Waxing Poetic (NoC RP #2)

[Seth Dillinger]

Seth Dillinger sits cross-legged on the black quartz countertop of an apartment kitchen. He wears a pair of green UnderArmor gym shorts and a heather gray tank top. Seth reaches over to a bowl of pretzel sticks and tosses one up in the air, catching it in his mouth. Carly Rae Jepsen's "Run Away with Me" blares in the background of the apartment, with the epic saxophone filling the room.

SETH DILLINGER

"I'm telling you, man. Emotion is the most underrated album of our generation."

The camera swivels over to reveal none other than Dennis Escobar, Seth's ex. He's wearing a purple and yellow striped shirt, khaki shorts, and a white kitchen apron. A hot pan sizzles on the stove with a mix of onions, chicken, and zucchini cooking in some sort of sauce and spice combination. He shrugs with his back to Seth, focusing on the food on the stove.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"I don't get it."

Seth scoffs at the response, hurling a pretzel stick at the back of Dennis's head.

SETH DILLINGER

"That's because you're uncultured."

Dennis turns around and cuts Seth a look.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"I'm uncultured because I don't love an album by the girl who had one good hit seven years ago?"

Seth rolls his eyes.

SETH DILLINGER

"Oh my god, I can't even with you. Call Me Maybe isn't even a good song!"

Dennis turns back with his spatula, poking and stirring the stir fry in the pan.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Well, when your worst song is the only one that got popular, maybe you're just not that good, huh?"

Seth gets annoyed and hops down off the counter, opening the fridge and sticking his head to search for a beer.

SETH DILLINGER

"Whatever. Like I'm going to take the musical opinion of someone who still likes Panic at the Disco seriously."

Seth retrieves a Pabst Blue Ribbon from the fridge and cracks it open.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Hey! Panic at the--"

Dennis turns and sees the beer in Seth's hand.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"--Um, me too please?--"

Seth dramatically sighs and turns back to the fridge.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"--Panic at the Disco is great. And Brendon Urie can get it."

Seth cracks open a second PBR and sets it down next to the stovetop.

SETH DILLINGER

"Look, we aren't debating cuteness. Do I want to sit on Brenden Urie's face? Yes, obviously. Do I want to listen to his shitty music? No."

Dennis reaches down and grabs the beer, taking a swig.

SETH DILLINGER

"How much longer on dinner, anyway?"

Dennis sets the beer down.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Oh, it's ready."

Seth throws his hands up.

SETH DILLINGER

"Then what am I getting you a beer for!?"

Dennis turns and grins cheekily at Seth.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Oh, I just like making you my beer bitch."

Seth grumbles and stomps off to the living room. Dennis laughs, dividing up the veggie and chicken bits onto two different plates. He grabs two forks and two knives out of the drawer, tossing them on the plates, then carrying both over to Seth and joining him on the couch. Dennis sets both plates down on the coffee table.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Bon appetit."

Seth takes his fork and stabs a chunk of chicken, biting it off.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"So... how is it?"

Seth tries to stay stoic, but can't help but smirk.

SETH DILLINGER

"It's... actually really good."

Seth chuckles and Dennis sits back, basking in the glory.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Aha! You couldn't even PRETEND to be mean that time!"

Seth stuffs a few more forkfulls of stir fry into his mouth. Dennis sits forward, finally doing the same. Seth takes a swig of his beer to wash it down.

SETH DILLINGER

"You're not so bad at this cooking thing. You know, for an accountant."

Dennis laughs, nearly spitting out his food.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Oh, yeah? Well, you're not bad at this wrestling thing. You know, for a... uh..."

Dennis trails off, struggling to think of a good comeback. Seth mockingly looks at his watch, tapping it. After a few minutes, Seth lets out a loud BZZZZZZZZZZZT noise, imitating a game show buzzer.

SETH DILLINGER

"Ooooh, sorry, Dennis, you didn't quite answer in time. Better luck on the insults next time."

Dennis waves him off.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Whatever."

SETH DILLINGER

"How about leave the quips and wrestling to me, I'll leave the cooking and math to you."

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Ah yes. The four constants in life: quips, cooking, math, and wrestling. How could I forget?"

Seth chuckles, taking another swig of his beer.

SETH DILLINGER

"I was never interested in math, man. It's honestly impressive to me when people are interested in it. And even more impressive when they're good at it."

