- Joined
- Apr 10, 2025
- Messages
- 23
- Reaction score
- 34
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- MATURE Themes
- Abuse
- Substance Abuse
- TEEN Themes
- Substance Usage
- EVERYONE Themes
- No EVERYONE Themes Apply
- Other Content Warnings
- Alcohol related substance abuse throughout, and a brief case of verbal abuse. No strong language.
The Hiding Place
He’s been sleeping for only a few minutes when I figure, what the hell, it’s been long enough, and I sneak out of bed on a silent path to the hiding place.
It takes about 50 slow seconds to slip away without pulling our sheets. I place my right foot in front of the nightstand before swinging a four foot leap towards the window. No creaks and thumps from this old marsh-shack tonight. Just one more noiseless trip down this secret road, one more then never again, I’m done for good, because I know this path leads only to ruin.
Slinking around the bedroom, back to the fragrant cypress walls, I arrive at the door left cracked when I came to bed and turn to look at him. The half-moon light ripples over the sharp jaw, through the thick handlebar mustache and sideburns. This watery moonlight is the only time I see that lovely face bubble with any emotion at all, my final image before I turn my back on paradise and face the burning city beyond our bedroom door. But I always look back at Chuck, every single time, and I always remember it too. I crack our door as wide as my large body allows, and melt through without a sound.
But even my soft wrestler’s feet can’t fool quagsire, who stares at me blankly from his kiddie pool by the back door. I mime an RKO on some poor imaginary opponent then give him a thumbs up. He mimes mock claps, black glass eyes unblinking, then salutes and settles down into his water.
Our Great Marsh bungalow has a one car garage that I’ve turned into a gym. Half-sized wrestling ring, dumbbells up to 125lbs, squat rack with a thousand pounds of plate. There’s a loose wooden wall panel in the corner by the treadmill, which I of course never use and Chuck only used for his physical therapy after the injury, and behind that panel is where I keep the good stuff.
I used to have enough liquid joy in this little corner for any occasion. Carrigans 18 year, made with Pastoria peat, it’s got the upside down croagunk on the label dripping poison into a wooden goblet. Alolan rum they age in palossand, allegedly. Gin from up near lake acuity. I don’t even like gin, but the fight promoter would always give me a case when we toured up there. Anything that didn’t make the cut for the bar cart in the dining room, I’d tell Chuck I donated to the good people of Pastoria, like the Fan Club or the annual Safari Dinner. That really meant this hole in the wall. But today it holds a kinder surprise, at least for him.
I haul out a box of that old gin and open the case, digging out some crimson streamers and a hanging banner that reads “WELCOME BACK” with googly-eyed timburr constructing the letters with steel I-beams. There’s also a vinyl poster I’d printed of Chuck and me, arm in arm, on the day he could finally bear weight on his leg. I had insisted he wear the tallest party hat we could find, but he’s barely even flashing a smile. Running my hands through the box one more time, maybe out of habit, I feel around for glass… but no bottles in there. I shake my head as I turn back into the house swinging the door fast at first to avoid the squeaking hinges, twist the knob, then shut the door.
In the living room I hang the streamers from the exposed trusses of our ceiling. I criss-cross the entire place in a crimson canopy, then poke my head above the beams to tape the streamers off. Chuck told me he found me up here one night, jumping beam to beam, yodeling like a passimian he said. Tried to get him to join me, apparently. I cracked one of the cross beams, and had to pay double to get a contractor out here to fix it on a Sunday. I don’t remember much of the gymnastics. I do remember my throbbing head as they set the beam that next morning. And Chuck won’t let me forget the whole thing, he calls me Trasher Wake every time I break something.
I hang the banner on the dining room wall, along with the poster of us in the dunce caps. I cover the discolored drywall where I punched a hole clean through the wall, back when I was playing heel on every sub circuit and the producers wouldn’t let me turn face. That was an Ekruteak Ale night, 17 of them probably. I’d only had nine when I punched the wall at dinner. Chuck just looked at me. His leg was still in a cast then, he couldn’t even get up to calm me down. I had the other eight ales after we went to bed.
