Monday 22 January – Cambridge, New Zealand

I went home before my tag team title match. I was getting a little homesick. I couldn’t even try to guess how long it had been since I’d been back in Cambridge, or even back in New Zealand, before that trip. The day I arrived, I went straight to the property I owned there, and had hoped to see some of my friends who live there. Nobody was home. It was kind of heartbreaking. I was falling to pieces. Every night I would drink, most of the time it was by myself. Justin Jones (a.k.a. Raziel) knew. At least I think he did. He never said anything though. I don’t know why. Maybe he enjoyed drinking just as much as I did. If ever I was drinking with anybody, Justin was certainly the one. Maybe he just didn’t actually care though. It’s been going on for longer than he knew though. Justin and I hadn’t been friends for a long time before The V.I.Ps made their brief appearance on the scene. At that time we just clicked. Didn’t last long, but that’s because we never made much of a connection away from the booze and the women.

Basically, I needed somebody to help me out. Justin wasn’t going to do that. I never asked the few other friends I’ve made in this place for help. I didn’t want to look weak. I didn’t want to look like I had fallen from my throne. In doing that though, I wound up falling anyway. Christian Connolly probably would’ve helped had he known. Same with Mike Raboin, he’s even been through a lot of the same stuff. If all else failed I could’ve asked Tyger Lilly as well. Maybe even Jon Brown himself, as we’ve always had somewhat of an understanding based around what’s good for business. Management has been kind to me here, he could’ve helped. But I never asked. I didn’t bother trying to track down where Alex Cutwright, Chris Cage or Andrew Gibson had disappeared to either, and so that left my support system rather lacking. So I went home.

When I saw that nobody was in my apartment complex, I figured I’d pick up some groceries and shoot over to my mother’s place. I couldn’t have imagined where she would have been at this time of night other than at her home. So I took a stop at the supermarket and surprisingly that was one of the most insightful moments of my life.

I walked in the entrance, and through the lobby into the produce department. Fruit and vegetables were stacked up pretty well on either side, which is to be expected at this time of night. There had been nearly zero cars in the carpark and in here all I saw was a young guy standing in one corner, wrapping up a conversation with an attractive young girl. The guy was a worker here, and so as the girl walked away, he was left doing his job and staring after her. Literally staring. Both of them would be about 18 years old, give or take a year. Seeing him gaze on was quite amusing but a little pathetic at the same time. I needed to say something. Maybe this kid could learn a thing or two.

“It’s rude to stare,” I say, fighting the laughter back. The kid turns and continues staring, this time at me with his jaw wide open. I glance quickly at the girl who moves out of sight, “Although I must say, if I was a few years younger I’d probably be doing the same thing.”

“Holy shit!” He exclaims. I wonder if any old farts are leaping out of their wheelchairs taking offence to that. “You’re… you’re Lee Stone!”

“Well congratu-fucking-lations on that astounding observation,” I reply, no longer wondering if anybody gets pissed off at me. I continue: “And kudos on the whole drooling thing as well. You could’ve chosen a worse looking girl to salivate over.”

“Salivate? You make it sound like I got a case of puppy love.” I watch this kid’s mind tick over. Obviously he knows who I am, so chances are he knows what he’s getting into if he wants to go back and forth with me. Even on the occasions when I’m not using the most original jokes and don’t have much to fire back with, I’ll say things with such conviction that it convinces people to turn to my point of view anyway.

“And is there anything else that pathetic display of horny teenage desires should be showing me you have a case of?” I crack a smile to further taunt him. Narcissism is a wonderful thing.

