
| I Want It All | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 3 2016, 12:53 PM (49 Views) | |
| Amy Jo Smyth | Jul 3 2016, 12:53 PM Post #1 |
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![]() I gotta get me a game plan, gotta shake you to the ground But just give me, huh, what I know is mine People do you hear me, just gimme the sign It ain't much I'm asking, if you want the truth ____________ In the Continuing Adventures of Our Hero... ◀◀ Be Kind, Rewind On rare occasions, Mother Nature blesses us with beautiful weather right when we need it the most. Today is one of those days. Roxi, the other crazy redheaded in my life, came over for no particular reason other than to fuck around and have dinner. Like most people do on an early summer afternoon, we ventured outside. One thing led to another and now we’re in the middle of the yard, barefoot, our hair tied back, challenging each other to various gymnastics moves that only past and present gymnasts would know. I take off running, perform a front handspring, leap even higher upon landing, turn into a corkscrew and stick it. Roxi just stares at me, arms folded in front of her chest, smiling flatly. A gentle round of applause comes from my family sitting beside the pool, watching with great awe. Keira, Roxi’s always unimpressed wife, boos. I stick my tongue out at Keira. “Your turn,” I announce, leaving her plenty enough room to run, jump, land. The redhead goes running. A similar leap and corkscrew, just not as impressive as mine, and a not so great landing. Roxi owns it and shrugs. “I haven’t done this kind of stuff since high school. I’m a little rusty,” she explains. Keira goes to speak but Roxi waves her off, a sly smile shared between them. “Don’t even say a word Keira,” Roxi says to her wife. Keira can be, well, slightly perverted. Okay, a lot perverted. The woman thinks about sex non-stop. Keira puts her hand up in submission and Rox turns back to me. “Again?” I ask, bouncing my eyebrows up and down. Without warning, I take off running and jump into a full salto with a twist and narrowly stick the landing. I hop up and down, working out some kinks from the hard landing. “It’s a lot harder without those springs in the mat giving you some bounceback.” “Well, at least we’re in the grass. Also…” Roxi starts, a big smile growing on her face. “It feels like I’m ten again. All I’m missing is the little girl overalls.” She then readies herself and takes a deep breath. She throws her arms up in pose, and runs. I watch as Roxi does her own twisting full salto and lands with a stumble, just as I did. In an attempt to cover it up, she moves into an awkward handstand. The giggles come as she tumbles over onto her back. The giggles turn into outright laughter. Roxi literally rolls on the grass laughing. “Okay, I’m super rusty. So sue me,” she says as Keira gives her a standing ovation. I shake my head. “You can’t even do a handstand.” I roll forward and voila, I’m in a perfect handstand. All the blood starts to rush to my head but it’s a good feeling. Like Roxi said, it’s like being a little girl again. It’s been a long time since I fucked around doing rolls, twists, saltos, tucks for no reason. No one watching me. No one judging me. No one screaming at me to improve my form, to straighten my back, curl in my toes, to be something other than a ten year old girl looking to have fun. Even when the fans would watch me, even when the judges were critiquing my every move, I still had fun. Then one bad landing and there was no more fun to be had on a mat, balance beam, the uneven bars, or the vault. I suffered the most common injury for female athletes. A torn ACL isn’t exactly career ending for most, but for a girl already on the cusp of aging out of the sport she loves, it was devastating. I took too long to recover. The Nationals came and went. The Olympics came and went. My dreams of a gold medal came and went. Other dreams took precedent - college, chemistry, curing cancer. Keira gets up from her seat, rushes toward me, and without even the slightest bit of care, pushes me off balance. “Ha!” I land flat on my back with a thud. “Ow,” I moan, sprawled out like a starfish. “Keira!” Roxi stands up, walks over to me. She pushes Keira, slightly scolding her. “It was just a joke,” Keira says, shrugging. Roxi looks down at me. “Are you okay?” I grab her by the hand, pull her down. All of Roxi’s weight crushes down upon me, knocking the air out of me. Fuck. That was not a good decision. Roxi laughs but then sees me in pain. “I’m sorry,” she says with concern on her face. “Are you alright?” Her hand comes out to help me up. I consider pulling her back down and quickly decide against it for both our interests. I sit upright, stare at Roxi’s hand then slap it away. “I’m right as rain.” I roll forward into a somersault and spring upward to my feet, extend my arms outward as I push up and out my knee in perfect performance form. “Okay then… Show-off,” Roxi says with a playful smile before hugging me. “Though, it was good for me, too,” she whispers into my ear, ends it with a flirty giggle. The skin on my neck explodes into goosebumps and every little hair in my ear stands on end. I quickly take a step forward and look directly at my wife. I cannot control primal physical reactions. “Aw, is the show over?” Allison asks from her