Finding NeXtremo

[Stephen Singh]

December 7, 2017

WCF Headquarters

Reading Pennsylvania

We’re outside Seth Lerch’s office in at the WCF Headquarters. It’s a rare sight: a few uncomfortable waiting room chairs, the secretary sitting at a cheap, cluttered desk and a slightly murky aquarium in the corner full of fish likely given away in plastic bags at the county fair. Few of the superstars ever actually WAIT for Seth and generally barge right in. The Superstar, of course, had already tried this but he found the door locked and when he attempted to bypass said lock with a hard right boot, it didn’t budge. He’d also shouldered the door before taking a step back and a harder look at them realizing these are not the same doors he’d breezed throughout without welcome dozens of times before. They’re a deeper color, denser, apparently reinforced. He’d easily busted them open despite being “locked” an occasion or two as well. It’d appear the owner and president of the WCF finally splurged and created and made his private office actually private. With a now-sore shoulder and an annoyance building to fury, Singh berated Dolores before plopping into his chair and waiting. He passes the time watching “John Rabid: Hail to The King Part 1.” He makes it four minutes into the Goebels-style propaganda before growing uncontrollably nauseous and springs to his feet and back over to the secretary’s desk.

Singh: I’ve already been waiting TEN FUCKING MINUTES, where is he Dolores!?

Dolores: I already told you Mr. Singh, I don’t know where he is. And I don’t believe it’s even been five minutes.

Singh: And I already told you, I don’t believe you. That shitbag demanded this meeting and now he’s not even here?!

Dolores: The meeting was set for two hours ago. Mr. Lerch was most definitely in at that time.

Singh: Time zones, Dolores! I told you, that was a miscommunication about timezones!

It was definitely not a miscommunication about time zones. That doesn’t even make sense. Also, her name is definitely not Dolores.

Secretary: If you’d just have a seat I’m su--

Singh: I’m sure you’d like that wouldn’t you? I wouldn’t even have showed up to this meeting if not for Lerch threatening to yank me off the ONE card every time he needs me somewhere for something. It’s manipulative and might be illegal, Dolores.

Secretary: Mr. Singh, you know my name isn’t Dolores.

Singh: It isn’t?

Secretary: No. Remember, we discussed before the film crew arrived?

Singh: Yeah, you told me it was based on that Seinfeld episode. It rhymes with a part of the female anatomy. Dolores.

Secretary: But that’s not it.

Singh: Well what the hell’s your name?! Bitty?

Secretary: No.

Singh: Schwabia?

Secretary: That’s no one’s name.

Singh: Just tell me if you want me to use it.

Secretary: It’s from the show, Mr. Singh, my name is Mulva.

Singh: MULVA?! Schwabia was crazy to you but MULVA is your name?!

Mulva: My parents were huge Seinfeld fans, I thought you’d appreciate it. Mr. Lerch always mentions your sense of humor.

Singh: A sense of humor is for the midcard, Schwabia. I’ll leave the yuks to the VBSes and SJWs of the world.

Mulva: ...Both of whom have recently bested you.

His eyes pop wide open as he sweeps his arm across her desk clearing nearly every item off of it and onto the floor.

Singh: ARE YOU SHOOTING RIGHT NOW?! GOOD GOLDEN GOD YOU BETTER NOT BE SHOOTING ON ME RIGHT NOW!

She recoils for a moment and looks down at her lap but as she does the mess he just made on the floor catches her eye and she her meekness pulls her lips into a grimace. Without looking up she half-whispers back to Stephen.

Mulva: …...Always be shooting.

