Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 22:25:23 GMT
The Root of it All
A steady vibration between the legs. It travels up through the hips, snakes it’s way to the spine. It shakes the shoulders, rumbles the elbows.
The wind in the face, travelling through the hair. The air brushing against the beard, the prickle against the neck.
It’s a rush, but calming all at once. It’s an oxymoron of life.
A wall of burgundy bleeds by at a 110 miles per hour. An endless path of asphalt swims through giving a feeling of indulgence.
The echo of the canyon showers down. The light dimmed before it assaults the eyes.
Heat beats down in an engulfing blanket, absorbed by the black.
This is my life. This is what I live for.
Me, my Harley Fatboy, and the pavement.
It’s what I live for and what drives me.
It wasn't always this way. I once had roots.
I grew up in in southwestern Missouri, just north of the Arkansas border in the Ozark Mountains. Where I grew up, we couldn't even get the designation of a town, rather we were referred to as a village.
Picture this. A community that is well below the poverty line. Beat down houses, paint chipped, siding in decay, shingles clogging detached gutters. Double wide trailers with plastic over the windows and back doors nailed shut. Driveways not of asphalt or even gravel but dirt and mud; usually a toxic red clay.
Yards are covered not in grass, it long ago died off, replaced by dirt and fast growing weeds nearly waist high, but covered in broke down washers, dryers, refrigerators. A blue molded sofa with springs protruding through the back is what passes as lawn furniture. Old rubber tires hanging from an oak tree serve as a swing while trashed cars that have been gutted for parts and left in a graveyard in the backyard is used as a jungle gym.
The biggest employer in the area is a Walmart that barely pays above minimum wage, twenty miles down the highway. Most people are living off of food stamps and pregnancy isn't done to create families or out of passion, but as a means to increase welfare funding from the government.
The real “employer” in the area are the cleared out garages, dank basements, and busted up barns where the tools of the trade include old cast iron bathtubs and an endless supply of phenylpropanolamine, pseudoephedrine and ephedrine.
Local economy rests on the methamphetamine trade. When crank is hard to come by the flow of goods and services run through the “redistribution” of legal medications, lead by the golden child of it all; OxyContin, better known as Hillbilly Heroin.
Every home has a horde of hounds doubling as both hunting companions and a lookout; trained as young pups to both alert and attack.
A child's real education is taught in the home rather than the schools. The science of the cook, the math of the measurement, the art of the rifle, the language of drugs, history of the snitch.
At school we would learn about Benedict Arnold, his treasonous actions and his exile. At home we would learn about David Lewis, known as Bear, who turned snitch and lay somewhere in the White River. At Bible Camp we were taught of Judas Iscariot and his betrayal of Jesus for thirty silver coins, and how he later hung himself as he was overridden with guilt. At home we were taught about Roger Wright, who turned informant for a lighter sentence, and later hanged himself from his jail cell when he learned his children would pay for his indiscretions.
This is where I grew up and this is how I was raised.
In Taney County I had two paths in front of me; become a part of the underbelly, or join the military.
So I created a third option for myself. I embraced my love for the road and my understanding of motors. I lost myself in the thrill of the ride.
I chose the life of a vagabond and it suits me more than the doomed end I was destined to face had I stayed behind.
I answer to no man. I'm saddled down by no walls.
I eat when I want to eat, sleep when and where I want to sleep. I fuck who I want to fuck, fight who I want to right, earn how I want to earn. When I grow bored with a place I hop on my bike and I leave it in my rearview, never batting an eyelash without a care in the world.
This is my life in all of it's glory and perhaps misguided wisdom.
The asphalt is my God and my bike is my church. My religion is the road, and the world is my heaven.
It's my life how I want it; no strings.
What You Don't Know - V Jasyon Matthews
When you look at me what do you see?
Don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question; and I'll answer it because rarely does the answer ever change to this particular question.
The surface answer never varies;
A seven foot beast.
Big bold arms with tattoos.
A thick, long, burly beard.
Girth from head to toe.
Those answers never change, and I wouldn't deny any of those. Just take one look at me and it’s glaringly obvious. No different than the sky is blue or water is wet.
But people think, because of my appearance, because of where I come from, that they know more than that about me.
Here's the common perception;
They look at my stature, figure out I grew up in a small town in the backwoods of the Ozark Mountains with a population of just under 400 and the first thought is I'm all brawn, no brain. Some mindless hillbilly who is lucky to be able to spell his own name.
People see my love of bike's, gaze at me with my leather cuts on, the ink on my arms, and they assume I'm a part of a shady motorcycle club.
I could go on, but the point would be moot. No need to beat a dead horse.