“Okay, now you’ve got me stumped Leroy.” Gah. If this kid knows who I am, then chances are he know exactly what he’s doing by using my full name. It doesn’t necessarily annoy me, and it most definitely doesn’t anger me, but it acts as if to treat me as an equal or worse – inferior. By calling myself “Lee” I control the image others have over me. I don’t like losing that control. It’s why I started referring to Steve Jason as “Steven”. I wasn’t talking to The Stinger or The Avenger or The Platypus-humper, but to the insecure little kid inside of him. And now this kid is doing it right back to me. “As far as I’m aware, you weren’t in the store to see the brief conversation I had with that girl, so how would you be able to bare witness to some “pathetic display of horny teenage desires”? All you saw was me appreciating nature.”

“Bitch please,” I chuckle out. “Obviously you know who you’re talking to, but you don’t seem quite aware of exactly what that means. I’m Leroy Bruce Stone, I know these things. To try and deny that you have any feelings for that unlucky girl is ludicrous.”

“Any feelings in regards to her, come straight from down here.” A crotch chop, great. This kid is far too much like myself for comfort. Damn punk kids these days. They follow whatever role model (and I use that term extremely loosely when describing myself) they see on TV without question. You see white guys walking around with their asses hanging over the top of their pants. Young girls walk around with their asses poking out from underneath their skirts. Basically kids these days are too fucking impressionable.

“You’re a male, that’s to be expected. But they’re feelings nonetheless, and therefore…” I pose with my arms out in the air and a grin plastered onto my face. I see the kid roll his eyes. “…I’m right.”

“Don’t you have better things to do right now, rather than bother me when I was already distracted enough from my work by the subject of this conversation?” He changes the subject in defeat. Score another tally mark in my W column.

“Well actually I don’t have anything better to do. This sort of conversation is pretty much the most fun I can have without having to perform foreplay. And like the majority of the male population, I hate foreplay, especially when I’m tired like I am now.” I tuck my hands into my pockets, keeping my feet firmly planted in place, much to his dismay.

“But isn’t there a reason you came in here in the first place?” he pleads with me.

“What time do you close?” I ask while looking down at my watch, keeping his latest comment in the back of my head.

“Nine o’clock.”

“Well in that case I have an hour and ten minutes to do my shopping in, which is probably an hour more than I need. And that means I have another whole hour to screw with every misconceived notion about the world that you have developed.” He sighs in frustration. I keep tormenting him for my own amusement. Does that make me a bad person?

“What if I spent the rest of the night in the storeroom area where there is a strict no customer policy that can be legally enforced?” He offers up in order to rid himself of me.

“Well then I’d have to choose one of two options,” I speak up quickly. It’s not an intelligent move to engage me in something like this. If I’m dangling bait in front of your face, you’d be a moron to bite. Having picked up a vibe from this kid, I snag him. “I could stand at the entrance and simply hurl obscenities down at you, or I could move on and do my shopping. However, we both know that your threat was merely a bluff as you wouldn’t get your work done should you choose to do that. And while you may be an alpha male amongst the people who have learned to not be offended by your comments, something tells me you’re not exactly having sleepovers and tea parties at your boss’s house, nor is he coming over before the big school disco to braid your hair and tell you which dress makes your ass actually look like an ass, as opposed to a fucking inflatable raft.”

“Well on the brighter side of things.” Hmm… he’s actually going to try to fight back. I’m rather keen to see what he’s got to offer. “I do need to go out to the back of the store right now, so that can give me some reprieve from your voice. How does hearing yourself talk not drive you to the brink of pure insanity?”

Oh… well that was a bit anticlimactic. He pushes his trolley of produce straight past me, not even waiting for a response. Unlike him though, I can wait. As I see him pass through the curtain that leads to the storeroom area, I jump up onto the ledge that juts out from the refrigerators where stock is put. I wait for him, perched on my stool, and when he comes out it looks as if he’s just been punched in the gut. Yessir, I’m still here.

“You should probably get off that,” he says, acknowledging the fact that I ain’t going nowhere. “Apparently there’s this big, important thing called hygiene that says sitting there is bad.”

“My ass is probably cleaner than your hands,” I defy him. “And you’re not wearing gloves.”

