Breakdown 7-17-25
{{ June 2022 }}
Since the day Spencer took Simon’s phone call and agreed to keep in touch, the two had spoken again a handful of times. For Spencer it had always been awkward. He didn’t know what to say to the man he had been raised to despise. It wasn’t lost on Spencer that he had never really given Simon a real chance since the day he walked into BlackOut; he’d walked in having already decided what kind of man his father was and let that cloud every single interaction they had up until the day Spencer told him and everyone who he really was. Even now with that door slightly cracked open, Spencer had a hard time seeing the situation as anything other than what he had believed his whole life.
But then Spencer found his mother’s journal.
A one-page entry had changed everything. In Anna Cleary’s own handwriting, Spencer read his mother admit to… herself? A notebook? That she intentionally withheld her pregnancy from Simon. Even after Caleb left that evening, Spencer read that one page over and over and over again. There were more entries after it but they seemed trivial. A day or two later Spencer made himself read the rest. There weren’t very many, just up until a month before he was born. In each one, Anna had renewed her vow to keep her secret. She also became more and more convinced she had done the right thing. She wrote about Simon writing her about wrestling, and a phone call or two. And then her decision to not reply to his letters anymore. She had to move on, for herself and her baby.
A week or so after finding the journal, Spencer finds himself at Magnolia Cemetery, one of the oldest cemeteries in Beaumont and the final resting place of his mother. He and Caleb had chosen a plot for her under a large tree, knowing she would have loved the view. Today Spencer is glad for that decision as he sits under shade on a large stone placed there just for that purpose. It’s still morning but it’s late June in Texas so it’s already quite hot and muggy. It doesn’t bother Spencer though; he’s used to it. What does bother him resides in his hands as he leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees. The journal. Spencer sits there just looking at his mother’s headstone for some time. He had no idea how long – could have been five minutes, could have been twenty. Time doesn’t matter today.
Finally, Spencer glances around making sure no one is nearby, then speaks.
“Hey Ma. I… don’t know where to start today. I know, that’s odd for me, I always have a lot to say and know just how to say it, but today…” Spencer shakes his head, and gently shakes the journal in his hands. “Today, it feels like your words are way more important than any of mine. Bet you forgot about this thing, huh? I’m guessing if you’d thought of it, you’d have gotten rid of it a long time ago.” Spence flips through the pages, to the page. He stares at it, not needing to read it. He’s memorized every word by now. “Well… you kept your promise. You took your secret to the grave. You said you’d do that…” Spencer flips a few pages. “Right here. That’s what you wrote. “He’ll never know about the baby, and the baby will never know about him. I’ll take this to the grave with me.” Spencer sighs, going back to the page. “That’s the last time you wrote anything about him. Almost like you left him out on purpose. Like…. practice or something. And look, I get it Ma. I read this. The whole thing. You made your decision and you stuck to it. Just like you always did my whole life. I can respect that, I really can. Because its you and there isn’t anyone else on this earth, living or not, who I have more respect for than you Ma. But….” Spencer shakes his head again, staring down at the handwritten words. “I don’t understand why.”
Spencer closes the notebook hard, angry, and slaps it into the grass at his feet.
“It feels so wrong, you know? To sit here and be angry at you. After all you did, how hard you worked to raise me and Caleb mostly on your own. Clarence tried, I know that, I got mad respect for him too, he gave me his name. But as a grown man I see he has the emotional and intellectual intelligence of a twelve-year-old, and that explains a lot about why you put him out when we were still boys. Point I’m tryna make here is…. I don’t want to be mad you, Ma. I really don’t. But…” Another heavy sigh comes from deep in Spencer’s chest, as he now stares at his hands instead of the headstone, almost as if avoiding his mother’s gaze. “It’s hard not to be, now knowing that the foundation of what I believed about myself, you, the way I see the world… was a fucking lie!” The last two words came out much louder than Spencer intended, startling some birds overhead into flying away cawcawing, and startling Spencer himself. He looks around again, hoping he was still alone and no one heard him. He’d been in the news enough recently after getting his title stripped and fired, the last thing he needed was another TMZ story about him losing his shit in a cemetery. But… there’s no one around. Good. Calming breath.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to yell at you. You’re not even here to defend yourself, or explain yourself… but that’s what’s so maddening about everything. I don’t know why. Why’d you… lie to me, huh? You kept my father away from me, kept me away from him…. But then again, I guess you never expected me to find any of this out, did you? Those boxes me and Cal found were stuffed behind so much stuff in that closet I bet you forgot about it. And you absolutely forgot about that…” Spencer gestures to the journal he threw to the ground. “So it never occurred to you that I might find him. That I might track him down and pretend to be some random dude just to get close enough to him to fuck him up for what I thought he did to us. Never once crossed your mind that doing so would end up making me look like a fucking fool.” Not only to Amy Chastaine, a woman who started as the coach who gave him a chance at BlackOut and became a manager and even a friend, but to the entire world. At least, the wrestling universe. And Spencer didn’t even want to think about Marie… not right now.
