What is Best For One's Self

Scene I: Wessex, England - the Inn of Wessex - Saturday, July 19, 2003

I was not my father's son.

Simkins is right.  I am not.  Nor shall I be ever.

He was a slave to the Lord God, to his ancestry, his heritage, his traditions.

I, slave to the bottle, to lust, to being my own god.

And for the time being I am content leaving it so.

However he has the power to haunt me still, to condemn me for being who I am.  In life he defeated me at every turn, and it would seem that he'll be damned if he doesn't do so even now.

Scene II: Wessex, England - Lancastrian ancestral estate  - July 19, 1987

I continued to rapp upon his door.  I knew he had been drinking, and I had warned him countless times on equally countless occassions to quit this abominable habit of his or else he'd risk being expelled from Eton, and worse, not being accepted to Oxford.

"WINDSOR, I know you are in there boy, now open this door now."

I chastized myself for using that nickname.  However I could not help myself, seeing as he reminded me of the Duke of Windsor - himself a lout as a youth - so very much, to my dismay.

Still no answer from inside his room.  Robert, who is to be my heir as Duke of Wessex some day - God the very idea of that sends shivers down my spine - is being his usual subversive self.  And I have had about enough of this nonsense.

"You either will come out or I shall have the door SMASHED down, do you understand?"

Finally a response.

"Go ahead, smash it down, it's your own goddamn property, be myyy guest."

He knew how to inflame me, even at seventeen.  I wasn't about to smash anything down.  A simple key would suffice.

I opened the door and found him trying to hide a bottle under his bed.  His hands moved slowly and clumsily in his fruitless attempt to hide the evidence.

I stared down at him as he sat beside his bed, not looking up at me.  

"You didn't think I'd actually smash down the door, did you."

He shrugged.  "I don't put anything past you."

I never understood him.  "Robert.  You can't go on drinking like this.  Your mother is very concerned, but I am greatly concerned about your schooling."

"My schooling? Fuck my schooling."

I slapped him across the face without hesitation.

"Do not use that kind of language around me.  You are a Lancaster, do you understand me?  You have a responsibility that you cannot possibly understand at your age, but I still expect SOME semblance of maturity from you."

With glazed eyes he looked up at me.

"You'll get none, from me.  You care more about your fucking last namee than you do aboout me."

I stood up and shook my head.

"You cannot understand can you?  Do you realize what is upon you when you inherit this title?  It's not just some farce for your enjoyment, the money, not there just because it's some right you expect.  You damn well better stop this nonsense or I shall be more than glad to send you for military training. Otherwise," I pointed a finger at his face, and then leaned down and grabbed the bottle from under the bed, "this stops NOW.  You are my son."


Scene III: Wessex, England - the Inn of Wessex - Saturday<, July 19, 2003

I recall that day vividly.  I had begun drinking a few months prior to that day, just for the hell of it, with a few friends at Eton. Then when semister ended, I thought why stop.  I kept on going.  My parents, specifically my father, found several empty bottles and then the shit began.

Then the drinking began seriously, intensely, continuously.

And here I am today.  Feeling seventeen years old once again.  For here I sit, the small inn and public house right across from my estate, sipping alone, the weather still hellish, myself, soaking wet, having walked through the torrential rains.  Where my appetite for liquor was not quenched at any moment then, nor tonight.

Why Simkins more-or-less sabotaged my marriage is something I shall never forgive him for.  Yet why did I not fire him on the spot.

His loyalty if one can call it that, is not in question.  I truly believe that he thinks he did what was best for me.  

I may not want to admit it to him personally.

But he may be right.

The magic had vanished.  Her love for me vapourized like water agonizing as the sun's rays beat down mercilessly upon its droplets.

And that's all that mattered.  Whether or not Kathy or Christine had come into the picture, I don't know if it would have made any true difference to the ultimate outcome.

I'm tired of thinking about her and all this bullshit.

Enough.

The comfort of a cold glass of scotch on the rocks warmed my innards as the rain continued to pour.  The inn owner, a fellow I've known my entire days, listened to the radio, the sounds of old 40's big band music filling the modest little place.  I singlehandedly at times kept the place going with my fifty to one hundred pound a night habits.  He looks up and smiles as I sip from my glass, tinkering on the lap top I dragged with me from home.

I had an appetite not just for the amber liquid which lingered in my glass, but for information, words of wisdom and opinion from the stars of the Coalition.

I should not be disappointed.

My disbelief could not be measured, after reading a transcript of Nighthawk's call-in appearance on a wrestling programme, just recently.

I rolled my booze around in my glass and quickly gulped the remnants down as I re-read the words that glared out to me, time and time again.

"Adam-X is not in for an easy night on the 21st. I will not walk away like Lancaster did. I will not let up on Adam in a moment of weakness like Lancaster did."

Those words seared into my mind.

I contemplated the deeper meaning behind Dave Boudreaux's judgmental tyrade.

What I did to Adam-X - showed mercy - to the man I once dispised - was it weakness on my part.  

No.  I cannot help but think that it wasn't.

Boudreaux's judgment was generated from ignorance.  Adam-X - no - Michael Xavier was suffering.  Badly.  Alcohol had poisoned him, his relationships no doubt, just as it did to me and my father, my mother, my wife - ex-wife - and everyone else close to me.

Had Boudreaux ever gone through such torment?  Not that I knew of.  His family?  Can't say I know the man that well.

But personally - in his blood - he cannot judge Xavier nor myself.

When I fought Adam-X and I saw in his eyes, smelled on his breath, the poison of alcoholism - and I knew that's what it was, immediately, no man comes to the ring intoxicated out of his fucking mind - I could not destroy what I once saw in myself.

It is true that he knew Xavier probably like a brother, and that, like Simkins, he was doing what he thinks is best for Xavier, by challenging him for the CSWA Heavyweight Championship.

Either way, whomever came out of Coronation II as the champion, I would clearly set my eyes on them down the road.  At whatever cost.  Xavier, because I know in his heart he is a sportsman, and hopefully would contradict Mastino's prediction that he would hide behind his friend and not bestow upon me a rematch for his championship.  Boudreaux, to show that although weakened, those cursed by alcohol can come back and cast those aside who cannot show mercy.

As my father cried out to me from the portrait above the hearth - show mercy when necessary, be ruthless at all other times, I did not forget that there is a fine balance that is needed between the two.

And I knew that after Coronation, at Wildfire, if I was selected to fight in the Viewer's Choice deal, I would not show former. There shall be no mercy. Nor shall X or Hawk receive it either, should I face either of them sooner than later.

After all, if I were to set out on a mission of repentence by punishing all who are in my way.

I might as well start with the best in the world.

Their blood would be sweetest of all.


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