“Touché,” I can just feel the sense of defeat oozing out of him. It’s almost depressing. “But still, if you’d let me think that I have at least some sort of power over other people, that’d just be swell.”

“I suppose,” I grudgingly mutter, taking pity on him as I jump to the ground. A few moments of silence pass, which surprisingly gets broken by this kid. I guess he isn’t as annoyed with me as he’d like me to think he is.

“You know, we’ve met before,” he glances at me momentarily before returning to focusing on his work.

“Have we?” I ask, feigning some surprise. I travel so much that I meet a lot of people. “Was it the most fantastic day of your life?”

“Actually it was quite possibly one of the worst.” Ouch. I know I should’ve expected this from a guy so similar in mindset to myself, but the strength with which he said it takes a blow at my self-confidence. Something tells me that there’s another story here that has nothing to do with me. Do I try to comfort him or do I rub it in his face? I guess the nice thing to do would be to offer a kind word or two. Naturally I choose the other option.

“Aw shucks,” I pretend to be flattered. “That’s such a nice thing to say.”

“Don’t think too highly of yourself,” he says, trying to ward off my ego. “You were only part of the reason.”

“When did we meet?” I ask him, dropping the ego for a second. I guess I was right with my assumption just earlier.

“October last year. We were at The Outback in Hamilton.” The Outback is a nightclub on one half, and a normal bar nicknamed “The Saloon Bar” on the other. “I didn’t recognize it was you at the time, but the realisation came to me in the morning.”

“Hmm… I don’t really remember meeting you.”

“You were… how do I put these delicately? Fucked off your face.” He grins at me.

“Yeah… makes sense.” I mumble, stretching my mind back to remember. “October was kind of a bad time for me. I wasn’t in a very good place. I didn’t hurt your feelings too much did I?”

“You bruised my ego more than anything else,” he says, brushing it off as nothing. “I held my own with you and got the last laugh, but with your intoxication it really wasn’t as sweet as I’d have hoped.”

“Well it’s nice to know that people like me exist in the youth as well,” I think out loud. To be honest, it’s actually not that nice. I am the kind of guy that I am, because I’ve dealt with all the shit of my past in a very unhealthy (mentally and physically) manner. I somehow doubt this kid has been through worse than me, and he certainly hasn’t had the life experience that I have to deal with it in such a poor approach. He stops to look up at me, his hands buried in a box of nectarines. “However I must take this moment to be serious with you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I was yanking your chain about that girl before dude. Sorry about that. But I see a lot of myself in you. You make jokes and use your ego as a way to make sure that you’re never left in a position of vulnerability.” I place a firm hand on his shoulder. He’s a tad perplexed. I feel a little goofy saying this sort of thing, but I feel I need to. Even thinking about it, it doesn’t make full sense to me. It will later though. “Ask yourself this though, do you really want to wind up like me? I’m a mildly alcoholic jackass who wouldn’t need all ten fingers in order to count his friends. I just went home for the first time in many months and nobody was there. I never solve my problems, instead I just wrap myself up in something else that will ultimately form yet another issue. Do you want to be like that?”

“Are you on crack?” he laughs after a period of blank staring.

“Dude, don’t do that,” I quickly cut him off. “I’ll leave you to your business right now if you promise me that you’ll think about what I just said. Actually take a risk for once.”

I now walk off to let him stew in his own mess for a while. I collect all the groceries that I had originally come in here for, and I take roughly ten minutes, just as I had expected. It’s not important what I buy, how much it costs, or even what is said in the clichéd conversation between myself and the elderly lady posted at the checkout station that I went to. All that matters is that as I hand over the cash for my items, I see the girl from earlier on re-enter the shop briefly and then exit once again with a smile on her face. Once finished, I pass through the sliding doors into the lobby and glance into the entrance to where the boy was. He’s still there and he’s smiling too. He looks at me, and while I may not know exactly what just happened, I knew it was something good for him. I wink at him and simply walk off without saying a word.