The final touch, a big bag of turquoise and pink wobbuffet balloons. I sneak barefoot over the carpet to the back door. Light touch with the latch, firm and slow on the pull, no noise. I sit on the warped Adirondack chair at the edge of the porch across from the hot tub. Chuck nailed this chair down years ago, because it’s in the perfect spot to see a gash of stars hidden in the black, weepy trees of the marsh.
He never liked to fight inside. It was out here I told him I was wrong for him, that I could tell he wanted nothing to do with me. That if he was so into discipline and consistency it made no sense for us to be together, he had a way more successful wrestling career anyway, he should find someone steadier. He sat in this chair and I leaned over him yelling anything hurtful I could think of; you’ve got no idea what it’s like having emotions like this, you’re a statue of a man who can’t even smile for a picture, how could I possibly feel loved, and when I’m drunk I have an excuse to cry. I told him I should be out doing every gig I could, the fans were finally starting to like me, or I should be at the gym taking on more challengers, but instead I had to carry him around everywhere like a cripple, and might always have to if his knee doesn’t heal right. I yelled all of this and god knows what else at him, shaking the chair; and he stood up and held my shoulders and said it was time. It was time to stop. That he could not tell which side of me was the secret and which was the truth, and that I had to stop drinking for good. He had kissed my collarbone then limped into the cabin, and I didn’t see him for two days. I fell asleep in this chair, a bottle of Sunyshore Select single barrel 105 proof whiskey sat carefully behind the legs with only an inch of copper liquid left in it.
Every puff of air from my lungs to these balloons brings a vision of that miserable first week. Laying flat on the canvas of the garage’s wrestling ring, baptized in an ancient fermented sweat like my body weeping, quagsire’s long cool fin on my forehead. My arms trembling like a teenager’s on rep five set two of overhead barbell presses, weight cut in half and no spotter, because my usual spotter’s gone and probably not coming back. I didn’t even try to sleep. I just lifted and trembled and swore and stared at that panel behind the treadmill. Every moment was an incalculable sum of pressure and regret, like some tattered carcass sunk to the seafloor.
But even then, I missed it. Every longing pang I fought with heavier weights in the garage, or another 30 minutes without sleep, or some other string of self-hating abuse--but you know, just a swig or two would pick you up, no more than that, and at least you could sleep, and you wouldn’t be miserable. That siren call crescendoed in my mind for two wet quivering days, until finally I went to that panel and tore those deafening fluid hearts from within the wall and transplanted them to the porch out back. I was halfway through dumping every last bottle into the marsh when Chuck appeared next to me and grabbed some bottles to help. I hadn’t even heard him open the door.
I finish blowing up the final pink wobbuffet and slide the door open. Quagsire helps me spread the balloons all throughout the house, in every nook and crevice we can think of.
Back at the hiding place, I return the empty gin/decoration box to the hole. I poke my head in to see if I forgot anything and I see it; the parchment label, the croagunk dripping its poison. I’m halfway inside the wall before I can grab it. It’s unopened. I haven’t held a bottle of liquor in 4 months. The deep amber ichor lops against the glass as I rotate it in my hand. That weak song sputters to life in my brain… Carrigans is good stuff, it’s been long enough, surely you could just have one…
‘Wake?’
Chuck’s behind me, how could I have woken him up? I burst out that I haven’t drunk anything, I just happened to find this old bottle--and I realize he must’ve seen the decorations, and now I’m apologizing and saying I just wanted to surprise him for his return to the ring tomorrow. I stand up and show him my hiding spot, and try to hand him the bottle of whiskey.
He sets the bottle down on the treadmill and reaches past my arm, past the wide dark hole in the wall I think he’s never seen before, grabs the wooden panel, and pulls it in the opposite direction past its resting place. Slowly he reveals another hole, I’ve definitely never seen this one, and he pulls out a hand bound book and a small box.
‘I’m surprised you never found it,’ he says with a twitch of his mouth. He chuckles watching me stare at his hiding place.