chair. I stare at her, thinking. All this jumping and flipping and rolling has me thinking about days gone by and all those awards and trophies and ribbons I won that are probably still sitting in my parents - mother’s basement, collecting dust. All meaningless to everyone, including myself, at the end of the day, at the end of my life. I was never able to get them back and I haven’t had the desire to fight with my mother about it. Though, just for the sake of laughs, I’d love to get my hands on a picture from those days. Me in that ugly pink leotard trimmed with silver glitter. Young, full of smiles, fancy and prancey in my youthful zeal and so painfully navie. Thinking about it, I start to remember that I might have a few pictures of me in that sinfully grotesque leotard courtesy of my aunt. Now just to find it. ↼ ⟡ ⇁ Down in the basement of the main house, of Megan’s house, I go through all the boxes and totes of shit that this family, like any family would, has accumulated over the years. Nelly’s baby clothes that Megan can’t part with. Lucia and Nelly’s various toys that were forgotten but can now fetch a pretty penny. Hudson’s priceless family heirlooms that have no place in his wife’s perfectly modern home. Megan’s collection of things from her teenage years. The comes the collection of my shit. A decade’s worth of nonsense that no one really needs but can’t bare to part with. Memories. Momentos. Artifacts. Things that, when we look upon us, remind of us things that we otherwise forgot in the process of daily living and creating new memories. I start tearing through all the cardboard boxes with ‘AJ’ written on them. Photo albums. Boxes of little boxes. Cheap plastic souvenirs from the places I’ve been in the world. Mostly junk. I hear footsteps behind me. “A.J.?” Roxi calls out to me. “Here,” I quickly answer. The redhead comes closer. “It’s time to eat.” Then in an instant, she is standing over me, looking down at the mess I’ve made in front of me. “What are you doing?” “Nothing,” I quickly say, throwing a picture away from me to join a pile of junk. Another unnecessary thing in my life. “Just looking for something.” I throw another picture into the pile. “Why do I have all this shit?” Roxi reaches over my shoulder, picks up the picture. The standard issue police photograph all new officers get upon graduation from the academy or upon promotion. I’ve got three of these things hanging around somewhere. One from graduation all the way up to the my last promotion to lieutenant. The last rank I would have before I took early - very early - retirement. “You never realize how much junk you have until you go looking for it,” Roxi says with a sigh before looking closer at the photo in her hand. “Hey. Is this your police academy picture? Why don’t you keep this out?” “That was a part of my life that is long over,” I say with an apathetic shrug. I tap the picture. “That was a taken a few days after my twenty first birthday. SPO Smyth.” “You still look great. I always did have a thing for uniforms,” Roxi smiles placing a hand on my shoulder. “I’m just messing with you, AJ.” I chuckle. “I look so… Uppity. Constipated. I wanted to be so badass and hard,” I say, raising my eyebrows. I snatch the picture from her hand, throw it back in the box. “Seriously, you should be proud of this stuff. I bet this basement is just full of stuff.” I shrug as I start moving things around, shuffling around in the box. I pull out a small photo album. The cover reads memories. Oh, dear. The opening picture is of me in a wrestling ring for the first time. I had no training, no idea what I was doing, I just knew I had to help my friend, and so I did by putting some douche in a choke hold. I flip the page before Roxi can see it. A picture of me with my first so-called World Title. I push my finger against the picture. “God, this makes me angry,” I snarl. “Why? We all sucked when we started. The leotard I wore...” Roxi shakes her head and makes a disgusted sigh. “It sucked. But obviously it didn’t take you long to win a championship, based on how young you look.” “I caught the bug. It bit me and I couldn’t be stopped,” I answer. “It didn’t matter anyway. I only held if for a week. I had a won long tournament, beat everyone in the fed, including the champion. I don’t think they had expected me to win, that they wanted me to win so they made damn sure that I didn’t retain.” Quickly, I turn the page. Looking back at me is the picture of me with the title I cherished, loved, that no one could beat me for. “I had to drop this title, ya know? Nobody could beat me. I was amazing. Untouchable.” I lean back, sigh with nostalgia. “That moment in my career, in the ring, that was the - that was the highlight thus far. When people talk about primes, that was my prime.” I laugh for a moment. I flip through a couple more pages, find the picture of me standing in the ring with my Universal Title, another title nearly no one could beat me for. “Had to drop that other title to get to this one. Move up, ya know? Even then no one could beat me. Someone finally did. Everyone’s gotta lose once or twice in their lives. But yeah.” I nod. Roxi nods. “I wanna say that was my prime, but that means I’ve already reached my peak. I don’t think I have. I’m still good. I can be great like that again. This is… Like, Roxi, I’m running