Truth is, people would be wrong, as they always are.
Imagine you have this cardboard box. This box is four feet by four feet. You look inside the box, gauging it's also four feet deep. You glance in the box and there's one item in it; a lone pebble. Not even a rock, it's not big enough to be called a rock. This pebble is the type of stone you get caught in the tread of your boots, forcing you to stop and fish it out with a stick.
I am this box. That pebble, it's what you know about me. The empty space around it; it's the part of me you know nothing about it.
All you have are your assumptions, that gut feeling that flutters in your stomach.
I'm what you might call a thrill seeker. It's not a leap, considering I'm a nomad, living my life on a steel horse and riding it wherever my instincts lead me. There is no greater thrill, for me anyway, than the thrill of the ride. But the thrill of competition is a close second.
It's so primal, so instinctive. It's gladiatorial, two combatants struggling against one another to prove who has superiority over his opponent.
That is why I'm here. My showing up in the main event a few weeks ago, putting Cable Arcane through a cage wall, it had nothing to do with any kind of friendship or some kind of blind loyalty to some spoiled little rich kid trying to win daddy's approval while masking his own insecurities in a sea of false bravado.
It was about two things; money and competition.
I've traveled all across this continent. From the Pacific Northwest, to the Coastal Gulf. I've sought thrill after thrill, but have yet to find anyone or anything that can challenge me.
This is why I find myself in Imperial Wrestling. I'm looking for something that can challenge me, I want to test my limits.
What do I get in turn? Jayson Matthews!
A slap in the face is what I've gotten.
I take to Twitter. I call out this so called man of however many holds, I care not, and I get stonewalled by the man who calls himself Nighthawk. He doesn't even dare utter a response; more than likely because he pissed himself. So rather than have a hope of making something worthwhile in that ring, I get saddled with Nighthawk hiding like a coward behind his little piss-ant flunky, Jayson Matthews.
It's not even the next best thing; it's the born loser.
Is this the best they can give me? Or do they just want a complete display of utter destruction? Because that's what this; a massacre on the horizon.
People would have you believe that someone like Jayson Matthews can beat someone like me. It's a feel-good story in the vein of David and Goliath. I'll admit, it's a good story, entertaining in that ultimate underdog prevails type of way, but it's just that, a story. David and Goliath is a fantasy created to make the meek feel as if they have a fighting chance. It's a story that Sunday school teachers tell children to give them hope, no matter how misguided it may be.
This can end only one way, and it's not a storybook ending for Jayson Matthews. There will no fanfare, no parade in his honor, no coach beaming at him with pride.
It will be utter humiliation and domination. It will be pain and suffering. It will be a loss unlike any before it, and there have been a great many.
I mentioned earlier just how little people know about it. This will be a coming out party. A message to Jayson Matthews, Nighthawk, every fan watching, every suit in the front office, every wrestler in the back, about what I can do and how destructive I can be.
It's a precursor to anyone who wants to climb in that ring with me that can't bring the competition I thirst for; the competition I deserve.
If I truly cared, I would feel sorry for Jayson Matthews, a man who will play the martyr.
Because....
Know this about me. I am Goliath. I'm a giant among men. Only in this story the lumbering Philistine wins.
And Then He Rode
Pulling off of Comer Bridge I veer off of Alabama State Route 35. I feel the the cold, night, air briskly catching my hair. There is no road here, just grass as my black and orange Fatboy tears ruts into the earth. I come to a sudden stop and kill the engine. I stand there for a long moment, taking in the stillness of the night while the wet scent of the Tennessee River wafts through me, flooding my senses.
I sit there, parked on the bank of the river, gazing to the other side at the night lights of Scottsboro.
I love the sound of an engine, but sometimes the calmness of night can be just as euphoric. I take it all in, the smell, the breeze, the lights, the crescent moon, the speckled night sky. The silence overtakes me. It calms me.
I lift up my right hand, looking at the broken skin on my middle two knuckles. I take the small tag of dead skin dangling from the knuckle between my index and middle finger and I pull it off, discarding it. Then I raise my hand to my mouth and suck ever so lightly on my own flesh, cleaning the blood and trying to help it congeal.
It was time to leave Scottsboro behind, to make it nothing more than a memory in the annals of my past.
I had stayed far too long this time and I knew it. I had worn out my welcome in Scottsboro. The bruising on my knuckles come tomorrow morning would be proof of that. Had I not left when I did, I may have never been able to leave.
I start my engine again as I give Scottsboro one last look. Then I gun it, turning the bike around, mud and grass flinging in my wake, my back end fishtailing as I claw my way back onto Route 55 and leave Scottsboro as nothing more than a memory.
This is my life, and life is good.