‘Recovery sucked,’ Chuck says to me. ‘I thought I’d never wrestle again. I thought I might not even lift or train heavy again. Remember what you said to me the morning after surgery? About how recovery is a river that never stops flowing, a song that never quite finishes?’
I forgot I’d told him that, and I shake my head.
‘Well you told me. And you told me you’d still be with me the whole way. So this is for you.” He sits next to me on the treadmill and opens the book right there. The first page is a picture of him and I ringside from a year ago, the night he got hurt.
‘I couldn’t have come back from this without you,’ Chuck says. ‘You’re the only person I’ve ever let see me at my worst. Feeling vulnerable is one thing; being physically vulnerable is something else. Calling you mine… I’m just glad you were there.’
It’s not just the pretty stuff in here. There’s a picture of him down on the mat clutching his knee, ref kneeling beside waving an arm, his opponent turned away with hands on his head. Chuck in the hospital bed before surgery, huge and ridiculous in a white gown with tiny flowers, grimacing with a thumbs up. The discharge form from the hospital.
And there’s his hitmonchan and I propping him up as he puts weight on his leg… Chuck lounging in one of my signature salt baths in the hot tub on the back porch, me dumping in another bag of salt… another, somehow larger party hat I made him wear when he could finally get back in the gym and start lifting again. I had forgotten about all these pictures he had us take. There were notes too; a diary of his worst and best days, lifting logs, PT progress reports. I stop at the last page, a picture of us toasting our sparkling lemonade from Driftveil two nights ago, celebrating his long road to recovery. I lean my head against Chuck’s shoulder when he closes the book.
‘For the first time in my life I feel safe.’ Chuck says. ‘I feel like no matter how low I get, or how my body fails me, you’ll be pushing me along in your current. You’re the wild white water sweeping me towards a brighter life.’
I’m hiding my face cause I’ve never cried like this in front of him, at least that I can remember, and he turns my face upward towards his with a steady raise of his hand when he tells me this last part.
‘You’ve shown me that I’m more than my worst day. That goes both ways you know.’
I reach out and kiss him, and as the abundant waves of regret and joy and love course over my face and my rather large body, he sits there and holds me up. Just as I did for him, I think to myself.
‘What’s in the box?’ I ask, once I can finally laugh.
‘You weren’t supposed to see that yet,’ he replies with a quiver of his mustache.
He’s been sleeping for only a few minutes when I figure, what the hell, it’s been long enough, and I sneak out of bed on a silent path to the hiding place.
It takes about 50 slow seconds to slip away without pulling our sheets. I place my right foot in front of the nightstand before swinging a four foot leap towards the window. No creaks and thumps from this old marsh-shack tonight. Just one more noiseless trip down this secret road, one more then never again, I’m done for good, because I know this path leads only to ruin.
Slinking around the bedroom, back to the fragrant cypress walls, I arrive at the door left cracked when I came to bed and turn to look at him. The half-moon light ripples over the sharp jaw, through the thick handlebar mustache and sideburns. This watery moonlight is the only time I see that lovely face bubble with any emotion at all, my final image before I turn my back on paradise and face the burning city beyond our bedroom door. But I always look back at Chuck, every single time, and I always remember it too. I crack our door as wide as my large body allows, and melt through without a sound.
But even my soft wrestler’s feet can’t fool quagsire, who stares at me blankly from his kiddie pool by the back door. I mime an RKO on some poor imaginary opponent then give him a thumbs up. He mimes mock claps, black glass eyes unblinking, then salutes and settles down into his water.
Our Great Marsh bungalow has a one car garage that I’ve turned into a gym. Half-sized wrestling ring, dumbbells up to 125lbs, squat rack with a thousand pounds of plate. There’s a loose wooden wall panel in the corner by the treadmill, which I of course never use and Chuck only used for his physical therapy after the injury, and behind that panel is where I keep the good stuff.
I used to have enough liquid joy in this little corner for any occasion. Carrigans 18 year, made with Pastoria peat, it’s got the upside down croagunk on the label dripping poison into a wooden goblet. Alolan rum they age in palossand, allegedly. Gin from up near lake acuity. I don’t even like gin, but the fight promoter would always give me a case when we toured up there. Anything that didn’t make the cut for the bar cart in the dining room, I’d tell Chuck I donated to the good people of Pastoria, like the Fan Club or the annual Safari Dinner. That really meant this hole in the wall. But today it holds a kinder surprise, at least for him.