“I just don’t get why. Why, Ma? Look, I actually understand this reason. Y’all were young, just kids really, and you didn’t wanna fuck up his plans, his life. You let it change yours though…. You coulda got rid of me. But you didn’t, and you always did your best for me, and Caleb too. So yeah… I get it. But did you have to lie to me, Ma?” Spencer shakes his head again, now staring down his mother’s engraved name. He could almost feel her eyes staring back. “One of the main things you beat me and Cal’s head in with… be a person of your word. And the whole time, the story of my literal existence was a lie. You coulda came clean to me, you know. I would have forgiven you. Immediately. And then I coulda approached him completely differently. I….” Spencer’s thought trails away as realization settles in his chest. He sighs hard, shoulders slumping, eyes closed.
“That’s why you never told me. You didn’t want me to go looking for him. Cause he never knew about me. Fuck….” Head in his hands, leaning on his knees again, Spencer tries to fight off the…. Whatever this emotion is. Grief, for losing his mother and never knowing his father? Anger, for how she kept this from him? Relief, that he’d finally figured out all of his mother’s motives? Or something else that he couldn’t name? Whatever it was, he couldn’t keep it in. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, clearing them away.
“I wonder what you think about all this, you know? Would you be mad I found him? Glad? Would you talk to him? I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s all on me now.” Spencer sits up straight, once again looking at his mother’s name. “It’s all up to me. And you raised me better than to keep being mad at somebody after realizing nothing was their fault. And to be man enough to apologize when I’m proven wrong. So Ima do what I need to do.” Spencer picks the journal up from the grass, then gets to his feet. He steps closer to the headstone, and lays a hand on top, the cement hot from the morning sun.
“I guess I'm not mad at you after all, Ma. How could I be? Love ya.” He pats the headstone a few times before walking away.
ON CAMERA
Man…. SCW threw me into the deep end, putting me up against Syren, didn’t they? I definitely appreciate the confidence, giving me a challenge like that five minutes after I got back to regular action. Not sure who it was meant for to prove something with though. Me… to show I can go and not sound like a fool saying I want the US Title I never lost back. Or her… to get herself back to where she wants to be, that World Championship. Even though she got me, I like to think we both proved something though, because I did not make it easy for her. So for that SCW… thanks. I know I left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths the way I left here, and my appearance last year… didn’t quite go as I planned.
But that was last year. This year… I’m doing my best to try to keep all that mess behind me and move forward. It’s hard though, when the man who pretended to be my father keeps causing shit, while my actual father keeps putting himself into matches… no offense pops… that he probably shouldn’t be in. But hey… he’s his own man, just like I am, so we’ll just have to see what happens at Rise to Greatness. When I started out looking for him, decided to track him down and…. Well, let’s just say that I never envisioned a world where not only would he and I be on the same side, but also where we’d be fighting in the same match at the biggest show of the year, in the greatest wrestling company on earth.
But that’s next week. This week, I’m coming to Breakdown to get into the ring with…. Adonis and Darius? The Man Mountain and the Sex Vibe….. man, these two should be a tag team or something, Sal sounds like he’d fit right into Kablam-land, or whatever the hell it’s called. And they could have some fun. Here’s the thing though guys…
I ain’t here to have fun. I’m here to kick ass and get myself back to where I was before everything went sideways. Sure, some of that was my own fault, I am admittedly a hot-headed man. I like to think I’ve tamed some of that in the time I’ve been away from here… but please believe that if and when needed? I can go feral for a few minutes again and you won’t know what hit you. Or choked you out. Either or.
I got some ground to make up after losing to Syren. Not that there’s anything to be ashamed about in losing to her, I don’t have to tell SCW what kind of competitor she is. But the fact remains that a loss is a loss… and I am not tryna walk into Rise to Greatness on a downstroke. I got a Scaffold to climb and survive and snatch a shot at what I came back here for.
So for Sal and Derek…. That means they both just shit out of luck come Breakdown. Whichever one of you boys I can get off your feet and unconscious first… best believe it’s gonna happen. Your specialty might be hedonism and… whatever it is Sal goes for. Mine? I’m the Submission Technician, and not the kind of submission I bet you two are into. Nah… I’m talking about the kind where you can’t breathe at the end and it’s not for a good time.
Adonis is always inviting people into his Kablam-world, I’m asking y’all to step into mine. It’s not gonna be very fun for either of you, but me? Hm, I’m gonna have an epic time.