If they could, his eyes would’ve jumped from his skull as Singh hears her turn one of his many coined phrases turned back onto him by this lowly secretary. His angry and disbelieving eyes crawl quickly back into their sockets though as he takes full measure of the woman before him: she’s shapely though not necessarily in shape, short, auburn red hair pulled up into a bun, mid 30s, professionally but still enticingly dressed. He turned his head, piecing together. It was Erica, his old assistant. Not literally of course, but this was Erica ten years into the future; an undergraduate degree under her belt but no real world or job experience left her chewed up and spit out by the market which leads her into accepting an “Administrative Assistant” role such as this one. Singh smiles unsure at what amuses him more: the thought that Seth Lerch clearly hired the discount version of his old assistant as his own or that this is where Erica will end up. Too good to have Stephen Singh’s kid but eventually condemned to getting verbally berated by large, entitled men. He also thought about fucking her. But to be fair, he thought about that with most women he met.

Singh: You know, Mulva, you’re right. Always be shooting. I apologize for losing my manners.

She now cocks her head, unable to solve the Rubix Cube of bullshit that Singh presents in any given moment. Singh picks up a mug off the floor that had been holding her small stash of pens and sets it back on the desk. He then snatches some of the pens from the floor and plops them in the black mug reads “Coffee Above All” in a familiar ice blue font. She’s a mark. And even more than that, she’s a fan. A million dollar smile papers Singh’s face as he makes purposeful and intimidating eye contact with her. He pulls one of the pens from the mug and slips it behind her ear.

Singh: Nice mug.

Blushing slightly, she smiles back without meaning to; he’s yelled at her and now made a mess of her work area but a the nearly intimate eye contact and that tiniest of compliments woo her despite herself. Seeing her cheeks redden ever so slightly, he’s aware of his success and breaks the eye contact to walk over to the aquarium. He stands in front of it’s not quite crystal clear water and addresses his camera crew directly.

Singh: We all heard the lovely lady, always be shooting right? Right. So here we are WCF. This is what I’ve been reduced to. Seth has a briefcase-shaped little carrot dangling out in front of me and I’ve got no choice but to actually go where he needs me. Last week it was that Golden Godforsaken church and this week it’s his office. And our friend Schwabia over there is right: I’ve been beaten by lesser men twice in the past two Slams. I shouldn’t be wasting my thoughts and efforts on how long I’m waiting on Lerch; I can’t let such minutiae deter me. Despite his less-than-stellar record this year, if I lose focus again Mikey I eat another loss that should not be on my record. I give more fodder over to Digger’s tiny little mind that I’ll surely have to hear about in the lead up to ONE. I let the myth of momentum slip away. So no more.

Instead of allowing my vision to be blurred and my focus to be deterred from the task at hand, I will place crosshairs cleanly on the head of one man: Michael Q. Extreme. That’s what I’ve decided to go with for you name, “Mikey;” it has more mature, stately sound to it. That’s what I want for you but as I’m pretty sure I’ve discussed ad nauseum MIKEY IS A FUCKING CHILD’S NAME. I shouldn’t get so incensed about it and I definitely shouldn’t be surprised anymore. In all honesty, I shouldn’t have been surprised in the first place. I should’ve taken one read of your repertoire, one gander at your goods, one peek at your peaks and realized: you’re no man, you are and always will be a child. Hence the name you’ve chosen for yourself: Mikey. You and your career are in a state of perpetual adolescence. You were born into the midcard and you’ll die in the midcard. You do not have the strength of will or character to claw your way up from the Omega Title to The World. Mikey eXtreme is a backyard wrestler who got lucky enough to jump off a roof and into a contract who is at least smart enough to know the one place you don’t jump is into the deep end with all the sport’s mature, child-eating sharks. Sure at the behest of Savior Seth you might dip a toe in the deep end now and again but every time you do, you lose a whole foot. Everest bounced your overperforming Extreme Wolves--what a godawful name, please hire a marketing team, Michael--out of the Trios tournament before Ethan King and I proceeded to bounce you and Kemp out of the ring on multiple other occasions. If this were a better-produced company, we’d hard cut now to a flashback featuring various private conversations between Ethan and myself about how sick of embarrassing you two we were. In all honesty, we actually felt bad for you; it wasn’t doing either of us any good. It did us no good to defeat you as everyone knew us to be your superior and it did you no good to be living and dying to those three little letters every week: J O B. Still, you showed up every time and gave it your extreme effort and came up extremely short. Unfortunately there are points given for neither simple attendance nor basic participation in this sport. So you still fail. Wait...what’s that I hear?