I haul out a box of that old gin and open the case, digging out some crimson streamers and a hanging banner that reads “WELCOME BACK” with googly-eyed timburr constructing the letters with steel I-beams. There’s also a vinyl poster I’d printed of Chuck and me, arm in arm, on the day he could finally bear weight on his leg. I had insisted he wear the tallest party hat we could find, but he’s barely even flashing a smile. Running my hands through the box one more time, maybe out of habit, I feel around for glass… but no bottles in there. I shake my head as I turn back into the house swinging the door fast at first to avoid the squeaking hinges, twist the knob, then shut the door.
In the living room I hang the streamers from the exposed trusses of our ceiling. I criss-cross the entire place in a crimson canopy, then poke my head above the beams to tape the streamers off. Chuck told me he found me up here one night, jumping beam to beam, yodeling like a passimian he said. Tried to get him to join me, apparently. I cracked one of the cross beams, and had to pay double to get a contractor out here to fix it on a Sunday. I don’t remember much of the gymnastics. I do remember my throbbing head as they set the beam that next morning. And Chuck won’t let me forget the whole thing, he calls me Trasher Wake every time I break something.
I hang the banner on the dining room wall, along with the poster of us in the dunce caps. I cover the discolored drywall where I punched a hole clean through the wall, back when I was playing heel on every sub circuit and the producers wouldn’t let me turn face. That was an Ekruteak Ale night, 17 of them probably. I’d only had nine when I punched the wall at dinner. Chuck just looked at me. His leg was still in a cast then, he couldn’t even get up to calm me down. I had the other eight ales after we went to bed.
The final touch, a big bag of turquoise and pink wobbuffet balloons. I sneak barefoot over the carpet to the back door. Light touch with the latch, firm and slow on the pull, no noise. I sit on the warped Adirondack chair at the edge of the porch across from the hot tub. Chuck nailed this chair down years ago, because it’s in the perfect spot to see a gash of stars hidden in the black, weepy trees of the marsh.
He never liked to fight inside. It was out here I told him I was wrong for him, that I could tell he wanted nothing to do with me. That if he was so into discipline and consistency it made no sense for us to be together, he had a way more successful wrestling career anyway, he should find someone steadier. He sat in this chair and I leaned over him yelling anything hurtful I could think of; you’ve got no idea what it’s like having emotions like this, you’re a statue of a man who can’t even smile for a picture, how could I possibly feel loved, and when I’m drunk I have an excuse to cry. I told him I should be out doing every gig I could, the fans were finally starting to like me, or I should be at the gym taking on more challengers, but instead I had to carry him around everywhere like a cripple, and might always have to if his knee doesn’t heal right. I yelled all of this and god knows what else at him, shaking the chair; and he stood up and held my shoulders and said it was time. It was time to stop. That he could not tell which side of me was the secret and which was the truth, and that I had to stop drinking for good. He had kissed my collarbone then limped into the cabin, and I didn’t see him for two days. I fell asleep in this chair, a bottle of Sunyshore Select single barrel 105 proof whiskey sat carefully behind the legs with only an inch of copper liquid left in it.
Every puff of air from my lungs to these balloons brings a vision of that miserable first week. Laying flat on the canvas of the garage’s wrestling ring, baptized in an ancient fermented sweat like my body weeping, quagsire’s long cool fin on my forehead. My arms trembling like a teenager’s on rep five set two of overhead barbell presses, weight cut in half and no spotter, because my usual spotter’s gone and probably not coming back. I didn’t even try to sleep. I just lifted and trembled and swore and stared at that panel behind the treadmill. Every moment was an incalculable sum of pressure and regret, like some tattered carcass sunk to the seafloor.