Dennis shrugs.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"It just came naturally, I don't know. I mean, certainly SOMETHING interested you in school. You didn't study wrestling and quips. I don't recall those being on the curriculum."

Seth looks up in thought for a moment.

SETH DILLINGER

"I dunno..."

Dennis sets his fork down and turns to face Seth.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Oh come on! Something! English? History? Hell, theater?!"

Seth snaps out of his train of thought.

SETH DILLINGER

"OH! I did do theater!"

Dennis smiles and points at Seth.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"See? That's what I--"

SETH DILLINGER

"--but I only did it so I could make out with Jake Schuster behind the stage scenery."

Dennis slumps back in the couch, resting his head against the arm.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"I give up."

SETH DILLINGER

"What? You would get it if you saw his hair. His hair Dennis! For a horny 16 year old, he was the closest I was going to get to making out with John Mayer."

Dennis puts a hand to his forehead.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Why am I not surprised you had the hots for John Mayer?"

Seth holds his hands out to express his innocence.

SETH DILLINGER

"WHAT!? It was 2006! There weren't that many heartthrobs to choose from."

Dennis sighs and shakes his head, sitting forward to take another bite of food.

SETH DILLINGER

"Actually, you know, there was one thing. Philosophy."

Dennis turns and raises an eyebrow.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Is this another setup for you talking about dudes somehow?"

Seth shakes his head.

SETH DILLINGER

"Nah. I legit liked philosophy. I always fancied myself as one of those types that can, like, get real introspective and shit and sound good doing it, you know?"

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"So... why not pursue it?"

Seth shrugged.

SETH DILLINGER

"Eh. Not my style, fam. You know? Like, I'm just kinda laid back. Things don't sound.... suuuuuuuuuuper smart coming out of my mouth. I don't think people would buy it. You know, the whole gravitas vibe you need to pull off something that big and thinky. Like, I'm thinking... Alistair Cooke from Masterpiece Theatre. That's the kind of aura you need to pull that off."

Dennis sets down his fork and hops up excitedly off the couch, clapping his hands together.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Are you saying--"

SETH DILLINGER

"Ugh, Jesus."

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"--that you need a glow-up!?"

Seth puts his head in his hands, sliding them slowly down off his cheeks, pulling at his skin in the process.

SETH DILLINGER

"No, Dennis."

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Oh, come on! It'd be fun. We'll make you QUITE stately and authoritative."

Seth shakes his head.

SETH DILLINGER

"No way. Plus, come on, who wants to hear what a wrestler has to say about philosophy anyway?"

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Dummy. You think philosophers talk about philosophy? Hell no, duh, they just start talking and eventually reach something profound."

Seth stares up at Dennis and blinks a few times.

SETH DILLINGER

"I'm not... sure that's how it works."

Dennis shrugs.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"They're all dead, so we can't exactly ask."

Dennis runs into his bedroom and disappears for a few minutes. Seth takes a few bites of food before Dennis rushes back out, holding a very soft-looking robe up with a wide smile on his face.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Lemme do you up!"

SETH DILLINGER

"Ughhhhhhhh."

Seth flops onto his back on the couch.

SETH DILLINGER

"I don't have it in me."

Dennis lays the robe over the arm of a nearby chair and then rushes off to the kitchen, calling back to Seth.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"You do! We'll get you done up and do one of those self-serious promos that all you wrestlers do."

Seth snaps up to a seated position.

SETH DILLINGER

"Hey. My promos aren't self-serious."

Dennis turns and squints his eyes at Seth.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Aren't they though?"

Seth scoffs and folds his arms, taking offense to the very idea.

SETH DILLINGER

"No! And I usually do blogs anyway!"

Seth pouts a bit as Dennis comes rushing around the corner of the bar-top area with a bottle of Patron and two shot glasses.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Come on. The best thinkers in the world did their best thinking while drunk."

Seth eyeballs the shot glass and bottle of liquor.

SETH DILLINGER

"...is this some fetish of yours? You trying to get me drunk so you can live out some fantasy of fucking a 1930's bourgeious white guy?"

Dennis rolls his eyes.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Please, honey, don't flatter yourself."

Seth feigns shock and horror, holding a hand to his neck to pantomime "clutching his pearls". 

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"I just think it could be fun. Plus, come on, what else do you have to do tonight?"

Seth casts a sideways glance over at the robe, then back over at the bottle of liquor.

SETH DILLINGER

"Okay. FINE."