Stephen puts his hand up to his ear as though interrupted by the fish.

Singh: What’s that Nemo? Little Fish Michael actually BEAT us on one occasion? He’s one of the few men that can claim a “victory” over The Golden God? Well now! What a point made by the marine life here at WCF Headquarters! Maybe YOU guys should have the office and Seth should behind the glass!

The camera zooms in to see one of the smaller fish darting around the aquarium, plucking small floating items out of the water and eating them. The shot follows the small, floating flecks to their source which is, of course, the asshole of another fish. The tiny orange fish is darting around eating shit. Maybe they really are cut out for leadership.

Singh: Anyways, the shit-eating little Mikey in there brings up a good point. Well maybe not a good point because it would only be brought up by something with an underdeveloped frontal cortex and an absolutely atrocious body-to-brain ratio but I guess it’s still a point. And with that caveat, it seems clear to me that the brain-dead dunce Mike E. Xtreme will likely bring up this so-called victory. So let’s clear the ear about that. Michael was indeed on the team that handed Everest its first loss which, at the time, was an enormous deal--mostly for him. Granted, we were pretty upset with that disappearing cucktard Bale Pascal but we showed him The End of The World and he’s never been heard from since. But for Yung Mike E. to actually notch a W over Everest? That’s an enormous deal for him after months of sitting on our personal punching bag carousel beside Kyle and Teo. Unfortunately that win was the worst thing you could’ve done for yourself.

I’ll admit that seeing your name across from mine this week left me uninspired, it left me wanting for a higher profile match against a higher profile opponent who had a higher chance of actually beating me. I considered not even cutting a promo this week. I considered not even showing up to Slam. And then this nagging little voice in the back my head reminded me, “Mikey eXtreme holds a victory over you.” And as much as I shushed the prideful little pontificator in my brain, that voice persisted. Everyday since the card was announced I’ve thought about the fact that in the record books (you know, the ones that show ME as a former World Champion and YOU as a former nearly relevant, almost main eventer) it reads that Mikey eXtreme has beaten Stephen Singh. And like you after our match or my dead brother, this cannot stand. That piddly little disqualification victory may have been a feather in your cap back then Yankee Diddle but I’m about to pummel your plumage. I want...No, let’s be honest here. I don’t want to avenge that DQ loss, I NEED to avenge it. I am driven by success and success alone. Before, above, and beyond all else all I care about is success. And knowing that there is one night in the history of the WCF where etched a W next to your name and an L next to mine stirs in me an ire I sometimes I forget I have. I normally save the kind of anger I’m going to unleash this Sunday for the big matches or the fuckchops who really deserve it around here. You have managed, by some dumb luck, to temporarily position yourself as some minor symbol of a “failure” on my part and for that I will leave you on Sunday with a Broken Will.

Singh pauses for a moment and taps on the aquarium’s glass.

In the dregs that is the current state of the WCF you’re a medium sized fish in a medium sized pond so it probably feels pretty damned good. You’ve taken a D+ gimmick and used A- execution to work your way RIGHT outside of the important matches, just under the main events, just out of the Bright Lights. But don’t worry, I’ll make sure you get a good look at them Sunday. Do you know which one of these little swimmers you are, Michael? Do you have enough awareness to realize that you’re that miniscule orange little shiteater darting around aimlessly? To be clear I mean shiteater in a literal sense here not just in my standard negative name calling. If the WCF is this aquarium, you’re the one darting place to place, lapping up all the shit left over by bigger, badder fish than you. You can’t exist with us and we barely notice your presence. I mean, you matter. You certainly serve a purpose. You eat all our shit to make this place look just a little bit cleaner, to make sure people can see a little bit clearer who the Big Fish are. That’s why you’re here, that’s why you’ll always be here and that’s why you’re the one facing me this week. Because your hideous face is just the right shape for men your better to use as a stepping stone up to their proper place above you. Then, once I’m back up at the top of the card where I belong, I’ll drop a massive steamer so you can keep doing the one thing you’re here for, the one purpose you serve in the WCF: eating shit.