But even then, I missed it. Every longing pang I fought with heavier weights in the garage, or another 30 minutes without sleep, or some other string of self-hating abuse--but you know, just a swig or two would pick you up, no more than that, and at least you could sleep, and you wouldn’t be miserable. That siren call crescendoed in my mind for two wet quivering days, until finally I went to that panel and tore those deafening fluid hearts from within the wall and transplanted them to the porch out back. I was halfway through dumping every last bottle into the marsh when Chuck appeared next to me and grabbed some bottles to help. I hadn’t even heard him open the door.
I finish blowing up the final pink wobbuffet and slide the door open. Quagsire helps me spread the balloons all throughout the house, in every nook and crevice we can think of.
Back at the hiding place, I return the empty gin/decoration box to the hole. I poke my head in to see if I forgot anything and I see it; the parchment label, the croagunk dripping its poison. I’m halfway inside the wall before I can grab it. It’s unopened. I haven’t held a bottle of liquor in 4 months. The deep amber ichor lops against the glass as I rotate it in my hand. That weak song sputters to life in my brain… Carrigans is good stuff, it’s been long enough, surely you could just have one…
‘Wake?’
Chuck’s behind me, how could I have woken him up? I burst out that I haven’t drunk anything, I just happened to find this old bottle--and I realize he must’ve seen the decorations, and now I’m apologizing and saying I just wanted to surprise him for his return to the ring tomorrow. I stand up and show him my hiding spot, and try to hand him the bottle of whiskey.
He sets the bottle down on the treadmill and reaches past my arm, past the wide dark hole in the wall I think he’s never seen before, grabs the wooden panel, and pulls it in the opposite direction past its resting place. Slowly he reveals another hole, I’ve definitely never seen this one, and he pulls out a hand bound book and a small box.
‘I’m surprised you never found it,’ he says with a twitch of his mouth. He chuckles watching me stare at his hiding place.
‘Recovery sucked,’ Chuck says to me. ‘I thought I’d never wrestle again. I thought I might not even lift or train heavy again. Remember what you said to me the morning after surgery? About how recovery is a river that never stops flowing, a song that never quite finishes?’
I forgot I’d told him that, and I shake my head.
‘Well you told me. And you told me you’d still be with me the whole way. So this is for you.” He sits next to me on the treadmill and opens the book right there. The first page is a picture of him and I ringside from a year ago, the night he got hurt.
‘I couldn’t have come back from this without you,’ Chuck says. ‘You’re the only person I’ve ever let see me at my worst. Feeling vulnerable is one thing; being physically vulnerable is something else. Calling you mine… I’m just glad you were there.’
It’s not just the pretty stuff in here. There’s a picture of him down on the mat clutching his knee, ref kneeling beside waving an arm, his opponent turned away with hands on his head. Chuck in the hospital bed before surgery, huge and ridiculous in a white gown with tiny flowers, grimacing with a thumbs up. The discharge form from the hospital.
And there’s his hitmonchan and I propping him up as he puts weight on his leg… Chuck lounging in one of my signature salt baths in the hot tub on the back porch, me dumping in another bag of salt… another, somehow larger party hat I made him wear when he could finally get back in the gym and start lifting again. I had forgotten about all these pictures he had us take. There were notes too; a diary of his worst and best days, lifting logs, PT progress reports. I stop at the last page, a picture of us toasting our sparkling lemonade from Driftveil two nights ago, celebrating his long road to recovery. I lean my head against Chuck’s shoulder when he closes the book.
‘For the first time in my life I feel safe.’ Chuck says. ‘I feel like no matter how low I get, or how my body fails me, you’ll be pushing me along in your current. You’re the wild white water sweeping me towards a brighter life.’
I’m hiding my face cause I’ve never cried like this in front of him, at least that I can remember, and he turns my face upward towards his with a steady raise of his hand when he tells me this last part.
‘You’ve shown me that I’m more than my worst day. That goes both ways you know.’
I reach out and kiss him, and as the abundant waves of regret and joy and love course over my face and my rather large body, he sits there and holds me up. Just as I did for him, I think to myself.
‘What’s in the box?’ I ask, once I can finally laugh.
‘You weren’t supposed to see that yet,’ he replies with a quiver of his mustache.