Seth snatches up the bottle and pours himself a shot, then shoots it back.

SETH DILLINGER

"...but I need to get very, VERY drunk first."

Dennis grins and pours two more shots, holding up one for Seth to clank against. The two throw it down the hatch.

TWO HOURS LATER...

The scene fades in. Seth sits in a lavish sateen burgundy robe by a fireplace, a glass of brown liquor at a small endtable at his side. The firelight dances off the wetness of his eyes -- probably accentuated by a night of drinking and haziness.

SETH DILLINGER

"Good evening."

Seth takes a long sip from the glass of whiskey & ginger next to him, gently nudging the lime out of the way of his lips to get a good sip.

SETH DILLINGER

"Tonight, I want to talk about violence-- or, maybe, it's about human nature..."

Seth trails off, stopping himself mid sentence, staring off into the midde distance at nothing in particular for a moment. He finally connects the dots in his head, closes his eyes, and sighs.

SETH DILLINGER

"Nah... this is definitely about human nature. Okay, let's start again. Good evening. Tonight, I want to talk about... human nature."

Seth sits and smiles, satisfied with himself, before closing his eyes and gritting his teeth.

SETH DILLINGER

"Fuck. Wait. You're supposed to start with a quote before you get all philosophical. Dammit."

He looks off camera at someone and throws his hands up in the air. A voice whispers back from off-camera.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"It's fine, just keep going."

Seth nods and closes his eyes, searching his brain archives for an appropriate quote.

SETH DILLINGER

"A great philosopher once wrote that 'violence is man re-creating himself'. And this... this is the root of all our problems. Err... I guess by 'this', what I'm really saying is... 'we'. WE are the root of all our problems. Our anger, our hatred, our fear of the different, our inability to let go, our foggy sense of confusion that clouds our judgment every single day. We can't just sit still, can we? Nah, man, that'd be too easy. We get bored. We spin our wheels. We demolish ourselves over and over again. We turn to violence to break ourselves down because we can't... just... sit... still. Violence... in other words? Violence is ignorance."

Seth shakes his head, staring down at the floor for a second. He sits up, glassy eyed, looking off-camera.

SETH DILLINGER

"I don't really think this whole waxing poetic about violence thing is going to go anywhere other than me... you know, going down the rabbithole of who attacked me again. I don't wanna do that."

Dennis calls back from off camera.

DENNIS ESCOBAR

"Alright, that's cool. Let's try the other story. The one you started to tell me..."

Seth leans back in his chair, drawing his hands up in front of him into a folded triangle shape, inhaling deeply and centering himself before continuing.

SETH DILLINGER

"It's funny. There were two types of stories my parents used to tell me when I was a kid. The first one... well, I'm sure you all know it. There was a free spirited magical boy named Peter Pan who appeared in a family's window, whisking them away to an unknown land. The children managed to be heroes and stand up to the evil pirate Captain Hook and everyone lived happily ever after, right? This is a warm and fuzzy story. This... this teaches us empathy. It helps us learn to put ourselves in other people's shoes, because we all wanna be heroes, you know?"

Seth grabs at the edge of his robe and flaps it around a bit to create a breeze.

SETH DILLINGER

"It's fucking HOT! Can you turn on a fan!?

Seth tugs at the lapels of his robe and opens them up a bit, giving his skin room to breathe and revealing a bit of his chest. He drapes an arm over and grabs his glass of whiskey and ginger, picking it up and taking a sip before holding it out to his side instead of setting it back on the endtable.

SETH DILLINGER

"The other type of story my parents told me was a bit different. It was the story of a little girl who wore a red hooded cloak. She would walk and deliver food to her grandma, and her mother warned her not to stray from the path. A big bad wolf appears, learning that the girl is heading to her grandma's house, and he tempts the girl to stray off the path and pick some flowers. She does, and with the extra time, the wolf runs ahead and pretends to be the girl, getting entry into the grandma's house, and eating her whole. The little girl shows up, and the wolf eats her too. This is a scary story. A cold story. This... this teaches us fear. It keeps us doing what others say we should. It's fire and brimstone. A tactic as old as time."

Seth now sets the glass of whisky back down, folding one leg over the other and placing a hand on his knee.