Have you heard of David Foster Wallace, Michael? You probably answered no even though you actually have heard of him and you’ve just murdered the brain cells that should be holding that information for you. You seem to be just the right type of perpetual adolescent to keep an unread copy of “Infinite Jest” on your bookshelf because you wrong-headedly think it’s going to impress someone. Just kidding, everyone knows you don’t have a bookshelf and that your totally gnarly and super extreme ways have probably rendered you as illiterate as MS13. That’s the problem with you people who speak of the “hardcore” and “extreme” and pretend that it’s actual wrestling: this is chess not whack-a-mole and after the amount of chair shots you’ve taken, I know you can’t tell a bishop from a pawn. Go to enough lengths, put your body on the line enough times and your brain turns into the same shit that you’ve spent your entire WCF career eating. I’m out here castling while you’re chewing on the pieces, drooling down the front of your shirt. It’s embarrassing for me, you and the sport. Look at the men at the top, Michael. How many of them tout the “hardcore” or “extreme” as their style, as their means to victory? Which World Champ pretends that is the best way to win? Not Rabid, not Singh, not Flash, NOT ANY OF THEM.

Wait a second, I was run over by own train of thought. I just get so worked up when I think about what an idiotic, disrespectful, childish mound of excrement “extreme” wrestlers are. David Foster Wallace: the guy’s a douche but if you throw enough mud against the wall, something’s going to stick. He delivered a speech at Kenyon college which included a little parable about fish that went something like this:

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

He goes on to rage against the daily complacency of the mainstream, of the average. He raises his voice warning of the dangers of the rat race. He more or less stated that while we are so busy swimming, we can’t see what is right in front of our faces, what surrounds us every moment. The point is that maybe I’m being too hard on you. Maybe you have no idea that you’re that shit eating little guppy in the tank because you’re so encompassed by the shit of your betters, you’ve never stopped and gone “Hmph. Maybe I should take a moment, really look at my life with fresh eyes, and then kill myself.” Because life is for the living, Mikey. You had a chance to put a stranglehold on a brand new title here in the WCF, you could’ve scrawled your “X” onto the strap and into the record books in a permanent fashion. Instead you just kept swimming and shrugged the championship over to Bowtie. You ate the shit. You can’t see the water. You’re not living, Michael. You’re floating aimlessly, fully unbuoyed and now in the pool with a shark. A shark with a reason to best you now. A shark who sees perfectly through the water but never forgets its presence, its importance. I lose, I remember. It burns in my mind and my heart until I can make it right. This Sunday I make one of those losses right. And when I’ve come for my retribution like a Thief In The Night, Michael, try to remind yourself:

This is water…

This is water…

This is water….

The door to Seth’s office suddenly swings open and he gives Stephen a nonchalant “come on in” wave.

Singh: YOU WERE IN THERE THIS WHOLE FUCKING TIME?!

Livid, Singh follows into the room and plops down in front of Seth’s desk. On the television is a short CNN piece on Singh’s little show out at the mega church last week when he “crucified” the pastor as the fake news is putting it.

Seth: I ask you to handle something and this is what you do? The guy was threatening to tell his rather sizable congregation to stop watching so you crucify him?

Singh: First of all, he’s just tied to that cross so let’s not continue with the drama of calling it “crucifying.” Secondly, that man is a crook.

Seth: Pot, kettle, whatever.

