The next part of my story’s my biggest regret

The next part of my story’s my biggest regret. I stand ashamed when I say married life was just one big competition. That which is supposed to be God’s gift to men, the very definition of life itself – a loving family – was ultimately just a game to me and Shawn. Peel away the layers of fatherly love and human emotion, and all you find is me and Shawn standing face to face, wielding our families at each other like conquests, showing off just how many strides we could venture away from one another.

Of course it didn’t appear that way – we fooled everyone, including ourselves. On the outside, we treated everything like the blessing of sunshine on a grave face, but behind closed doors, clinging and sweating and withering black within each other’s arms, we were hateful, aggressive alpha males, sadistic both sexually and mentally towards each other. We rammed and grinded and screamed and roared, both of us pleading, demanding and praying to be set free. Sometimes Shawn would cry as I slammed into him from above. Maybe I was hurting him physically – I knew I was hurting him inside. And yet I had no sympathy for him. How can you feel sorry for someone when you’re just as screwed as they are? So rough, painful sex was his punishment from me. God knows we punished each other enough.

Things became ridiculous in their repetition. For months we would scrape together pseudo independence. We would do everything possible to fool the other into thinking that we didn’t need them anymore. But it always wound up at the same place – some scummy motel bed in which we would devour each other as passionately as the first time we discovered how well we fit. We built up towers of disdain, only to knock them back down again and vow the next morning to never do it again. Cue the next round. The competition was all about who needed the other the least, and could hurt the other the most. That’s where family life came in. The question was, who could go the furthest?

First there was Cameron.

I cried myself to sleep the night Shawn came to me with the results of Becca’s test. Said they were having a baby. Said they were gonna be a proper Christian family. Said he was gonna cut every last scrap of my dirty faggot gut out of his life.

I turned around and there he was, looming at the door.

“Becca’s pregnant.” He croaked. His eyes were glazed, as if these intense, malicious orbs were programmed for only me. For a moment I just stared at his tear-streaked face, registering exactly what this meant. Then he started laughing; laughing vindictively at this new separation, whilst continuing to cry about it at the same time. Then he let loose, firing insults and painful words at me through his mess of snot and tears. And every shot he fired hit the target. Every little word atomised me, and all I came to know was the thunder of my battered heart. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you Shawn Michaels!

So I programmed my attention to Stephanie, who I showered with gifts and expensive dinners and romantic nights in. Hell, I pretty much shoved my face into my wife’s tits every time Shawn even dared to cross my mind. It was low and pathetic, but somehow it worked – at least over the most painful periods. Armed with Stephanie, I survived Cameron’s birth and christening; the broody, tender gossip of the divas, and the salient smile of Shawn, which I realised painfully, was the first genuine smile that had cracked his face in years without my assistance. Maybe he really didn’t need me anymore.

Nevertheless, I didn’t allow myself to be convinced. Even when witnessing his incredible bond with his newborn son, I screamed to myself that he still loved me. Shawn loved his son; he was the purist, most beautiful thing in his life and the reason he kept on breathing – but he was also the vice clamping Shawn to Becca. A clamp Shawn had forged himself, to condemn himself to a life of conventional misery and build a fortress to ensure I could never claim him again. And, more importantly, he could never claim me.

And then, abruptly, we almost captured each other again. Almost.

The encounter four weeks after Cameron’s birth was what I later realised to be a guilt-ridden, dubious, wishy-washy, skim-across-the-surface of an apology on Shawn’s part. He approached me tentatively in a bar, softening his eyes as synthetically as if he were moulding plastecine. His words were equally as mild and meaningless.

“Hey, Hunter I…look, we need to sort this out.” Like him finding happiness suddenly meant everything could be sorted out like the contents of a filing cabinet. How do you respond to that shit? I simply couldn’t.

After absorbing my silence, he persisted half-heartedly. “Come on, Hunter…”

“Stop.” Although I couldn’t bear to look at him, I could see the troubled blue eyes in the corner of my own. I’d been waiting so long to hear his voice again, and now it was just too much. “Just don’t speak, okay? I…can’t take it. You know that.”

He nodded. He knew it alright. He understood perfectly.

But of course it didn’t shut him up for long.

“I…I don’t wanna…I can’t cut you out of my life, Hunter. I know you don’t wanna be in it, and I know what I said before, but you’re still my best friend…”

At this I just had to laugh. Then all humour was vanquished as I turned to look at him with wild eyes. “Friends?” I whispered. “You think that’s what it was, Shawn? Honestly? You think me ripping your clothes off and fucking you into the carpet was the same as Kevin letting you borrow his aftershave? Or Batista giving you a ride home? Or Jericho inviting you to the ball game? Just exactly when does it stop being friends for you, Shawn, and become more? Why don’t you fill me in, you know, put a number on how many orgasms it takes?”

I noticed Shawn’s eyes darting about franticly as I raised my voice a little towards the end. Then abruptly he clutched my arm, coaxing me off my stool and marching me into the empty bathroom.