SETH DILLINGER

"For the rest of our lives, these two stories will compete in our heads. On one hand, empathy. On the other hand, fear. Empathy and fear. As we grow, do we help the homeless guy on the street? Or do we shy away because he might be scary? Do we welcome immigrants with open arms? Or do we lock them away in detention facilities at the border? These two simple concepts determine so much of the rest of our lives, and we're barely even aware of it. We let one side take us over, and then get too weak, so the other side compensates. It's like clockwork. You can set your watch by it."

Seth trails off, staring down at the back of his hand. He stretches out his fingers to examine his fingernails. They need a little bit of work.

SETH DILLINGER

"See, I'm usually guilty of letting empathy take over. I tend to put myself in other people's shoes, look for the bright side... and in doing so, I ignore the fear. I let my guard down. It's what lead to me walking into an ambush by Bobby Barratt and his cronies. It's what lead to me letting Roy Harlowe scamper off with the Midwest... errr, I guess it's the US Title now? All those moments, I was living loosey goosey, loving life, nothing could get me down. I didn't even think the worst of the Icons despite how shitty they had proved to be. I sorta sympathized with them -- like, hey man, Jack isn't that bad, he had a rough upbringing and made something of himself... and Maverick just can't catch a break. That optimism bit me in the ass."

Seth snatches up the lime from his drink and pops it in his mouth, chewing out the flesh of the fruit before tossing the skin over his shoulder into the fireplace.

SETH DILLINGER

"But then, you know, I overcorrected. I went too far down the path of fear. I let fear rule me and in response, I got tunnel vision. I got out of the hospital, scared to let myself be vulnerable again, because it bit me in the ass last time, right? So I went full in on the fear thing, let it dictate my every move. I got obsessed. I drove away..."

Seth looks down at the floor to obscure his face, then clearly reaches up to wipe away a tear. He glances back up, looking off-camera at Dennis.

SETH DILLINGER

"I drove away someone that I loved and cared about very, very much."

He holds the gaze off-camera for a moment and nods his head. After a bit, he lets a smile creep at the edge of his lips before turning away and wiping another tear. He looks back up into the camera.

SETH DILLINGER

"I even let fear drive me to put myself in a situation where I was way in over my head. I tried to hang toe-to-toe in a street fight. It was savage. Brutal. I didn't know what I was getting into with the likes of Bobby, Jack, and Card. It was straight up dangerous to go in there blinded like that. I just... man, that's where being driven by fear will get you. It'll get you beaten and bloodied and left on death's door. That was... that was a humbling moment for me. Funny thing about being humbled, it tends to leave you a bit more empathetic than you were before..."

Seth trails off again, smiling, staring up at the ceiling. He takes in a deep breath through his nose and exhales deeply through his mouth, lowering his head calmly to look at the camera.

SETH DILLINGER

"It's easy to get consumed by one side or the other. But it's hard as hell to stay centered, grounded, and in the middle. That's the trick. That's what eluded me for so goddamn long. That's what lead to the endless cycle of empathy overtaking fear overtaking empathy. Hell, go back before my time in XHF. Empathy lead to me letting my best friend overdose. Fear lead to me drowning out my guilt with every substance known to man. Take a step even further back? Empathy lead to me coming out to my parents. Fear lead to me getting stuffed right back in that closet. It's the wheel that never stops turning for most people. It takes a HELL of a lot of fortitude and self-awareness to stop that wheel from turning..."

Suddenly, Seth stands and shatters his rocks glass on the ground, his upper torso moving up out of frame. Dennis can be heard scrambling behind the camera in shock, trying to adjust. The camera abruptly tilts upwards, showcasing Seth from a lower angle with the fireplace in the background silhouetting him.

SETH DILLINGER

"I broke the damn wheel, man. I figured out my shit. I let both sides control me equally. Fear is powerful. At Night of Champions, fear of being weak is what is going to drive me to fight my ass off against all four of my opponents in yet another match ripe for ultraviolence. But unlike AWF's Christmas Street Fight, this will be different, because I'm not fully consumed by my fear. I have empathy. Empathy for how others -- people who are near and dear to me -- will feel if I'm not careful. It tempers that drive, it moderates my passion. It helps me achieve balance... the same balance that drove me to victory in the Rumble. I won't be consumed by any one emotion. Not like Tabitha. Not like Holiday. These people revel in fear. It's their currency. But fear without empathy? Shit, man. That's a recipe for disaster. Take it from an expert. Take it from someone who let himself lose too much once before."

Seth glances up at Dennis off-screen, a twinkle in his eye.

SETH DILLINGER

"...but I won't let it happen again."

Fade to black.