Singh: No, as I explained to him, the word THIEF is all but my business card. But him? He pretends to be a man of the people, to be a humble shepherd for his flock. That shepherd drives has a BMW and a Rolex. He preys on the unsuspecting while they pray fo--

Seth: Jesus, I watched the promo last week, don’t recap the whole thing for me.

Singh: Well then I don’t know what I’m being scolded about, that guy had it coming.

Seth: Maybe, maybe not. But I sent you there to make sure our viewership didn’t take a hit and you made it the Stephen Singh anti-religion rant and rave instead. That story got picked up by a bunch of national outlets. Fox News had a field day….

Seth flips over to a recorded segment where it appears a rich white man’s head may explode as a man named “Singh” wages apparent war on christianity.

Singh: Since when do you have a TV in here by the way?

Seth: I don’t know.

Singh: This didn’t just get put in for the purpose of this promo did it?

Seth: What? No. That’s impossible. I’ve definitely had it since….Hmmm….I’m not sure when. Listen, that’s not the point. The point is that you nearly cost yourself, and more importantly, ME a lot of money.

Singh: Nearly.

Seth: Right. Because it turns out, there’s no such thing as bad press. Letters of complaint are pouring in to the FCC but it has nothing to do with us as your stunt wasn’t on our show. And a few zealots are calling for our boycott which of course has the atheists doubling down on viewership and merchandise sales.

As Seth informs him of the unintended positive consequences of his stunt, Singh’s phone buzzes in his pocket and pulls it out, ignoring his boss. It’s a text from Donna. His mother. The woman who hasn’t spoken to in nearly a year just wrote him a simple “How is everything?” Befuddled, Singh ignores it and shoves it back in his pocket.

Singh: You’re welcome. So now I assume I’m free to go? You clearly just called me down here to thank me in person. Which is appreciated, Seth. You’re a real class act sometimes; don’t listen to what your mother says.

Seth: Fuck right off, Stephen. I called you down here to tell you to pull it together. You half-assed that match last wee--

Singh: You put me in a half-assed match so it got the effort it deserved. Catch as catch can? I’m the Picasso of Pontification but if all you hand Pablo is a crayon, the Mona Lisa never gets made. You took half my tools out of my box; I’m not going to exert maximal effort in a match with minimal thought behind it.

Seth: Which Singh am I going to get this week?

Singh: You mean which Singh is Michael going to get this week.

Seth: Michael?

Singh: Yes, Michael. He’s a grown goddamned man and I’m calling him Michael. And he’s going to get The Golden God. The Watson of Wrestling. The Sure Thing himself. And me? I’m going to get that nearly imperceptible little blemish off my record by snapping Mikey’s knee. Bad news for the two of you though. I’m going to punish him and it’s going to hurt his little title defense in UCI. And it probably won’t have healed by the time his Omega Title shot at One rolls around either. So just remember that you once again buried him by leveraging him as nothing more than a tiny, minorly motivating little mook of a speed bump on my road to One. Michael is no longer the King of anything, I’ve already proven that time and time again this year. No one is yearning to Make America Mikey’s Again; not even Dag would shill for that. The Darkness is about to be enlightened by a Golden God. “Darkness,” what a joke. Darkness is here! Darkness is spreading! What does that remind me of? Why does that seem so familiar...Oh wait I think I know…

I already tried to remind Michael that “This is water” and he needs to have a look around once in awhile, really try to live here and be in the moment, try to step back and get a real handle on the banal uselessness of his WCF existence. Because I’m hoping he can come to the same conclusion David Foster Wallace did and fucking hang himself. Game...blouses.

The scene begins to fade to black but just as it does Seth Lerch’s voice can be heard.

Seth: Wait...are you blouses in this scenario? And….isn’t that a different sketch anways?

An angry grunt in the blackness and Singh's voice as it fades to black.

Singh: I'm going to fuck your new secretary.