outta time.” Roxi thinks for a moment as I stare at her face. “We all look back and yeah, sometimes our best days were in the past. But it’s not about reaching your highest peak and then you crash down the mountain. It’s about how long you can be consistent. You don’t have anything to prove to me. And, really, you don’t need to second guess yourself, or what you’ve done.” Roxi taps the photo album. “These photos, don’t treat them like they are old news or just memories, they are trophies. They should be displayed. For everything you’ve done. inside the ring, and out.” I listen to her words but something else catches my eyes: black and bright blood red. The colors of the place that gave me this ring box. I was a Renegade, a proud Renegade for a long time. That’s where I found most of my success. I pop open the ring box to expose the big golden ring with the company’s black and red logo in the center. I show it to Roxi as a I smirk. “This is something, isn’t it?” “Yes. It’s beautiful. What’s it from?” “Hall of Fame, motherfucker,” I say then chuck the thing in front of me. “Wait, what?” Roxi asks, shocked. “Why don’t you wear it? Why don’t you at least have it out somewhere? Why is it down here?” I start laughing. “Because - because it is literally the least important thing to me. Hall of Fames are for old people who’ve retired, given up the ghost, want to show off what they’ve done, instead of what they can do.” I keep flittering through the things in the box. “I mean, I guess it’s some kind of proof of what I can do, what I’m capable of but really, it’s not as impressive as it seems. It’s a good weapon, but what other purpose does it have? It’s pretty? It says some closed down place liked me enough to give me a pretty ring?” I twirl my finger in the air, make a whistling sound but I can’t really whistle. “There’s… I dunno. I’d rather have people know my name then get a ring,” I say, distracted. “Doesn’t matter how many hall of fames you get in if nobody knows your name.” “I think you may be overthinking it. Hall of Fame’s aren’t just a place being nice. It’s a reward. It’s a culmination. It’s your hard work being acknowledged. That’s justification. In some cases vindication. It’s a whole lot more than a ring, AJ.” “Meh,” I say, shrugging. “Hall of fames feel very final to me. I'd much rather have what you have. You’ve done so much. People want to face you. They know you. You have the most precious thing in this sport, a name. A name that people know, that they respect. I don't. I have to build my name outside of my small circle. Nearly a decade in this sport and it’s like I’ve just started. I’m much better than people think - realize, but they don’t know that because I’ve never let them see it.” “I’ve also been a lot of places. Some longer than others. I’ve just tried to do well, not make a fuss. People like that, owners, presidents, and such. That’s really all I’ve ever tried to do. Some people, ya know, wanna wrestle me just for that reason alone. It’s weird.” I turn, look at her. “But they know your name. They know who you are and what you can do. I want that. Titles are great, that’d be nice. But more than anything, I want my name to be associated with respect, being a great in wrestling, sought after.” “I guess then… You gotta put yourself out there. I’ve seen how good you are so there shouldn’t be in issue when it comes to talent,” Roxi says with a shrug. “I want you to do well, you know?” “Thank you,” I mumble, turning the page. I get to pictures I don’t want to see so I turn the pages faster until the the pages have nothing to offer. Blank. Blank pages to fill. Room for more memories, for more accomplishments, for all the things I win. Once I fill this, I’ll buy a new one and fill that one up. “Is this why you joined that tournament in Japan, Koroko?” “Kokoro. It’s Kokoro,” I answer. “It translates to English as either mind or heart but it means so much more than that. I didn’t know that. It’s everything, heart, mind, thoughts, emotions, coming all together to work together. It’s spiritual. ” Roxi nods slowly, her eyes tight. “Right…” “It’s the spirit inside you, the fighting spirit.” “I didn’t know you were the spiritual type.” “I’m not,” I say. “I’m a scientist. I don’t get any of this shit. I do like the idea of calling it ‘fighting spirit’ though, because when you’re fighting - whether it be in the ring or yourself or whatever - you’ve gotta get all things in line to be at your best, to win, to be a great warrior.” “It's an interesting concept,” she says. “But that doesn't answer my question…” “Oh. Right.” I go back to sorting through my shit, looking for the picture I came here for. “Yeah, I wanna get my name out there. I also wanna get out there, face some good competition, learn their names as they learn mine. Plus, you know, I wanna say I beat them.” Roxi chuckles. “Sounds right.” “Should I win this tournament… When I win this tournament, it's just a start to all the amazing things that I will do.” I finally find the picture I was looking for. Nine-year-old Amy Jo in a gawd awful leotard, holding a trophy, beaming with pride. I show it to Roxi. “Is that… That's you!” She starts laughing so hard she buckles over. I join her. Everyone in the house has to hear us we’re so loud. end. ![]() |
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12:55 AM Jul 13