“What the fuck, Hunter? You crazy?!” He hissed. “There are people out there with ears! I’ve recently been blessed with a child god damn it!”

I ignored this, continuing. “Shawn, we’re not friends. And I don’t just mean now. We haven’t been friends for years - you know when the last time we were friends was? When you leant me your god damn lighter in 1989! And guess what happened then? I came to give it back and we ended up FUCKING! THAT’S when the friendship ended, Shawn! Everything after that point has NOT been friendship! In fact it’s been the exact opposite of friendship! Know why? Because I’ve hated you, Shawn! I’ve hated you and you don’t hate friends! I’ve hated you ever since that day in your apartment, when I realised just how fucking incredible you are!!”

Shawn stared at me, completely shocked. It amused me bitterly that his puerile pout and wide, frightened eyes made him look as helpless and innocent as his baby son.

“Oh and don’t go flattering yourself, either.” I snapped, shoving a cigarette in my mouth and lighting it furiously. “Because I’ll tell you something, Shawn. I look at you, standing there with that stupid fucking look on your face, And d’ya know what? You’re disgusting. So fucking disgusting, Shawn - inside and out. All greasy and old and stinking of baby sick. Does it ever even cross your mind? Aren’t you just disgusted with yourself, Shawn? Crawling into my bedroom, spreading your disgusting legs and letting me fuck your disgusting slutty ass like some disgusting little whore. And then of course its back to Becca again, so she can rub diprobase all over your disgusting dirty body, thinking the bruises are from the match and you’re some kinda hero for getting them. But you’re really just a faggot, aren’t you, Shawn? A disgusting little faggot who can’t go one month without cock in his ass. Been a while, hasn’t it, baby? Well now why don’t you just bend over that sink and I’ll ram it on home for old times sake, eh? Then you can go limping back to your son and put your disgusting hands on him and spread your disgusting dirt all over him and make yourself feel better at his expense.

and don’t even get me started on the kid.” I closed in on him. “What kind of sicko brings a child into a loveless family to prove a point, Shawn?”

Tears were birthing in his crystal eyes; he shook his head franticly.

“You’re wrong.” He whimpered, barely audibly. “I love my son and I love Becca.”

I shook my head and was forced to look away. “Disgusting.”

The look of hurt that flashed on his face tore me in half, one half relishing his anguish and humiliation, the other stinging for reasons that I didn’t understand at the time.

“It isn’t easy, Hunter.” He said quietly after a tense couple minutes in which he adamantly averted my glare. “I still have feelings for you.” His voice trailed away.

“You bastard.” It rolled off my tongue as naturally as when I had once told him he was beautiful. “You and your little brat can go to hell. We could have been happy, Shawn, just you and me – us! Together! Remember that? And now what? All those memories, Shawn, they mean nothing now! They’re just the shit you left behind, and you know what, I don’t want them! Admit it, Shawn, we were perfect! It was perfect! Neither of us can feel like that again; don’t you understand what we’ve lost? You wanted to free yourself – well now you’re trapped forever and I’m stuck here on the outside and I damn well don’t belong here and you know it!!”

I belonged with him. We both knew it.

I regained my breath. “And it’s all your fault, Shawn! You ruined everything!”

“1995 is long gone, Hunter.” But the answer wasn’t good enough, and we both sensed it.

Upon receiving nothing more but two pained, soldier blue eyes, I continued, wondering where my own tongue was taking me.

“But this is the good part – you’ll eat this up, because even standing there, looking more disgusting to me than I ever thought you could, even then I want you, Shawn! I wanna hold you and make love to you like in the good old days. I want you to be mine, not Becca’s! I want you and I can’t have you and that’s why I hate you!”

He didn’t reply. He turned away with an anguished expression, and I knew I’d shot him down. As we filed out of the bathroom, I turned to close the door behind me, only to find my lips inches from his. I pondered over a thousand mysteries about those lips in the mere half a second they were hovering before my own. I wondered if I had truly experienced the best of them, as I’d definitely experienced the worst. I wondered there was a place on my body they hadn’t engulfed. I wondered if they’d be appreciated reserved only for Becca.

For a moment, we were in Limbo. All was forgotten as we stared at each other, our lips barely over an inch apart, the distance between us bridged by hot, ravenous breath. The whole world was ours to forget – the people around us didn’t matter, and the previous argument was suddenly a mile away, negligible under the bulk of our kindled feelings for one another. I think that in that second we both genuinely believed we were the only two people in the world. We both felt the freedom and lust and spirit of our youthful selves, and encapsulated in that moment was a feeling that we could do anything we wanted, go anywhere we wanted, and be together forever. One taste of each other, and it was 1995 again – at least until the moment broke.

Shawn turned away, and was gone too abruptly to register in my mind. Reality swept in, and once again and I was flooded with anguish and regret. It was easy to hate Shawn, but unfortunately, it was just as easy to love him.