A steady vibration between the legs. It travels up through the hips, snakes it’s way to the spine. It shakes the shoulders, rumbles the elbows.
The wind in the face, travelling through the hair. The air brushing against the beard, the prickle against the neck.
It’s a rush, but calming all at once. It’s an oxymoron of life.
A wall of burgundy bleeds by at a 110 miles per hour. An endless path of asphalt swims through giving a feeling of indulgence.
The echo of the canyon showers down. The light dimmed before it assaults the eyes.
Heat beats down in an engulfing blanket, absorbed by the black.
This is my life. This is what I live for.
Me, my Harley Fatboy, and the pavement.
It’s what I live for and what drives me.
It wasn't always this way. I once had roots.
I grew up in in southwestern Missouri, just north of the Arkansas border in the Ozark Mountains. Where I grew up, we couldn't even get the designation of a town, rather we were referred to as a village.
Picture this. A community that is well below the poverty line. Beat down houses, paint chipped, siding in decay, shingles clogging detached gutters. Double wide trailers with plastic over the windows and back doors nailed shut. Driveways not of asphalt or even gravel but dirt and mud; usually a toxic red clay.
Yards are covered not in grass, it long ago died off, replaced by dirt and fast growing weeds nearly waist high, but covered in broke down washers, dryers, refrigerators. A blue molded sofa with springs protruding through the back is what passes as lawn furniture. Old rubber tires hanging from an oak tree serve as a swing while trashed cars that have been gutted for parts and left in a graveyard in the backyard is used as a jungle gym.
The biggest employer in the area is a Walmart that barely pays above minimum wage, twenty miles down the highway. Most people are living off of food stamps and pregnancy isn't done to create families or out of passion, but as a means to increase welfare funding from the government.
The real “employer” in the area are the cleared out garages, dank basements, and busted up barns where the tools of the trade include old cast iron bathtubs and an endless supply of phenylpropanolamine, pseudoephedrine and ephedrine.
Local economy rests on the methamphetamine trade. When crank is hard to come by the flow of goods and services run through the “redistribution” of legal medications, lead by the golden child of it all; OxyContin, better known as Hillbilly Heroin.
Every home has a horde of hounds doubling as both hunting companions and a lookout; trained as young pups to both alert and attack.
A child's real education is taught in the home rather than the schools. The science of the cook, the math of the measurement, the art of the rifle, the language of drugs, history of the snitch.
At school we would learn about Benedict Arnold, his treasonous actions and his exile. At home we would learn about David Lewis, known as Bear, who turned snitch and lay somewhere in the White River. At Bible Camp we were taught of Judas Iscariot and his betrayal of Jesus for thirty silver coins, and how he later hung himself as he was overridden with guilt. At home we were taught about Roger Wright, who turned informant for a lighter sentence, and later hanged himself from his jail cell when he learned his children would pay for his indiscretions.
This is where I grew up and this is how I was raised.
In Taney County I had two paths in front of me; become a part of the underbelly, or join the military.
So I created a third option for myself. I embraced my love for the road and my understanding of motors. I lost myself in the thrill of the ride.
I chose the life of a vagabond and it suits me more than the doomed end I was destined to face had I stayed behind.
I answer to no man. I'm saddled down by no walls.
I eat when I want to eat, sleep when and where I want to sleep. I fuck who I want to fuck, fight who I want to right, earn how I want to earn. When I grow bored with a place I hop on my bike and I leave it in my rearview, never batting an eyelash without a care in the world.
This is my life in all of it's glory and perhaps misguided wisdom.
The asphalt is my God and my bike is my church. My religion is the road, and the world is my heaven.
It's my life how I want it; no strings.
What You Don't Know - V Jasyon Matthews
When you look at me what do you see?
Don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question; and I'll answer it because rarely does the answer ever change to this particular question.
The surface answer never varies;
A seven foot beast.
Big bold arms with tattoos.
A thick, long, burly beard.
Girth from head to toe.
Those answers never change, and I wouldn't deny any of those. Just take one look at me and it’s glaringly obvious. No different than the sky is blue or water is wet.
But people think, because of my appearance, because of where I come from, that they know more than that about me.
Here's the common perception;
They look at my stature, figure out I grew up in a small town in the backwoods of the Ozark Mountains with a population of just under 400 and the first thought is I'm all brawn, no brain. Some mindless hillbilly who is lucky to be able to spell his own name.
People see my love of bike's, gaze at me with my leather cuts on, the ink on my arms, and they assume I'm a part of a shady motorcycle club.
I could go on, but the point would be moot. No need to beat a dead horse.
Truth is, people would be wrong, as they always are.
