTE color bars.