Imagine you have this cardboard box. This box is four feet by four feet. You look inside the box, gauging it's also four feet deep. You glance in the box and there's one item in it; a lone pebble. Not even a rock, it's not big enough to be called a rock. This pebble is the type of stone you get caught in the tread of your boots, forcing you to stop and fish it out with a stick.
I am this box. That pebble, it's what you know about me. The empty space around it; it's the part of me you know nothing about it.
All you have are your assumptions, that gut feeling that flutters in your stomach.
I'm what you might call a thrill seeker. It's not a leap, considering I'm a nomad, living my life on a steel horse and riding it wherever my instincts lead me. There is no greater thrill, for me anyway, than the thrill of the ride. But the thrill of competition is a close second.
It's so primal, so instinctive. It's gladiatorial, two combatants struggling against one another to prove who has superiority over his opponent.
That is why I'm here. My showing up in the main event a few weeks ago, putting Cable Arcane through a cage wall, it had nothing to do with any kind of friendship or some kind of blind loyalty to some spoiled little rich kid trying to win daddy's approval while masking his own insecurities in a sea of false bravado.
It was about two things; money and competition.
I've traveled all across this continent. From the Pacific Northwest, to the Coastal Gulf. I've sought thrill after thrill, but have yet to find anyone or anything that can challenge me.
This is why I find myself in Imperial Wrestling. I'm looking for something that can challenge me, I want to test my limits.
What do I get in turn? Jayson Matthews!
A slap in the face is what I've gotten.
I take to Twitter. I call out this so called man of however many holds, I care not, and I get stonewalled by the man who calls himself Nighthawk. He doesn't even dare utter a response; more than likely because he pissed himself. So rather than have a hope of making something worthwhile in that ring, I get saddled with Nighthawk hiding like a coward behind his little piss-ant flunky, Jayson Matthews.
It's not even the next best thing; it's the born loser.
Is this the best they can give me? Or do they just want a complete display of utter destruction? Because that's what this; a massacre on the horizon.
People would have you believe that someone like Jayson Matthews can beat someone like me. It's a feel-good story in the vein of David and Goliath. I'll admit, it's a good story, entertaining in that ultimate underdog prevails type of way, but it's just that, a story. David and Goliath is a fantasy created to make the meek feel as if they have a fighting chance. It's a story that Sunday school teachers tell children to give them hope, no matter how misguided it may be.
This can end only one way, and it's not a storybook ending for Jayson Matthews. There will no fanfare, no parade in his honor, no coach beaming at him with pride.
It will be utter humiliation and domination. It will be pain and suffering. It will be a loss unlike any before it, and there have been a great many.
I mentioned earlier just how little people know about it. This will be a coming out party. A message to Jayson Matthews, Nighthawk, every fan watching, every suit in the front office, every wrestler in the back, about what I can do and how destructive I can be.
It's a precursor to anyone who wants to climb in that ring with me that can't bring the competition I thirst for; the competition I deserve.
If I truly cared, I would feel sorry for Jayson Matthews, a man who will play the martyr.
Because....
Know this about me. I am Goliath. I'm a giant among men. Only in this story the lumbering Philistine wins.
And Then He Rode
Pulling off of Comer Bridge I veer off of Alabama State Route 35. I feel the the cold, night, air briskly catching my hair. There is no road here, just grass as my black and orange Fatboy tears ruts into the earth. I come to a sudden stop and kill the engine. I stand there for a long moment, taking in the stillness of the night while the wet scent of the Tennessee River wafts through me, flooding my senses.
I sit there, parked on the bank of the river, gazing to the other side at the night lights of Scottsboro.
I love the sound of an engine, but sometimes the calmness of night can be just as euphoric. I take it all in, the smell, the breeze, the lights, the crescent moon, the speckled night sky. The silence overtakes me. It calms me.
I lift up my right hand, looking at the broken skin on my middle two knuckles. I take the small tag of dead skin dangling from the knuckle between my index and middle finger and I pull it off, discarding it. Then I raise my hand to my mouth and suck ever so lightly on my own flesh, cleaning the blood and trying to help it congeal.
It was time to leave Scottsboro behind, to make it nothing more than a memory in the annals of my past.
I had stayed far too long this time and I knew it. I had worn out my welcome in Scottsboro. The bruising on my knuckles come tomorrow morning would be proof of that. Had I not left when I did, I may have never been able to leave.
I start my engine again as I give Scottsboro one last look. Then I gun it, turning the bike around, mud and grass flinging in my wake, my back end fishtailing as I claw my way back onto Route 55 and leave Scottsboro as nothing more than a memory.
This is my life, and life is good.
Well howdy there pardner.